Lent

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday. Where I live, in the unchurched Northwest, the day passed with little notice. No hospital employees or patients walked around with forehead ash crosses. No special mass was held in the hospital sanctuary. No one was hung over from Fat Tuesday celebrations. It just isn't so mainstream here. But, all the same, Ash Wednesday it was.

Now, I'm not Catholic. I'm not even completely Christian. Lent holds no religious meaning for me. But I have always been fascinated by it. It's not just the Christians who use periods of self-denial to achieve enlightenment or spiritual growth or whatever. The Muslims fast for the month of Ramadan. Buddhists fast after noon once a week. Hindus have a complicated schedule of frequent fasting. Jews fast for Yom Kippur. Hell, scientists think that fasting, in adherence to the Greek Orthodox church, is the key component of the health effects associated with a "Mediterranean diet." That's right - denying a basic bodily need keeps it healthier.

Most years, I use the Christian calendar as inspiration to practice my own version of lent. Mostly because I'm too lazy to come up with any better plan. Usually I will abstain from chocolate or sugar or alcohol for the 40 days. Unpleasant, but not difficult. One year I went all Eastern Orthodox and abstained from all animal products, oil, wine, and yeasty bread. That was difficult. This year I have been pondering how to use lent in my own practice. Abstain from something I don't need to start with, like chocolate? wine? gossiping? While pondering my course of action, I looked up lent on Wikipedia (where else would one go for spiritual advice?) and read this:

The traditional purpose of Lent is the penitential preparation of the believer—through prayer, penance, repentance, almsgiving, and self-denial.

The three traditional practices to be taken up with renewed vigour during Lent are prayer (justice towards God), fasting (justice towards self), and almsgiving (justice towards neighbour). Today, some people give up a vice of theirs, add something that will bring them closer to God, and often give the time or money spent doing that to charitable purposes or organizations.

The last part of this, the almsgiving, reminded me of something else I've been working on - the 30 Days to Live a Better Life series. I started this a year ago, and have made it to day 22. So, I'm not on schedule. I hope it is a figurative 30 days and not a literal 30 days, because I don't like turning in work late. It is taking me more than 30 days to sort out the complexities of my inner and outer life enough to start living it better. That's another story. But, today, where I am stuck, is this task: Peform 3 acts of kindness.

Apparently I am not a kind person, because I can't think of 3 things to do to check that day off my list. Three little acts of kindness. I'm stumped. I don't have time for kindness. I don't know anyone to whom I could be kind. I can barely keep up with the minimal requirements of relationships and society. Forget going beyond those to actual kindness.

So, as long as I'm picking and choosing how to interpret and practice lent, I may as well pick the one aspect of lent that seems to challenge me. Almsgiving. Kindness. Justice towards my neighbors. Maybe I'll try being kind for 40 days.

Be kind for 40 days. All well and good. But. I still don't know HOW to actually BE KIND. So, I once again turn to the internet for spiritual guidance. I found a website that is actually called RandomActsOfKindness.org. Seriously. And it has idea lists of kind things to do. Look, I don't know how pathetic this is, but I'm going to use a web-site to find ideas of kind acts to perform for lent. It's techno-spirituality. It's relevant. It's multi-tasking. It's challenging. It's my lent.