lent

Lenten Pilgrimage

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After doing my own reading and talking to my close friend, I’m going to approach Lent as a pilgrimage of sorts. In that way, it goes along with my view that the last couple of years were and are a path that I’m following until I end up where I belong, wherever that is.

As a non-Catholic for my whole life up to this point, I’ve thought of Lent as that part of the year most like Yom Kippur. Time to atone your sins and with Easter renew your year, much like I do at that time of the year in the Fall or most people do in January at the New Year.

I’ve come to find that it’s much more than that. Of course, it’s whatever each individual decides to do for themselves, so please don’t take this as a directive that now suddenly I’ve attended Mass for less than a year and I’m some kind of expert. I only know my own observations and what my friends’ have told me, not to mention any specific questions I’ve had answered, either through asking or Googling.

As a child, I was under the impression that Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are fast days, and that meat isn’t eaten on Fridays during Lent. I am planning on observing these dietary restrictions with the addition that I will also eliminate bread during most of the week of Passover. This year is definitely a transition for me; I also remind myself that Jesus himself was celebrating Passover at His Last Supper.

I’m abstaining from two things for the next forty days (although I think it’s slightly longer than that). Diet Coke (and all soda really, but that’s the only one I drink) and the bakery scones I’ve been enjoying too much. I’m replacing the Diet Coke with water and green tea. I really don’t like green tea, but I’ve been reading that it counteracts some of the bad things that aspartame does to your body, so I’m going to try it out. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll drink my usual black tea and water.

This is an extraordinarily difficult thing for me to give up. Except for an occasional morning tea or lemonade in the summer or Starbucks drinks, ALL I drink is Diet Coke. I would guess that I average about 28 12 oz. cans in a week.

The only advantage I have is that they’re decaffeinated, so I won’t have the pleasure of going through a caffeine withdrawal. Been there, done that, wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.

I won’t be replacing the scones with anything. Part of that is to save the money and part of that is to lose the weight I’ve gained in the last couple of months out of the blue. Both saving the money and losing a bit of weight will be advantageous for me come October.

I also want to use this time for my writing. It was suggested that I trade one hour of Tumblr for one hour of writing, but I don’t have the willpower to do that; it would just make me miserable every time I ‘cheated’, so it’s not going to be a 1:1 ratio.

However, I will commit to writing certain things for the next forty days and hopefully keep it up as we go through the rest of the year.

The first thing that I want to write about on a daily basis is my faith journey, whether that’s this past year and how it’s brought me to this place or what I’m feeling on that day during the Lenten season. There are so many days that I have a monologue in my head about the faith and spirit that I’m feeling and I never get them down, so I’m hoping that this will help me get it out. I also have my Mason Jar project continuing through the year. There are still a couple of things that I haven’t put in it yet, but that’s separate from Lent.

The second thing I want is to be more consistent in my blogging. Whether it’s non-fiction blathering or Fan Fiction and Meta, I want to be posting, if not daily, then consistently, so it’s expected, both by me and by my readers. I’ve had my blog nominated for a couple of new blog awards and my essay about writing was recommended in January. These are great things, and make me very proud of what I have done, but with new readers comes higher expectations, and my expectations for myself should be higher than the reader. I want to try and live up to that.

I think what that means are at least two writings per day: one related to my faith and one for general writing.

Most importantly, I’m not dreading what’s expected of me this Lenten season. I’m looking forward to it; the challenges, the commitments, the creativity, the walk with Christ.

My Journey Towards Faith

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I’ve spent a lot of time on Tumblr writing about my new found obsession, Supernatural. This show really has everything – good music, complex characters, a cast that loves their jobs and more pop culture references than you could possibly name, not to mention the puns.

I may eventually share those essays here if there is a want for it, but my friend, who encourages me in all things, and especially writing knows exactly which buttons to push to get me off my ass and before I knew it, I had over 5000 words in three essays about the show, the characters and my predictions for the future of the all of the above.

In addition to that taking up much of my time, I kind of had a relapse with my depression. I wasn’t more depressed or down, but I could feel that I fell off the wagon. I think I’m back on as long as I stick to my routines that I have really grown accustomed to, and more than that, comforted by.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever mentioned here what’s been happening in my religious life. A quick overview would be that I was raised Jewish, and followed all of the holidays, more so when I was a kid, but I’ve tried to give my kids the feel for the traditions that I grew up with. As far as faith, I’ve never been very religious in that way, although I knew most of the Bible stories, and believe in them.

Last year around this time, I kind of fell apart. It was about two months after an official diagnosis of severe depression and other things were happening in my life that would be inappropriate to discuss on a public blog, but I found myself at our local Roman Catholic Church. I knew I would be welcome, and so I wandered in to pray by myself and catch my breath so to speak. I did this several times whenever I was ‘sent’ there through the various signs (truly neon) that were sent to me on certain days and I followed those feelings.

Eventually, I began to attend the daily Mass three days a week, and I am still doing that today. Over the course of this last year, I discovered the Scriptures and the Word of G-d, and the role Jesus Christ has played in religious mythos and history of the Catholic Church (and all of Christianity, of course). At some point, I understood what was meant by ‘coming to Jesus’ and being ‘saved’. It was so clear in so many things that I was witnessing, both emotionally and physically. My head took a bit longer, but my heart knew what was to come in my life. I was lucky to have a very strong, supportive friend as well as a very supportive priest, regardless of any decisions I made in regard to remaining Jewish or converting to Catholicism.

At the very end of last year, New Year’s Eve in fact, I sat down with my priest to discuss my desire to be baptized. This will happen next Easter (2014), and while there will be bumps on that road that I will have to deal with, I know it is the right one.

The one question that has come up (from a family member) is whether or not I believe in the Resurrection. I don’t always have to see things to believe them, although I am extremely cynical in my ways. I do believe in ghosts, however, and if those manifestations are real, there is no logical reason that the Resurrection is not. So, yes, I do believe.

The reason I bring this up is that Lent begins on Wednesday, and since this is my first year attending church, for myself, I have decided to observe Lent, even though technically I’m not required to, and I will also follow the Jewish holidays that I would have normally celebrated including Passover next month. I don’t expect any of this to be easy. The point actually is for it to be a challenge – a kind of pilgrimage as part of the new path that I’m on.

In addition to giving up a couple of things, I will be adding writing and meditation to my Lenten journey, which will both focus me creatively and bring me closer to G-d.

I drink a lot of Diet Coke. It’s practically the only thing I drink, so I’ve decided that soda is what I will be giving up. I drink non-caffeinated, so there shouldn’t be any kind of physical withdrawal, only a psychological one, but because of the negative effects of the aspartame (I was told twice this week about them, both from my best friend and my brother), I will be adding green tea as well as regular tea and water. I am also giving up my favorite bakery scones, which is good both for diet and pocketbook.

However, Lent isn’t just about giving up things; it’s about adding G-d and Faith into your life and that is my intent, not only adding Faith, but adding my Dreams to this reflective time.

I’m going to cut back on some of my social media and prioritize things because last year at this time I checked out of my life. I wasn’t there for my friends; not for my kids; not for my husband, and to give credit where credit is due, he took on a lot more than he should have been expected to and with less complaint than he was entitled to. All of our problems aren’t gone, but I’m physically better; I’m mentally better, and the support system I have seems to be working for me. We still need work, but that is also part of my Lenten pilgrimage.

Thank you for giving me such great encouragement to this writing experiment. I’m happy that you will join me as I (hopefully) increase my writing output with quality, timely and entertaining posts. I’m enjoying hearing from many of you. Any of your suggestions on format and topics/prompts are always welcome.