Giving Up and Taking On: A Holistic Approach to Lent

Every year I spend a lot of time thinking about what I'm going to do for Lent.  There have been years I gave up social media, years I gave up eating meat... if I ever tried to take something on I don't remember it (which shows how successful I was).  But I also think there's been a part of me that's been shy about committing "too much".  This year I kind of felt like I wanted to go "all in", or at least deeper than I have in the past couple years.  

Pray, Fast, Give.  That's the Lenten mantra that gets repeated over and over again.  You pray more, you fast from something, you give alms.  At least, that's the tradition.  Maybe this year, I thought, I need to incorporate all three practices instead of focusing on just one.

For the first practice, Pray, I decided I'm going to try to make Evening Prayer a habit.  Ever since Advent, I've successfully added the Morning Office to my daily routine.  There's a podcast from Forward Movement that allows me to do this in my car on the way to work each day.  So now, during the Lenten season, I'm going to add Evening Prayer to my day, sometime around 6 PM.  

After having a conversation with my spiritual director recently, another prayer practice I want to try is to spend some time each day "wasting time with God".  This phrase is one that I've heard used to describe the monastic life.  It hit home when I spend some time on retreat last year and found myself... I hate to even say it... bored.  After praying the regular hours and eating meals, the time in between I found myself wandering around, wondering what I was doing there.  But during that wandering, I found myself more able to hear what the Spirit was trying to say to me.  Without the mad rush to fill my brain with information, either from my phone or yet another book, I could be open to listen for a change.  

As far as the second practice, Fasting, is concerned, there are two ways to go about it: a bodily fast and a mind fast.  Taking a break from Facebook or your phone in general are some ways to give your brain a break, and I've thought about both of these.  But I want to go deeper and give up something that will actually be a sacrifice for me.  I briefly considered giving up coffee.  I was told that maybe that would actually be inconsiderate to those around me, so I gave that idea up...  So now I'm going to go with the second hardest substance for me to give up: sugar.  Giving up sweets for Lent is kind of a cliche, and that's probably why I've avoided it.  But it's also something that would actually be difficult for me, more than giving up meat was.  

A mental fast that I've considered this year is to give up multitasking.  That sounds pretty ridiculous to me now given the fact that I'm taking on multiple Lenten disciplines.  But the point of such a fast is to only do one thing at a time and really focus on that thing.  That has become harder and harder in today's world, where you have this little computer in your pocket that can do virtually anything you need it to.  I think at the very least I can put the phone aside for periods of the day, those times when I can instead be "wasting time with God."  It's more spiritually edifying than playing iPhone games, right?

And now we come to Give.  This Lent, I'd like to give some more of my time to St James' Lunch Program.  I've given plenty of time coordinating volunteers and helping serve, prepare and clean up, but what I have done a lot less of is connecting with the people there.  So once a week, I'd like to spend time just sharing in the meal and the human connection.  

I know, it sounds like a lot.  It sounds like I'm being a Lent overachiever.  I think I'm really craving structure right now, as I'm waiting to hear back decisions on my applications to seminaries.  The idea of being in that seminary environment, with the structure of daily prayer, class, fellowship and formation is very appealing to me.  I have spent a lot of my life so far pretty unstructured.  As a result, I feel scattered more often than not.  This might be my attempt at building a "rule of life" for the first time.  I know I'll probably fail on some of these disciplines.  Some may end up being habits that stick around long after, though.  I promise, I won't be too hard on myself.  As a good friend of mine said, "I don't think Jesus cares if you give up pop or not."  But if I'm spending more time focusing on Him than on other things, that's the most important thing.