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Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Focus, Spirit, Discipline - a Lenten series

I have a funny story about how I started observing Lent. (Hey, that's good, start off Lent with humor. Perhaps wry is a better word than "funny".) Ok, so I have a wry story about how I started observing Lent.

Bear with me.

During my senior year of college, the thing to do was to head down to New Orleans for the week leading up to Mardi Gras for the, ummm, festivities. It must have coincided with Spring Break or something, because we were there for almost a week. It was everything you can imagine. The food was good; our behavior was not. (although, I must say we were pretty tame participants)

On the way home, one of us asked, "So, if we've participated in Mardi Gras, I guess we've got to give up something for Lent, right?" Well, it did seem like a fair trade off. So, I gave it a try.

I've no idea what I "gave up", but I'm sure it was pretty innocuous. And it probably didn’t last very long.

Over the next few years, as I made the long, slow journey back to biblical Christianity, I also got more serious about observing a good Lent. Lent has become, for me, a season to be re-grounded in my faith.

DH and I want to offer our kids a good Lent. We'll be trying to do that in three ways:

Our Focus of Lent - The Triduum as high point

Our Spirit of Lent - Recommitment to spiritual practices

Our Disciplines of Lent - Living out commitments to prayer, fasting, almsgiving

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