I have two articles that I enjoyed so very much today that one friend posted on my wall: http://www.sojo.net/blogs/2012/02/21/fat-tuesday-and-skinny-wednesday and another friend had posted in the newsfeed: http://www.relevantmagazine.com/god/deeper-walk/features/28361-why-practicing-lent-is-crazy . I enjoyed both very much and would love to share them with others.
While I was brought up Catholic, I was never asked by my parents to give anything up for lent and I can't even say we had pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. We may have but I can't recall. We sporadically got ashes on Ash Wednesday. We did go to church, my mom, brother and I pretty much every week but that was about it.
For many many years after being confirmed I had no interest whatsoever in church. NONE.
They, when I was newly married, I became a lector at St. Pius. I enjoyed it. I usually went alone. My hubby was an altar boy when he was young but is pretty quiet about his beliefs. I also read at St. Joseph's once we lived in Whites Lake.
I have had many periods of being upset with church and organized religion. I have had hiatuses because some principle or practice or interpretation the church has will severely piss me off and then I need a lot of reflection and examination of my own faith and beliefs before I go back. I have on many an occassion called myself a Recovering Catholic.
Being a parent has led me to try to be more involved. I think it is a huge responsibility to share your faith and to help your child develop their own faith. It is also really a challenge to always remember that it is THEIR faith. My eldest asked me about a year or two ago if I would be angry if she became a Muslim some day. I said that I needed some time to think about that. Truthfully, I know very little about the Muslim faith. I hardly know a lot about Catholicism. So I thought for a couple days. I did not research the Muslim faith because it was not about that. I thought about how I had felt an immediate pang of sadness and frustration. What was that all about? Was I not doing my job as a parent? Was I not modelling appropriately? Did I need for my child to be a Catholic? What had I agreed to when she was baptized? What are my obligations here as far as God is concerned? So after a couple days, I said "I am ready to answer you about your faith question. Every religion has pros and cons. Everyone in every religion is still an individual that takes in all the information and turns it around and comes to conclusions about it. I want you to really learn about all you can before you make any decision about any faith. I will never be angry about it. It is personal. It is your relationship with God." She remembers none of this... except for asking me if I would be angry. LOL. and I thought so hard about it... oh well... I stand by what I came up with should she or the other one ask me something similar. LOL
So I attend a Catholic church. I practice numerous elements of the Catholic Faith. I am not a zealot by any means. It is a flawed religion. Aren't they all? And shouldn't they be as we ourselves are all flawed? How can we develop an organized religion that isn't flawed when we barely know anything of what God knows?
So this brings me to Lent. For me as a parent, when my kids were a bit younger, we had taken about a year off church, maybe a year and a half. I had on many occassions during that year bought games and videos at Blessings, the store in Bayers Lake. We have an awesome board game about Easter that is based on the children's game Memory. We had some great discussions. I had storybooks from the same store about Easter. These discussions were far more rich and involved then most we have after a mass we attend. It was then that we discussed sacrifice.
So that was when I started giving things up. I know that giving up chocolate or some such things (chips, nachos, pop, fill in the blank) is nothing compared to giving up your only son (as in God's case) or giving up your life (as in Jesus' case) (and yes I know they are one and the same) BUT when you give anything up, you have some measure of suffering (again nothing like what they went through) but you contemplate it, you miss it, you crave it, you have moments of regret, confusion, times you doubt yourself, times you are proud of yourself, times you think what you are doing is ridiculous etc etc etc. And then when you think about the ultimate sacrifice that was done for us, you say this is nothing at all, this is no sacrifice compared to that. That was LOVE. Unconditional true, deep abiding LOVE. This is something so minor for us in on little lives but it is a way for us to have time to think, to stop, to realize how human we are and just maybe how grateful we are.
I am going to be more loving to my family, send them some notes, and I am going to use some TV time for other things like household tasks, exercise, organization, reading, scrapbooking. I am going to do something fitness oriented every day. And I will fast from sweets. I will reflect on these choices. They will all make me more loving as well as healthier. These are both gifts.
