Forty days to discover / His Passion calls us to new life

[midnightmelody]

I love Lent, it is one of my favourite part of the liturgical year! It is all full of promise and purpose and being purified and redeemed, and the space to figure everything out and start again where I need to. It's preparation for mission, and spending 40 days with God, and being freed from all the crazy prisons I wander into

Comments

[orientalmoons]

At some point in my childhood I got the idea that Lent was when you were miserable, sang doleful hymns and were deprived of things you like without really understanding why (and therefore losing the point of the exercise). I know now that Lent is not about being miserable, but it still has those overtones- and being miserable is the last thing I need.

I know it's not possible to opt out, but I would like to make Lent positive, which is what it should be. Someone suggested reading a Psalm a day, which I could get along with. I don't want to do the giving up foods thing because it's too much like the miserable Lent of childhood. And whilst I would like to go to church every Sunday, it's hard when so many of the hymns are so melancholy.

[midnightmelody]

Yes, Lent's only something I've come to like over the last few years. I think a lot of that has come from Ignatian spirituality, which never lets you dwell on sin for very long without reminding you of God's amazing compassion and mercy, and our wonderful legacy as beloved children of God. And yes, I would imagine that you're quite steeped enough in melancholy, and therefore are already (in that sense) prepared and waiting for the joy and promise of healing and new life that Easter brings. I hope you can find some way of integrating some services into your Lenten celebrations, if that is important to you. Or that you find some other way of marking the season which helps you rather than hindering you.

An LJ community I'm on has come up with what I think is a friendly and positive reflection for each day in Lent, here - feel free to use it if it works for you!

[smhwpf]

That is a good way to look at it. Aye, definitely got stuff to work out, and crazy prisons to be freed from, God willing.

[midnightmelody]

*hugs* I hope you can be all free and joyful. Sometimes we are crazy people, Paul definitely had a point with the whole 'Stop acting like you're trapped! You're free! Free, I tell you!' rant.

Oh, ranty St. Paul. :)

[the_elyan]

Unrelatedly, but to a fellow Stoppard fan - I just went to see the Invention of Love at Cambridge ADC, and it was wonderful.

[midnightmelody]

Awesome! Thanks for the heads-up on the other Stoppard, by the way!

[the_elyan]

Cool - looks like it should be good (I love the Real Thing). Let me know if you'll be there the same time as me. I mentioned ito princessdanae as well.

[emperor]

I'm not very plussed about being away from home for Shrove Tuesday, and Ash Wednesday. I think my lenten discipline might be finishing Diarmaid MacCulloch's A History of Christianity :)

[midnightmelody]

Ooh, ambitious!

[ewtikins]

May you have a blessed Lent.