Current mood:
quiet i have tried to give something up for "lent" in the past and this year had me thinking about what exactly i should be giving up. i have tried chocolate, beer, caffeine but i always go back to them before my time is up. willpower is not my strong suit.
the pastor at church gave up facebook which i find both funny and tragic. the youth pastor gave up saying "no" to people which i find incredibly stupid. then again, he is the youth pastor and doesn't know his way around life just yet. then i became curious as to what it will truly signify in the traditional sense if i gave up something for lent. just how did our modern society became so skewed in our interpretation of this time in relation to biblical teachings. so curiosity got the best of me and i began looking at the meaning of ash wednesday via the ever faithful world wide web. here's the 411, condensed version of course.
ash wednesday derives its name from the practice of placing ashes on the foreheads of christians as a sign of repentance. the minister or priest general makes the sign of the cross on your forehead and says "remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return." it signifies the beginning of the 40 days in which jesus fasted and prayed, resisting the temptations of sin while in the desert. it is a time for us to relinquish power and draw only on our spiritual nature as a guide to do what is right and just. pretty powerful stuff if you ask me.
reflection and repentance. food for thought. but the amazing part is that somehow we have translated this sacred experience into a time to give up things like chocolate, alcohol, caffeine. 40 days of kicking a habit, a vice so to speak. somehow along the way it became more about denying yourself something that you enjoy, perhaps to the point of excess, for a short period of time and then going back to it as soon as the season is over. in fact, we celebrate the end of those 40 days with lots of cheer and excitement. yeah us!!!! we can have chocolate again. suppose it is somewhat like turning away from sin and proclaiming your faith but i find that a stretch.
temporary cessation of a bad habit. seriously? we have become so narrow, so absolute in our thinking that we have reduced what could be a powerful spiritual journey into not eating salty foods for 40 days because excessive salt is a sin? did i miss something here? i mean, even those people around me who are suppose to be "spiritual" in their daily lives are giving up things like facebook and beer. frankly, i think it's pretty sad.
sad because this occasion doesn't call for giving up fast food stops on the way home. it calls for deep spiritual exploration. a time to look at yourself, look at what your life means, how you live it and a time to repent and ask forgiveness. for some people it's asking forgiveness from god in the christian sense but i think it's bigger than that. i look at it as forgiving yourself, moving forward and learning from past "transgressions". i'm still pissed that tiger the dick-flinging golf prodigy took such a powerful word as his own simply because he couldn't keep it in his trousers. another blog, another time.
it's about exploring your existence, having faith or rediscovering a faith you have lost. perhaps it's a faith in your god, a faith in this big old universe or faith in yourself. that's the beauty in exploring it. what will it hold for you? for me it's not about giving something up. it's about the movement into something better, something bigger. it's about faith in myself, in the process, in the moment. so i'm not going to give up beer, chocolate, caffeine, profanity, sex. nope. besides, chocolate is about the only one i would have a good shot at giving up anyway. the others are just too damned much fun!
instead i want to take the next 40 days and own them. truly live in the moment and turn inward, becoming my own teacher. i want it to be a time to reflect, re-examine and forgive myself. really examine what is happening and start finding that inner balance we all seek. i doubt that i'll find it in 40 days and i hope that my journey doesn't end at that time.
but in the meantime i will not deny myself coffee to prove that i am worthy. no way. i doubt that giving it up would make me worthy of the love of the universe anyway. the universe wants me to have coffee. otherwise, it wouldn't be in my pantry.
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