Lent 2015: time-wasting

This Lent I have set myself the quixotic sacrifice of time-wasting.

It's sort of hard to know what's wasting time and what's fiddling. Sometimes reading a comic book is wasting time, and sometimes it's productive stimulation and sometimes it's research.

But as a concrete expression, I have barred myself from my ipad. No dinky time waster games for 40+ days. No reddit on the tablet.

I can still waste time on my desktop, and I do. Or even on a couple of analog time wasters I've got here. But when I find myself wandering that direction, I am at least aware of it and try to veer back in the direction of doing something instead of nothing.

At the Ash Wednesday worship we went to, it was impressed on me that the vice, the thing you give up for Lent, is not the point. You walk around and you're like "I'm giving up hooch for Lent." But that's not the deal.

The deal is that when your vice is gone, you've kicked your own crutch away. The vice was covering over a hole and now you have an obvious hole in you. 

Depending on how long you've had that cover-up there, you might not even know what's living in that hole these days. Maybe it's just an emptiness. Or maybe it contains things you put in there because you didn't want to have to look at them any more. And now you're looking at them. For 40 days.

But that's not the point either! The real point is that God is there to help you fill up the hole. The point is more God. And the by-product is a wholer, holier you when you two are done with that.

For me, living in a brand new city strips even more away, because I have a lot of free time. Which means a lot of opportunity to waste time. Which means a lot of opportunity to stare into the hole and asking God what kind of spackle this thing is going to take.

Restless and deprived of my usual consciousness salves, it's been grim so far. I've been reading a book on the Holy Spirit which isn't grabbing me. Tonight I finished a book of Robert Howard's Solomon Kane stories, which has actually been more productive. (Solomon Kane—worst Puritan ever or pure psychotic?)

But I'm hopeful about what things will look like come resurrection day. The antsier I feel now, the more I hope for an epiphanic payout. A lasting change instead of the returning tide of mild hedonism.

Lent reflections 2013

Lent again, and I'm running at it with the usual half-hearted enthusiasm. I keep wanting religion to mean things. Sometimes it does! But other times it unrolls like a rug and then lies very still like a rug.

This year I wanted to give something up, but I didn't want to give up something that would be, like, hard.

Last year for Lent, M and I tried over the top -- all juice. It was too crazy too much too fast, skipping straight from Burger King to beet juice. We would up retreating to "no processed foods" by Easter.

This year I just didn't want so much work in my suffering. So I found a thing I do a lot, that I like a lot, but that I can stop without pangs.

I'm not eating out. This Lent, everything has to come from the grocery store and be prepared by someone I didn't pay to cook for me.

It's just the right amount of sacrifice. I hope. It requires me to think about food, reflect on my choices, but doesn't seriously deprive me. (Now that I've written that down, it sounds like the biggest softball I could find. Sacrifice without deprivation? Balls to the motherfuckin' walls, Quick!)

Still, it is having an effect. With a serendipity I'll call grace, I started tracking what I eat on an app (myfitnesspal, available for download on your fancyphone of choice). I don't do it every day, and I don't do a crack job of tracking when I do. But the crux is that it creates pauses to think about what I'm shoving in my Doritos-hole all day long and to have different thoughts besides, "More horsemeat."

I'll probably be a few pounds lighter come Easter 2013, but weight loss is a pleasant side effect. What I really want is a religious observance that doesn't lie like a rug, but flies like a carpet. I want God to show me something amazing that irrevocably cuts through fear and complacency.

It sounds like I'm asking for a lot in exchange for not much. If I was serious about this shit, I'd go get imprisoned or beaten, right? But God's economy is not tit for tat. God is always operating on a different scale than humans. We're commemorating a messiah back from the dead! That's kind of a big deal. I've got to come to the table, but I can't be expected to bet real money there, you know?

Given that state of things, I think I can ask for fireworks even if my chief contribution is a wet match. But I'm afraid I won't get them. Or I'm afraid I'll be too stupid to know how to follow up even if I do. Those are the two main outcomes of religion in my life thus far: disappointed or dumbfounded.

I keep showing up though. Trying is better than not trying. 

Observing Lent 2012

It's Lent again. M and I are eating whole foods and no meat for the discipline this year. And we're taking Sundays off, because that's the Sabbath.

Which is interesting because every Sunday for the past 3 weeks has been a day to eat meat, and not have to think so hard about what I eat.

Except that thinking about not thinking about eating is still thinking about eating.

Yesterday, I ate a lot. A burrito from my favorite burrito place, and then a half-pound burger at Wendy's, and then a Geno's cheesesteak after church meeting, and about a liter of Mello Yello after all that.

You might think I'd have some gastrointestinal trouble, but no. Even though I've been eating somewhere around 1500 calories a day for the last three weeks, mainly in fruits and vegetables, a day of gluttony does not upset my stomach at all. It doesn't even upset my conscience.

What it upsets is my taste. Cheap meat used to be a big part of my diet. Now, with this discipline going on, I think wistfully sometimes of eating at crap food places again because they're cheap and easy.

But what I noticed yesterday was that the food didn't even taste that good. It wasn't bad. But if I'm going to look forward to food, I want it to taste good when I get there.

Today, I'm back to the usual. All I've had today is some fruit and yogurt (which is processed, I know, but too bad). I'll probably have some cheese and whole wheat bread before I go to bed. That's kind of how I eat this Lent. Not much. Mostly plant-based. I don't know yet what I keep and what I eject after Easter.