Lent!

Jaybird

Jaybird is Birdmojo on Xbox Live and Jaybirdmojo on Playstation's network. He's been playing consoles since the Atari 2600 and it was Zork that taught him how to touch-type. If you've got a song for Wednesday, a commercial for Saturday, a recommendation for Tuesday, an essay for Monday, or, heck, just a handful a questions, fire off an email to AskJaybird-at-gmail.com

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27 Responses

  1. fillyjonk says:

    I dunno. In my faith tradition it’s more common to take on something “beneficial” (service or prayer or the like) than to give up, but I’ve already started sharply cutting sweet and carbohydrate consumption (to lose weight, and hopefully so my bloodwork later this month will be good). So maybe I go with that.

    In past years I tried giving up getting irritated at the little things (like when someone ahead of you in the checkout line has a ream of coupons, argues with the checker over the price of something and THEN pulls out their checkbook and starts hunting for a pen) but I was not that successful at it.

    I gave up frivolous spending for a while but I found that made my general attitude worse, so….I’m not sure the aim of this is for me to be grumpy and cranky. (Then again: the “giving up frivolous spending” was not for a limited time, it was “until the budget retrenchment here ends” which is probably “never,” so)

    Yeah: giving up sweets is easier for me than giving up the occasional purchase of a yard of fabric or a book. So I’m going with that.Report

  2. Kolohe says:

    alcohol and any sort of candy/cookie/sweet as a dessert or a snack. Chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast on a weekend morning are ok because that’s a main course. (just munching on chocolate chips straight out of the bag is not)Report

  3. Marchmaine says:

    One of the little things I do is change how I prepare my coffee (think no sugar or no cream)… its a little bit different than giving up something (which you can train yourself to ignore or substitute) in that you have a small constant reminder of the season. Which reminds me to change my avatar… Lent Trumps Trump.Report

  4. Joe Sal says:

    In the past I said that I’m a non practicing atheist. I guess to unpack that a little bit is to say that my religious beliefs reside in individual constructs. I don’t go out trying to save/convert people, I don’t really speak at length about religion unless someone interesting asks me more than a couple questions.

    Lent is one of those things I never developed as a individual construct. It has always been something important to other people and something other people do.

    I am a bit curious why other people have made it a construct. Is it something the family did. Is it something they learned in church. Is it something they picked up from reading a book, that they personally internalized.

    So I ask the people who made it their own. How did it become important to you?Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Joe Sal says:

      The first inkling I ever had that Lent might be worth doing was the first time (nowhere near around Ash Wednesday) that I went on Induction for the South Beach diet.

      Two weeks of bacon, eggs, spinach, steak, chicken breasts, and cheese.

      On the 15th day, I had a small handful of blueberries.

      They were the sweetest berries I have ever tasted and I remember that first berry breaking against my teeth with fondness even today.Report

    • Kolohe in reply to Joe Sal says:

      It allows you to hit the reset button on and take another crack at your New Year’s Resolutions.Report

  5. Pinky says:

    I don’t do much, so I don’t have anything really to give up these days. I’m already on a diet. If Lent fell in football season, that’d be a good choice, but that doesn’t happen. Maybe I should give up arena football? That’s just a formalization of a decision that I made long ago.

    This Lent I’ll be working my way through St. Catherine of Siena’s Dialogue. I anticipate slow progress. Like, slow. I’d rather read the first 20 pages over 40 days than finish a book without ever having “gotten” it.Report

  6. aaron david says:

    Lent? Isn’t that what the library did?

    I kid, but, not being a catholic, I am not sure on this whole thing. I quite smoking, that was easy but took a long time, I could give up drinking, but at one beer or so a week, not sure what that accomplishes. Lets see, reading, no too fundimental and not really a sin. That is what this is about, right? Still not sure…

    How about work? That do you? Now, as long as I don’t tell my wife, I am cool.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to aaron david says:

      Not about sin at all.

      It’s about the various pleasures that one has allowed to transmogrify into obligations and this is an attempt to put these back in their proper role in our lives.Report

    • Pinky in reply to aaron david says:

      Lent is a do-it-yourself ritual law. (I’m making an assumption based on your name.) Christians believe that they’re exempt from the ritual law, but there’s a spiritual benefit in setting things aside for G-d, so we bind ourselves to something of our choosing in order to remind ourselves of the Creator.Report

      • Stillwater in reply to Pinky says:

        That may be how Catholics view it, but they are wrong. 🙂 Voluntary sacrifice of a worldly pleasure is a reminder that the kingdom of heaven isn’t materially derived.

        I mean, that’s obvious, right? 🙂Report

        • Pinky in reply to Stillwater says:

          I was describing it for a Jewish audience. I didn’t think that “uniting your suffering with that of Christ” would resonate in quite the same way. But then again, I don’t think that we Gentiles really understand what it means to set something aside, which is the definition of “sanctification”.Report

  7. KenB says:

    I’m endeavoring to give up regrets for Lent, or at least the wallowing in them. I had a milestone birthday recently and it’s made me think things like this.Report

  8. Damon says:

    Not being a christian and I don’t give up anything, but I don’t celebrate Fat Tuesday either so…..I guess that balances out.

    I didn’t realize it was ash wedneday until the the actual day and I started seeing folks with “dirt” on their foreheads….”ah yes…ash wednesday”. I did have gumbo though for dinner.Report

  9. Maribou says:

    I’m giving up acquiring books (including the temporary acquisition known as borrowing of any kind, but not including people insisting on giving me stuff, because the latter would be rude). Which I do more years than not.

    (Jaybird might have first figured out that Lent was useful when we went on the South Beach Diet, but I had been practicing both positive and negative Lenten obligations off and on for a long time before that. Cradle Catholic, college heretic, etc.)Report