So, Lent starts today. Some of you have given up the internet during this time, so you won’t be reading this. Unless you forgot that you had signed up to the email notifications. In which case: sorry, this is the internet here and you have broken your Lenten resolution on day one. Apologies.
Others will be observing Lent in various and sundry ways, perhaps because you find it helpful to do so or because you promised to follow the liturgical calendar of the church at some point and now can’t really get out of it.
As for me: I am following a liturgical calendar of my own devising. I am feasting when I should be fasting, and fasting when I should be feasting. There is, to be honest, probably less fasting than there should be. For this reason (and a scarcity of study materials, etc) I would not recommend following my liturgical calendar.
On Twitter and blogs I see a lot about services attended, luxuries given up and advanced spiritual disciplines undertaken. This has a tendency to make me feel envious and inadequate for reasons that need not concern us in a blog post.
That said, my understanding of a genuine fast / penitent activity is that no one should know about it. So in order to gain any genuine spiritual benefit Lenten tweeting and blogging would have stick to (for instance) photos of A4 sheets of paper, cups of tea, etc.
But I am almost certainly wrong about. In any case, I am choosing to read what is being written. Perhaps I should give up the internet for Lent.
[Drawing: One-armed men go to the pub. Drawn in three minutes - I can do better.]
