Stopping Out for Lent

Here’s what my Lent looks like:

• Three weeks of a four-week yoga class
• Speaking and doing critiques at the wonderful Bay to Ocean Writers Conference
• Dinner with a former colleague I haven’t seen in nearly a decade, and a mutual friend who lives here and with whom I recently re-established contact
• A leadership meeting for a church-related movement
• Two virtual book-club meetings with my sisters
• A trip to Grove City, Pennsylvania, for the St. Davids Christian Writers’ Association spring board meeting
• Hosting my favorite editor and his wife while they stay with us for a night
• Taking to dinner the Cursillo candidate I’m co-sponsoring, and some other activities around that weekend
• Introducing a new friend to the wonders of the movie version of “Jesus Christ Super Star” (personally, I find it a sin anyone her age doesn’t know about the phenomonen that is Ted Neeley) and watching “Godspell” with her and my sister, both in a single day
• Three days in Chicago with a college friend
• Writing weekly Your Daily Tripod blog columns and my next Living Faith devotions
• A show at the Kennedy Center about Roma
• Finish judging books for the Ben Franklin Awards

And of course, then there’s the day job. And sleeping. And working out. And “American Idol” (even though it’s probably a foregone conclusion that Phillip Phillips will walk away with the crown). And the fact that a book contract is said to be in the mail, so I’ll have revisions to do. And the fact that I should get more serious about my social media platform. And the fact I haven’t spent any time writing fiction, an emerging passion, for four months.

So what am I adding or taking away during Lent? I thought about adding daily Mass at least one per week. I thought about adding 15 minutes of spiritual study every night. I thought about giving up alcohol. But instead, I’ve settled on two things that will be more difficult than any of that:

1. I will not add anything else, no matter how pleasant or obligatory, to those six weeks.
2. I will not complain or whine about the frenetic pace of my life since it appears that’s the way both God and I want it.

I’ll let you know how it goes–when I have time.