Promises, Promises

Anyone?

It seems as though there are so many opportunities throughout the year to "start fresh." For many people, the academic calendar triggers the back-to-school, clean-slate feeling long after we've left the classroom. For others, there's the confetti throwing promise of New Year's Resolutions when we toss out the old year. And then, for some, there's now. Lent. I remember being younger and the emphasis being on the giving something up. Sr. Jean-Michael sponsored the bowling club, and somehow she knew exactly which students had given up pop for Lent by the dip in their bowling scores. As the years went by, there was a shift--talk of doing good deeds, not just abstaining from bad habits (we should do that anyway, but for our own good, and not just for forty days). I continued, for the most part, to give something up every year: chips, cake, caffeine. Last year, I asked the kids to give up asking for fast food meals that come with a toy. It worked out fine, but this year, I want to focus on good deeds. I will probably let them decide, to the best of their ability, what they can accomplish. For me, it's a bit more complicated.

My Lenten Promise: Mindful Living

The pastor of my parish, in his Lent/Easter letter, summed things up by writing, that the "resurrection asks us to receive the human spirit deep inside each one of us. The empty tomb encourages us to be empty enough to be filled with God."

And so, some mental decluttering is in order to make way for mindful living.

I have the feeling it would have been a lot easier to give up potato chips...