My Personal Lent

Today is the beginning of Lent and I have been thinking about Lent a lot recently. I did not grow up in a religious tradition that celebrated Lent, but the town in which I grew up was about 75% Catholic, so I was exposed to the idea as a child. Many of my classmates gave up chocolate for Lent. I am not sure how many of my elementary school classmates knew what the purpose of the “fasting” was. I was raised in a Baptist tradition in which the idea of making a sacrifice for the Lord for only 40 days (depending on how you count) was offensive and that true repentance meant making the sacrifice year round. I think this indoctrination is part of what led me to reject the concept of Lent for so many years.

In the last few years I have come to have a great appreciation for the idea of Lent, within in my own conceptualization of it. In looking at the meaning/purpose of Lent, I see a lot of good that can be applicable to people who do not engage in this religious practice, but perhaps do see themselves as spiritual. In recently discussing with a client a behavior that she feels she needs to give up, we have been talking about the possibility of her giving up the behavior for Lent and taking this period to reflect upon what role she wants this behavior to play in her life. The idea is that the abstinence/fasting will allow her to see more clearly the role that this behavior does play in her life and see what it might be like without it or, at least, with it in much more moderate or appropriate ways.

In talking about this refraining from behavior, we have talked about it in terms of not just being a fresh start, but in terms of repentance and cleansing her spirit, or at least giving her spirit a rest. We have talked about the fasting in terms of something she can do for her soul—to stop dumping toxicity into her body/self through this behavior. We dump toxicity into our bodies/selves when we invite drama into our lives, not just when we put into our bodies substances that hurt our bodies. We have talked about repentance, not in terms of repenting of sins done unto God, but rather sins done unto oneself.

Another common part of the Lent celebration is prayer. The purpose of prayer is to get one closer to the spirit, traditionally God. If prayer is not the way you connect to your spirit, you can engage in a variety of behaviors that helps you get closer in touch with your own spirit as well. Meditation, for example, is often a quieting of the mind in which extraneous or damaging thoughts are chased away and one focuses on one’s self—it is a communing with oneself, as it were—promoting mindfulness. Recitation or affirmation of the goal can also be prayer-substitute behaviors that can be other ways of connecting the mind and body. Within a non-religious approach “prayer” can be an act of deliberate self-reflection.

I have twice decided to give up deserts/sweet baked goods for an extended period (3 months), not so much in repentance for the sin of cake-eating, but to get back into a better relationship with my body. I have engaged in my Lent-like behavior when I discovered that I was eating deserts at a rate that threatened my health (I am diabetic) and experienced this habit as out of synch with my spirit. In other words, I was not living in accordance with how I see myself and was experiencing internal discomfort with this. I have taken the opportunity during my “Lent” to evaluate my relationship with deserts and my body and consider patterns that are more in accordance with how I want to live following my “Lent” period. I am in the midst of such a Lent-based evaluation of my behavior right now as I reconsider with what frequency and under what conditions do I want to allow myself sweets. My “Lent” followed a period of indulgence (my Mardi Gras, of sorts) of desert consumption during the holiday season. While in this fasting, the temptation of desert seems to be ever present, but each opportunity for desert allows me to look at what role desert plays in my life and what role I would like it to play.

Just as I did not begin my “Lent” on Ash Wednesday, you do not have to begin your period of self-reflective fasting at any particular time—the date is rather arbitrary. But if you are feeling that a persistent behavior of yours in causing you distress, then you may want to consider engaging in an extended fast of that behavior in which you observe and reflect upon what role and impact that behavior is having in your life. I do not imagine that I will give up desert forever after my “Lent,” but I expect to establish a behavior that better suits my intentions and relationship with my body. If I lose the path again, as I did after my last “Lent,” you can again engage in a reflective fast, in your own personal “Lent” at anytime.