Lenten Leanings

So Shrove Tuesday comes, and what do I want from Lent this year? How do I meet Jesus and the wilderness and the wild animals, prepare for Jerusalem and Golgotha and what comes after?

There are always the eternal list of to-do’s and should-do’s (both “spiritual” and “practical”) that follow around me, but I think the main task will be to take up the task my spiritual director recommended 25 years ago: a weekly or monthly one page reflection on “what I believe”, a summary of my operational theology. This year it will be a bit more often and sustained – maybe six weeks of reconnoitering around the questions concerned with where I find my faith (and doubt) right now, connecting it with the past, and moving towards the future.

I’m not thinking of a systematic theology, but just taking time to reflect on where my life finds meaning and grace at present and how that connects with the vows I made at Baptism over forty years ago. We’ll see where it goes, but a lot of it will go into the blog.

I’ve neglected this for the last year, and it was important to me before that; but four people have mentioned reading it in the last few weeks, so maybe it’s time to put some effort into Chaplinesque – here we go again!