Ash Wednesday

A year ago, I wrote these words:

This year, for the first time, I am attempting to observe Lent by fasting, or abstinence. This year I am abstaining from excuses. I am abstaining from fear. I am abstaining from all things that separate me from my own creative force and therefore the original Creative Force in whose image I am made. This is the plan. Every day I will write a page of something, just to write. If it embarrassingly ungrammatical, irksomely self-indulgent or just plain sucks, so be it.

It turned out to be an interesting experiment. I fell short of my self-imposed daily quota (working Holy Week as a musician tends to get fairly consuming as Easter approaches) but I did feel like I had made discoveries about myself and that I had pushed through some kind of barrier. So this year I’m trying to take it a step further, broadening the objective in hopes of broadening the impact of the outcome.

To start with, I’ve never identified with the idea of “giving something up” for Lent. It wasn’t part of my religious tradition and honestly it always seemed a little silly. (Give up chocolate for Lent? Honestly, I think chocolate brings me more in touch with the Divine.) While last year I focused on giving up fear or excuses, this year I want to make a positive step and focus on what to give for lent, rather than what to give up. I want to make this a time of contemplation and creativity, of action and hopefully a time of sharing and communication with my family and my community. A year later I am still at a crossroads, still at a personal crisis with no job, no career and no clear vision of the future. The one thing I have is a stronger belief in my own value and perhaps, an understanding that things will get better.

So here is the plan for this year.

One: Read something inspiring every day. It think many things are inspiring, but as my starting place I will be reading Walter Wangerin Jr.’s beautiful Lenten meditation, Reliving the Passion. It’s been a long time since I’ve read it and I’m looking forward to seeing it with new eyes. If you’re interested, each day’s entry is only 2 pages or so and it is available to download on Kindle for only $6.

Two: Write something honest every day. Same as last year, this doesn’t need to be deathless prose, I just need to be accountable for setting something down that isn’t a Facebook status or a grocery list. Different from last year, this may not always be a blog entry, although I will be using the blog again this year, both as a writing platform and as a way to log other activities and general thoughts on this process. As last year’s project resulted in more writing in my life on a regular basis, the day’s writing might be a blog entry, a poem, part of a story or play or even a Storybird or other collaborative endeavor.

Three: Make a positive choice every day. While it is not realistic for me to make goals to eat perfectly, exercise, exhibit charity and be the perfect mom and wife every day, I believe I can commit to at least once a day, taking one of those signpost moments and making the positive choice. I’ll try to expand on this idea later, but the underlying thought is to find self-empowerment in self-discipline. What better time to reflect on discipline than Lent?

That’s the plan. It’s ambitious. I may fall short. But in falling short I still will have accomplished something . Perhaps like last year, I will find Easter with a new heart and an expanded mind.