Friday Five: What Are You Doing For Lent?

Here are RevGalBlogPals Friday Five for the week:


1. Did you celebrate Mardi Gras and/or Ash Wednesday this week? How?
Instead of Mardi Gras, my congregation and I celebrated Dimanche Gras the Sunday before—lots of bright colors, jazzy music, drumming along with communion in worship, followed by a potluck meal afterwards.

2. What was your most memorable Mardi Gras/Ash Wednesday/Lent?
Probably my second Lent while attending a Catholic high school. The first year really showed me what Lent was all about. By the second year, I’d sorted through the traditions and was able to apply those that fit my more Protestant upbringing.

3. Did you/your church/your family celebrate Lent as a child? If not, when and how did you discover it?
Not really. The Reformed and Presbyterian churches we attended mentioned Lent once or twice during the season and then focused on Palm Sunday and Easter (skipping most of holy week as well as the rest of the Lenten season). At home we gave something—usually chocolate—up for Lent. But there wasn’t much depth behind any of it. It wasn't until I was sent to Catholic school that I became aware of the liturgical seasons.

4. Are you more in the give-up camp, or the take-on camp, or somewhere in between?
It depends on the year and what feels most like it will help me along the wilderness journey path for the issues in my life at the time. Some years, that means giving up something that I’ve found standing in my way of practicing resurrection. Other years, it’s meant taking on something. For the last two years, for example, I’ve added the practice of keeping “fixed-hour” prayer (using Phyllis Tickle’s The Divine Hours ).

5. How do you plan to keep Lent this year?
Lenten devotions and prayer, meditation, and the reading of Bread and Wine along with RevGalBlogPals.