The Lenten season puts us in touch with life’s journeys – with temptation, pilgrimage, faith and faithfulness, discipline, and the flowering of human experience…. It is also about human courage and resilience and the power of God to turn the bleakest moments into ones of promise.

O’Day and Powers, Theatre of the Spirit

Lent began Wednesday night. I placed ashes on the foreheads or hands of worshippers, reminding us of our mortality. This year I did that as my father lies dying and another relative of mine, Kathy, has had her cancer return with a vengeance. This is its third appearance and things don’t look good. The next day I received word that a retired United Methodist pastor who attends my church fell while out walking. He hit his head so hard, and the damage to his brain was so traumatic, that his survival is in question. He is hospitalized in a neuro-trauma unit.

Lent is puts us in touch with some of the difficult realities of human life. I am not sure I needed the reminder. In that context we are also reminded of the joys possible within an embodied life – reminded, too, of courage, resilience, the flowering of human experience and the power of God. I can always be reminded of those.

I have not always been big on “giving something up” for Lent. Some years I preferred to add or focus more on a particular practice. This year, however, I am giving up red meat for Lent (beef and pork, et. al.). I will still eat chicken and fish, and I plan to eat more vegetables and fruits. My rule is going to be firm, but not so as to inconvenience others. If I am at a meal and the only thing served is some dish with beef or pork in it, I will not ask my host to prepare something else for me. I don’t expect this to happen often if at all. My discipline is mine to keep, not others to try and accommodate. I am giving up red meat in order to get a better handle on my own eating habits, which can be rather lax. I am giving red meat as a way to acknowledge the negative impact too much red meat in the human diet has on the planet.

The journey has begun.

With Faith and With Feathers,

David