Lent

Lent again.  Already.  Once again the birthday is during Lent.  Oh well.  Should be used to it by now. 
Lent is supposed to be a time of spiritual self-examination.  It is a time when some people give something up in order to take away a distraction or a self-indulgence.  Others add a discipline, something they need to do to improve their spiritual life.  (And sometimes their physical life.)  For Lent this year, I am going to try a couple of things.  I am going to try to make fewer negative comments out here in the real world.  Online, I do a pretty good job of keeping things mostly positive.  I do all right at it at work, but here at home, where I get tired and grumpy, and my only audience is my poor long-suffering husband, I get really negative about life, the universe, and everything. 
I am also going to try to regulate my sleeping habits a bit better.  I might be less grumpy, tired, and negative if I got the proper amount of sleep.  (Ya think?)  Doing so is not easy, as both of us tend to be night owls, and getting to sleep before midnight can be a challenge.  Getting up early is a real challenge for me.  I am not fully conscious until after 8 am.  It just does NOT happen. I may get up, and function on some level, but my brain is NOT fully functional before 8 am.
There are specific traditions observed in our worship services during Lent.  No alleluias.  Not anywhere, not any time.  Somebody in the congregation goofed after the Ash Wednesday service and tried to add the "alleluia, alleluia" to the Thanks Be To God at the end of the service.  The clergy didn't add it, but someone in the congregation was responding a little too much by rote.  The Psalm is sung to a different melodic pattern during Lent.  That started Wednesday evening.  Today, first Sunday in Lent, was the Great Litany, or as we refer to it, twice around the figure 8 around the nave Sunday.  The Litany is sung in procession, and my part was dicey this morning because some notes would NOT come out.  Thankfully, the whole congregation sings those responses, so it was easy to hide the fact that my voice is having a major malfunction.

In general, Lent is supposed to be a reflective, somber season.  Not easy to do while the rest of the world is going crazy with cute bunnies and candy, and other stuff getting ready for Easter.  Holy Week has a lot in common with Passover.  Many believe the Last Supper was a Seder.  The rituals we observe for Maundy Thursday, the celebration of the Last Supper, are very solemn indeed.  The altar is stripped, and any leftover Hosts and wine are taken to an "altar of repose", usually in the small chapel in the Education building.  On Good Friday, we will worship in a church that has no linens on the altar, no light burning in the Sanctuary Lamp, and no flowers.  Only a plain wooden cross is placed there, in front of the high altar usually.  In this spare season, we still gather every Wednesday evening for a dinner, and an Evensong service, and then, for some of us, choir rehearsal. 
Of course, Sundays are feast days, even during Lent, so we have our usual worship services on Sunday mornings, with the differences I mentioned for Lent. 
It is always hard for me to find a discipline for Lent, and to stick to one.  I grew up in a church that did not observe Lent as such, and so I never really got the habit of giving something up.  I hope that I can manage this year to have a Holy Lent, as we are instructed to do when the ashes are placed on our foreheads on Ash Wednesday. 
May this season of reflection be for you whatever you need it to be.  And if you are not a Christian, then may it still be a time of reflection for you as the world prepares to re-awaken from either the cold of winter in this hemisphere, or the energy-draining heat and drought of summer in the Southern Hemisphere. A season of preparation for the season of change.