Individually Collective Blogging: Lent (not to be confused with “lint”)
My good friend Christina and I have been participating in NaNoWriMo together for two years now. Next year, we were contemplating choosing a storyline and characters and each writing our novel using the agreed upon plot and setting. I’m not sure how this is going to work out, but it sounds rather interesting. I was also recently inspired by my Twitter-bud, @melissaoyler and her friend (Amy) who are choosing a random topic and then each blogging about it. Christina and I thought this would be an awesome way to test out our ability to write individually on a collective topic.
Welcome to a special Wednesday edition of Individually Collective Blogging!
Visit Christina’s blog and her take on Lent here.
How I got to be this way
I am Bathlic, which isn’t to be confused with Cathtist. My mother is Baptist and my father is Catholic (which probably accounts for my serious issues with guilt). When I was tiny, my parents agreed that I should be raised in the Baptist church. However, provided that I am my father’s only child he can’t help but worry about my eternal soul. As a result he made sure that I attended the Catholic church for high holy days, ate a McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish sandwich (no cheese, no tartar sauce) on Good Friday, and gave up something appropriately agonizing for Lent each year.
Three or four years ago my father decided that I should give up bread for Lent. Bread is my life-force, literally manna for me. Why my father got to decide what I should give up for Lent now that I was an adult completely baffled me and I went kicking and screaming the whole way. There was even an incident in Macaroni Grill where I nearly passed out, cried, and renounced all care for the meaning of Lent and my forced-upon sacrifice. My mother told me if it was going to affect me in this way I should just quit. Quit. To be perfectly honest, she knew exactly what would happen if she used the dreaded Q-word. I would dig my heels in and do everything possible to not quit and it is quite possible that I might go a whole seven weeks (rather than the required six for Lent itself) just to prove that I wasn’t a quitter. Needless to say, that horrific night at Macaroni Grill was the turning point that year.
Lent 2009
It has become a tradition for my family to give up bread. Here’s how it goes. Mom, Dad, and I all give up bread the day after Fat Tuesday. We go through a veritable agony for six weeks and don’t observe the “day off” from Lent on each Sunday, just go straight through. And Steve mocks us the entire way. He’ll start out giving up bread. He usually lasts about two or three days. Then he decides that since he is no way actually related to Catholicism or Batholicism he isn’t required to remain on the program for the full six weeks. I think that Steve takes great delight in eating bread in front of the three of us.
This year will be no exception. Bread is over. Starting today, I will be giving up bread for the next six weeks. For this I apologize to you, my faithful blog readers. My blog may experience a bizarre turn as I work through this particular time.
This year will be a bit different, however. This year I will also be giving up the elevator. With a small exception. March 19 – March 21 I will be attending the Virginia Daughters of the American Revolution state conference in Portsmouth. I will be paging at this conference. Paging requires being on your feet for endless amounts of time. In fact, I think a primary rule (other than wearing nothing but white) is that you cannot sit. Not once, not at all. So, I’m putting a clause in my giving up of the elevator. In the event that my feet give extreme protest and / or our room is on a high floor, I will be exempt from giving up the elevator only during the time that I am at the VADAR state conference.
Additionally, the exemption applies when using the elevator is required by my job. As the Records Technician, I have to do all the filing. We have file rooms on different floors in the building. I can’t see taking the filing cart down the stairs as being a productive use of my time. The idea isn’t to get fired.
This year should be challenging, but I feel I’m up to it. Feel free to chastise me to make sure I’m keeping honest.
A Bathlic eh? That’s got to be confusing :/ I choose to avoid religion entirely. Life is simpler. And I can eat what I want
Woo, giving up bread though, that’s tough. I mean, I’m trying to think if I go a day without bread normally, and I don’t think I do. Whether it’s a bagel or a peanut butter and jelly sammich or a burger or something… more power to you for being able to do it!
Chris’s last blog post..Only sorta LOST Part 3
I gotta admit, bread is hard. Two days ago I was saying it was a piece of cake, but at the moment I’m having a bread-deprived vertigo bout. Not sure if it’s me being really hungry or my body completely protesting to no simple carbs, but whatever it is it’s not fun. I suppose Lent isn’t supposed to be “fun” though.
Weird thing about all of it is, my religious views are a total mish-mash. My childhood expression of religion is truly “Bathlic” (mostly Baptist with a smattering of Catholic, although no one ever told me that Baptists didn’t drink or dance…) but then I grew up and took World Religion, studied heavily yoga and hindu beliefs, and have taken several classes in Buddhist meditation. I’m all over the place. I just know that I do believe in a higher power, and I tend to call that higher power “God.”
Lent appeases my father. We don’t discuss why I own a set of malas beads blessed by a yogi in New Delhi.