Giving up Lent for Lent - or How It's Not the 40-day Shred

My friend on Ash Wednesday: My friend is an atheist and she said she was giving up sugar for Lent.
Me: Does she know what Lent is?
Friend: Yeah. I told her she was actually just going on a diet.

I try so hard, so very very hard every day, not to judge, but that is just silly. It's the silliest thing I've heard among a number of comments I've heard this past week about what thing to give up for Lent, whether it's the usual chocolate or swearing or something more of-the-moment like Facebook. (Sorry, I think giving up Facebook for Lent is silly too.)

I was raised Catholic, significantly, seriously so, and I don't practice anymore beyond the fact that I still own a rosary and use repetitive Hail Marys on occasion when I'm really freaked out or need comforting. Because I don't practice, I DON'T GIVE UP anything for Lent. I'm totally aware that it's happening, but I don't engage with it on a daily sacrificial level. Because guess what? It is not a fitness challenge or an internet meme - it's a religious observance and a spiritual practice, arguably the most serious in the Christian calendar. And while I don't practice Catholicism anymore, I have much respect for the genuinely faithful people who use this time as an attempt to better themselves either by giving something up (more traditionally) or working more mindfully on improving something about themselves.

My strong feelings about this are tied up in the deepest stuff of my life and my heart, namely my grandparents and how seriously they took Lent, among all the things they took seriously about living a committed Catholic life. My remaining attachments to the church - which are many and varied in my heart in spite of my political and ethical differences of opinion with the Vatican - have to do with them, for the most part, and the way they lived their lives in the most faithfully Catholic of ways, on a daily basis and in times of religious observance. One did not eat much on Ash Wednesday or Good Friday, as they were fasting days, and certainly not any meat. There was no consuming meat on any Friday in their house, because when they were young you didn't eat meat on Friday, all year long. It was the night for little glass bowls of egg and tuna salad, for toast and soup and cottage cheese. It was a time to pray more and to go to church more. It was serious Jesus business, it was, and just reading this I cry because they were just that good, and that good to me. I cry a little bit because this memory makes me wish I still believed.

It was so not the life I have now, the life where I eat steak on Ash Wednesday.

The past I lived and the present I'm struggling through combined with my weird hybrid belief system make me cranky about people grabbing onto Lent as a time to shred with Jillian Michaels (Yes it's 40 days. No, it's not the same.) or to whine to their friends about how hard it is to give up some first world convenience or the other. I'm sorry. I'm a total Facebook crackhead like many of my brothers and sisters in Internet addiction, but giving it up is no kind of real sacrifice. It's irritating, sure, because who in the hell wants to miss out on 40 days of fake pokes and little green plants and wall posts going "Hey. What's up?" But a real, true sacrifice? I think not. Ask a kid in Darfur, loser.

I'm sorry I'm so rude about this, but I rarely rant anymore and this is just...GETTING TO ME. It's driving me to caps, because people just don't seem to get it. Lent is supposed to commemorate the spiritual crisis of the Christian MESSIAH and, oh, SAVIOR OF THE WORLD, undertaken as he wandered in the desert for 40 days. Call me crazy, but if I don't believe in that and I latch onto it as an excuse to lower my cholesterol or look better in a bridesmaid dress? That's just creepy. And yeah, in my lapsed Catholic way, maybe even a bit karmically frightening.And even if I do believe in Jesus and the benefit of a spiritual test, I have to wonder if giving up a social networking service is good enough.

I guess I look at it in a context of other religions and what I wouldn't do. I wouldn't borrow elements of Ramadan that might work for me, or Passover, because I don't know shit about either one of those important holidays and quite frankly, they're none of my business. They are not my cultural practices so until invited to participate I just need to observe.

There is so much I need to work on in my life, so much I need to improve and lose and gain, weight and attitude and brain cells and what have you. If I'm going to do it I need to to tie it to what makes sense for me and my life. If that isn't Christianity on a daily basis - which right now it's not - I need to keep my hands off the traditions associated with it, mind my business and head to therapy or Weight Watchers or the gym.

And in my peculiar, particular catechism, an atheist wanting to give up sugar needs to do it without any help from God, because - well - to attach it to Him, for them, just misses the point.

Comments

[grace]

This is a truly great post. I've been guilty of exactly what you're talking about, but suffice it to say it won't happen again.

[Kimberly]

Thank you! I was raised Catholic as well and although I don't consider myself Catholic any longer* I am fiercely protective of the religion and its rites. Ashes on one's forehead is not a fashion statement and a Lenten sacrifice is not a New Year's resolution.

*I disagree with too much of the canon - for me to go to church regularly would be faking it, and religion's the one thing I won't fake.

[restaurant refugee]

I am a lapsed Catholic, severely lapsed according to my disappointed mother. Twelve years of Catholic education, almost as many of Sunday School as a student and teacher have given me a solid understanding of the faith (warts and all.) Given the aforementioned givens, I am not disagreeing with your position. Rather, I am specifically agreeing with you when you noted that faith and spirituality are personal.

For whatever reasons, I have disavowed myself of all of Catholicism's rituals and practices save Lenten sacrifice. I won't enter a church unless at the tip of a bayonette (or a wedding invitation) but I still sacrifice something I enjoy for these two fortnights. I still do my best to avoid eating meat on Fridays. I don't do these things for the sake of a diet or to aide in the breaking of a bad habit. I sacrifice (without demonstration or seeking of congratulation) because there is something personal within me that makes it feel right, just as your position feels right to you. Again, I am not disagreeing with or disparaging your position, just an alternate perspective.

[Sarah, Goon Squad Sarah]

I once had a friend ask me what I was giving up for Lent and I said "Nothing. I'm not Catholic." and she thought I was crazy. I guess where she grew up people just gave up stuff for Lent no matter what their beliefs.

I don't understand that thinking.

I also think that giving up cake (yes, I know a couple who gave up cake last year for Lent) is weak and kind of an insult to a religion that I don't even believe in.

[Debbies Dog Clothes]

I grew up Catholic and I really do pay attention to religion anymore so I don't give anything up for lent.

[DOWN PILLOW]

i totally agree

[DOWN PILLOW]

the lent thing is also in symbolism of what God gave us