It’s well past 9pm and I’m on the internet.
I have not been able to keep off the internet as I resolved this Lent.
In both success and failure there is always a lesson.
These are my lessons thus far from going 0-2 in my Lenten vows:
1) How we unwind at night is not to be messed with.
How was I supposed to know I got so much relaxation from playing Words with Friends? After a long day’s work and chasing Isaiah around, and cooking, and cleaning, and driving, and thinking, and counseling, and brainstorming, and exercising, and rescheduling, and and and…
the last thing I feel like doing is depriving myself from something that helps me wind down.
2) Lent isn’t always about changing, but deepening.
The point of our Lenten vows are not to just simply “sacrifice” so we feel closer to God, it’s about transformation and conversion. My favorite Lenten hymn has a line, “return to me with all your heart…” Is the internet really going to make a dent in that? How can I deepen my relationship with God? One way I deepen is through thinking, and, right now, the internet is an easy tool to find articles, provide answers, and read inspiring perspectives from scholars, theologians, and deep thinkers within minutes of research. I don’t WANT to give that up.
3) I’m too damn tired at 9pm to push myself.
Wednesdays are known as Pushday. It’s the day I have a million things to do before I go to bed and each Wednesday night, I am so tired, I can barely take my boots off. I collapse on the couch, steal a handful of cheerios or whatever Isaiah has manage to sneak out for a night snack before I pass out with my work clothes still on. I don’t feel like fighting.
And if Lent is about deepening, is it something that should be further exhausting me? Yes it should require effort, but it should also be something meaningful and transformative.
I may take the weekend to rethink all of this.
Growing closer to God isn’t as easy as people think. It’s like how do you show great appreciation for the air you breathe? It feels almost impossible to create metaphor, symbol, or action that adequately describes our relationship to it.
Where does one begin?
I’ve got 38 more days to crack this.
Hello George,
Thank you for your message. You are more than welcome to use the word, provided the site isn’t called “My Ecdysis” which is the name of my domain. But please feel free to use it in whatever capacity you need to express your spirituality.
Also, thank you for the kind words and I hope you build something that lifts up your spirit and those of your readers and contributors.
Your web site is wonderful. I would like to create my own ecdysis. I do not want to step on your toes. My themes are darker and may be more inflammatory.
I am a spirtualist, but am dying slowly from leukemia. I would like to create an open forum for people to write their own obituary. Not the phony ones published by family after they are gone. Since you are the only ecdysis, please permit me to use the word. Thank you