The irony of course, is that they're old enough now, but I'm the last person they want to have these conversations with... right now anyway. I know I was the same way with my parents, and so the sins of the father are visited upon the daughter and son. I'm pretty that my parents and God are laughing at me right now.
Since there was no rhyme or reason when I started other than committing to write every day in Lent, the flow is a bit loose with foreshadowing peppered throughout for future posts. The writing tightened up as of Day 16, which is when I started titling the posts. (I later went back to entitle the earlier posts.) By the end I knew I was writing not just as a personal exercise, but to my children.
And so this Lenten blog is dedicated to my beautiful children Amy and Noah, who along with my lovely wife Denise are among the biggest blessings in my spiritual journey.
- Lent 2010: Prologue - The backdrop for this Lent is inspired by the death of a friend's father and contrasts in mourning rituals
- Lent Day 1: Spiritual Hunger - While Lent is often associated with giving up types of food, I ache for something spiritual
- Lent Day 2: Quiet Time and Psalm 51 - Acclimating to the quiet enables revisiting the Ash Wednesday Psalm
- Lent Days 3 and 4: Ritual and Meaning - A sign (ritual) without significance (meaning) is just superstition
- Lent, First Sunday in... - Explaining that Sundays during Lent are not part of the 40 days, and noticing this blog was automatically posting to my Facebook Notes page
- Lent Day 6: "Mulligan" Needed - The sad reality that work sometimes overwhelms the personal life
- Lent Days 5 and 6: Quiet and Focus - Drowning out daily noise provides emerging clarity
- Lent Day 7: Inanimation/Animation - Without the breath of life our loved ones are not recognizable
- Lent Day 8: Cremation and Distance - My personal history with death and dying has been remote at best
- Lent Day 9: (Friday) Fatigue - Sometimes the workweek just takes everything out of you
- Lent Day 10: Grief and the Bronze Medal, but Gold in Our Hearts - The inspiring performances of Canada's Joannie Rochette, after the sudden death of her mother, were "The Moment" of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics
- Lent Day 11: "Peanuts", Parents and Privateness - How Charles Schulz's mother's privacy about her terminal illness helped form one of the most beloved comic strips ("Peanuts") of all time
- Lent Day 12: Clarification on Hindu Rituals - Because recollections and notes from my Lenten Prologue were a bit scattered, here are some clarifications from my colleague, N
- Lent Day 13: "Mulligan" Needed (Tech Version) - One of best things I had ever written was eaten by
my dogby Google's Blogger app. There's a reason Google's software is always in 'Beta' (and not Production) release. See Day 17 for the reconstructed post. - Lent Day 14: Blessed in Public (Transit) - How the personalized nature of the St. Louis mass transit PA system unexpectedly provides a lift to my day
- Lent Day 15: TGIF / TGFT - Remembering God in 'Thank God It's Friday'
- Lent Day 16: Worship Service Music - About the blessings of being a lay church musician in Lent
- Lent Day 17: Carol Ann - My eulogy for one of my favorite aunts, who like Charles Schulz's mother, was very private about her illness and dying
- Lent Day 18: More on Carol Ann - Brief note about establishing a scholarship in Carol Ann's name and reminder that my mother took a trip to India (part of her spiritual journey)
- Lent Day 19: I Am Become Like a Pelican - While serving as a lay church musician I heard this Christian poem written by Madeleine L'Engle (A Wrinkle in Time)
- Lent Day 20: Desmond Tutu and the Two Craigs - With the release of the Archbishop's latest book I recall his interview on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, and his being cited as an inspiration for Free the Children founder Craig Kielburger
- Lent Day 21: A Wake for Bobby - My personal little "Big Chill" moment about a childhood friend whose inspiration indirectly helped me consider Christianity along my spiritual journey
- Lent Day 22: It's About Time - Reflecting on the way we manipulate Daylight Savings Time in context of God's Time
- Lent Day 23: More About Time - Human time, God's Time, the after-life and heaven and hell on earth
- Lent Day 24: The Only Time is Now... - My search for a quote cited by my mother decades ago leads to either me misremembering the words, or my mom quoting the Grateful Dead
- Lent Day 25: Proud Papa - Watching my daughter and best friend perform a mini-play at a Lenten service and feeling the Gospel lines in their hearts
- Lent Day 26: Proud Papa, Part 2 - Watching my son earn his judo green belt in an interrogation setting unlike anything I've ever had to face
- Lent Day 27: Proud of a Papa and a Mama (pop culture edition) - As part of his grieving process, The Late Late Show's Craig Ferguson eulogizes each of parents on special episodes of the show
- Lent Day 28: A Strange Place - Another poem by Madeleine L'Engle that encapsulates how I feel about Lent
- Lent Day 29: Ear Worms - The hauntingly beautiful melody of Lenten Vespers music gracefully remain lodged in my brain
- Lent Day 30: A Hint of Spring - The return of warmer weather reminds me of my favorite Lenten hymn
- Lent Day 31: "Lost" and "Earned Grace" - Can anyone really earn grace, or better yet, can anyone receive a gift without truly any strings attached?
- Lent Day 32: Death Desensitized - Pop culture's cavalier attitude about death and how love and fear are more opposite than love and hate
- Lent Day 33: A Charlie Brown Christmas - How the popular television classic played a significant role in my spiritual journey
- Lent Day 34: Charlie Brown, Christmas and Crossings - A more in-depth look at Linus reciting Luke and how it touches my daily life in a lay theology essay I wrote for the Crossings Community
- Lent Day 35: Palm Monday and The Outsider - How the random seating arrangement for the Palm Sunday service reminded me of the five years I attended Mass/worship before my baptism
- Lent Day 36: Christ and the Recovering Adolescent - How youth ministry and my spiritual journey have built upon each other
- Lent Day 37: A Night at the Ballpark - High School baseball and the Lenten season as winter-into-spring metaphors
- Lent Day 38: Un-Fall-Ability and the 11th Commandment - The Papal Paradox about the current sex scandal through the lens of Maundy Thursday's (Last Supper) Great Commission: "Love one another as I have loved you"
- Lent Day 39: Good Friday, BC and AD - The "Sweet Swap" on the Cross, as depicted in the "B.C." comic strip
- Lent Day 40: Easter Vigil in the Eternal Now - Living simultaneously as both a pre-Resurrection and a post-Resurrection child of God
- Lent-to-Easter 2010: "It was 30 Years Ago Today" (Or "This Ending Is Also My Beginning") - This Lenten blog culminates with Easter Sunday, the 30th anniversary of the first time I attended a church service, the event which formally kicked off my spiritual journey. The blog concludes with the fuller dedication to my children.
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