On Giving Up

I haven't always practiced the tradition of Lent.  When I was a kid, all my Catholic friends talked about it, and gave up things like chocolate or Atari, and I didn't really understand the point.  But then, I thought it was just a Catholic thing, and I didn't pay much attention.  It was only as an adult that I started to understand the concept of Lent, and it's only been for a few years that I've been practicing it myself.

Last year was pretty tragic, if you want to know the truth.  I jumped on the church staff bandwagon and decided to go with The Daniel Fast,.  While it was a great experience for many of my friends, I found myself focused more on food than ever before, leaving myself little time to focus on God.  My husband D. decided to do it with me, and he's a picky eater in some ways.  So while I could throw some refried beans in a whole wheat tortilla and eat that for lunch just about every day, I had a hard time finding enough non-meat protein for my meat-and-potatoes-loving, non-refried-bean-eating honey.  I couldn't figure out what to cook for dinner every night and it seemed like ALL I could think about.  Well, and then there's the whole thing about how it put me in the hospital.

Okay, okay.  It's entirely probable that The Daniel Fast didn't actually put me in the hospital.  That was actually the fault of my gallbladder and about 30 small gallstones that gave me gut-wrenching, cold-sweat-producing, I-can't-breathe-because-of-the-pain problems.  So really it was my gallbladder that put me in the hospital for a week and on the "nothing by mouth" diet for just as long.  It's just that my first gallbladder attacks happened to coincide with my self-proclaimed "end of The Daniel Fast", and now the two are forever connected in my brain.  So, right...no Daniel Fast for me this year.

I've been praying about what it will be for me this year...what God wants me to "give up" for Lent.  And while I don't have an answer quite yet, I do have a few ideas.  One idea that seems like a good thing for me is to give up listening to music of any kind while I'm in the car.  For me, this will be rough.  I like nothing better while I'm driving than to plug in my iPod and sing along to my music.  Some of it is secular music, but a lot of it is praise music as well, so it's not that the music itself is bad.  It's just that maybe for those six weeks, I will use that time differently.  Maybe I will use it to count my many blessings, or to pray for my family and my church and my leaders, or to think about my morning Bible reading.  Maybe giving up music in the car is an intentional way to enrich my prayer life. 

Every year, I also mention to my kids that we're coming up on the season of Lent, and I ask them if they're planning to give anything up for it.  I don't force it on them; they're all old enough to make their own decisions and make it part of their own faith.  They've done well in the past, giving up fast food or whatever.  None of them have made decisions yet as far as I know, so it will be interesting to see what they come up with. 

What about you?  Do you practice Lent?  What does it look like for you this year?

On Hospitality

Last week I read a novel for my book club.  It was a good book all the way through, but one very insignificant line in the book took me off-guard.  It was just a simple comment, but one that has stuck with me and that I've thought about over and over again since then. 

The author was contrasting a large group dinner in India with one here in the States.  She compared our Thanksgiving dinner with a family dinner in India.  When those in India get together with family, often on a weekly basis, it usually consists of huge groups of people, cousins and neighbors and in-laws numbering well into the twenties and above.  The women all get up early, gathering to cook together, laughing and talking and discussing everything while making dish after dish after dish. 

Here, when it's Thanksgiving, we all stress out about everything that needs to be done.  We get up alone at the crack of dawn, making lists and freaking out about what we're forgetting or how moist the turkey will be.  Everything has to be perfect or it will ruin the entire holiday.  Sure, we have fun eating together and watching football and playing games after the dinner, but the preparation is nothing if it's not stressful. 

What's the difference?  Why does the preparation in India tend to be full of joy and community, while for the most part Americans cook seperately in their own homes and then bring their "I hope it's good enough" dish to a dinner cooked by a sweaty, stressed-out host who is anxious for the whole thing to just be over with?

I know I'm generalizing.  I know it doesn't always happen this way.  There are many families in America who love cooking Thanksgiving dinner and who do it joyfully with friends and family.  I'm sure there are also Indian families who stress out about what they're cooking.  But something about what the author wrote rang true for me.  I want that joyful community dinner experience.  I want to gather in a kitchen with friends and cook whatever it is we're cooking while laughing and chatting.  I want there to be less stress and more fun in entertaining.  I want to invite people over even if I haven't mopped my kitchen floor in weeks, knowing that they will care more about the conversation than the cleanliness of my chaotic home.  I want to bake cookies for a friend's visit and laugh together with her about how I burned the bottoms.  Too often, I stress about the "stuff" and don't take enough joy in the "who".  I want it to be about the people, not about the food. 

I'm pretty sure that's what hospitality really is.