What to give up for Lent?
zouhair mostly beat me to it, at least by implication. If your intent is to spend the time forcing yourself to focus on God, etc., then go extreme without risking your health. (If, OTOH, you’re looking to put on a show, go without, I dunno, beer or sex or crackers-with-your-soup or something, but then you run into that whole left-hand/right-hand antibiblical thing about who’s watching, etc.) Do you have some minor eccentricity about yourself you’d like to change? (FWIW, I’m thinking more along the lines of nailbiting than this-means-other-issues things like glory holes in a high school locker room.) Change it for Lent. You come out a “better person” and spend the 40 days in the metaphorical desert becoming more spiritually aware. Devout atheist here, but I was (raised) Catholic. I do feel the season, but there’s nothing I like better on a Lenten Friday than a bag of pork rinds followed by a steak dinner. I gave up fish for Lent one year, and I’ve never looked back.
Religion already given up – ironically I never observed Lent when I was a Christian. When I was more Catholicky than I am now, I used to give up things I’d never partaken of, thus making the Lenten season something of a cake walk. This year, for no particular reason, I’m using tomorrow to get my (expanding) arse back to the gym, so I’d second the idea of starting something, rather than giving something up. Note also I’m planning on using the guilt planted by heatherann to add a few extra sets of lat pulldowns. Thanks heatherann.
I would be stunned if I met him in heaven and he was sitting there keeping track You’re completely missing the point. I find the number of people here who began to observe Lent after they lapsed away from the Church fascinating. I’m the same way; I never observed Lent when I considered myself a Catholic but I observe it now as a Christ-was-a-great-man-but-not-the-son-of-God-and-maybe-there-isn’t-a-God-anyway agnostic.
