Member-only story
Ash Wednesday. Today begins the season of Lent. Typically when I was growing up in my mother’s very Catholic home it meant No-Meat-Fridays and “giving up” something you really really enjoyed. My mother “kept the fast” on Sundays. I was well into my 30s before someone told me we got a reprieve on Sundays and could, in fact, eat chocolate or drink beer — whatever said enjoyable something we had “given up” was.
My mother was hardcore Catholic.
As I grew spirituality I left the Catholic Church and developed my own personal relationship with The Divine.
Note to self: She didn’t give a fuck what I ate or when I ate it.
She was way more interested in how I treated My Life. Was I using My Gifts? Was I learning? Was I echoing Love? Or was I stuck in the stupid shit? Stupid shit like “fasting from meat” on Friday by eating seafood which costs twice as much. Now there is a great loophole every Catholic worth their salt knows about!
But back to Lent.
Forty Days. That’s the Magic Number for us to get our spiritual house in order. Forty Days. You see it a lot in religious traditions. Every. Single. One.
In Christianity and Judaism, it’s referred to the number of testing. In Hinduism, it’s the number of repetitions for prayer. In Islam, Muhammad was forty years old when he began his…
