{"id":107599,"date":"2019-03-22T00:45:44","date_gmt":"2019-03-22T07:45:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?p=107599"},"modified":"2019-03-18T14:24:45","modified_gmt":"2019-03-18T21:24:45","slug":"fasting-friday-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2019\/03\/fasting-friday-2.html","title":{"rendered":"Fasting Friday 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>Continuing from last Friday, we keep looking at ways <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/csc\/101-practical-fasting-ideas-for-lent\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">suggested by Deacon Nick Senger<\/a> to observe fasting during Lent, along with my commentary in boldface.\u00a0 My commentary, understand, is not meant to tell you what to think about these suggestions, still less what to do in response to them.\u00a0 If any of them speak to you then by all means try it whatever response I happen to have to them. Rather, the idea is to, if you will, provide a sort of chatty model of free-flowing dialogue that you can join in with at the comboxes with your own ideas or responses.\u00a0 In short, I\u2019m trying to get the conversational juices flowing here.\u00a0 I want to elicit, not silence, conversation.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>Switch from regular radio to Christian music radio or Catholic talk radio.\u00a0<strong>I live in a largely radio-free world.\u00a0 I don\u2019t even play the music on my computer when I\u2019m working since it impairs my ability to think clearly.\u00a0 So this is not addressed to my condition.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Avoid shows with gratuitous sex or violence.\u00a0<strong>Not my cup of tea anyway.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Give up or limit watching sports on television.\u00a0<strong>I lack the sports gene anyway.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Listen to only classical music for the next 40 days.\u00a0<strong>Music is for pleasure, not for spinach. I don\u2019t see the point of making music a form of penance. If you are going to do penance, do penance.\u00a0 Don\u2019t turn intrinsically non-penitential things into penance.\u00a0 It\u2019s like diet pizza or 2% chocolate milk.\u00a0 Either indulge or fast, but don\u2019t don\u2019t half-ass pleasures by making them unpleasant.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Drive to work in silence each day.\u00a0<strong>I drive from my bed to my desk, a total distance of one foot. To my credit, I do it in silence as a rule.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Read a work of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/books\/nicks-summary-of-great-books-lists\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">classic literature<\/a>. <strong>Okay.\u00a0 But that doesn\u2019t seem very penitential either.\u00a0 I think I might give <em>The Pickwick Papers<\/em> a whack.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Read a\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/books\/nicks-catholic-classics-reading-list\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Catholic classic<\/a>.\u00a0 <strong>Does the Bible count?\u00a0 I\u2019m trying to read it more than I have been lately.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Read a story to a child. <strong>That sounds fun!<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Sit in fifteen minutes of silence each day. <strong>As an extrovert trapped in an introvert\u2019s job, I regard the prospect of silence as both frustrating and impossible.\u00a0 My head is full of talk and silencing it is just battening down the lid on a pressure cooker.\u00a0 I need to get things out.\u00a0 And God is mostly who I have to talk to.\u00a0 15 minutes of silence just feels like a pointless time out where I am literally watching the clock till I can get back to doing something useful.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Write a letter to God each day. <strong>For a writer who spends all day writing about the Faith and God, this like carrying coals to Newcastle or telling scuba diver to practice swimming more. I take my prayer walks to escape writing.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Set time limits on overall online time.\u00a0<strong>I refuse to discuss this on the grounds that it may incriminate me.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/news.cnet.com\/8301-17939_109-10169632-2.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Limit Facebook time<\/a>.\u00a0<strong>Trying.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Limit Myspace time. <strong>Myspace is some kind of Pleistocene-era tech, if memory serves. This list was put together ten years ago.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Resist making or adding to lists that rank people.\u00a0<strong>That\u2019s not a thing for me.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Share one spiritual video with your online network once a week. <strong>Done and done! See below.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Blog about the poor once a week. <strong>See Almgiving Monday.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Add a spiritual blog to your blog reader. <strong>No time.\u00a0 Sorry.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Subscribe to a prayer podcast like\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.pray-as-you-go.org\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Pray As You Go<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/psp.libsyn.com\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Pray Station Portable<\/a>.\u00a0<strong>No time.\u00a0 Sorry.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Leave an encouraging or positive comment on a different blog each day. <strong>I\u2019ll give this a whirl.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Help a new blogger by sending traffic their way. <strong>She\u2019s not a new blogger, but <a href=\"https:\/\/shirtofflame.blogspot.com\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Heather King<\/a> is quite good.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>And here, in fulfilment of my promise above, I give you John Cleese reading <em>The Screwtape Letters<\/em>:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/SBxpcGfznos\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Continuing from last Friday, we keep looking at ways suggested by Deacon Nick Senger to observe fasting during Lent, along with my commentary in boldface.\u00a0 My commentary, understand, is not meant to tell you what to think about these suggestions, still less what to do in response to them.\u00a0 If any of them speak to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1075],"class_list":["post-107599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-lenten-thoughts"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Fasting Friday 2<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Continuing from last Friday, we keep looking at ways suggested by Deacon Nick Senger to observe fasting during Lent, along with my commentary in\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2019\/03\/fasting-friday-2.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta 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