{"id":11944,"date":"2016-02-10T10:09:03","date_gmt":"2016-02-10T15:09:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/?p=11944"},"modified":"2016-02-10T10:09:03","modified_gmt":"2016-02-10T15:09:03","slug":"repeating-last-years-lent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2016\/02\/repeating-last-years-lent.html","title":{"rendered":"Repeating Last Year&#8217;s Lent"},"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><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0867164301\/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0867164301&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=unequyoked-20&amp;linkId=4N37LA7CIX2HJT4S\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-11945\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/84\/2016\/02\/armchair-mystic.jpg\" alt=\"armchair mystic\" width=\"267\" height=\"267\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m doing the same thing this year for Lent as I did last year:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Giving up jaywalking<\/li>\n<li>Trying contemplative prayer<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Mostly on the grounds that both were still frustrating by the end of last year\u2019s Lent, so I figure there might be more to learn from both. \u00a0Not jaywalking left me on tiptoe at curb, waiting to sprint into the street, which didn\u2019t so much fix my impatience as at least make it ridiculous. \u00a0Watching the crosswalk on the other side tick down from 30 and finding it intolerable to be stopped for\u00a0<em>up to half a minute<\/em> is, at least, humbling.<\/p>\n<p>But trying contemplative prayer was mostly just frustrating (as my problems with waiting at crosswalks may suggest). \u00a0I don\u2019t like waiting, I don\u2019t like silence, and the only times I avoided impatiences were the times I tried contemplative prayer in a too-comfortable posture and fell asleep.<\/p>\n<p>So, by midway through Lent, my contemplative prayer attempts were pretty much reduced to using the time at crosswalks to be silent.<\/p>\n<p>This year, since I don\u2019t seem any better prepared for this that last time, I\u2019m reading a chapter a day of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0867164301\/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0867164301&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=unequyoked-20&amp;linkId=4N37LA7CIX2HJT4S\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"><em>Armchair Mystic: Easing Into Contemplative Prayer<\/em><\/a> by Mark E. Thibodeaux, SJ. \u00a0It\u2019s got exercises, at least, so I\u2019m pleased not to be just on my own recognizance. And I\u2019ll wait (possibly patiently) to see what grows out of it.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And, as you discover who else in your office, or commute, or anywhere else is Catholic today, I figured I\u2019d share the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.firstthings.com\/web-exclusives\/2015\/09\/catholic-consensus\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">\u201cCatholic Census\u201d essay I wrote for First Things<\/a>, on doing more with the neighbors we don\u2019t know we have:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"color: #4d4e4e;\">Any other Saturday night, I might technically be able to pray with a stranger, but I wouldn\u2019t have known how to ask. The papal visit drew people out, and made it easy to disclose our faith to each other. It felt like a much more joyful and communal version of the annual Catholic Census that happens on every Ash Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #4d4e4e;\">I might notice the smudges on my coworkers\u2019 foreheads but I don\u2019t start conversations. The somber, sin-focused nature of the day makes it hard to imagine introducing myself and asking someone to coffee or to pray for me. It just means that, for a day, the Catholic-heavy demographics of my city become visible to me.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m doing the same thing this year for Lent as I did last year: Giving up jaywalking Trying contemplative prayer Mostly on the grounds that both were still frustrating by the end of last year\u2019s Lent, so I figure there might be more to learn from both. \u00a0Not jaywalking left me on tiptoe at curb, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":11945,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spiritual-practice"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ 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