Lent

For the period of Lent (February 6-March 23, 2008), a group of people have committed to write this blog as a community project.

Here’s how they were invited:

You are an interesting group. One of you is considering being an ordained deacon in the Roman Catholic church. One of you is finishing a ministry sabbatical year, writing about hope for a year, and trying to figure out why God doesn’t want her right now in another part of the world. One of you teaches religious education in the public schools and her own high school son at home. One of you is trying to finish writing a stage production of the last days of Jesus, among other things. One of you is a pastor of a church in Fort Wayne, with a huge heart after prayer. One of you is (almost) an oblate with a Benedictine community near Minneapolis and the heart behind the Broken Heart manifesto. One of you is a social marketing genius who is also an elder in a church in Austin, TX.

All of you love Jesus. All of you are clearly committed to the awareness that you don’t know all the answers. All of you are trying to work out what it means to be a Christ follower. All of you write well.

And all of you have challenged and changed my life.

Some of you know that I wrote a blog post a day for advent. It was a good exercise. As a result, I went ahead and reserved lent2008.wordpress.com, with the intention of writing at the same pace for lent, which begins in about a month. Yesterday, however, while I was in the shower, i thought, “do this in community.” I don’t argue with those thoughts anymore.
This is an invitation to contribute to a lenten blog. What I’m seeing is posts from you which would wrestle with what we learn when we give up that which we enjoy for the sake of better understanding that in which we delight.

Not all of us are from a liturgical background. That’s the point. I want to have some wrestling with lent, with fasting, with self-denial as self-discovery, with the relationships between forms and faith and relationship.

Are you interested? Are you willing? Do you have questions?

They all said “yes” and all expressed trepidation. “What do we say? What if we have never ‘done lent’? What about…”

And so, we are on the journey together to interact for the next six weeks as followers of Christ. There is a weekly theme, and each writer has one day of the week for which they are responsible. And each of us is struggling with challenges right now, whether from health or family or jobs or our future (or all three). As a result, this will be an interesting journey.

Thanks for stopping by.

Jon Swanson
Ash Wednesday, 2008
Grabill, Indiana