Lent: 40-some days of reflection

I will once again be doing #UULent reflections, even though I am not Unitarian Universalist and I’m not even sure I’m Christian these days given the bad name Evangelism/Fundamentalism are giving Christianity. I do like the concept of Lent as a period not of giving up but of growing up, and I feel like these prompts will help me focus on that outside of myself.

These reflections will be on my blog for the next 47 days (whatever happened to 40 days of Lent?). Please join me in reading and reflecting, whatever your religious preference is.

Forty days of reflection

As a Quaker (i.e. member of the Religious Society of Friends, an unorganized religion) I do not give things up for Lent as I did when I was a child in the Roman Catholic Church. I miss the concept of sacrifice, however, at the same time I feel like giving up something doesn’t lend itself to spiritual growth.

A friend of mine is Unitarian Universalist, and she posted a Lenten devotion of reflections upon words that hook into people’s spirituality. The devotion suggested pictures of each day’s word to reflect on, as shown below:

For the forty days of Lent, I will use these words as the jumping point for my blogs. I will do the day 1 reflection later tonight — the word, it turns out, is dedication. I think I can speak to this.