i wish...

One thing I love about Lent (and Advent) is the opportunity to have Lenten rituals, daily and weekly. I especially like rituals that you don’t to by yourself.

So I’m super-excited about the daily Lenten ritual that my boyfriend and I came up with. We put a good deal of thought into it and built in all our favorite things about worship and prayer, and what we can up with is a nice mix of scripted prayers, reflection, songs, scripture, and discussion.

The challenge is carving out the time for this ritual. We’re both super-busy, and this ritual takes up maybe 45 min – we can’t just “squeeze it in” when it’s almost bedtime!

So on Tuesday – Mardi Gras, the last day before Lent – when we had a bunch of friends over to my place and they stayed ’til about 11, I couldn’t help thinking that during Lent, when we invite people over to one of our apartments for dinner, we’ll have to kick them out early.

And then I had this CRAZY thought: Wouldn’t it be great if instead of sending them home, we could invite them to join us for our daily ritual?

The thing is, it’s totally crazy. You can’t get your non-Christian friends to join you for praying and singing. They would be so uncomfortable! (It would be a good way to get them out of the apartment quickly, though.)

But if we all moved past that, it would be so great. I would love to be able to share my Lenten traditions with my friends who aren’t Christian – these spiritual practices are, after all, the biggest thing going on in my life right now, and I totally wish I could discuss my take on scripture with them. So it makes me sad that instead of getting to share them, I instead have to break up the community by sending them home early.

Well... someday, I hope.