Yes, it's Lent ... the 40-day fast leading up to Easter. It's the time of fasting, of preparation, of ... well, my Christian friends should know what I'm talking about. Truth be told, it's them I think about most at such times.
Yes, I have quite a number of friends and acquantances who have accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior and who have been washed clean by the Blood of the Lamb and are ... according to them ... guaranteed a place in Heaven. Just like the guy who shot up those people at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado.
I know, I know ... I shouldn't be so cynical. You're right. I shouldn't be, but unfortunately, I can't help but be when confronted with ideas like that.
I have other friends, you know. Yep, friends who are intelligent, enlightened, awakened, who know that all that religion stuff if mumbo-jumbo and only science holds the keys to truth. Yes, these self-proclaimed Enlightened Ones also missed the quantum-physical revolution in which it became clear that matter is scientifically verified to be an illusion and something other than matter and alleged laws drive the universe. There is more than one form of superstition alive and well in the world.
If you think I'm picking on either of these groups, you would be sorely mistaken. I'm not. Why should I? As long as they believe what they believe and don't try to make others accept their own personal delusions and are not harming anyone, why should it bother me. At heart, they're all really nice people: friendly, generous in their own ways, and wanting nothing more that the world be less violent, unjust, and surreal than it is. Good luck.
Whether you think Easter is anything worth celebrating, it is, like Christmas (though under under names) a festival that has been celebrated since time immemorial. Yes, animistic, mythic, pagan, Christian ... it doesn't matter. At this time of year, somebody somewhere had some reason to celebrate and it's still around today. The "reasons" may be different, but we celebrate all the same. In times passed, people prepared for their celebrations. Today, well, we have no need to do anything we don't want to or don't feel like doing. We're free and liberated human beings -- or so we like to think -- and besides, we're going to Heaven anyway: after all, we said the right words in the right way at the right time in the right place. What could possibly go wrong?
There was (and still is) something of a reason for Lent, and an even more important reason for observing it. Even as obscure as it is, Lent is (yet another) opportunity to get in touch with your real you, the you inside, the you you've been avoiding as long as you've been alive, the you that's brought the world to the eve of destruction (to paraphrase and capitalize on a well-known oldie-but-goodie).
OK, giving something up for Lent won't save the world. I don't think it will even save just you alone. But giving things up, denying yourself something you really like, even if just for a short period of time, if done seriously, can help you get a different view of the world in which you find yourself. It doesn't hurt, and who knows what good might come of it.
Of course, if you already have a get-out-of-hell-free card it doesn't matter, just as it doesn't matter that you believe nothing at all. The real world, though, is still somewhere in-between, where the rest of us mere humans live.
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