this year i've been thinking (like your post captures) that God is about relationships, so i started what I've called "40 days of lent – Facebook Style". Each morning I post something about someone I've encountered in my life, and I spend the day with that person in my thoughts and prayers. posting on facebook helps me because I am reminded to stop, reflect and reach out to God everytime I log in. Plus, i get to connect with some people, including people haven't heard from in a few decades.

The Christian way combines contemplative practices (praying, meditation, silence, gratitude, sabbath, etc) with communal ones (worship and church/community activity) to yield missional work like justice, charity and evangelism. Lent is individualistic for a reason. We need to acknowledge our weaknesses and turn back toward God in order to serve the world, to promote justice and to love all of what God created. Sometimes the biggest roadblocks are within ourselves and those might be overcome by a Lenten observance.

What I don't understand, like you, about both these things is why they have to be things that we take away from our lives. I liked the idea of eating communally instead of eating out, too. I was thinking why can't for Lent, a bunch of folks get together and host a game-night or some other white-bread fun activity that I love so much.

Like you said, it seems like it would be so much more productive to build something into life than to take things out.

That said, I'm horrible at even remembering liturgical stuff. Completely forgot yesterday was Ash Wednesday. And I've been in the Episcopal church for six years now!!!

While I think Jesus' admonition to not perform our acts of piety just for the sake of being seen doing them IS apt here, I didn't mean to suggest a hard and fast rule that one should keep it a secret what one is giving up for lent. Like Julie, if the attitude and spirit is right I have no problem with "the telling and having it out in the open," especially if what I am giving up and why, and how it is affecting my faith, is something that others can be edified by. But so often it doesn't seem to be about that – it seems like "what are you giving up" or letting others know what I have given up, becomes the whole point, or the main point rather than an almost ancillary point to participation in the lenten season. If the main focus stays on what I've given up, what someone else has given up, and how much it sucks to give it up, then the point of lent is missed.

The fact that we miss what we've given up is inescapable, and of course we're supposed to miss it. I'm not saying we're not supposed to notice the absence and acknowledge that it's hard. But once we get very far into the "what have you given up this year?" discussion it seems like it's hard to pull back out and make sure the focus is where it belongs. I think the desired trajectory of experience for those who celebrate the discipline of fasting during lent is that described by Frederica M-G: “. . . In the first years, Lent was bewildering to me. Later, it just seemed hard. Last year, it was a spiritual mountaintop. I don’t know how to explain why repentance is a path to joy, or how to make it appealing. I think you have to come find out for yourself.”

First off – Makeesha, I totally understand. This was the mild version. At this point I'm just thinking that I'll do my best not to be a selfish bitch during Lent…

but to address the other ideas

for those that brought up the Orthodox tradition – that is something that makes more sense to me. It is the community of the church participating in an act of worship together. If the church has seasons, it just makes sense that they should celebrate them as one. The deep fasting and lifestyle rhythms make this time apart more communal and less individualistic. Not that I haven't heard complaints of "this is so hard" from them as well, but at least they are all doing it together.

To me this whole doing it together for the sake of others is key. So I have no problem with the telling and having it out in the open. The journey should be all together imho. I like what Mike said about choosing as a group to give up eating out – it was a communal act that pushes beyond the self.