Ash Wednesday

In the Western Christian calendar, Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent and occurs forty-six days before Easter.

At Mass and services of worship on this day, worshippers are blessed with ashes by the celebrating priest or minister. The priest or minister marks the forehead of each participant with black ashes, in the shape of a cross, which the worshipper traditionally retains until washing it off after sundown. In many Christian churches, the minister of ashes may also be a layperson or non-clergyman. The symbolism echoes the ancient Near Eastern tradition of throwing ash over one's head signifying repentance before God (as related in the Bible). The ashes are prepared by burning palm leaves from the previous year's Palm Sunday celebrations and mixing them with olive oil as a fixative.

There are traditionally forty days in Lent which are marked by fasting, both from foods and festivities, and by other acts of penance. The three traditional practices to be taken up with renewed vigor during Lent are prayer (justice towards God), fasting (justice towards self), and almsgiving (justice towards neighbor). Today, some people give up something they enjoy, and often give the time or money spent doing that to charitable purposes or organizations.

Well, thank you Wikipedia. Once again you have been very helpful.

Personally, I have always enjoyed Lent. I always found myself to be more introspective about religion in general during this time. As I come from a pretty traditional Lutheran background, we celebrate Lent in my church. Even though I haven't been very close to religion lately, I think it's an important time, and I decided that I'm going to partake in Lent in two different ways this year.

I decided that I wanted to "do things" rather than simply give something up. That's not hard for me, its not really a challenge to give up chocolate, or soda, etc -- its more of an inconvenience. For me, pushing myself to take action is more difficult. So, I'm going to give up fast food. But what I'm really going to focus on are the actions I'm going to start taking.

First of all, I am going to start volunteering again. In high school and college, volunteerism was a huge part of my life. However, since I started my new job, I have not done any volunteering, and I can feel the impact of it. I am a very blessed person, and I want to give back some of that to others in my community. Secondly, I'm going to get myself more motivated career-wise. I'm going to pinpoint what kind of job I want, figure out what will make me happy and satisfied, and I'm going to go after it.

I'm excited :)

What are you going to do for Lent (if anything)?

~Molly