I apologize if I was touchy.
StG
Well, it’s Ash Wednesday, and i haven’t eaten fast food yet. Doing well. St.Germain, my best friend told me that the modern definition of fasting for Ash Wednesday was one big meal and two small ones. Is this correct? Plus going meatless, of course.
Lissla Lissar - The two small meals aren’t together supposed to equal one normal meal. Not much of a fast, IMHO. I usually do only one casual meal on Ash Wednesday and God Friday- a sandwich or something. I will admit to eating on Shrove Tuesday before midnight, so I’m not quite so hungry the next day.
StG
I’m adding things, rather than giving anything up. I’m going to say the Chaplet of Divine Mercy daily, take an hour-long walk daily (exempting myself from today, because I’m not yet over the flu), and do some daily salutary reading.
For those asking for book recommendations, my favorite spiritual book ever is Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love. You can find an online version of it here.
I have a little book called All Will Be Well: 30 Days with Julian of Norwich, which has a short reading from Revelations of Divine Love, a short phrase you think about all day, a set of reflection questions, and a night prayer for each of the 30 days. Some of my roommates and I are using that book this Lent. Today’s short phrase is, “Nothing less than God can satisfy us.”
The Jewish dietary laws that appear in the Bible are given as rules that you are supposed to follow, with no explanation given. Any explanation you might have heard is speculation (we really have no way of knowing what God was thinking).
Oh, yeah, Julian of Norwich is great. Maybe I’ll reread it this week.
In answer to the OP, Jolt cola. 39 days and counting.
Day one of no television:
After microwaving a vegetarian Indian TV dinner I purchased from Wal-Mart[sup]SM[/sup] on the drive home from work, I accidently sat down and turned the TV on. It ran a solid 30 seconds before I remembered I wasn’t watching TV and turned it off. Honest mistake, I swear! I didn’t even see an actual program, because I immediately hit the “DVR” button to go to the list of recorded shows.
And now, immediately prior to bedtime, I’m finishing my final vodka-and-tapwater for the night and wondering if I’ll be drinking more during lent out of boredom to replace TV. I think I need to get a good book (non-religious would be OK) or two to tide me over.
Not quite. One regular size meal plus two small meals that, taken together, still do not amount to a regular meal.
The “meatless” part is actually the “abstinence” portion of “fast and abstinence.”
My understanding, too. The folk etymolygies (as it were) that I’ve heard sound very after-the-fact. “Well, pork had trichinosis in those days!” Well, probably all animals had a lot of parasites in those days, and people tended to eat a lot of spoiled or unwholesome food, period, in the days before refrigeration. “Shrimp are bottom feeders!” So? billions of people eat them with no ill effect, and this sounds like a modern day squeamishness rather than any form of public hygiene that an ancient Hebrew could have discerned (remember, people didn’t understand what caused disease or illness, for the most part, till about, oh, 100 years ago). I’ve actually seen Orthodox Jews get mad at these “Kashrut was a practical food-safety system” theories, precisely on the grounds that it reduced mysterious and divine pronouncements to a utilitarian Health Department regulation.
[hijack]For those of you who give something up for Lent, do you believe that you are free to indulge in it on Sundays during Lent? I think I know the doctrinal answer ((a) any sacrifice is a matter of individual conscience so by definition, it is up to you to define the scope of sacrifice you want to make; (b) Sundays are not technically among the 40 days of Lent, so even on a legalistic basis, you’re free to take a holiday from your abstinence)). However, I and some I know view this as “cheating” or breaking up the sacrifice and making it “too easy” – so we typically don’t eat meat, or drink, or smoke, or whatever it is we’ve given up, on the Sundays of Lent either. And you?[/hijack]
It’s also sometimes used as a justification for not keeping the laws of kashrut any more. If trichinosis was the reason for avoiding pork, and thanks to modern technology that’s largely a solved problem in first-world countries, then by that reasoning it should be OK to eat pork now.
And it does trivialize the kosher laws- would the people in this thread who are giving something up for Lent like it if someone said that practice was instituted to (say) conserve food resources at a time when they’re scarce? (implying that, now that food isn’t scarce, there’s no reason to give something up for Lent) I know that people give things up for Lent for reasons that are more spiritually meaningful to them than that.
Well, my newly-Catholic friend and his extremely devout cradle Catholic wife say that the weekday sacrifice makes the feast day of Sunday particularly joyful.
YMMV, of course, but our pre-Lent sermon consisted of the priest telling us “Look. You’re not giving something up to get brownie points with God, because guess what? He’s not your Boy Scout leader, giving you merit badges for your diet. Giving something up for Lent is your way of saying 'I have control over my destiny. I can give this up to prove that I don’t have to be reliant on physical things like a favorite food or a bad habit.” He also had a lot to say about ‘self denial’ and how it was misused in the past among the flagellantes of Spain and wives trapped in loveless, abusive relationships.
This was at the <i>traditional</i> service in the historic sanctuary, too. Candles and singing and bright shiny robes. And while the priest who gave the sermon wasn’t the rector (who gives the best sermons, in my opinion, though McDonald was right up there), he is one of the guys running the regular weekly church history/doctrine class.
I do love my church. 
Oh – I’m giving up fried foods. But I’ve already been bad, unfortunately. In my defense, I had no money and it was either McNuggets or go hungry. 
I think it is ok to treat yourself to something special on Sundays, but I wouldn’t make it whatever you’ve given up for Lent.
Sorry, you must have seen something that others missed. Up to this message, I haven’t seen anything intolerant whatsoever. A question was asked and it has been answered in a variety of ways, none of which have been nasty or unpleasant.