Good Lent, bad Lent

Some years - all too few! - I feel we have a "good" Lent. We abstain from certain things, we pray more, we go to an extra weekday Mass, I fit in extra spiritual reading ... and I get to Easter feeling that we have prepared well. More often, we have "bad" Lents. Good intentions fall apart, and we do only a fraction of the ideal. Life is busy, even hectic, and I never manage to carve out time for reflection ... sometimes I don't even slow down enough to remember I ought to be trying to find time.

This year is another of our bad ones We did manage to make our salt dough crown of thorns, and are removing a thorn every day (or sometimes a cluster of thorns when we have forgotten for a while!). We are using the new Stations of the Cross book by Christine Haapala as the focus for our morning prayers. We have all abandoned some little luxury. (What do I mean "little"? We are talking chocolate here!). I have read ... um ... two chapters of my Lent book. Time for quiet prayer? Nope. Extra weekday Mass? Nope (in fact logistics have meant we haven't managed any weekday Mass). Serious attempt at spiritual reading? Nope. But I am realising that even the little we are doing is enough to give us pause occasionally. Lent is still noticeably a season of preparation, and Easter, when it comes, will be more of a celebration because of it. I, at least, am just that bit more focused on my shortcomings than usual. Maybe even a bad Lent can be a good Lent.

[Note: If this post turns out to be incoherent, it is because a herd of elephants went on the rampage above me. My yells of fear and reproach - lest the ceiling fall down - woke the Cherub. More yells. Concentration gone!]