Helen and I invented Lenture between us on Facebook today. If an Adventure happens in Advent, then a Lenture is the same thing, but in Lent. I have never had a Lenture before; I think this is probably because I have suffered so often with seasonal depression, which usually leaves me a sobbing wreck by the end of January. This hasn't happened this year, and it's Shrove Tuesday, and I'm really, really looking forward to Lent.
I've been having a private pancake party. I have a candle in a jar marked petite fete de lumiere, and I've listened to Mozart's Alleluia a lot. Now I've finished the pancakes and I'm drinking Cointreau left over from the crêpes suzette and thinking about my Lenture.
There are two parts to this. Firstly there is the observance, which is something I do every Lent, to a greater or lesser extent. I am fizzing with ideas for this, and tempted to over-commit myself. A pattern I learned from![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sashajwolf a while ago is useful: give something up, take something up, read something.
Things to give up: meat; buying stuff; being polite to people at the expense of my own well-being.
Things to take up: lectio divina; Count Your Blessings; wearing rainbow fish brooch (House of Bishops have been singularly unhelpful on LGBT issues recently) and having any awkward conversations that result; remembering to bring food in to give to the foodbank collection; writing more in my diary; @livelent.
Things to read: something out of a box in Cambridge; the Archbishop's Lent book; poetry.
Writing all that down hasn't really helped; I just want to do it all. Apart from the Archbishop's Lent book, which I can't be bothered buying. I'll see what shakes in over the next couple of days.
Perhaps I could have a candle?
And then there are two Objectives. One: I'd like to make progress on Objective Trollope Up With It. Two, and really important: Objective Safe House.
I'm going up to Cambridge on Thursday, and we will spend a week reconnoitring potential safe houses. Tony is already doing the background research. I do not particularly want to set a deadline, but we do need to find one.
Dear house, you are out there somewhere. You are exactly what we need for a year, or perhaps two years. You will be close enough to the station for me to get to work without dying of exhaustion, and far enough out for the place where you are to have a soul. You will be a place where we can have a cat, and people to stay, and late-night boozy conversations around the kitchen table. You will have a shed to put the bikes in. You will be close to the shops and the bus route and a church I can live with. Your landlord/lady will be lovelier, if possible, even than Andy King. I will plant lavender in your garden.
The Lenture begins tomorrow.
I've been having a private pancake party. I have a candle in a jar marked petite fete de lumiere, and I've listened to Mozart's Alleluia a lot. Now I've finished the pancakes and I'm drinking Cointreau left over from the crêpes suzette and thinking about my Lenture.
There are two parts to this. Firstly there is the observance, which is something I do every Lent, to a greater or lesser extent. I am fizzing with ideas for this, and tempted to over-commit myself. A pattern I learned from
sashajwolf a while ago is useful: give something up, take something up, read something.Things to give up: meat; buying stuff; being polite to people at the expense of my own well-being.
Things to take up: lectio divina; Count Your Blessings; wearing rainbow fish brooch (House of Bishops have been singularly unhelpful on LGBT issues recently) and having any awkward conversations that result; remembering to bring food in to give to the foodbank collection; writing more in my diary; @livelent.
Things to read: something out of a box in Cambridge; the Archbishop's Lent book; poetry.
Writing all that down hasn't really helped; I just want to do it all. Apart from the Archbishop's Lent book, which I can't be bothered buying. I'll see what shakes in over the next couple of days.
Perhaps I could have a candle?
And then there are two Objectives. One: I'd like to make progress on Objective Trollope Up With It. Two, and really important: Objective Safe House.
I'm going up to Cambridge on Thursday, and we will spend a week reconnoitring potential safe houses. Tony is already doing the background research. I do not particularly want to set a deadline, but we do need to find one.
Dear house, you are out there somewhere. You are exactly what we need for a year, or perhaps two years. You will be close enough to the station for me to get to work without dying of exhaustion, and far enough out for the place where you are to have a soul. You will be a place where we can have a cat, and people to stay, and late-night boozy conversations around the kitchen table. You will have a shed to put the bikes in. You will be close to the shops and the bus route and a church I can live with. Your landlord/lady will be lovelier, if possible, even than Andy King. I will plant lavender in your garden.
The Lenture begins tomorrow.
