Good Thing It Isn't Called Lent Sanity

I mentioned Lent Madness in a post last year.  It’s back again just over halfway through the first round (the Round of 32).  I was really excited about Lent Madness coming back, and I decided that, since I was going to be following Lent Madness from the beginning, I’d fill out a bracket and select (hopefully) the winner.  I even bought a couple of the poster sized brackets (one for my office, another for YODAH) so that I could keep track of who is still on track to winning the Golden Halo.  So far, things don’t look good for my predictions.  Here’s the bracket as it stands currently (click to make it bigger):

Already, two of the saints I had in the Faithful 4 (Absalom Jones and John the Baptist) have been eliminated.  Perhaps my method of “I know that person” and “I like that person’s name better” isn’t a good way to select tournament winners.  Maybe I should have done a bit more research into why these holy men and women are considered so, well, holy.  That’s the beauty of Lent Madness, though.  While I may have made a mess with my bracket selections, I still have the opportunity to humbly* learn how much these holy people from our past help us to be holy people today.  I hope you’ll take the chance to learn as well.

*I may still be a bit bitter about J-Bap losing to Lucy

Another Lent, Another Blog

I know what many of you are thinking.  “Isn’t a bit late to start your ‘Lenten’ blog?”  Yes, it’s true.  I haven’t posted anything for almost the entire first week of Lent, but that was intentional.  I decided that I wanted my Lenten discipline this year to be more sustainable.  As I mentioned last year, I am not a big fan of writing.  If I’m going to make blogging a regular and sustainable part of my life outside of Lent, I need to find a way that works better for me during Lent.

When I first started this blog, my goal was to blog every day (except Sundays) in hopes that I would be in the habit of blogging by the time Lent was over.  Because I’d been blogging almost every day for a month and a half, I should have been able to keep up the habit.  Instead, I found that I got so tired of writing by the end of Lent that, when Easter came, not only did I rejoice in the resurrection of our savior, I rejoiced because I no longer “had” to come up with something to write.  This year, I've decided that I am going to make it my Lenten discipline to post to this blog a minimum of once a week, with Tuesday being my set day to post.  Here we are at the first Tuesday in Lent, and a post is up.  Go me!

I hope you’ll join me this Lent (and hopefully at regular intervals afterward) as I continue on a path toward a deeper relationship with God.  There’s no telling what will happen in this journey.  Maybe I’ll help others on their own spiritual journey.  Maybe I’ll provide a good jumping off point for a discussion to be had in the comments section or in people’s lives outside of this blog.  Maybe I’ll add little more than a few extra kilobytes of data to the web.  Whatever the outcome, I’m excited about the trip.