Lent Calendar 2020, Week One

My theme for Lent this year is the Road to Resilience. I'm trying to build and strengthen my ability to bounce back from challenges, conflict, and calamity. I found this from a blog called Gathering the Stones:

This is what Lent is designed to do: nurture hopefulness in the face of dashed dreams. ... Lent is about more than swearing off bad habits. Lent is about cultivating resilience. Lent is the season of learning to commit and sustain love in all circumstances. It’s a season of releasing what does not serve you and practicing the habits of resilience that empower you to rebuild and participate in healthy community after a disaster or a loss.

My goals are to:

• Recilience Habits: Recilience has lots of parts - equanimity, flexibility, resolution, tenacity, social intelligence, and optimism to name a few. I want to gradually add in some useful daily habits as a practical way to grow in recilience.
• Fast from binge eating: I try to choose something to fast from that is a good symbol of how I am trying to grow, and I think my binge eating has a direct connection to feeling overwhelmed by life's challenges.
• Educate myself: I'm reading the book The Coward's Guide to Conflict: Empowering Solutions for those Who Would Rather Run Than Fight.
• Inner work: Ground myself in journaling, meditation, and prayer to connect to my core of peace and courage. 
• Take creative action: Take decisive action on adverse or challenging situations as they arise, and use my creative super powers to grow, and make the world better.

February 26, Ash Wednesday- 

1. Begin fasting: One of the main things I need to stop doing in order to become more resilient is ignoring or hiding from challenging situations rather than acting positively to improve them. I think that binge eating (eating 4 scones, a whole sleeve of crackers, etc.) is a good symbol for how I negatively react to overwhelming challenges.

I've decided to fast this Lent from binge eating: I will eat only small portions, and especially reduce my carb intake. 

When I feel the urge to binge, I'll try instead to take a small positive step to face a challenge.

2. Study "The Coward's Guide to Conflict": Read Chapters 1-3 this week.

The author lists 7 choices one can make in a conflict, and I use all of them at times, but the one I use most is avoidance: I'd rather not answer the phone, not come face-to-face with the angry person, and not deal with the problem at all. 

The assignment is to track my behavior over the next week and build awareness of how I want to change.

3. Recilience Habits: I've already worked a few daily Equanimity habits into my life, to help me to maintain calmness no matter what life throws at me: 

1. Start each day by feeling grateful for the gift of this new day.
2. End each day by stating out loud a few things I've accomplished, to acknowledge my successes, and bring my mood up.

February 27- 

4. Draw a Lino block: I'm working on a series of block-printed prayer flags to hang in public spaces, and today I'm starting one for Resilience. 

One of the things I like most about the Craftivism movement is that, as I work, I'm not only expressing my hope for change, but also creating a quiet space for myself to regain a sense of power and purpose.

February 28-
5. Research and write: We had a conflict during business meeting last Sunday, and I want to write a response to those who were present. Soon I will have to act, using this research, to bridge a gap that was created - but first I need to put my thoughts in order.

February 29-

6. Write a letter: Hopefully I now have an idea of how to address the conflict of last Sunday, and can write a letter to those present.

Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent, a 46-day period of preparation for the joyful Easter celebration. The word lent comes from the Anglo Saxon word lencten, which means "lengthen"; it refers to the longer days of spring. 

Lent is about mortality and transformation; death and rebirth. Marcus Borg says "It means dying to an old way of being, and being born into a new way of being, a way of being centered once again in God."

Agenda for Lent:

1. Set intentions for Lent

2. Write a daily Lenten calendar

3. Hang up the Lady Lent
4. Make pretzels

Mardi Gras

Today is Mardi Gras, which is French for Fat Tuesday- also called Shrove Tuesday, or Pancake Tuesday. We've come to the end of the season of Carnival, which starts on Epiphany (January 6) and ends at Lent. Fat Tuesday is always 47 days before Easter Sunday. 

Agenda Today:
1. Make a screen mask
2. Make carnival corn soup with dumplings

Maslenitsa

Maslenitsa (масленица) is the oldest of all Russian holidays. It began as a spring equinox festival called Jarilo, named for the Slavic god of the vegetation and spring. Later it became a Christian holiday, starting on the Monday one week before the Eastern Orthodox Lent. 

Carnival season starts on Epiphany (January 6) and ends at Lent. This is the Russian version of Carnival, with eating, drinking, sledding, games, and costume parades. Even though it's now Christian in theory, all of its events still focus on driving away the winter and re-awakening nature.

In Russia, Maslenitsa lasts the entire week before Orthodox Lent, which starts next Monday, March 2. Since the Western Lent starts a week earlier (this Wednesday, February 26), I sometimes celebrate Maslenitsa a week earlier, but this year I'm just going to have a shorter and simpler version of Maslenitsa.

Agenda:

1. Make an effigy doll
2. Make blini pancakes

Maha Shivratri and New Budding Moon

Tonight is the new moon; the Chinese call the second new moon the Budding Moon. 

Spring has always been my favorite time of year, when I feel most creative and joyful. As we cycle nearer to spring, I can feel my energy growing and swelling like the buds on the trees!

Shiva, Crafts Museum, New Delhi

Tonight is also Maha Shivratri, a Hindu festival which falls each year on the night of the new moon in the Hindu month of Phalgun (in February or March). The Sanskrit word ratri means night, and maha means great, so Maha Shivratri is the night to honor the great Shiva, for his dance of primordial creation, preservation, and destruction.

Many Hindus keep a fast all day, make offerings of flowers and incense, and chant to Shiva. They vigil all night, sing songs, and dance to the rhythm of the drums.

Agenda Today:
1. Mantra
2. Journal queries
3. New moon meditation and prayer
4. Make Thandai

Pea Planting Day

Pea Planting Day is a special anniversary for us. 

February 22 is listed on my planting calendar as the first day to plant peas in the Willamette Valley; it also happens that this is the day W and I got engaged to each other, 44 years ago!

Peas are traditionally the first vegetable sown outside in the spring because they will germinate and grow in very cool soil. We plant peas today to ceremonially kick off the start of the planting season, and also to remind ourselves of the beginnings of our relationship; the day we decided to be together forever.

Agenda Today:
1. Prepare to plant
2. Pea planting ceremony
3. Permaculture pea tips

Tu B'Shevat

This cedar is 8-feet tall now!

Tu B’Shevat (too b’sch VAHT), the Jewish New Year for Trees, began last night at sunset on the evening of the full moon. This is the season in Israel when the earliest-blooming trees start a new fruit-bearing cycle. In contemporary Israel it’s celebrated with tree planting ceremonies and a focus on ecological awareness. Many also share a seder (ceremonial meal) of tree fruits.

Agenda: 
1. Tree of Life visualization
2. Plant a tree
3. Share a seder meal

Full Snow Moon and Lantern Festival

Darcy's first snow day (2019)!

Tonight is the full moon called the Snow Moon. We've been having low enough temperatures for snow, but no more than a dusting here in town.

Tonight is also Yuan Xiao, the 15th and last day of the Chinese New Year Festival. Yuan xiao means "first night", meaning the first time that the full moon is seen in the New Year.

This festival's other name is the Lantern Festival, because on this night folks make or buy lanterns of all kinds: shaped like flowers, or boats, or birds; made of bamboo, silk or paper; decorated with paintings, embroidery, paper cuts, tassels, and fringe.

Everyone takes to the streets to display their lanterns. It’s like a carnival: Children dress in costumes and watch parades with lighted floats, fireworks displays, puppet shows, and dances.

Agenda for today:

1. Journal queries
2. Altar
3. Practice Receptivity
4. Gestation Walk
5. Make tang yuan, sweet dumplings
6. Hang a lantern
7. Riddle guessing

St. Dorothy's Day

St. Dorothy lived in Caesarea in central Turkey, around the year 313 AD. She was tried for refusing to worship idols, and a mocking lawyer asked her to send him fruit from the garden of Paradise. In response to her prayer, an angel appeared and presented three roses and three apples. 

She wrote: 

"And then said the holy virgin with a glad semblant: Do to me what torment thou wilt, for I am all ready to suffer it for the love of my spouse Jesu Christ, in whose garden full of delices I have gathered roses, spices, and apples."

Because of this, she is the patron of gardeners. Also of brides, and brewers.

Agenda Today:
1. Make Persian Spiced Apples
2. Garden journal queries
3. Garden visualization & plan
4. Make garden markers
5. Work outside!

February Simplicity

The Testimony of Simplicity was one of the things that attracted me to Quakers 30 years ago.

What is a testimony? Well, Quaker’s have used the term “testimonies” since the 17th century to mean a public profession of religious experience, and understanding of the truth. In other words: A testimony is a spiritual leading to action, where spirit and action come together. 

Now as I become more active in climate justice, my calling to simplicity has become more central to my life. I lead a simple life in order to do what I can to save the planet!

Agenda this week:

1. Journal queries
2. Set priorities
3. Simplify my kitchen
4. Maintain hope

Imbalc

Imbalc (pronounced Im-molc) is the Celtic Sabbat that falls between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. At this time we celebrate the "beginning of the end" of winter.

Imbalc means surrounding belly- the Earth Mother’s womb; soon the seeds in the womb of the earth will begin to swell and creative forces will begin to come alive in the world.

Agenda for today: 
1. Creativity Altar
2. Journal queries
3. Seed blessing ceremony
4. Make a Brigid's Cross
5. Make Irish seed cake
6. Housework
7. Have a fire