Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Christian season of Lent. Christians around the world are invited, during the 40 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter Saturday, to engage in a spiritual discipline so as to prepare ourselves for the memorial and celebration of Christ’s passion, suffering, death and resurrection. Traditionally that has been done by fasting from food. Indeed a young Indian woman I was with today did just that. I have fasted on many occasions too. But this Lent I feel called to engage in writing a journal each day that will document my personal journey through Lent, here in India. So here we go.
Yesterday was Shrove Tuesday, also called Pancake Tuesday in English, and Mardi Gras (or “fat Tuesday”) in French. It’s the day when Europeans traditionally ate up big before Lent began. Yesterday I ate up big, but on pizza, not pancakes. Lena and I took our guests, Laura from the Uniting Church’s UnitingWorld, and Indu, from the Church of North India’s Amritsar Diocese, out to dinner at what we think is Manali’s nicest restaurant, Johnson’s Café. The thing is, I kept eating today, as the 3 women took me out for an early birthday afternoon tea. So Ash Wednesday this year has felt like an early celebration. Tomorrow will see some hard work, though, as I take the 2 girls on a 300km journey through the Himalayas and down to the plains, to the city of Chandigarh. having left them to go their separate ways I’ll take myself to Shimla to start planning an ecological care conference for next year.
So it’s time to get to bed at the end of this first day in Lent, 2014.
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