A few years ago, I discovered at my neighborhood farmers market 20-pound boxes of tomatoes selling for a mere $12. It was late September and this particular farm had quite the bumper crop. I came back with my car and bought a box.
My friend Steve was visiting that same week. Having learned to can the previous year, he took a look at my box of tomatoes and asked if that's what I was planning to do. I stared at him blankly.
This year’s Lenten Season has special significance for me. For the first time in my lifetime, Easter will fall on my birthday.
I am used to having April 24 to myself. Sharing the date this year gives me a singular opportunity to spend the weeks beforehand interweaving my physical life-journey with my Lenten spirituality
So how can that play out?
I spent a few weeks wondering what to give up for Lent. I wanted it to be something that really did make me think and recall Jesus’ teachings.
The meditative process of bread-baking is simple: Combine flour, yeast, and water, knead, allow to rise, knead again, rise again, bake. While simple, it takes a fair amount of time and care to create a lovely loaf of bread. Simple doesn’t always mean quick and easy. Sometimes it’s the simplest of tasks that we find the most overwhelming or confusing because to accomplish them, we need to slow down, pay attention to our intuition, and follow it.
9. Kathleen O. Chesto: Fasting from fast-ing
A story is told of a safari in the Serengeti. A researcher was rushing to the mating grounds of the African elephant. He had started late and pushed his porters relentlessly to arrive by mating season. On the fourth day, the porters sat down and refused to move. The translator explained they would go no farther until they had given their spirits time to catch up with them.
When I first tried this soup, I’d been feeling somewhat down thanks to the relentless Chicago winter that I have endured now 10 times. (I'm hoping you get time off of Purgatory for every year spent in Chicago in the winter) The soup was an instant mood lifter. It’s lightly spiced with a subtle coconut flavor that can transport your thoughts from the seemingly unending cold and gray to the possibility of warmth and sunshine.
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