Are you feeling a little worn out? When Lent begins as early as it does this year, we feel like we turn around from Advent/Christmas to encounter Ash Wednesday before we’re really ready.
I’m continuing to read and enjoy Twain’s The Innocents Abroad. He comments on the different approach to work taken by Europeans and Americans: “Just in this one matter lies the main charm of life in Europe–comfort.” He goes on “When an acre of ground has produced long and well, we let it lie fallow and rest for a season…when a razor has seen long service and refuses to hold an edge, the barber lays it away for a few weeks, and the edge comes back of its own accord. We bestow thoughtful care upon inanimate objects, but none upon ourselves. What a robust people, what a nation of thinkers we might be, if we would only lay ourselves on the shelf occasionally and renew our edges!”
If you engage in a Lenten discipline, perhaps one possibility might be more sleep…