Soon I'm going to enjoy my last meal before a 12 hour fast.

I hate doing these things.  I feel super nauseous when I don't eat for long periods of times and can also get a headache.  With all the modern advances, can't they figure out a way to shorten these fasting tests?  I could manage the not eating, if I could drink something like a sports drink.

The association between religious communities and food has been noticed widely.  The Christian church almost has more in common across it's denominations with regards to culinary traditions than theology.  We believe vastly disparate things and yet there is not a congregation you can find without some tradition of pot-luck, post-worship meal, or monthly fellowship get together.  I find it intensely interesting when rituals unite us where ideas cannot.  Perhaps inter-necine arguments should be held around circular tables with bread and a warm hearty meal...

Four days into Lent and the exercise is raising more questions than it's answering.  My inability to perform a 'perfect' lent leaves me with a sinking feeling of failure and comprimise and yet each of these choices was made for good reason.  Perhaps the oddest insight is that my Protestant upbringing, which makes so much of God's forgiveness, has left me with a persistent feeling of guilt.  The choices that I made, to have 2% milk in my coffee instead of cream (although a perfect lent would have refrained from even that amount of dairy fat), my slip up on Ash Wednesday w

 I've been told that there is no such thing as Cultural Christianity.  That it's so closely intertwined with 'Western' culture that one cannot be a cultural Christian the way that one can be a cultural jew or muslim without strictly holding to the teachings.  If this proves to be the case then there is very little in my heritage that I can cling to and would have to leave my entire Christian upbringing behind simply because I'm walking away from most of the doctrines of Christian Orthodoxy.

So Ramadan 2010 is a go.  So far so good.  I plan to read the entire Qur'an this Ramadan just as I did last.  I also hope to engage people who would normally not be open to discussion in inter-faith dialogue and friendly discussion. And I plan to give my yearly alms on Eid ul-Fitr as per usual.  All the while trying to be the best Muslim, and human being, that I can be.

Lent is the Season in the  Christian Church which is 40 days before Easter that begins on Ash Wednesday, It was a time of fasting, repenting by giving up  certain things in one's life.

What is Lent like today?

Do you find giving something up in your life is beneficial  to your spiritual self?

For those Progressive Christians whose path is somewhat different, what does the Lenten Season mean to you?  This 6 week journey leads to the Crucifixtion, Burial and Resurrection of Jesus. How do you see it?