Lent and the Race for the Cure

Had a conversation with Paul this evening about lent. At first I was adamantly of the opinion that since I am no longer a practicing Catholic it would be a bit hypocritical (and useless) of me to decide that I was going to "give something up" for the next 40 days. My experience with lenten promises growing up have always been a lot like New Year's Resolutions- entirely selfish and impossible to stick to. We spent a lot of time in 3rd period religion discussing how well we had fulfilled our promises and how we could do better.

But then I thought about it a little longer, and I think all the old Catholic guilt started to churn itself up again. So I'm going to try something. It does combine a good deed with a selfish motive, but then there's this whole discussion of whether the good deed itself can ever be anything other than selfishly motivated, and I don't want to get into all that now. I have been thinking about taking part in the local 5k Race for the Cure for a while now, to get out and do something active, to take part in some sort of social event, and...well...because it's a good cause, right? Well, at least that part made the list somewhere.

The point is, I'm going to do it. My deed for Lent will be to actively raise money for the Komen foundation and take part in the 5k on March 21. If you would like to help out without all the pesky being outside, running around business, you're welcome to pile on the guilt to make sure I stick to my goals, click here.

And anyone who wants to have that conversation about intentions and the selfishness of the "good" that we decide to do for the world and our fellow man, just let me know. Only not tonight, I need a few hours of sleep before I tackle that.