Lend, Lending, Lent

It's Thursday, but my body tells me it's Friday. I have come to associate Thursdays with the end of the week, with finality and self-led study and freedom. This is wonderful, except that I get confused sometimes, like today, when I kept asking Jenny questions about the weekend and finally got frustrated when she reminded me that tomorrow is Friday. It's hard being me.

This week I didn't have Stage Makeup because Shauna, the teacher, canceled it both times. It created a nice gap of time for me in the middle of the day, but unfortunately I didn't know we weren't having class, so I showed up only to leave soon thereafter.

Chinese also went well this week. The class has fallen in number to three enrolled students, and one of them was not in attendance either day this week, so just Lu JieXi (Jessica) and I had Dr. Zhuang all to ourselves. I like the other girl in the class well enough, but she doesn't study or really care about learning the language, so it seems sometimes like she's a bit of a burden. That sounded condescending. Today we had an awesome class. Zhuang Laoshi was able to go through a whole new section with the two of us and explain etymology of new characters and how they can be re-used in other words. That's the beautiful thing about characters. A suit of clothes and a set of silverware and a suite of furniture and a set of appliances and all the props for a play are expressed in the same structure with only one character changing in each one. It's pretty cool. One wish I have is that if I ever pass a decent level of the HSK (that is, the test of one's ability in Chinese), I'd love to learn about ancient Chinese and how the characters emerged. It is truly one of the most fascinating and culturally revealing pursuits I've ever come across.

Lent started yesterday. I've not completely settled on what I'm doing. That is, I realize that the whole point is to go through this season with my brothers and sisters as we all observe the time leading up to Holy Week. But I am not sure what to do. I started by trying to do a traditional prayer schedule and using traditional prayers. It isn't that I think these prayers are magical, but I just wanted to experience something so outside of my tradition and yet inside the bounds of what is considered orthodox Christian faith. Problematically, I don't really know how to get into a schedule like that proscribed by praying the office. Other options are on my horizon, and I have the discernment not to be worried about the legalities of Lent. I think they are off the target of the season, anyway. Another aspect of my wrestle with Lenten devotion is that I actually think it's important. I don't ascribe any salvific power to it, of course, but I do think that by fasting from something for a season, it brings to mind the greatest event in the history of man on a very real, very regular basis. It isn't about giving up sodas or not eating chocolate, but being reminded throughout the day that there is one who died and rose again, and that he is more real even than that craving that seems earth-shaking in the moment. I guess that kind of regular, physical and immediate reminder is why it seems important.

The gravity begs that I not push it aside, even if my Baptist brethren tend to eschew it as a Catholic practice.

T