Lent for Skeptics 2015 starts on February 18, Ash Wednesday.

01-Lent 2015: Living Life Like Atlantic City. On Ash Wednesday, we are invited to confess openly that we are just dust and ashes. We get to peel away our own veneer. We confess how we distance ourselves from love, how we wrong God, one another, ourselves, all of creation. At the end of 40 days in the wilderness of telling the truth about who we are, we get to celebrate the end of death…. keep reading

02-Lent 2015: Failing is for Everyone. We’ve journeyed through seven days of Lent. By Ash Friday (just made that one up), I was tired of my Lenten discipline. While I’ve heard the suggestion to take up something instead of giving up something, I still haven’t given that a try. Here I am again, feeling a little grouchy, trying to wean myself from two not-to-be-mentioned substances…. keep reading

03-Lent 2015: Lenten Laundry Struggles. In Lent we join Jesus in saying “No” to the comfort, pleasure, power, control, and fame the tempter offers us in the wilderness, thereby siding with the poor, hungry, powerless, and unseen. The Lenten practice of rejecting those primal impulses to grab worldly power can help us experience the presence of God…. keep reading

04-Lent 2015: Experiment in Forgiveness. Lent is often seen as a time to pause and reflect on our inner life: our pain, numbness or distraction, and the grudges we hold, and then to try to turn around. Lent is long enough to try a few experiments in forgiveness…. keep reading

05-Lent 2015: Philly Stations of the Cross. One common Lenten devotional practice I’ve been doing is the stations of the cross. Physically walking from station to station, we recount Jesus’s journey to the cross. You only see the suffering. There’s no Easter story to the stations of the cross. Just suffering and rejection…. keep reading

06-Lent 2015: Skeptics go to Church. I write about Jesus. I also go to church every Sunday, but I don’t always like it. As previously mentioned, I drink all afternoon on Sundays. Church is where a bunch of hurt and hurting people gather to pray together and to receive Communion. Let me tell you why I haven’t given up on the Church, and why I don’t think Jesus has either…. keep reading

07-Lent 2015: Every Day is Good Friday. The Monday before last at the church’s daily Morning Prayer my husband Ben read the passage where Jesus heals a man born blind and some people who think they have their shit together complain about it and try to figure out whose sin made him blind. He asked if anyone had any thoughts about the Gospel reading for the day. “Some people didn’t like that God will help anybody. They thought he should just help some people but not others. They didn’t like that God will help anybody,” said one woman… keep reading