O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, despair, lust of power, and idle talk.But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to Thy servant.Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own transgressions, and not to judge my brother, for blessed art Thou, unto ages of ages. Amen.
So, this Sunday is Meatfare Sunday, the last day to eat meat before Lent. Then there's Cheesefare week, a last chance to eat dairy before the first day of Lent, which will be Monday, February 27, this year.
I will admit that I've had mixed results in my attempts to keep the Lenten and Nativity fasts in the past, but I am determined to do this all the way this year. I won't be blogging about my efforts, since that would go rather against the spirit of the exercise (see Matthew 6:16-18), but I might write a little bit in more general terms about what all this means to me, any astoundingly good vegan recipes I encounter, and how it is that I ended up at Orthodoxy in the first place. I hope that I will do better if I make an effort to keep in mind what I am doing and why. I hate to admit it, but it is pretty easy to let God take a backseat when you're swamped with all the mundane details of material life. (And that's probably when I could use God the most!)
