{"id":843,"date":"2009-04-05T04:21:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-05T04:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2009\/04\/from-40-days-down-to-4.html"},"modified":"2009-04-05T04:21:00","modified_gmt":"2009-04-05T04:21:00","slug":"from-40-days-down-to-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/04\/from-40-days-down-to-4.html","title":{"rendered":"From 40 days, down to 4"},"content":{"rendered":"

And how has your Lent been going? <\/p>\n

Mine, not so great. It went by too quickly. Too much frenzy, too many distractions, precious little time to be still, to ponder, to pray. I gave up swearing and eating meat, and was doing both before the ashes were completely gone from my brow. <\/p>\n

Damn. <\/p>\n

Thankfully, I have a few days left. I’m taking off from work for Holy Week, which will give me a much-needed breather. It will not exactly be quiet time around the Kandra household — there’s the Chrism Mass Tuesday night, and rehearsals, and the Exultet to practice and the Triduum Marathon to be run — but it will give me a welcome opportunity to refocus my energies and clean out the cobwebs. (I always like to plunge into Rahner’s Prayers for a Lifetime<\/a> during this week.) <\/p>\n

Amy Welborn, meantime, has penned a kind of prayer<\/a> that finds connections between the physical and spiritual that are worth wondering about as the last hours of Lent tick down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And how has your Lent been going? Mine, not so great. It went by too quickly. Too much frenzy, too many distractions, precious little time to be still, to ponder, to pray. I gave up swearing and eating meat, and was doing both before the ashes were completely gone from my brow. Damn. Thankfully, I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":365,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-links-r-us","category-my-world"],"yoast_head":"\nFrom 40 days, down to 4 - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/04\/from-40-days-down-to-4.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"From 40 days, down to 4 - The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"And how has your Lent been going? Mine, not so great. It went by too quickly. 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