Every Lent for the past six years I have gone off Facebook. It began the year I got married, with our wedding one week out from Easter, and was a powerful way for me to detox spiritually as I prepared for this new life. I found it so refreshing that I’ve actually looked forward to this Facebook detox every year since.
But this year I thought I would do something different. Having been more conflicted over the last twelve months about the power of social media for good or ill, I’ve decided to exercise a new discipline this year: to stay on social media during Lent, and commit to only being a positive voice. This means no doom-scrolling and no incessant checking for likes. Instead I’m going to do something I’m calling “Five Minutes for Lent”. What this means is that I’ll be posting a picture on Instagram from everyday life and a very short Lenten reflection related to the image, drawing on one of the three themes of Lent: fasting, prayer and almsgiving. I’m seeing it as a kind of daily soul maintenance, like the five minutes I might spend watering the garden, pulling up weeds or pruning. I might be thinking about something that needs pruning or uprooting, something that needs the nourishment of prayer, or a way that the fruits of my life’s garden should be used to bless others. I pray that, even if you are not someone who “does Lent”, you’ll tune in for five minutes of soul-keeping each day and be blessed by it.
But the five minutes has another meaning. I’m keeping myself to five minutes per day to write these reflections and five minutes posting and connecting on social media. To keep this to a minimum, I’m not going to post here: you can tune into @matthew.pullar at Instagram to find the reflections, and they’ll be reposted on Facebook. If you want to share a thought in response, please do so, but if your thought will take more than five minutes for me to respond, please share it via a direct message to The Consolations of Writing on Facebook, and I’ll be delighted to talk more with you that way.
Praying for you and your garden this Lent. Love Matt.
The Consolations of Writing 