“Lent starts tomorrow, I should go ahead and eat that cookie,” I said to myself, unwittingly reinventing Mardi Gras.

I am not great at observing the different seasons of the liturgical year. A good friend of mine once responded to this complaint with “Welcome to living a liturgical year life,” so I gather that to a certain extent, this is how everyone feels about it. It always feels a little frustrating to me, though, because I love the idea of the liturgical year.

I attended a spiritual retreat sponsored by my congregation last Saturday, and one of the activities we did was to string together some painted wooden beads representing the different liturgical seasons as we read about what each of those different seasons represents. I love the sense of “waiting for something great to happen” of Advent. I love the bursting forth of the spirit associated with Pentecost. I even appreciate the invitation of Ordinary Time to make the everyday sacred in its own way. I’m just bad at making those areas of focus when those seasons roll around (maybe the prayer beads I have up in my office now will help).