While I'll still be posting occasional local, weather or feline-related posts, they will be supplemental to the Lenten blogging cycle that starts tomorrow, Ash Wednesday. Lenten blog posts will continue for the next 47 days, until Easter Sunday, which this year falls on 5 April. For the record, jeziorki.blogspot.com has had over 113,000 page views in the past month, and as usual, I expect that audience to plummet (as it always does over Lent), with just a hard-core of readers remaining with me through to Easter as I focus on the spiritual aspects of human life.
Each year's Lenten blogging cycle stands as a summary of what I believe, feel, intuit, experience about my spiritual quest – does it bring a better quality to life? Does consciousness survive biological death? If so, in what form? Is there a God? If so, how can we understand God? Through lived experience or through the written word? How can belief in God help us in our everyday life? How much spirituality do we need in a biological/material world? Is there one path to God or myriad paths? How can we even begin to understand the Infinite and Eternal? How can we square the Material with the Spiritual?
More questions than answers; I set off on my Lenten quest fully appreciating that it is our destiny to remain curious.
This is also a time to reflect on what I've learned over the past year, how my own search has led to sharper definitions and more nuance, and a broader understanding of knowing what we'll never get to know. Looking back over previous Lenten blogging cycles, I sometimes see deep moments of insights, whilst at other times I see beliefs that I now find overly simplistic or just wrong. Worldviews shift over time as new intuition clarifies questions.
I have toyed with the idea of using AI to help me at least order the Lenten posts, but having quizzed ChatGPT and Google Gemini about providing me with a structure around which to write daily content, the answers seemed too glib, too polished, too logical – and so my remaining Lenten readers can be assured that you will be getting writing that comes from me and not from a large-language model.
This will be my 35th consecutive Lent, my 11th during which I have sought to focus on matters spiritual this my blog. Over the decades, Lenten observance have brought me bountiful rewards in terms of physical health. My Lenten sacrifices such as giving up meat and alcohol, and exercising have turned into good habits – I drink less, eat less meat, and do far more exercise than I did as a younger man. But the spiritual aspect of Lent has become increasingly important for me over time. And this is what the next 47 blog posts will set out to do – outline my current beliefs concerning the metaphysical aspects of life.
This time last year:
Afterglow
Metaphysics: woo-woo or fact?
This time seven years ago:
Skierniewice-Łuków line modernisation announced
[PKP PLK still getting round to sorting out the tenders...]
Entropy and anti-entropy in a constant-ruled universe
This time nine years ago:
Truth, spin, bullshit and lies
This time ten years ago:
How much spirituality do we need?
This time 13 years ago:
The Chosen Ones
This time 14 years ago:
Fixies in the snow
This time 17 years ago:
Just the ticket
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