I started this blog on April 13, 2011 – four years ago.  The idea was to start a blog with a simple task I set for myself for Easter week.  I had read the book, The Last Week, by Marcus Borg and John Crossan, the year before and found it interesting.  The book follows Jesus’s week from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday, with each chapter in the book covering a single day’s events.  The task I set was to read a chapter a day and write a blog post about it.

That’s where the name of this blog started, “Andrew’s View of the Week.”  The domain was available and I decided not to stress over the name too much.  I’ve expanded the themes I write about a lot over the years and lately have been doing more poetry.  It’s not the greatest name, but it’s mine.

The idea behind the original task was really two-fold – to engage in a spiritual study during holy week and to force myself to the keyboard and write.  It worked to a certain extent, although it took getting prostate cancer to really drive home the need to write consistently.  As a spiritual study it did work to teach me things about the events of that week that I never really understood before.

It’s this week in Jesus’s story that really defines many of my core spiritual beliefs. Things such as forgiveness, sacrifice, non-violence, loving one another and courage.

The season of Lent starts on the 18th and my mind is drawn again to this book and that exercise I did four years ago.  I thought I’d revisit it and read, The Last Week, as part of my personal Lenten study – with a small difference or two.

When I did this the first time I found myself very pressed for time to do the reading and writing in just eight days.  It wasn’t a lot of time for prayerful reflection of the material.  This time I’ll something similar but I’ll do it over eight weeks starting the Monday before Lent and ending the Monday after Easter.  I’ll refer back to my 2011 writings and update my thinking and insights – so those should be short posts…

During this season of Lent I’ll be doing three posts a week to maintain both a spiritual and writing discipline.  On Sundays I’ll post a poem – likely one from my book since I need to keep that project moving.  Mondays become, “Meditative Monday” where I’ll post a link to my 2011 piece along with a short essay with any new or different thoughts I have.  Wednesday will still be for woodworking as I find working in my shop to be a creative activity and in my world creativity is a spiritual practice that brings me closer to the spirit.

I’d like to thank all of you who have been following my blog.  It’s hard to describe the warm feeling I get knowing that I have so many people reading and liking my little bits of writing.  It’s also difficult at times for me to wrap my brain around the fact that I’ve written 260 posts and that people I’ve never met in person have read them.

Thanks!

Till next time,
Andrew