A blessed Lenten journey to one and all. In the Eastern Church, Lent in the full sense arrives in one week this year, with our Paschal Feast one week behind the West’s (it can be as much as five weeks later).

You might want to follow along with Anglican poet Malcolm Guite through your journey this year.

My little Orthodox parish has a group of young people who made an album a decade or more ago (my son did keyboards on a few tracks, but wasn’t really in the core group). My favorite song on it was one of their originals, with this rousing chorus:

It’s a long way to heaven, dear Lord
It’s a tough row to hoe.
And I don’t know if I’ll make it, dear Lord,
But I sure won’t make it alone.

Those Christians who don’t observe Lent significantly have my pity, and my admonition that you can change that, though you might need to change denominations to make it something more than one more individualist quirk. You sure won’t make it alone.