This Lent's Project

With Ash Wednesday coming up, I have been thinking about how this year's lenten reflections should go. With Advent, I found a very nice project taking the daily gospel reading each day. I thought that this would be the first time I repeat a devotion. After all, I started by reading through smaller books of the Bible, then to the decades of the rosary, then to a prayer book based around the Sunday mass readings, then finally to the daily gospels.

I had planned to repeat the daily gospels, but I just had another idea. The main pros of this new idea would be something I would create that goes beyond this blog two people (that I love, don't get me wrong) read and the other would be treating this devotion not as something separate from my creative and productive life as a theatre student but as a part of it.

So the idea: what if I worked on creating monologues from the perspective of different women in the Bible? I was thinking about the post I wrote on parents of prophets v. parents of apostles and what I could do with Mary Magdalene and the Woman of Samaria that I love so dearly. Perhaps the best way to do this would be to read their stories and reflect on them through the week and aim to write a monologue for them by week's end.

It would be a nice way to continue the escalating demand of these devotional writings and have the added bonus of being something I could weave into a piece that I take into the wider world.

I am also considering (and quite worried about) another idea for what I will do for Lent: sit up straight the entire time. It gets tasking and even painful after awhile, particularly when I need to sit at the computer for an extended period of time. But it would be a taxing physical thing that was good for me. That can be hard to find, so I think I have to at least try to do it.

So, a preliminary list of women:

Elizabeth*

Woman of Samaria*

Mary Magdalene*

Hannah

Virgin Mary?

Peter's Mother-in-law

Martha*

Mary (her sister)

Delilah

Esther

Ruth

Woman caught in adultery

Herod's Step-daughter (not Wife, although she'd also be interesting)*

Pilate's Wife

It could be a very interesting blend of inspiration and the cost of ministry and the Call of God with a list like this, which is what I think I would be going for here.