What Is The Point Of Lent?

For anyone who attends a church,
whether they prefer their conversion
to be noisy and dramatic, declamatory,
or whether the change of conversion
should be slower, much more gradual, 
what is always more slow to be adopted
is the purpose behind the church calendar.

The church calendar runs parallel to,
and is eclipsed by, the secular calendar
where every day is a day of consumerism,
every day is a day to be consumed, to eat,
to expel, to buy and sell without regard
for tomorrow, or for the day after. 

In both calendars the twin peaks of activity
are Easter (April) and Christmas (December).
The point of Lent is that it is a time of reappraisal,
an annual life audit over the six weeks
before the celebration of The Resurrection.

That it is the least understood of periods
in the church calendar is unsurprising
-more than any other church season
it goes directly against the tempo
of the secular consumer calendar- 
for which no life audit is ever required, ever.
Because the more careless our materialism is,
and the more thoughtless our consumption
the less tomorrow, and today, ever matters.