Even before I was Catholic, I observed Lent. As a religious studies major in college I was aware of the practice, and I enjoyed participating with a certain self-aware academic distance, sometimes even hightailing it to an Episcopal church to receive ashes. Did I hear the words - remember you must die? You are dust and to dust you shall return? Perhaps. But like a distant echo, a poetic and beautiful thing, but not anything with any real bearing on my life.
For me, Lent was a challenge and I love challenges - and lists! Another opportunity to make resolutions. I loved the New Year’s 2.0 feel and would test myself in various ways that basically resulted in a new fitness regime, a diet, or, my go-to, a break from social media.
This last practice was the norm for me for at least the last seven or eight years.1 Lent would come around and I would make some sort of acrimonious post about living in the present and then delete the apps from my phone. I would go through the six weeks before Easter on some sort of self-congratulatory high, walking in fields without posting a picture of the sunset, going out for drinks at that nice cocktail bar without posting a picture of my grammable Old Fashioned. Then here came Easter - a pretty dress, maybe a sun hat, some cherry blossoms on the trees - and it was time to post my WELCOME BACK post on the gram and scroll all day Easter Sunday, catching up.
I’m being a little hard on myself, but only a little. I don’t think I understood Lent very well, or even my own motivations very well. To be charitable, I think I consistently gave up social media because I realized I had a problem with it. I’m glad I realized that. Social media would waste hours of my time. It would provoke imitation and self-doubt, and it would make me view my life in captions and boxes. I relished the time to be free of it. But I was also always equally excited to log back on.
When I became Catholic, Lent became more serious and I usually made unrealistic pious resolutions revolving around the number of rosaries I’d pray or the number of times I’d go to Adoration. And of course, no social media. This last Lent, in 2023, I logged off as I usually did, but when Easter came around, I hesitated. I didn’t feel that same excitement, that same overwhelming need to log on. When I did, I felt… empty. Everything seemed so saturated, so tidy and boxed in and shallow. I logged back off.
I used social media only intermittently after that and when
shared her experiences a year after deleting her social media, I felt this overwhelming sense of clarity. This is no longer serving you (was it ever?) and I deleted the apps for good.2It has now been 7+ months being social media free. What can I tell you about it? Well, deleting social media did not solve all my problems. In fact, it created some new ones. Without the easy dopamine hit that posting and scrolling provided, I have often felt myself twitchy and anxious. In fact I have had greater anxiety than probably any other time in my life since I deleted social media. This may seem to go against the common sense conclusion that social media creates anxiety,3 but I would argue that there is a less talked about aspect to the social media dilemma.
Numbness.
When you are barraged with image after image: horrors in the Middle East, pregnancy announcements, AI generated fakes, cute puppies, hot takes on politics, trad influencers, woke influencers, it all just ends up in this strange, deadening loop in your head. You can’t feel any of it.
So I logged off and started feeling things. Not all the feelings were good. But they were real and they were mine.
I think I have fewer acquaintances since I logged off social media. Since we all tend to live quite isolated, the small interactions you used to have at the post office or the grocery store or your kid’s school4 now usually happen online. I have very few occasions for casual social interaction and I find this somewhat problematic.
But there are many other friends who I have grown much closer to. I value these deepening friendships very much and I credit logging off social media with a certain transparency and authenticity that I think may truly be impossible if I was still posting my alter-ego public persona.5 Some of those friends are even people I met initially on Instagram6 so I realize that in a world largely lived online, this may simply be ‘where people meet’ these days.
I think the biggest gift of logging off social media has been my ability to write again in a real way. There is a focus I have for long form writing that I just never had when I was still thinking in captions.
My caveat is I don’t think logging off social media is absolutely necessary for everyone, though I do think many people, probably most people, would benefit from doing so.
So if a social media fast is one of your Lenten practices this year, I think this is a very good thing. I don’t think it will solve everything in your life and I don’t even think it will solve the issue of how we consume and sell and package one another’s lives (this is an issue on Substack as well). But it may get you closer to feeling the awful, beautiful, paradoxical reality - you are dust and to dust you must return.
It may hurt to feel it, but you will feel it. This is no small thing.
When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
"When Death Comes" by Mary Oliver
Other Lenten thoughts…
There are many jokes to be made about Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday falling on the same day. Nothing more romantic than memento mori, right! Love and sacrifice, life and death. But are these things really so opposed?
Think here of the contradictory children of Nyx, the Goddess of Night in Greek mythology - Sleep and Death, Dreams and Pain, Love and Old Age.
We live in the paradox, we live in the cracks between worlds - As Leonard Cohen crooned, there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.
I haven’t made many big Lenten lists this year, which honestly goes against all my instincts.
What I have instead is a verse in my head:
“For I desire steadfast love, and not sacrifice,
the knowledge of God, rather than burnt offerings.”
HOSEA 6:6
Steadfast love, not sacrifice.
I don’t have any wise meditations, any big takeaways. All I know is I came across this verse and it lodged in my mind like a beacon of something. I don’t know what star it is but I’m following it. And so I want to simply offer you those words, whatever they may mean to you right now, in whatever season of life you are in.
other topical things…
On a lighter note,
and have given all of us Inklings fans a great gift - Valentine’s Day cards from Lord of the Rings and Narnia!There are so many good ones, so be sure to look at the full lists but here are my favorites:
in case you missed it…
ON THE PODCAST:
S7:2 EP94: Friendship: Not a Lesser Love + Bonus Post Ep. Chat with Christy Isinger
S7:1 EP93: The Twelve Dancing Princesses
ON SUBSTACK:
Friendship is Unnecessary: But it might just make life worth living
“Of Life After Death:” At last a Sylvia Plath biography worthy of its' subject
Ireland Chat with Christy Isinger
And remember, if you’ve been thinking about signing up for
and my October 2024 pilgrimage to Ireland, there is a Valentine’s Day week special going on where if you sign up with any other person you’ll get a combined $300 off. No code necessary, the discount will automatically apply between February 14th-21st! This is the perfect time to get your deposit down and claim your spot!Download the brochure / Commonly asked questions / Sign up!
I’m wishing everyone a spiritually fruitful Lent and a very happy Valentine’s Day. Love might seem cliche and passé, a little too Hallmark, but it is an extraordinary gift, the gift, of human life, eminently worthy of celebration. It’s worth it all.
Cheers and all good things x
Katie
Hi, I’m Katie, a writer and podcaster and I believe that literature, art, beauty, theology, and wonder are worth our time and attention. This essay was free for you to read, but took time and research to write - consider upgrading to a paid subscription to support the work I do.
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I converted to Catholicism in 2018.
And wrote my most read post to date: Why I deleted my social media
and absolutely does - especially for young people, as Jon Haidt writes about so well in his Substack
.but now we have online shopping and self checkout and rushed drop offs on the way to the next thing.
I should say, I didn’t think of it that way at the time. I thought I was just sharing parts of my life or promoting my podcast, etc., but logging off has put me at such a distance now that it does truly seem like a persona and not me.
This resonates with me as I have been battling the “do I or don’t I delete social media” argument for quite a while. For Lent, God called me to abstain from podcasts (gasp!) and I know why. He wants me to let my brain rest, let silence file away all the Information I have taken in as I have deconstructed from evangelicalism into the appropriate places in my mind. I will be receiving ashes for the first time today, and I can hardly wait. So grateful.
Thank you for your thoughts on this season and for sharing the Inklings Valentine's! 😊