Tag Archives: lent

So, Whaddaya givin’ up for Lent?

March 1, 2017 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

I always give up the same thing: snacks and desserts. (I used to give up alcohol, too, however, I don’t really drink anymore, so it wouldn’t be much to give up.) But I also add things during Lent. By that, I mean, I always study some new take on the life of Christ that I haven’t studied before.

This year, I’m reading Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Reza Aslan. It is a great companion piece to the digital course I took recently, Jesus and His Jewish Influences, taught by Professor Jodi Magness, PhD., of the University of Pennsylvania.

After that, I’ll be reading Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity, by James Tabor — possibly my most favorite author when it comes to anything about Jesus Christ. He’s an historian — a Professor of Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity at the University of North Carolina Charlotte –not a theologian, so his take on Christianity and/or the Bible is always extremely interesting, thought-provoking, and refreshing.

When I first began studying to become a minister, I was a fan of Pauline Christianity, but by the time I graduated and was ordained, I wasn’t anymore. In fact, I can barely tolerate anything having to do with Paul the Apostle now. (In fact, the one-man play I’m writing about Caiaphas — In the Days of the Flesh –and his take on the life & times of Jesus is my humble way of trying to undo the influence of the teachings of Paul in about 64 minutes a night, and twice on Wednesdays & Sundays!) (Only partially kidding, gang…)

Anyway. So, Happy Ash Wednesday.

And no, I hadn’t forgotten about my humble blog! In the last week, I’ve taken two, YES, 2 !!, writing/publishing/marketing webinars, and that’s not counting the time I’ve spent taking an ongoing online history course on the US Constitution and the continuing online course in Biblical Hebrew, as well as being up to my eyeballs in the never-ending re-writes of the Untitled Cleveland Drama (once known fondly as Cleveland’s Burning).

All that online stuff, and simply being on the computer stuff, has made it just about impossible to find a free moment inside my wee bonny brain to update my blog until today!

Sorry I left you hanging re: the table read in Burbank last week, of my TV script, The Tea Cozy Murder Club: A Murder at Parsons Ridge! It went GREAT!! And the feedback and suggestions I received from the actors was really, really helpful and insightful.

It is so frustrating to still have revisions to do on the Cleveland Drama because now all I want to do is tackle the re-writes of the Tea Cozy Murder Club script. AAaaaarrrrgh! But onward. I am getting there…

And life’s good! I really love living out here in the hinterlands. So peaceful. So beautiful. So quiet. So affordable. Everything not only could be worse, but, indeed, has been worse — much, much, much worse — more times than I care to remember. Each morning, I wake-up and count my blessings that I’ve made it out here to the hinterlands in one piece.

All righty!! You know what Lent really means, gang? It means that St. Paddy’s Day is just around the corner!! Yay! So I leave you with this tidbit of joyful anticipation of that great day. Thanks for visiting, gang! See ya’ real soon!

An interesting day, on so many levels!

February 15, 2015 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

One of the really good things about today is that Lent is just around the corner!! Yay!!

For Lent, the Right Reverend Marilyn Jaye Lewis gives up all sweets, treats, and snacking — and since I currently have some incredibly yummy imported Italian gelato in my freezer, which must go before Wednesday, I feel completely entitled to eat gelato today, and plenty of it (!!), to ensure that it does not end up going into the kitchen trash. Yay!

I also have a bag of those Terra Exotic Vegetable Chips in the cupboard (that “healthy alternative” to potato chips, though they are still deep fried in fat with added salt — just, I guess, a better kind of fat and a better kind of salt!). Anyway, those, too, must go!! Yay!!

So, for me, Fat Tuesday is actually happening on Fat Sunday this year…

Okay, you caught me! That link above there will take you to the Wiki page for a non-New Orleans- Shrove Tuesday, which is still the night before Ash Wednesday, when you basically consume all the yummy good stuff you can’t have during Lent. However… Shrove Tuesday also involves “making a special point of self-examination, of considering what wrongs [we] need to repent, and what amendments of life or areas of spiritual growth [we] especially need to ask God’s help in dealing with.”

I’m thinking this might be a good introspective time for me to figure out what the heck is going on with all these re-writes I don’t seem especially eager to undertake! Aside from working with Kevin yesterday, I got no writing done at all. Instead, I watched Love Story and Pillow Talk — two wonderful old movies. And on top of it, by the end of the evening, I was thinking that I didn’t want to be a writer anymore at all! I thought, “Why on earth would I want to write for television in L.A., when all I really want to do is move back to New York and frolic among the pines in my friend’s 3.09-acre backyard??!!”

Indeed. I am 54! I don’t necessarily need to be a writer anymore. I’ve done a heck of a lot of writing already. And once this house gets sold, I won’t need to do anything I don’t feel like doing ever again! So there!

And yet… last night I had a very intense dream. I was in L.A., in a TV studio, following the producer around, trying to get her to perch somewhere and give me story notes on the TV pilot. And then, when I’d followed her into the control room (I guess it was a “live” TV studio), another producer (also a woman) said, “Just wait until June, when you find out what we’re doing with your novel, Twilight of the Immortal!”

(And if you go to that link, please do not purchase the paperback edition being sold for $74 unless you are a hard core collector. The paperback edition of that book was riddled with typos! I no longer work with that publisher, and the Kindle edition has no typos and is published by me!! Just a word to the wise, gang. Not that I want your money, I just want you to read the 600-page novel as I actually wrote it, without the inane typos littered throughout.)

Needless to say, I awoke from that dream, thinking: What the heck are they going to do with my novel in June???!!! Is it going to be a highly lucrative miniseries for PBS?? I can’t wait to find out!! But then I also thought that the dream was trying to tell me that it is ludicrous to think that I am going to give up writing. Ever. So, it begs the question: Why am I not writing? I guess because I really, really do want to get this move back to New York underway already. This limbo is very distracting. It is making me nuts.

Yet, on that happy, introspective note… I will tarry not a moment longer on this page, and I will get busy on some writing here. Have a wonderful Fat Sunday, wherever you are, gang!! Thanks for visiting. See ya!