I need your advice on something. (Well, from those of you who still have blogger accounts, who are becoming very few and far between.)
This year, for Lent, I've given up shopping. If I can't get it at the grocery, I don't buy it. No online shopping, no browsing through clothes stores, and absolutely no setting foot in either Target or Walmart. (Although I do go to Walgreen's, but that's just to save time. I'm still not buying anything I couldn't get at Kroger with an extra 10 minutes.)
Then this past Sunday, our lifegroup decided to do a book study for the next few months. So is it shopping if I go buy the book? If I order it online? Or do I send a friend to Borders with a coupon and my Rewards card? Or is that just sliding by on a technicality? Or am I okay, since it's not me going into a store to wantonly spend money on things I don't need? Since it was, in essence, beyond me to make the decision to purchase this item?
Does it change things that I can, in fact, buy books at the grocery, even if I can't buy this one?
This year, for Lent, I've given up shopping. If I can't get it at the grocery, I don't buy it. No online shopping, no browsing through clothes stores, and absolutely no setting foot in either Target or Walmart. (Although I do go to Walgreen's, but that's just to save time. I'm still not buying anything I couldn't get at Kroger with an extra 10 minutes.)
Then this past Sunday, our lifegroup decided to do a book study for the next few months. So is it shopping if I go buy the book? If I order it online? Or do I send a friend to Borders with a coupon and my Rewards card? Or is that just sliding by on a technicality? Or am I okay, since it's not me going into a store to wantonly spend money on things I don't need? Since it was, in essence, beyond me to make the decision to purchase this item?
Does it change things that I can, in fact, buy books at the grocery, even if I can't buy this one?
hmmm. Personally my conscience would be clean to purchase it since I know what it's for. However, there are 2 other options I see: 1. ask to borrow the book from a friend or 2. check it out from the library until Easter.
ps- sorry "love song" got butchered. terrible.
I'd buy it (or explore FS's options). To me, this is not the type of shopping you're trying to sacrifice. I think you're going for the recreational shopping sort of thing - the times when you go into Target for contact solution and wind up spending $75, or when you go crazy for CDs. (And the "you" is a rhetorical you.) This is different. Spiritual enhancement, if you will. So I'd either borrow it or get it from Amazon or B&N, making very sure not to buy anything else.
ps - are we talking about AI? I didn't think it was butchered. I think Blake is hot.
I would try FS' suggestions first and if those don't work, I'd buy the book. I think the spirit behind the Lenten fast is more for having time/energy/resources to be more focused on your spiritual journey and not an exercise in legalism.
Yeah, Malia said it better than me.
Thanks, y'all.
Jen - I left a message at FS's that the dude performed the song well, but that the way they chopped it up to make it fit the time frame totally sucked. One of the cool things about that song is that the meter changes up a couple of times, and they had to actually cut lines to keep it in a more straightforward format. Which I get, but still.