Several weeks ago, we ran a poll asking what you were doing to commemorate Lent. 28% of you said that you weren’t doing anything special. Well, it turns out that doing nothing can also be a way of commemorating Lent and Easter. Drawing from a NYT travel article about “do-nothing vacations,” Angelo Matera at Godspy suggests that we consider doing nothing for Lent.

The goal is to scale back on the frantic activities and shopping that characterize much of our normal lives, simplifying your life enough to allow for some extra prayer and contemplation during the Lenten season. He suggests three things during Lent:

• Nothing that involves spending money.
• Nothing that requires strapping something to your feet. [Think skiing or other such activities—you’re allowed to wear socks and shoes during Lent.]
• Nothing done with a device that can be purchased at Best Buy.

What’s the point of this? From Matera’s essay:

What’s the point of doing nothing? To commune with God? That’s reason enough. But can’t you commune with him while doing something like feeding the poor, visiting the sick, or some other act of love? Sure. But often time, we don’t have the spiritual strength to take on such charitable works—or just show compassion to the person closest to us—because we haven’t connected with the source of that strength, through silence, solitude and prayer.

Anybody out there practicing this kind of “simplification” as an act of devotion this Lent?