Two nights ago after a leisurely dinner, I found myself reading a fine essay about Lent. I rounded off the dinner with a few squares of white chocolate as I pondered Michael Gerson’s words.

The chocolate is significant because I didn’t give it up this year, and in Gerson’s thoughts I found some justification for my decision. “Some of us give up sweets,” he writes, “with the dual purpose of self-sacrifice and dieting. It is fully consistent with American ideals to kill two birds with one ancient spiritual practice — examining our inner selves while losing those 10 pesky pounds.” The focus instead ought to be on the inner life, he says.

What I was striving for this Lent was to pray more, snipe less — to be more grateful for that which has been given to me. In that I’ve been only partially successful. But I’m encouraged when I learn of others who struggle too.

Gerson describes an earlier “enforced Lent” he experienced recently, a week in the hospital with poor food and no electronics. “What did I miss? Lots of things. What could I do without? Pretty much everything.”

Such denial, he writes, reveals that the “richness of life is found elsewhere — in … the experience of gratitude — not for this thing or that thing — but for God’s radiating presence in all things.”

I don’t typically seek spiritual uplift from the newspaper. But that’s what I found the other day.