Mike Ivaska

Giving Up Hopelessness for Lent
February 2026, Island Voices

Giving Up Hopelessness for Lent

By Mike Ivaska The church I pastor has historically had, at best, a tenuous relationship with the church calendar. The generation before me was iconoclastic in every way. Many were former hippies and, in their own words, “recovering Catholics.” When I started at the church, we practiced Advent (the season leading to Christmas), Christmas Eve,…