In Good Faith: Seasonal Changes

In my February In Good Faith column I write about the changing (liturgical) seasons and the joy of living life through the rhythm of the Church year. Also, I promise not to bring a mob to your house to rip the wreath off your front door.

Seasonal Changes

I admit it’s hard to think about the penitential season of Lent when Christmas decorations are still up. Drive around town and you’ll still see a fair number of wreaths on front doors and the occasional wilted garland hanging on a fence (it’s easy to spot the fake ones — they’re bright green!). At night, sporadic strands of exterior lights still shine and you’ll spot a few of the optional-but-not-really white lights in the windows of houses on Main Street. 

The twelve days of the Christmas season seem to get longer and longer each year. I mean, by now that partridge is surely getting tired of hanging out in the same old pear tree day after day. If Epiphany (January 6) is the traditional day to take down yuletide decorations then Ash Wednesday (February 10 this year) is the absolute drop dead date. If they make it to Easter they may as well stay up until next Christmas.

But this is not a rubrical rant about when you should take down your decorations. Sure, there are longstanding traditions surrounding the changing of the liturgical seasons but it’s not like I’m forming a mob to come to your house with torches and pitchforks to tear the icicle lights off your front porch. 

The reality is that it’s sometimes difficult to make smooth seasonal transitions. CVS is always about a month ahead so, for instance, it’s impossible to find candy canes on Christmas Eve but you can find all the Valentines Day boxes of chocolate your loved one’s heart could possibly desire.

For those who live into the Church’s liturgical calendar — the marking of the seasons like Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Easter — it serves as a counterbalance to society’s endless jumping ahead. It bids us to wait and be patient; to anticipate and live in the moment. 

The liturgical year has its own rhythm, one that, when fully embraced, allows us to experience life at God’s pace, rather than our own. Each new season brings fresh opportunities to stop and reflect and meet God and one another through the lens of relationship. Whatever life throws our way, there is underlying joy in experiencing the triumphs and tragedies of life amidst the backdrop of the eternal. 

But there is occasionally overlap between the seasons. Just as we may find that long lost shepherd from our crèche sometime during the Easter season, we may feel particularly repentant during Christmas. Or joyful during Lent. The seasons of our relationship with the divine are not always neat and tidy and so there is sometimes seasonal “drift” that takes place. Most important is to be cognizant of our ongoing relationship with God, even if the liturgical season doesn’t reflect our current spiritual mood.

The season of Lent is the perfect time to renew your faith. Maybe you’ve been meaning to get back to church after a long hiatus. Or maybe you’ve been intending to restore a relationship with a long lost friend. Perhaps you’ve been thinking about attending to your prayer life in a more intentional way.

However this plays out in your life, recognize that it may not be a smooth transition. But most importantly, I bid you to open your heart to the spiritual preparation of the Lenten season. Even if that wreath is still on the front door.

#VirtualShrove

One of the best things about the Episcopal Church is the number of parishes that host Shrove Tuesday Pancake Suppers. Call it what you will -- Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday -- but it's all about the pancakes.

At my own parish, St. John's in Hingham, Massachusetts, it's one of the great highlights of the year with fabulous food, an intergenerational crowd, pancake games, and the ritual burning of the palms from last year's Palm Sunday service to make ashes for the next day's Ash Wednesday liturgies.

Last year’s Pancake Supper was snowed out. Remember the massive amounts of snow we

got in New England last year? Oh, we do. Throw in a burst pipe in the parish hall, the usual venue for the Tuesday night supper, and you've got the potential for an epic flapjack failure. 

Well, we tried to get creative by holding a Virtual Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper. We encouraged everyone, wherever they were, to join in by...eating pancakes and then sharing the pictures on social media with the hashtag #VirtualShrove. It was a lot of fun and all sorts of parishioners participated (even Bishop Gates played along).

We also decided to share the love with Episcopalians everywhere by inviting everyone — at churches or at homes — to share photos and use the hashtag. It sort of went viral (in an internet, not food poisoning way) and It was amazing to feel so connected to so many even while being snowed in at the rectory.

So why not make this an annual tradition? Whether you’re eating pancakes at church or with your family, why not tell the word you’re preparing for Lent? If it leads to some questions about this tradition or an invitation to Ash Wednesday services, that’s a good thing. Or even if it just shows that Christians are capable of taking their faith but not themselves too seriously, that’s an easy win in itself.

Consider this your invitation to participate. How? Eat pancakes! And then post pictures to social media with the hashtag #VirtualShrove.

Oh, and if you're curious as to why it's called Shrove Tuesday? Here you go:

The day before Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, is known as Shrove Tuesday. To shrive someone, in old-fashioned English (he shrives, he shrove, he has shriven), is to hear his acknowledgement of his sins, to assure him of God's forgiveness, and to give him appropriate spiritual advice. The term survives today in ordinary usage in the expression "short shrift." To give someone short shrift is to pay very little attention to his excuses or problems. The longer expression is, "to give him short shrift and a long rope," which formerly meant to hang a criminal with a minimum of delay.  

Shrove Tuesday is also called Fat Tuesday (in French, Mardi Gras) because on that day a thrifty housewife would use up the fats that she had kept around for cooking (the can of bacon drippings for instance). Fatty foods would not be eaten during the penitential season of Lent. Since pancakes were a standard way of using up fat, this day became associated with them. Which is why, of course, so many parishes hold Shrove Tuesday pancake suppers. So this last day before Lent has become the 'feast' to prepare for the time of 'famine' in the desert. 

In Good Faith: Tuning Peg

In my latest In Good Faith column, I liken Lent to a spiritual tune-up. If it sounds familiar, it's because a version of this essay appears in my book Dust Bunnies in the Basket: Finding God in Lent and Easter. So basically I plagiarized from myself.

Tuning Peg

When I was a kid, I sometimes tagged along with my father to symphony orchestra rehearsals. He was a conductor with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in the 1970s and so when a babysitter got sick or my mother was working, I’d accompany him to the old Lyric Theater downtown. 

When I wasn’t hanging out in the dressing room with the poker-playing horn players or wandering around backstage among the huge double bass cases and assorted timpani drums, I’d be out exploring the red velvet-lined boxes in the balcony. 

Looking back, these were pretty special moments, memories I particularly cherish since my father died of cancer at fifty-two.

You could say that one of the soundtracks of my childhood was the tuning of the orchestra. If you’ve ever been to a classical music concert you know that they all start with the same ritual tuning. After a nod from the concertmaster, the principal oboe player gives them an A and then the rest of the orchestra tunes their instruments off of the oboe which, of all the instruments, provides the truest pitch. It just takes a few moments, but they always tuned up at the beginning of the rehearsal and then periodically throughout it if my father heard something that didn’t sound quite right.

The spiritual life is a bit like an orchestra in this regard. Over time, instruments naturally get out of tune if left alone. Strings in particular are very sensitive to cold or humidity. A violin string might stretch out, causing it to go flat. Or it might constrict, causing it to go sharp. A violinist must do a bit of fine-tuning with the pegs to get the instrument back in playing condition. 

In a sense, the season of Lent is the church’s tuning peg. Because our priorities can become slightly off key, Lent brings us back into tune, allowing and encouraging us to live again in harmony with God. It’s easy to let our spiritual lives get away from us. We get busy; we get self-absorbed; we get bogged down by endless activity. We let the minutiae of life drive our priorities, and suddenly we find ourselves out of tune with God. 

It might be so subtle that we hardly notice that our spiritual life has gone a bit flat, or it might be strident, atonal disharmony. Either way, Lent holds the potential to bring our spiritual lives back into tune. It encourages self-reflection and a return to the basics of our faith.

Lent forces us to reconsider the priorities of our lives. It demands we face the questions about what is truly important. There’s a natural sifting of the superfluous and nonessential pieces of our lives that brings us back to the brass tacks of the human experience. The basics of family and friends, shelter, food, and helping others in need are often what remain. And at the heart of these is our relationship with the living God, the God who creates, redeems, and sanctifies us, the God who joins us on the journey of life and faith, whatever trials and tribulations we meet along the way.

Throughout Lent, I encourage you to allow your spiritual tuning peg to be turned, if even just slightly. It requires obedience to the ultimate conductor of our lives yet results in ever-increasing peace, joy, love, and harmony.

Virtual Shrove Tuesday

One of the best things about the Episcopal Church are the number of parishes that host Shrove Tuesday Pancake Suppers. Call it what you will -- Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday -- but it's all about the pancakes.

At my own parish, St. John's in Hingham, Massachusetts, it's one of the great highlights of the year with fabulous food, an intergenerational crowd, pancake games, and the ritual burning of the palms from last year's Palm Sunday service to make ashes for the next day's Ash Wednesday liturgies.

But what you do when your community is paralyzed by an insane amount of snow? Throw in a burst pipe in the parish hall, the usual venue for the Tuesday night supper, and you've got an epic flapjack failure. Right?

Not a chance! Because this year we're holding a Virtual Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper. I've encouraged everyone, wherever they are, to join in by...eating pancakes at some point on Tuesday.

Whether it's breakfast, lunch, or dinner; at home, in a restaurant, at a neighbor's house, in an igloo,

wherever!

And on behalf of my community, we're inviting everyone in the entire Church to participate. How? Eat pancakes! And then post pictures of you eating them to social media with the hashtag #VirtualShrove. Whether you're eating pancakes at church or with your family, why not tell the world we're preparing for Lent?

Oh, and if you're curious as to why it's called Shrove Tuesday? Here you go:

The day before Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, is known as Shrove Tuesday. To shrive someone, in old-fashioned English (he shrives, he shrove, he has shriven), is to hear his acknowledgement of his sins, to assure him of God's forgiveness, and to give him appropriate spiritual advice. The term survives today in ordinary usage in the expression "short shrift." To give someone short shrift is to pay very little attention to his excuses or problems. The longer expression is, "to give him short shrift and a long rope," which formerly meant to hang a criminal with a minimum of delay. 

Shrove Tuesday is also called Fat Tuesday (in French, Mardi Gras) because on that day a thrifty housewife would use up the fats that she had kept around for cooking (the can of bacon drippings for instance). Fatty foods would not be eaten during the penitential season of Lent. Since pancakes were a standard way of using up fat, this day became associated with them. Which is why, of course, so many parishes hold Shrove Tuesday pancake suppers. So this last day before Lent has become the 'feast' to prepare for the time of 'famine' in the desert. 

Dust Bunnies in the Basket

Gearing up for Ash Wednesday? Here's the title chapter from my new book Dust Bunnies in the Basket: Finding God in Lent and Easter. Illustrated by the incomparable priest-cartoonist, Jay Sidebotham, it serves as the companion guide to Dog in the Manger: Finding God in Christmas Chaos (also illustrated by Jay).

If you're looking for a fun guide for your Lenten journey (I mean, besides Lent Madness), I hope you'll pick up a copy. It also has discussion questions at the end of each session if you have a book group or just seek further individual reflection.

Somehow both of these books slipped through the cracks at Forward Movement, where my archnemesis, Scott Gunn, is the executive director. He was probably lulled into submission by the awesomeness of the accompanying illustrations.


He has also informed me that for a LIMITED TIME ONLY, the book (already dirt cheap at $10) is available at 30% off through Forward Movement. Use code LENT15E2 at checkout to receive the discount.

Dust Bunnies

I don’t like dust and I especially don’t like dust bunnies. You know those mysterious furry things that lurk behind your bedroom door, or in your closet, or under your bed. Who knows how they got there? Who wants to know how they got there? But they’re there, and I don’t like them, especially when they move around. You’ve probably seen them do this: you open a door, look behind it, and the dust bunny catches just enough air that it seems to start hopping away. 

Cleanliness may or may not be next to godliness but dust bunnies show up whether or not we’re compulsive dusters. Even Mr. Clean himself occasionally sees dust bunnies in his pantry closet—and his clean- shaven, earring-wearing self is horrified. 

So, it’s not the most comforting thought in the world on Ash Wednesday when we receive the sign of the cross on our foreheads with the words, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

Fortunately, this doesn’t turn us into walking, talking dust bunnies. God’s not going to sweep us away with a giant feather duster. But the words of the Ash Wednesday service remind us that there is something greater out there, greater than what we can see with the naked eye, greater than our hopes, fears, and dreams. And that something is God. It’s not that we’re as insignificant,  useless, and annoying as dust bunnies; it’s just that the world doesn’t revolve around dust, and it doesn’t revolve around us. God is the center of all life and creation, which doesn’t mean we’re useless; we’re just not in control. 

Think about dust for a moment. There are two ways to create it, through inactivity and activity. If you go downstairs into the part of the basement that rarely gets used, the part where you store old boxes full of books or that pair of cross-country skis you’ve long since outgrown, you encounter dust. Run your finger along those skis and you get a tangible reminder that they haven’t been used in ages. Your finger is suddenly covered with dust, and you might even sneeze once or twice. 

Then there’s the other way dust is created, through activity. That’s how those dust bunnies in your bedroom came to be. Through the everyday activity of life, you create dust. It comes in on your shoes or your clothes, or on the kids’ backpacks. If we’re not kicking up some dust, we’re not really living. 

Jesus encourages us to kick up some dust every now and then, to roll up our sleeves and get involved with the world and the people around us. We might get dirty every once in a while, but that’s okay. Through our relationship with Jesus we are cleansed, renewed, and dusted off time and time again. 

All of this is why I like to hold a children’s Ash Wednesday service every year. Not many churches do this because there’s a natural inclination to shield our kids from concepts like mortality and human sin. And the idea of dumping ashes on the heads of young children and telling them they’ll eventually die gives some clergy the willies. But ignoring an important and integral part of life isn’t the answer. You certainly don’t have to spook children to make the point—though I do know a woman who went to Catholic school and for years was convinced that the ashes themselves came from the bones of dead nuns. 

I simply like to make age-appropriate connections for children that hopefully lead to further questions. On Shrove Tuesday (aka Mardi Gras), we burn the palms from the previous Palm Sunday. At the next day’s Ash Wednesday service, I invite the children to sit with me as I use a mortar and pestle to create the ashes. As I grind the burnt palms and strain out the larger pieces, I talk about life, death, and resurrection. Then I administer the ashes on their foreheads. Rather than removing the mystery, I find this process draws them deeper into the story and makes the entrance into the season of Lent that much more tangible. 

Of course, one year I had just imposed ashes at the children’s service with the words “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return,” when a little girl looked up and asked, “Pixie dust?” Sure. Why not? 

"Allelu...oops"

Ah, the start of Lent. The day in the liturgical year that many well-intentioned church goers mistakenly say the verboten "A-word." You know how it goes. After the breaking of the bread at the altar the celebrant says, "Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us." And everyone replies "Therefore let us keep the feast. Allelu....oops."

In fairness, some members of the congregation have been lulled to sleep by the smooth, monotone of the priest as he/she blesses the bread and wine. Out of habit, that word just slips out. If this has happened to you, you may recall the disapproving glances and rampant judging by your fellow pew mates. You can either turn beet red, laugh self-consciously, run screaming out of the church until Easter, or...let me help you.

You see, out of pastoral concern for my fellow Christians (it is Ash Wednesday after all), I've come up with a short list of words you can say if you catch yourself in time. Once you realize you're the only one who has vigorously proclaimed "Allelu..." you can add these ending to change direction and save face. Here goes.

Allelu...ke Skywalker

Allelu...nar eclipse

Allelu...fthansa

Allelu...dicrous

Allelu...kewarm

Allelu...natic

Allelu...theran (works better if you actually are one)

Allelu...re me in but don't take advantage of me

The only one I'd caution you against would be Allelu...cifer. That might get you in trouble with the priest.

Ashes to Stay

There's a hot new trend in the Episcopal Church (and for once I'm not talking about Lent Madness). "Ashes to Go" is the clever name for bringing ashes to the masses on Ash Wednesday. The idea is for fully vested clergy to go to places like commuter rail stations or busy intersections or coffee shops or even, as has happened the past few years, Grand Central Station in New York City.

I have a number of friends who have been on the forefront of this movement -- the epicenter (no pun intended) was Chicago -- and it's spread all over the country. There was even an article in yesterday's USAToday titled "Episcopal Priests offer 'Ashes to Go.'" (Take that, Lent Madness).

I applaud the entrepreneurial spirit of taking worship into the streets. If the Church is to thrive and remain relevant rather than wither on its ecclesiastical vine, such thinking is essential. Proponents of "Ashes to Go" note that it's not intended for church goers who "get" the whole forgiveness thing but is a form of evangelism meant to convey this message to the wider world.

And yet, as innovative an idea as this is (and as much as it plays to the strengths of those few extroverted priests out there), I struggle with the concept. The danger is that it reduces this sign of penitence and mortality to little more than a liturgical party favor; something to show off to your co-workers over that morning cup of coffee.

The reality is that true forgiveness and repentance only take place within the context of authentic confession. Drive-thru grace doesn't do justice to the profound theological underpinnings of our faith. "Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return" only makes sense within the context of the Resurrection. Otherwise it is a truly depressing and deadly notion.

So I'll be indoors at St. John's today with services at 12 noon, 4:00 pm (children's liturgy), and 7:30 pm (with choir). When it comes to Ash Wednesday, I personally prefer to dine in rather than take it to go.

This isn't to say that I'm opposed to this practice of, to quote the Doobie Brothers, "Takin' it to the streets" -- not at all. The Church should be out in the world where it belongs. But I do caution those involved in "Ashes to Go" to think before they smear.