The wholly silly and solemn joy

It's Lent again. 

A time to sort out the wholly silly from solemn joy.

Solemn joy

My day so far has been Morning Prayer using the Church of England's Common Worship book for the daily office.

For they disciplined us for a short time at their pleasure, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant; later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those been trained by it.  (Hebrews 12:10 - 11 -- I'm using the RSV, a Christmas gift from my parents in 1963; the year of USMC training, civil rights activity, the assassination of JFK, and my decision to offer myself for ordination -- busy year)

This Lent I'm doing the morning office alongside some spiritual reading -- Evelyn Underhil's "Inner Grace and Outward Sign." It's a retreat she offered in 1927 in the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral. 

I'm doing Underhill slowly. A few paragraphs at a time. Today's included this.

What am I for? Just what this place (the crypt, the cathedral) which has taken us into its heart is for: to express in my life something of the glory, power, and unchanging beauty of God by my very existence, by my love and my actions.

Later I'll attend Evening Prayer and Mass at Saint Paul's, Seattle.  I always feel a bit "off" receiving the ashes at days end. 

Wholly Silly: Lent, Trenton Thunder, and Pork Roll

Episcopal New Service helped me sort out Ash Wednesday and Valentine's Day

Ashes to Ashes, Dust to dust; In Jesus' Love, We put our trust

Yes, really!

There was also the article about "drive through ashes." I assume "Ashes to go" will show up shortly.

On the First Things web site George Weigel did a tongue in cheek piece -- "Pork Roll, Lent, and Catholic Identity." It caught my attention. I went to a few Trenton Thunder games. I know the only store in Seattle that sells Taylor Pork Roll. 

Here's a bit of Weigel's posting.

"A few weeks before Ash Wednesday, an Associated Press squib with Lenten implications appeared in the Washington Post sports section:

YANKEES: New York’s Class AA affiliate in Trenton, N.J., will change its name from the Thunder to the Pork Roll on Fridays this season. The pork roll is a New Jersey staple, served on breakfast sandwiches and as a burger topping.

For those unfortunates who didn’t grow up in the I-95 corridor between the Holland Tunnel and the southern outskirts of Baltimore, I venture to explain.

“Taylor Pork Roll,” also known as “Taylor Ham” south and west of the Delaware River, is a compound of the ground-up and sugar-cured bits of a pig of which the pig has no cause to be proud, tightly encased in a canvas wrapper. Fried or grilled, it’s salty and greasy and a lot of other wonderful things frowned on by the food police. ... But only the perfidious Yankees—“the Yanqui enemy of mankind,” as the Sandinista national anthem in 1980s Nicaragua neatly put it—would have a farm team that changed its name to “Trenton Pork Roll” on Fridays.

Ad primum, pork roll was always consumed as a post-Mass treat on Sundays, and rigorously avoided on Fridays. Ad secundum, flaunting pork roll in the face of devout Catholics by emblazoning it on jerseys at Arm & Hammer Park on Fridays is an invitation to the divine wrath, to which the Thunder/Pork Roll is already vulnerable because of its major league affiliation.

So in solidarity with fellow Catholics in the Diocese of Trenton, I propose that we all continue the Lenten practice of Friday abstinence from meat, which commences on February 16 this year, until such time as the Thunder/Pork Roll’s management acknowledges its miscue and switches the name-switch to Sundays. (If the Thunder wish to become the Trenton Fish Fry on Fridays, fine by me, although as a marketing tool that would likely work better in Wisconsin.)"

I think I'll wear my hat to the Eucharist tonight. 

Back to solemn joy

As I'm writing this the news is about the shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. They don't have a count yet.

"It's a horrific situation. It's just a horrible day for us" said Broward County Public Schools Supt. Robert Runcie 

I'm stepping aside from offering any moral guidance -- posting signs that this is a "no gun zone" or arranging gun safety classes for teachers. I guess I'm tired of all the self righteousness. It seems that much of the way in which the nation and the Episcopal Church deals with moral guidance is a contribution to our inability to talk with each other and our failures to find a way forward.

Maybe ascetical practice and guidance might be useful.

Most holy and merciful Father:
We confess to you and to one another,
and to the whole communion of saints
in heaven and on earth,
that we have sinned by our own fault
in thought, word, and deed;
by what we have done, and by what we have left undone.

So, I return to Underhill - A reminder of what each of us and our parish churches are for --

What am I for? Just what this place which has taken us into its heart is for: to express in my life something of the glory, power, and unchanging beauty of God by my very existence, by my love and my actions. I am here to add to the praise offered by the world, to fit into God's scheme, and to translate something of His spiritual reality into the terms of human life. For this I must accept discipline, submit my will, use my talents, kill all self-interest, and cooperate with my fellow human beings.

  

I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent

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