We mark each other’s foreheads with ashes and admit our common mortality: the kneeling girl, the crackhead who helps me sweep the floor, the stranger at the door. And maybe because I work so much with food––serving bread and wine on Sundays, then groceries from the same altar at the pantry––I think of Lent as an opportunity to admit our hungers.
Lent is not a temporary affectation of gloom or a brisk interlude for self-improvement. It is for being in the wilderness, which means stopping long enough to recognize the truth of our inertia and faithlessness. This deadness inside is a fact. On Ash Wednesday we are called first to face this fact—but then what? What shall we do?
Received by email from anglican-information.org: At last some common sense emerges in the Diocese of Lake Malawi: Unfortunately, it is not as a result of
The Anglican Communion Network for Inter Faith Concerns NIFCON has released its treatise on interfaith relations, Generous Love: the truth of the Gospel and the
Clean-air activists and others plan to send hundreds of heart-shaped valentines to the governors of Utah and Nevada urging them to oppose plans for a $1.3 billion coal-fired power plant near Mesquite, Nev.
The Anglican Primate of Australia, Phillip Aspinall, said yesterday that it was difficult to understand the decision by the Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, to boycott this year’s Lambeth Conference, as virtually all Australian bishops declined to support Dr Jensen.
The Bishop of Liverpool, the Right Rev James Jones, a conservative evangelical, expressed the views in a book, A Fallible Church, in which he apologised for objecting to the appointment of the gay cleric Dr Jeffrey John as Bishop of Reading. He was one of nine bishops to sign a public letter criticising the proposed consecration.
Some time along about noon yesterday, the Episcopal Café received its one millionth visit since opening for business in late April, 2007. Just a day earlier, we reached 2.5 million “page views.” Our heartfelt thanks to everyone who visits the site, especially those of you who drop by daily to keep up with the news, appreciate the art and perhaps spend a little time in meditation.
Yesterday we began talking about fasting, the pre-eminent spiritual discipline recommended by the prayer book for Lent. We got as far as the externals, the nuts and bolts of the discipline. Now we’ll take a step deeper and look into the theology, spirit, and purpose that animates the practice, connects it to Lent, and empowers it as a tool for the Gospel.
Shrove Tuesday calls us to think about sin in preparation for the season of repentance, yet the tradition of revelry associated with Mardi Gras militates against deadly seriousness. Can we let ourselves into the subject of sin a little lightly?