The Spouse was ranting this morning at breakfast. Okay, an exaggeration, that. No one at our breakfast this morning could muster the energy required for a rant. We’ve just had a very full weekend. Friday was Beangirl’s first Photo Day at school, and, in the evening, I had a Kirk Session meeting. Saturday was spent at church, enjoying a rather chaotic and happy afternoon of messy crafts and games with the Sunday School children. Then yesterday there were two services: the 11am followed by coffee and congregational lunch and the 6:30pm followed by a congregational pub night. And in the midst of it all, the Spouse was putting the finishing touches on yet another postgraduate essay. But we all got through to Monday morning, more or less happily, and at breakfast, the Spouse had some views to share about Lent in the grocery store. Perhaps more musing than ranting. But here goes:
It seems that the grocery store has the wrong end of the stick when it comes to Shrove Tuesday, according to Spouse. He popped in there yesterday on the way home from church to pick up a few essentials, and he was amazed at the amount of pancake paraphernalia available. Syrup, of course, in a few different varieties. And lemon, sugar and butter, front and centre, too. Pancakes pre-cooked (in that strange manner of the Brits) and also pancake mixes. Fruit sauces. Flour and baking powder. Even frying pans. Yes, Lent – that perfect frying pan purchasing season, honoured from days of old. Quick, everyone! Lent is coming! Let’s accumulate!
So much for the idea of pancakes being the ideal vehicle to use up all your extra butter and sugar before your Lenten fast begins. We are definitely in need of some of that creativity that Kelly Rempel was advocating. But how to mark Lent as a season set apart today? When I was a university student, I tried fasting for a couple of Lents, but it never worked terribly well. For one thing, I tried to do it on my own, a bit of a secret practice. Going into your room to be in secret with your Father who is secret and all that. But practically, fasting needs to be a communal activity – especially when you are living with other people. Otherwise their kitchen smells and your social responsibilities become tantalizingly too much. And I can’t quite imagine any form of fasting with anyone under 5. Unless rejecting parsnips is a form of fasting.
Last night at the pub night, I sat next to another mum. Her kids are older than mine, the youngest being 10. We fell to talking about Lent and Advent and how it is easier to come up with ways of counting down to the later, the former being a little more awkward. She was looking for a table-based activity that she could use with her family to mark the season.
So here’s what I came up with. Let me know if you think it works. You will need to accumulate some beads, but other than that it’s fairly basic. And not a chocolate in sight.
You will need a string of 80 beads: 40 yellow laced together at one end and 40 green laced together at the other. The yellow beads represent things in bloom, and the green one are things that require growth. In other words, these are good things and hard things. Or, in Ignatian language, consolations and desolations. You will also need 7 purple beads or marbles to mark the Sundays – the celebration of the Sabbath and the traditional “days-off” in the Lenten fast. I imagine something shiny for these ones – maybe glass even so that the light can shine through. Put the purples in a small bowl to set aside until Sunday rolls around.
Hang the string somewhere accessible where you will see it every day and where you can easily take it down and take beads off from either end. On the table, put a glass jar large enough to hold all of the beads. Each night at supper, one member of the family will take two beads – one yellow and one green – from the string and add them to the jar. As they do this, they share the story of one good thing that has happened recently and one thing that has been hard for them. Each night, it will be someone else’s turn to share and to add beads to the jar – adults included – so that the jar, night by night, will fill with the happenings of your whole family’s life, good and bad all muddled together. Then on Sunday, take out the bowl of purple beads and add one to the jar, perhaps sharing together something special about your Sabbath together. How did you know God this Sunday? What words did God speak to you in worship? In afternoon rest? In spending time with those you love?
By Easter, your jar will be full, a colourful mix of life in its sweetness and bitterness, its blessings and its burdens, and, through it all, God present among us, inviting us into rest and celebration.
