Great Lent is Hard!

Great Lent is supposed to be "easy." We find it hard because our lives are too complicated.

Of course, our lives are complicated, so Lent is hard.

Lent is hard because my children are high-energy. The thought of managing high-energy kids makes me not want to take them to church. I can't really pay attention anyways.

Lent is hard because we work. Stephanie works for "the man." Being an academic, I can be more flexible with my schedule, which is just another way of saying that she works long hours to meet her deadlines, while I help out more here, miss my deadlines, and scramble later to get my work done. Prayer is the first thing to drop off when things get hectic.

Lent is hard because it's so cool. I'm glad my Protestant and Catholic friends give things up for Lent. My Lent is less cool. Self-denial isn't exactly the point (at least not in the same way). This makes Lent hard to talk about.

Lent is hard because I'm really, really tired.

Lent is hard because on nights when I've not been able to get dinner ready ahead of time (see above), it's not like I can just pick something up at Sonic.

I've been reflecting on this post for several days. Letting it sit. Trying to figure out something profound to say at the end of it. Frankly, I've got nothing. The best I can come up with (and it's a lousy answer) is that maybe I've got to think of the difficulty of Lent as a cross to bear. I know that's a really cheap thing to say! It cheapens the cross! When Jesus said, "take up your cross" he wasn't talking about all the busy-ness of life. He was talking about martyrdom.

But I am not a martyr. I am just a busy Christian, and not a very good one at that! So if the only thing I can do to orient my busy-ness Godward is to think of it as a kind of Via Dolorosa...well, that's all I can do. Forgive me.

Prayer of St Ephraim

O' Lord and Master of my life,
take from me the spirit of sloth,
faint-heartedness,
lust of power,
and idle talk.

But give rather the spirit of chastity,
humility,
patience,
and love to Thy servant.

Yea O' Lord and King
grant me to see my own sins
and not to judge my brother
for Thou art blessed unto ages of ages, Amen.

Presanctified Gifts are Coming...

So, tonight we are once again going to the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts. I suppose I should explain what that is for the handful of people who actually read this blog, but right now my mind is occupied with thoughts of George throwing his Giraffe (which has lately been called "Jaffy") at the people behind him. I am praying that my kids will be extremely good or extremely asleep. I'll report back later.

On Lent and Glut

Lent is good for reminding us what we can live without. I was out of town until Saturday night last week. Saturday is grocery day. I do the grocery shopping, which means that the groceries didn't get "shopped." Okay, we did pick up a few essentials on Sunday afternoon, but I did this in a quick five-minute run through Kroger. It wasn't my usual 60 minute trip.

So far, we haven't starved. I made three meals last week. The first was "Dave's Spicy Black Bean Soup" (a secret, much coveted, recipe I came up with myself), Macaroni and Beans, and Lentil Soup. All three are still sitting in our fridge. I'll probably have to swing by Kroger's one more time to get some milk for the kids, but aside from that, it looks like we're set until Saturday. In other words, we've needed a little more than half the groceries we normally do. (As an added bonus, I've spent less time in the kitchen, which is partly the point, I guess.)

Hey! Did anybody notice we're in a recession? We got into this recession for a lot of reasons. One of them was that we thought we needed more than we did, so we spent more than we made. In a consumer-driven economy like ours (was) Lent says, "Don't believe it!" Practicing a little restraint in one area of our lives can have added benefits in other areas, if we reflect on it. Yes, Virginia, you can live without that Plasma TV.

Some of my Protestant friends agree with me that, as a society, we generally need less than we think we need. "Why," they ask, "don't we just live this way all the time? Why do we need a special time of year called Lent to be frugal?" My response is, "How's that working out for you?" We like to talk a good game about restraint, self-control, and moderation, but really most of us are pretty hypocritical about it. There is a wide gap between how we say we should live and how we actually do live (Lent is good for reminding us of that as well). I say 40 days before Easter ain't half bad.

Lent is a school in frugality. The lack of satiety reminds us of our gluttony. Some people can go all year eating beans and rice. I call them monks. The rest of us can live with less only for shorter periods (which is not to say that the monk is necessarily holier than the rest of us; he just lives differently). I am not suggesting that the Orthodox calendar is bulimic, that we live by cycles of binging and purging. The fact is that most of us (middle class Americans) binge all the time. Rather, I would like to think – or at least hope and pray – that the purging we do at Lent makes us binge just a little less the rest of the year.

George's Post

This morning George said he wanted to write a post about what he thought about the Presanctified Liturgy last night. He can't type yet, so he's dictating to me. I will use his vocabulary, occasionally explaining his meaning in brackets.

"Last night Daddy picked me up from daycare and took me home. I helped Kyla clean her room. Then I helped Daddy help Kyla with her homework. He would check her reading and I would throw a ball to him.

Then it was time to go pick up Mama from work. She took a long time coming out. I thought I saw her a few times, and, I have to admit, I got pretty upset when I thought I saw her walking away. Then Mama got in the car and we drove to church.

On the way in I saw Fr. Bob blow out the candle [lighting the vigil lamps]. My Daddy had to go potty, but I wouldn't let him go by himself. I went in with him. I tried to get really close to the action, but Daddy kept pushing me away.

Then some people started singing. Daddy brought me and Kyla some colors [coloring books and crayons]. I turned to a page with a doggy on it, scribbled for a few seconds, and announced I was done. Daddy asked if I wanted to color some more. I said No. Then I began exploring our row.

A little later Daddy kept telling Kyla not to talk so loud. He kept saying, 'Whisper, whisper.' Then he took her coloring book away to punish her for not being quiet. That's when Kyla got REALLY loud. Daddy had to take her out of church with his hand over her mouth. She looked a little like my Jaff [Giraffe]. His neck doesn't have any stuffing left, so he bends over backwards a lot.

Naturally, I got upset when I saw Daddy leaving. So I started screaming too. Daddy saw me after he got done talking to Kyla. Then we all went back into church.

I still didn't want to color. I found a little stand with about four Jesuses [icons] on it. The walls in church slant in. So there was room behind it for me to hide. I started hiding from Daddy. It was funny! But Daddy didn't seem to want to play.

Then I discovered that the stand made noise when you kicked it! It was so loud and funny! Daddy wanted to play after that! He chased me for a little bit.

When he put me back in the row I decided to push Jaff through one of the seats, walk around the row, pick it up, and do it again. Then I started walking around, doing circles, in the middle of the church. Daddy says we aren't supposed to play there because that's where the altar is. But I did it anyway.

After a while, just pushing Jaff through the chair wasn't fun. It's more fun to throw him. I threw Jaff so far! He landed at the feet of the lady behind us. When Daddy went to get it, I decided to play chase again. A strange man with glasses tried to pick me up, but I ran away. Daddy caught me and put me back in our row. I stayed there for a minute, then threw Jaff again.

Daddy took me to the back of the church after this. He called it the Narthex. I thought it was kind of neat. First I tried to play with the sand that held the candles. Then I tried to walk up the stairs a few times. Then I hit the wall.

Daddy looked tired. He tried to show me a few icons, but I wasn't interested. I told him who Jesus and Mary were just to humor him. Sometimes I call Jesus Mary, just to mess with him.

I decided a few times that I wanted to go back in church, but Daddy wouldn't let me. Meanie!

When we went back into church Daddy told me it was almost time for Eucharist.

Then Kyla said she really had to go to the bathroom.

After I took Eucharist I wanted to get the bread that the big kids always hold in the bowls. But there was none! 'BREAD! BREAD!' I screamed.

Daddy took me in the back again. But I wanted Mama, too! So I screamed louder! Mommy didn't hear me. Daddy took me back into church and Mama held me.

Then church was done. We went to have supper. Daddy got me a plate of sketti [spaghetti], fruit, bread, and peanut butter and jelly. I took a bite of the sketti and said I didn't like it. (I really do like it, but I wanted to mess with him). Mama gave me some milk. Then I took a couple bites of the sandwich. I'd never had peanut butter before, but I decided I didn't want that either. I ripped the bread in half and licked the butter a little. Daddy kept trying to get me to eat the fruit salad. He wanted me to try something he called a 'Mango.' But I knew I wouldn't like it, so I refused. Then daddy got me some lemonade (I had finished my milk). I drank that too. I said I wanted down, but Mama and Daddy weren't done yet. So Mama gave me a piece of chocolate. Success! My plan worked!

I don't remember much of what happened after that. I have some scattered memories of being put into the crib and helped out of my coat. I do remember crying at night. I had a very wet diaper! All the lemonade I guess. Daddy mumbled something about '1:00 in the morning'. He wasn't in a good mood. But I got some milk. I won't go back to sleep without milk. Good thing too! Because I was so hungry!"

Forgiveness Vespers

I have never celebrated Ash Wednesday. When I was a Protestant, my church rejected Lent and all its trappings as too "Catholic" (anything remotely Roman was bad in my old church). Ash Wednesday was ignored. It seems like a beautiful ritual, being marked as a follower of Christ with a sign on the forehead, and one reminiscent of the seal placed on the forehead at one's baptism, to boot! Still, the emphasis that gets placed on personal sins – and the understanding of Lent as a time of penance before Easter – makes me worry that Ash Wednesday might feed into my legalistic compulsions.

As an outsider, I'm hardly equipped to say that Forgiveness Vespers is a "more beautiful" way of entering into Great Lent. I'm not even sure what such a statement might mean. Instead, I will only say that Forgiveness Vespers is beautiful.

The Forgiveness part of Forgiveness Vespers is tacked onto the end of a more or less regular Vespers service. The colors of the church are changed to purple. Then priests and deacons, standing on the ambo (platform) bow, make the sign of the cross, ask forgiveness of each other, and embrace. "Forgive me, a sinner," one says. "I forgive and God forgives" is the reply. This is followed by the clergy's families, then the rest of the faithful.

The church lines up and repeats this little ceremony. Moving from the front rows to the back, the faithful form a line of forgiveness that gradually wraps its way around the church, until everybody has exchanged forgiveness with everyone else.

The hardest thing, at least for me, about Forgiveness Vespers is not mumbling words about forgiveness or hugging people I barely know – or sometimes don't know at all! The hardest part is looking someone in the eye when I ask for forgiveness. Where I come from, looking someone in the eye means that I have to mean what I say. And, frankly, its a lot easier just to go through the motions and pretend I've wronged someone than to admit to myself that I've really sinned, that I harbored bitterness in my heart toward my sister, that I judged my brother, or that I gossiped about someone else's sins and made excuses for my own.

Not that Forgiveness Vespers make me feel especially guilty! Far from it! It makes me feel honest, which I suppose is exactly what it is supposed to do. After all, Great Lent is not exactly about sorrowing over our shortcomings while wearing sackcloth and sitting in a pile of ash (not that there's anything wrong with that). Great Lent is about confronting the dark sides of ourselves – the sides that we like to keep in the shadows and pretend aren't there – to hold our sins and our shortcomings up before our Heavenly Father, and, with the help of Divine Grace, to overcome them (even if we fail to do that most of the time).

Forgive me, a sinner.

Goals for Lent

When I say that I have a couple of goals to meet during Lent, you can rest assured that – sinner that I am – I will fail to meet them. But the point of this blog is to help me be accountable during Great Lent. The struggle is more important than the victory.

My first goal is a pared down version of one of my lifetime goals. I have a dream of being a decrepit old man, standing on the hillside of my coffee plantation/vineyard/brewery/zombie-impregnable-fortress, and greeting the sunrise by reciting the Psalter. But for now, Psalm 50 is a good place to start: "Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy great mercy: according to the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out mine iniquity..." I pledge to pray this daily and to have it memorized before Pascha.

The second goal is harder. I have been thinking about the fast by reading the Prophet Isaiah, who wrote, "Is this not the fast that I choose...to share your bread with the hungry, and to bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?" (Is. 58.6-7, RSV). The angel who spoke to the Pastor of Hermas said something similar: It's not a fast if I keep my excess. What is not spent on food must be shared with the poor. Like many families during Lent I drop my extra change into a money box that goes to a fund established by our archdiocese. Let me be brutally honest, the nice thing about doing things this way is that I don't actually have to be near the poor. I don't have to touch them or smell them or ask their names. I can simply send in my disembodied cash. Keeping poverty at a distance protects me from confronting my own year-round excess. It allows me to be comfortable in my middle-class lifestyle. Of course, this is wrong. So this year, along with dropping change into my little box, I'm going to take half of my weekly spending money and find a way to give it to a person with a face. There tend to be some homeless hanging around Vanderbilt. My goal, in all of this, is not simply to give money (which I know a lot of you probably think I shouldn't do, but I prefer not to presume that I know what is best for somebody else; I would rather give in faith and hope). I also want to give a little dignity.

My friend Doug introduced me to this concept a few years ago. When people stopped him and asked for money, he would stop and ask for their names. Sometimes he gave a little change. Sometimes he didn't have any change to give. But every time I've seen him do it I saw a little light appear in the eyes of the person he spoke to. Begging has to be humiliating. Sometimes it is good to remind the homeless that they have dignity, that they too are made in the image of God. Asking for a name is a good way to do that.

Last year my goal was to attend more services. My "record" is going to be a little lower this time around. It was easy to attend the Presanctified Liturgy when I could rock George to sleep, but right now he's at the age where as soon as he gets into church all he wants to do is knock over icons and play with the vigil lamps. So I will attend as many services as I can with him. (Stephanie and I may tag-team, who knows?) In the meantime, these two goals are a good place for me to begin to journey with Christ to Jerusalem.

Great Lent is about to Begin

If you are new to this blog, you should know that I use it as a public journal of my experiences during Great Lent. I do it because I am weak, and without some kind of public accountability I will find all sorts of reasons to be spiritually lazy.

Great Lent begins on March 2 (or March 1, depending on how you are keeping time). In Orthodoxy, if we are going to do anything, we are going to overdo it! So just as Great Lent prepares us for Pascha, a lot of what happens this month prepares us for Great Lent. This Sunday is the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee. Next week is the Sunday of the Prodigal Son. After that the Sunday of the Last Judgment. Are you seeing a theme here? The Church is helping us repent. We do not enter Lent by being sorry for our sins and simply begging forgiveness from them. Ash Wednesday is a beautiful thing, but there is no comparison to it in Orthodoxy. The stress, in our Church, is on repentance – metanoia – turning around and (like the prodigal son) heading in a different direction. Great Lent is a contest between us and our sinfulness. We struggle and pray so that, by God's grace, we might overcome them.

That is also why we fast. We do not fast so that God may see us, sitting in sackcloth and ashes, and have mercy on us (may God, indeed, have mercy on us!). We fast because, as Church fathers from St Gregory of Nyssa to St John Chrysostom to St Augustine have known, the desire to eat and the desire to sin are not fundamentally different. I am not saying that eating is sinning. I am saying that overcoming one kind of desire helps us overcome another kind of less-healthy desire (besides, let's be honest; most of us eat too much anyways). We have an appetite for sin just as we have an appetite for too much, or too fancy, food. When our stomachs grumble in church we ignore it, and pray a little louder. Likewise, when our habitual sins press themselves upon our souls, our reaction should be no different. We ignore them, and we pray a little louder.

Christ is Risen!

I probably should have taken the time to put this post up on Monday. But Pascha takes a lot out of a person. I was tired, and after having taken a lot of time off during Holy Week I was anxious to get some work done.

Of course, I wouldn't have it any other way. I think church is supposed to take a lot out of you. It is supposed to be demanding, not convenient. I remember when I was a pastor and we made Easter morning into a huge production. There were slides, song specials, and scripture readings, as well as an unusually short sermon. Liturgically we tried to cram Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday into one action-packed 90 minute service. The result was something shallow. Easy, but shallow. It felt very much like the performance it was.

Last Friday morning Stephanie took Kyla to decorate the bier where they would lay an icon of Christ for the service of Divine Lamentations. I stayed home to make preparations to break the fast. In other words, I was cooking what we would eat on Sunday morning.



That night, I took Kyla to the Divine Lamentations service where she stood with some of the teenagers singing around the body of Jesus. She probably could have picked up the tune, but I think she was struck with a bit of shyness.



One of the highlights of the night was when all the young girls were able to march around the church throwing rose petals. (I'll post pictures as soon as I get them).

Saturday morning we got up early to attend Holy Saturday services, where we commemorate Christ's entrance into Hell to release its captives. Several catechumens were also chrismated at this service. Then I tried to get the kids down for a nap (pretty much unsuccessfully) while Stephanie returned to the church to decorate it for that night. That evening, I had to cook some more food while Stephanie started getting the kids ready.

We arrived at church at 10:00. I apologize for the poor quality of these next pictures. I was trying not to use the flash, so it's a little blurred, but I wanted to get an image of the arch that Stephanie helped put together.


At about 11:00 or so the lights were dimmed as the voice of the priest rose above the hushed sounds of the congregation, "Come ye, take light from the Light that is never overtaken by night; come glorify Christ, risen from the dead." (That quote may not be exactly right since it's from memory.) Then we began to light our candles from the flame the priests and deacons were holding. After processing around the church, the priest announced that Christ is risen, while we responded, "Oh Christ is risen from the dead! Oh Christ is risen from the dead! Trampling down death by death and upon those in the tombs bestowing life!" This continues after we enter the church, with the priests marching down the aisles shouting in various languages, "Christ is Risen!" We shouted back, "He is risen indeed!"

These moments in particular were hard for George, who kept falling asleep but then would wake up every time a priest began censing his way down the church (but we finally got him to sleep).



That service lasted about three hours. So by 2:00 in the morning we were all very tired, but ready to continue our celebrations together by feasting.


The good news is that we were able to sleep in the next morning... Except we have kids. Scratch that. George was up by 7:30 and Kyla was up by 8:30.


After a great big breakfast (Pascha bread makes great French toast), we headed to a church-league softball game and then back to church for Agape Vespers. I read the Gospel in German. Others read in Russian, Greek, Japanese, Arabic, French, and Thai. This traditions expresses the universality of the message of the resurrection.

Being Southern and Orthodox we finished our Pascha celebrations with barbecue. The kids had an Easter egg hunt.

Some of the men sat outside enjoying their cigars.


Some of the women were dancing.


We got the kids to bed by 7:00 that night. They were out in a matter of minutes. Stephanie and I also tucked in early.

Of course, the celebrations don't really stop. This week is Bright Week. We will continue to sing Christ is risen until Pentecost, or is it Ascension? In any case, the celebrations will last for weeks, which is only fitting, since the preparations also lasted for weeks. This is the kind of toll church is supposed to exert on our bodies. It is how the church disciplines us, readies us for the Kingdom of Heaven. I have a black belt in Jujutsu. One of the techniques my sensei would use was very much like what the church does. Especially on cold mornings, he would have us do the same drill a hundred times until we were panting and out of breath. Then he would have us spar, but amazingly being so exhausted made sparring seem more natural. The church does something similar. It trains us by asking a lot of us. But the next time (the next Pascha) what we are asked to do doesn't seem quite so hard. The church also lets up on us a little bit. It asks us to sacrifice, but then it rewards our sacrifice with celebration. The fact that we fast before we feast is significant, because in that discipline the material and the spiritual merge together. Our desire for the resurrection is in some ways indistinguishable from our desire to eat together and to celebrate. Right now we are in a kind of special time (what the Greeks would call kairos). When Pentecost comes and we begin to enter normal time (chronos), putting an end to our celebration, but not really ending it, because we know that even as we leave this Pascha behind us, we are already getting ready for the next one to come again.

Lenten Reflection 10: Pascha Bread

It's Holy Friday. George is taking a nap. Kyla and Stephanie have gone to decorate the bier (where the icon of Christ will be laid after he is taken down from the cross). I am home to get ready for tomorrow night. I am making Pascha Bread. I've tried this before with limited success. This is a new recipe, but they are all variations on a theme: lots of butter, sugar, and about a dozen eggs. It's like a large, baked donut.

The bread is rising right now. I am reflecting in the meantime on baking as worship. This is something I struggle with. Baking can be more of a frustrating experience for me. But at times I take joy in preparing food that my family loves to eat. I will make my famous shortbread cookies later, to thunderous applause. OK, it's actually Betty Crocker's recipe, but the point is that there is a kind of sacrifice that goes into the art of cooking, a way you put your soul into every knead.

Orthodox women understand this. For the family matriarchs -- the real power-holders in the church -- cooking is something mystical, maybe magical. I get that sense when I read my Orthodox recipe book, with a list of contributions from families from a church in Massachusetts. It's like cooking something they just know how to do. Asking them to explain the steps to the process reads like asking a spider to explain how she weaves a web. So the directions are always difficult to follow.

But I have learned a couple of things so far. First, I have learned that I need a bigger bowl. My original plan was to double the recipe and save some dough to use later. But I would need a bathtub for that. It's hard to cram 15 cups of sifted flour, a dozen eggs, three cups of butter, and a cup of sugar into the biggest bowl I have. The second lesson I had learned before, but in this case I had forgotten. When preparing traditional Orthodox meals, I need to cut the recipe in half. Not only would the ingredients fit better into my bowl, but I would be able to eat it. Looking at the large ball of dough sitting on my counter top (that I'm praying rises properly), I have no idea how we are going to eat it all.

Actually, we will eat it all, if it turns out OK. We will eat the baked donut, the cookies, eggs, and chocolates, and we will love every minute of it...tomorrow (Sunday, if you want to get technical).