Author Archives: Derek A. Olsen

Lenten Preparation from M

I thought I’d posted this before but couldn’t find it—here’s a bit from one of M’s sermons that I think captures the proper perspective on Lent:

The season of Lent is often associated with deprivation or giving something up. Our Prayer Book reminds us that Lent in the Early Church was about fasting and penitence and invites us today into a period of prayer, fasting, repentance, and self-denial. But Lent can also be a time to add things to our lives, especially holy habits. The Prayer Book also invites us into a period of self-examination, reading and meditating on God’s Word. If you’re like me, though, the idea of
adding just one more thing to your life is almost unbearable. I mean—life is hard enough as it is with juggling children, jobs, and relationships. How can you hope to fit in more spiritual things?

The word Lent comes from an old word meaning springtime. One way to think about Lent without stressing yourself out is to think about it like an early springtime garden. In the early spring last year’s beautiful garden can look like quite a mess. Heaps of leaves from the fall lay around, dead plants from the previous year poke up, and maybe some industrious weeds have already gotten a head start on you. If you want a beautiful garden again this year, then it’s time to begin again. You have to start by getting rid of the stuff that’s there—maybe even stuff that once was living, vibrant, and beautiful but isn’t anymore. So you start raking…what activities in your life seem to just exist to fill space—and don’t really add anything to your life? And you start pulling up last year’s dead plants…what are those intentions that you always wanted to do but never got around to and
now feel guilty about? Or those things that you use to do because they gave you joy and peace, but now don’t? Finally you go after those little weeds…what new little things are poking up in your life that you’re not terribly proud of?

Once all of the clutter has been cleared away, it’s time to put in some new plants. Now some people may just put in fully-grown plants right away but most start with new plants, with young plants that require care and nurturing or else they will die right a way. They have to be tended for a while until they can live on their own without constant watering and care. This is the helpful way to think about adding things to your life—not piling yet another thing onto an already full schedule. If you’re going to give something up, give away something that sucks up your time and energy, and plant something beautiful and life-giving in its place. Like taking a few minutes to read the Bible with your morning cup of coffee or reading one or more of the daily devotions in the Prayer Book with your kids, spouse, or a friend.

So instead of thinking just about giving things up or piling things on, think of Lent as your early springtime garden that needs cleaning up the old overgrowth and putting in some new things. These are the holy habits. Holy habits are the things that we are called to nurture and, like young plants, habits really do have to be nurtured before they become natural. These are the holy habits that discipleship demands and that today’s Gospel tells us to take up during
Lent.

Discipleship, taking up our cross, is a life-long process, not just something we do during Lent. It is a daily task that requires discipline, strength, prayer, and assistance from God. We as Christians are called to be disciples each day whether things in our lives are going well or not. Discipleship is not something to be taken lightly, done only when we feel like it, when it’s popular, or when it’s convenient. It is living out holy habits, something we do each day of our lives until we die. The hymn we just sang illustrates this well
when it says in verse 5: “Take up your cross, then follow Christ, nor think till death to lay it down; for only those who bear the cross may hope to wear the glorious crown.”

Lent can be a great time to begin this process, to begin growing the holy habits that will last a lifetime—and beyond. Jesus calls us to discipleship. Jesus calls us to take up our cross. Not to be popular or to follow an easy road but follow him wherever he leads.

Random Bullets of Aliveness

  • Yes, I’m still alive. Barely. But I’m buried under a mound of crap.
  • I did finally send off one thing that should have been done a month ago. It’s a project M and I are doing together. More on that one later, perhaps.
  • I have 217 feeds waiting for me in Bloglines. That means y’all are still alive and writing. Good news, but I fear they’ll continue to pile up for a while. I may be mostly away until the end of Lent or so.
  • I do have something in the works for the Cafe so I’ll still be marginally about.
  • Thomas, I fear I don’t have any other good recommendations on Anglican lectionaries. There are a few historical works out there on the BCP but they seem few and far between. The only two things in my library that are even close to the topic are Marion Hatchett’s Commentary on the Prayerbook and Martin Dudley’s The Collect in Anglican Liturgy: Texts and Sources 1549-1989. Christopher, M, or others may be able to point you to some other, better stuff. The single most instructive thing I’ve found to do is to peruse Chad Wohler’s amazing BCP site and to print out various liturgies/tables/etc. and to study them in parallel.
  • Lil’ H is no longer wandering the halls at night and—for the moment at least—has stopped stripping off her diaper at night. Instead, she and Lil’ G are bunking down together—at Lil’ G’s insistence. As the big sister, G sleeps on the outside so H can’t roll out…
  • Enough procrastinating–back to work. Y’all take care of the Anglican Communion while I’m away, ya hear?

Big Bed Update

I’m typing away in here, the Muse is going and suddenly I hear a loud thump from the next room, a moment of silence, then wailing… Lil’ H had indeed fallen out of bed.

Actually, the transition’s been going well. No more nocturnal wanderings. *fingers crossed* The major problem we’re having now with her has no relation to the crib/bed change. It’s that whenever we put her in pj’s with pants, whenever she feels wet she’ll strip off her pants and the wet diaper—which, as nature continues its course through the night and calls again, leads to 2 AM wailing and a lot of sheets and mattress pads that need washing…

New Stuff at the OJN Liturgy Page

I have been alerted through a broken link notice (thanks, bls!) that there is new material that the Order of Julian of Norwich’s Liturgical Publications page. There are three new items: a new set of collects, a 2008 kalendar, and—perhaps most exciting—the order’s hymnal from Advent through Lent. I’d posted Advent bits but did not have the time to get to the rest. Thankfully, they have…

Patristic Bits

The sum of all we have said since we began to speak of things thus comes to this: it is to be understood that the plenitude and the end of the Law and of all the sacred Scriptures is the love of a Being which is to be enjoyed and of a being that can share that enjoyment with us, since there is no need for a precept that anyone should love himself. That we might know this and have the means to implement it, the whole temporal dispensation was made by divine Providence for our salvation. We should use it, not with an abiding but with a transitory love and delight like that in a road or in vehicles or in other instruments, or, if it may be expressed more accurately, so that we love those things by which we are carried along for the sake of that toward which we are carried.

Whoever, therefore, thinks that he understands the divine Scriptures or any part of them so that it does not build the double love of God and of our neighbor does not understand it at all…  (Augustine, On Christian Teaching, 1.35.39-36.40)

Since God accepts repentance after sin, if each one knew at what time he would depart from this world, he would be able to select a time for pleasure and another time for repentance. But the one who promised pardon to a person who repents did not promise us a tomorrow… (Gregory the Great, Hom. 10)

Random Stuff

  • I’m really slammed with stuff right now—I’ll not be posting or commenting much for a bit.  I’ll be back before too long, though.
  • I saw the moving from a crib to a big bed that Marshall+ posted in the comments below. I’m not convinced and I’ll tell you why… As far as I’m concerned, a “wrote-down prayer” (as we call ’em down here) ought to be what I’m thinking and feeling, but just more eloquent and with more depth. My crib to big bed transition prayer at 2 in the morning was, “Father in Heaven, please make this darn baby sleep instead of playing, giggling, or roaming around the upstairs. Amen.” And to my eyes, certain elements of that were, well, missing from the suggested prayer below.
  • I was struck the other evening that Ps 59 would make an awesome voice-over at the start of a vampire-slaying movie. I blame it on verse 2…