A digital commonplace for a Regular Guy called Charlie Pharis

Month: February 2005 (page 2 of 3)

Lent, Even More…



Seven and a half Moleskine pages of notes and thoughts from Robert E. Webber’s Ancient-Future Time: Forming Spirituality through the Christian Year

Most Protestants don’t make any spiritual preparation for the annual celebration of the death and resurrection. For example, when I was growing up the only preparation for Easter made in my home…was the planning and purchasing of new clothing. Easter was a weekend event. Preparing for Easter for seven weeks was unthinkable, ludicrous, even pagan. But now I am constrained to ask: Who is the pagan? (p. 100)

I’m not going to include all the scribblings I made here. Webber closes his section on Lent with the Lenten Prayer of St. Ephrem the Syrian…

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 errors and not to judge my brother; for Thou art blessed unto ages of ages. Amen (p. 115)

Ash Wednesday, Part Deux and Other Stuff I’m Learning About Lent…



Some notes on Lent from Receiving the Day: Christian Practices for Opening the Gift of Time

When Christmas seems barely over, and when the light of Epiphany has only begun to disclose who Jesus is, the season of Lent arrives.

Although it begins and ends with a cross, however, Lent’s name means ‘”spring,” and its purpose is a springtime purpose. This season opens a renewing space in time, a trench into which we can shovel whatver must die in us – different for each person – before new life can come. Making good on this opportunity requires intention and attention. Like the poet-farmer Wendell Berry in “A Purification,” we sort through the results of our efforts and separate the worthy from the waste. We do the earthy housekeeping of self-examination, and we confess that we have not been paying attention. Just as Jesus will soon be buried in the tomb, we bury some of what separates us from him. (p. 92-93)

She includes Berry’s poem…

At the start of spring I open a trench

In the ground. I put into it

The winter�s accumulation of paper,

Pages I do not want to read

Again, useless words, fragments,

Errors. And I put in it

The contents of the outhouse

Light of the sun, growth of the ground,

Finished with one of their journeys.

To the sky, to the wind, then,

And to the faithful trees, I confess

My sins: that I have not been happy

Enough, considering my good luck

Have listened to too much noise,

Have been inattentive to wonders,

Have lusted after praise.

And then upon the gathered refuse

Of mind and body, I close the trench,

Folding shut again the dark,

The deathless earth. Beneath that seal

The old escapes into the new.

And this word of warning…

…the Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann, a great lover of the liturgy, warned that without the unsettling presence of the Holy Spirit, this liturgical year can become “the more or less antiquated decoration of religion,” and a quaint “audio-visual aid” instead of a “root of Christian life and action.” (p. 109)

Ash Wednesday, Part the First…

Southern Baptist born, Southern Baptist bred, I’ve never done the whole Lent thing before. The most attention I ever paid to such matters was during the two years we lived in New Orleans. I paid attention to Ash Wednesday then because it was the day after Mardi Gras and a great day off from school.

Last year on Ash Wednesday, I took our students from church to see The Passion of the Christ, and I remember going to eat afterwards, seeing many people with the ashes on their forehead, and trying to explain to our Southern Baptist born, Southern Baptist bred students what that was all about.

Today, however, has been different. If there was ever a time in my life I felt the need for repentance, refocusing, and renewal, now is one of those times.

Like I said, my tribe never “celebrated” Lent, (do you “celebrate” Lent? Maybe “commemorate” or “observe” might be better?) so I really don’t even know where or how to start. On my way to the office this morning, I pulled into the parking lot of the big Catholic Church across the street, hoping to see some notice of an Ash Wednesday observance or whatever. No cars in the lot, but they are going to have a fish fry every Friday during Lent. I saw the banner advertising that! They also cancelled all “religious education classes” for the day, according to their message board. Nothing about Ash Wednesday or anything though.

I thought about calling my friend Revdude, because he, being a Methodist and all, would likely have some profound insight into the whole Lent thing. But I figured it was too early in the morning.

I tried to find “The Boy’s” eighth-grade history teacher, who is now the rector of a local charismatic Episcopal church, with no success.

So I went into my office, pulled out the Book of Common Prayer (shhhhh…I won’t tell the folks in Nashville or Atlanta if you won’t!) and looked up the order of worship (see how Baptist I am – most folks who know any better call it the “liturgy,” right?) for Ash Wednesday. Pretty good stuff!

That led me to Google for “Lent” and “Ash Wednesday.” I found the Lenten Calendar at Simple Living. Its focus this year is on hunger. I looked up the scriptures they provided and found Matthew 6:1 and Isaiah 1:15-17.

So now I’m on a quest, a mission, if you will, to learn a little more about things liturgical, especially as relates to Ash Wednesday and this whole Lent thing. So far, I’ve found some neat stuff in Dorothy C. Bass’s Receiving the Day: Christian Practices for Opening the Gift of Time and Robert E. Webber’s Ancient-Future Time. Maybe I’ll post some more from those in a while.

To wind up this long and tedious post, though, I will say this: What I have re-discovered is that God is not particularly interested in our outward observances, no matter how great or moving or emotional or whatever we think they are. He is ultimately interested in whether or not we are living for Him with our whole hearts and whether or not we are putting that wholehearted devotion into practice via loving, compassionate service to those around us. it’s not so much about “giving up” as it is about “giving out.” Maybe this little trip into Liturgical Calendar Land wil help me re-focus my life around that overarching principle.

Anne Lamott’s Favorite Prayer…Maybe Mine, Too…

Found this little gem posted on an e-mail listserv over the weekend…

Anne Lamott says her favorite prayer is “Help me, help me,help me! Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

Kind of says it all, doesn’t it……

If we get right down to it, that’s the essence of all our prayers, right?

I’m somehow reminded of the story one of my seminary profs told about his daughter saying grace at a meal. It was her turn, so she bowed her head, closed her eyes, and started with the typical “God is great, God is good…”

Suddenly there was a long pause. And the pause grew to what seemed like minutes. The little girl lifted her head, opened her eyes, and said softly, almost tearfully, “I can’t remember the rest.”

My professor said his first, immediate reponse would have been to be a little miffed. But he said it was as though God was speaking in the moment. What did he say? He said, “That’s OK, honey. As long as we remember ‘God is great, and God is good,’ that’s all that matters.”

Help me, help me, help me! Thank You, thank You, thank You!

The Big Show…A Bit Disappointing…

OK, so here’s the biggest media event of the year. The top teams of highly paid professionals ready to go head-to-head for all the marbles. Strategy. Finesse. Strength. Teamwork. A well-developed game plan. Billions tuned in from all over the world, hoping for the magic.

But at the end of the day, I was just a tad disappointed. You can check out the highlight reel here.

Game?!?!? What game?!?!? You mean they had a football game on TV today?!?!? I was talking about the commercials, silly!

Nike and Starbucks: Incarnational Marketing…

More from that Tom Peters interview with David B. Wolfe…

Check this exchange. Peters says…

But I think somewhat related to this, in the end, brands only survive through collaboration between companies and customers.

DW: Yes.

Can you talk about what that means?

DW: Sure. That is why Starbucks was able to become the international giant that it became with almost no advertising. Because of the customers and the company collaborating in building the brand and giving it meaning.

How? In what way did we Starbucks customers � I go there every day, more than once a day � collaborate?

DW: By your responses. Starbucks never did any conventional research. They didn’t do focus groups, they didn’t do quantitative surveys. Which is quite similar to the way Nike developed. Phil Knight hates research. But he, and later his people, went around to athletic meets and they just sort of breathed the air the customers were breathing. And Howard Schultz, Starbucks, did the same thing. So it wasn’t that the consumers and Schultz’s people sat down around a table and planned; it’s that Schultz put himself and his people in proximity with the consumers and observed them, and followed their lead.

Maybe, just maybe, instead of trying to “out-market” the marketers, we need to go where the people are, breathe the air they breathe, and invest our lives in helping them become what God intended for them to be.

When Marketing Misses the Point…

Saw Tom Peters’s great interview with David B. Wolfe, author and expert on marketing and consumer behavior, especially in the sometimes-neglected over-40 age group.

The first line of the interview grabbed my attention. IN response to Peters’s question, “What problem is your book. Ageless Marketing, addressing?” Wolfe’s response is…

The fundamental problem I’m addressing in Ageless Marketing is the incongruity between what marketers are doing and saying and what the consumers are experiencing, in terms of their world views, their needs, their motivations, their values, that govern their shopping and buying behavior.

Wolfe goes on to talk about how youth is not the primary reason for marketing these days, and that those who can effectively target the “New Consumer,” especially Boomer women, are the real leaders in the field.

Interesting stuff, when so much we see in and out of churches and other organizations is geared toward younger and younger demographics. But still, the most telling line is that first one: If you can’t deliver what you promise, you’d be better not promising it in the first place!

Afraid to Pray…

Overheard this afternoon…

I’m afraid to pray. I never get what I ask for. In fact, the situations I’m praying about always get worse! I think I’d be better off just not going to the trouble.

What do you say to that? What can you say to that?

Paul Simon…

Right now, I’m listening to excerpts from his Graceland project from the 1980s! You really can’t help but love “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes”. And who could forget “You Can Call Me Al”? Good stuff!

America’s Most Literate Cities…

Thanks to Eileen McDargh for news of this interesting study done each year by the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. It measures standards of educational level, publications, library resources, booksellers, etc. in cities of over 200,000 population. Pretty interesting results.

The Top Ten?

  1. Minneapolis, MN
  2. Seattle, WA
  3. Pittsburgh, PA
  4. Madison, WI
  5. Cincinnati, OH
  6. Washington, DC
  7. Denver, CO
  8. Boston, MA
  9. Portland, OR
  10. San Francisco, CA

Oh, Atlanta? Came in number 15 overall.

The other interesting result? Most of these cities are waaaayyyy too cold in the winter, and the people all talk funny! I’ll take number 15, and keep the weather and the drawl just the way they are, thank you very much!

One other note…the study caught my eye because the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater was the site of many of my very favorite summer days back in high school (also known as many moons ago, when Moses was a corporal). We drove up to Whitewater from South Georgia every year for the Drum Corps International Midwestern Championships on the campus of UWW.