Shawna Atteberry

Baker, Writer, Teacher

The Great Litany

Tomorrow I will lead our church in chanting the Great Litany. Many Episcopal churches chant The Great Litany on the first Sunday in Lent. What is The Great Litany? Chantblog has the answer:

An intercessory prayer including various petitions that are said or sung by the leader, with fixed responses by the congregation. It was used as early as the fifth century in Rome. It was led by a deacon, with the collects led by a bishop or priest. The Litany was the first English language rite prepared by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer. It was first published in 1544. Cranmer modified an earlier litany form by consolidating certain groups of petitions into single prayers with response. The Litany’s use in church processions was ordered by Henry VIII when England was at war with Scotland and France. It was printed as an appendix to the eucharist in the 1549 BCP [Book of Common Prayer]. The Litany was used in each of the three ordination rites of the 1550 ordinal, with a special petition and concluding collect. The 1552 BCP called for use of the Litany after the fixed collects of Morning Prayer on Sundays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. The 1928 BCP allowed the Litany to be used after the fixed collects of Morning or Evening Prayer, or before the Eucharist, or separately. The 1928 BCP included a short Litany for Ordinations as an alternative to the Litany. The 1979 BCP titled the Litany “The Great Litany” (p. 148), distinguishing it from other litanies in the Prayer Book.

The Book of Common Prayer online has The Great Litany here. Chantblog has a Youtube video of The Great Litany chanted at St. Barnabas.

I will let you know how it goes. (Which reminds me I probably should run through it again before bed.)

Does you church do anything on the first Sunday of Lent to set the tone for the next 40 days?

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Poetry: The Clarity of Darkness

The fog rolled in, heavy and damp
It blanketed the city in its mist
It was the thick, pea soup kind
Where was the hand in front of your face?
Then the booms echoed, and the mist lit up
As the rain poured down
I wondered all day when
I would see the buildings across the street
Again
Now all it quiet
The fog has lifted and rolled away
I see the lights on Columbus and Lake Shore Drive
And the itty-bitty red lights dotting Balboa
I revel in the wee hours
When all is dark and silent
There is a clarity in the darkness
Where I can think
Ponder
And dream

© 2009 by Shawna R. B. Atteberry

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Ash Wednesday: The Freedom of Ritual

Today was not a good day. In fact, I’ve been out of sorts most of this month. Mainly because I have not been writing as this blog makes very obvious. I really did not want to go to the Ash Wednesday service. I feel enough guilt and shame. I know that I “have sinned by my own fault. . .by what I have done, and by what I have left undone.” Especially the what I have left undone. Do I really need an additional reminder about what I should be doing that I’m not? Really? But I had to go: I was bringing bread for the soup and bread dinner after the service, and I knew I needed to be there.

I’m very glad I went. As we were praying the Litany of Penitence, I felt a great peace come over me, and I acknowledged that I was a human and that means that I am going to fail, make mistakes, and even choose outright rebellion to what God has called me to do, which is to say, sin. It was not only a peaceful, but humbling thing, to admit that “From dust I have come and to dust I will return”; to confess my sins with my fellow brothers and sisters and accept God’s forgiveness. It was also a recognition that I am not the only one falling short of God’s calling. We, as a community, have fallen short. I could feel the forgiveness not just for myself, but for our community, as prayed. Tomorrow is a new day. Tomorrow I can say yes to God. Tomorrow we can obey God and better build God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

I have decided what my Lenten disciplines will be this year: I am going to practice centering prayer, and I’m going to write in this blog. My 40 days of Lent will be spent in quiet with God and talking to you.

Also stop by Haraka Haraka Haina Baraka where Mark shared his Ash Wednesday experience. (And yes, you will find the translation for his blog name if you go and read.)

For those interested in praying the Daily Office, the Episcopal nuns of Mission St. Clare have everything you need including karaoke versions of chants and hymns. I also post Vespers Monday–Friday at Street Prophets.

Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing you have made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (From The Book of Common Prayer.)

Related Posts:

Ash Wednesday Reflections
Lenten Disciplines: Fasting
Lenten Thoughts and Practices

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Ash Wednesday Reflections

Today I read three wonderful articles on Ash Wednesday:

At The Episcopal Cafe Sam Candler reminds us that some of the most fertile and rich soil comes from ashes in Ashes and Wine:

But today, I propose another meaning for these ashes. Out of these ashes, these signs of our mortal nature, comes something else. Once we recognize our own responsibility for wrongdoing, once we acknowledge our mortal and dusty nature, the ashes also become a sign of fertility.

If we are truly repentant, and truly cleansed, and open to the reality of God around us, then we are also fertile, ready to give growth to greatness.

Out of seven years worth of ashes on the island of Madeira came one of the finest wines of that time. There is no way the wine could have been produced without the burning, without the ashes. In fact, it was the burning that cleared the ground in the first place.

Ash Wednesday and Lent are, likewise, the burning and clearing of our Christian lives. We enter a time for confession, for penitence, for realization of our earthly nature. But this is also a fertile day, a time for self-examination and self-preparation. Today is getting us ready for something.

In The Artful Ashes Jan Richardson shared what she discovered when she took a project where she learned to draw in charcoal (if you are not reading The Painted Prayerbook regularly, I highly recommend you subscribe to her feed):

Taking up a new medium, entering a different way of working, diving or tiptoeing into a new approach: all this can be complex, unsettling, disorienting, discombobulating. Launching into the unknown and untried confronts us with what is undeveloped within us. It compels us to see where we are not adept, where we lack skill, where we possess little gracefulness. Yet what may seem like inadequacy—as I felt in my early attempts with charcoal—becomes fantastic fodder for the creative process, and for life. Allowing ourselves to be present to the messiness provides an amazing way to sort through what is essential and to clear a path through the chaos. To borrow the words of the writer of the Psalm 51, the psalm for Ash Wednesday, it creates a clean heart within us.

Ash Wednesday beckons us to cross over the threshold into a season that’s all about working through the chaos to discover what is essential. The ashes that lead us into this season remind us where we have come from. They beckon us to consider what is most basic to us, what is elemental, what survives after all that is extraneous is burned away. With its images of ashes and wilderness, Lent challenges us to reflect on what we have filled our lives with, and to see if there are habits, practices, possessions, and ways of being that have accumulated, encroached, invaded, accreted, layer upon layer, becoming a pattern of chaos that threatens to insulate us and dull us to the presence of God.

I love to chant, and I recently discovered chantblog. For those of you who love to chant here are the Lauds and Vespers hymns for Ash Wednesday and Lent.

I have yet to settle on a Lenten discipline, although I am thinking of making more room for silence in my life. What are thinking about during this Lent? What needs to be added to your life? What could you do without?

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"Writing the World Right" published in E-Quality

E-Quality published in article I wrote in their winter issue. You can find “Writing the World Right” in “Women and Writing,” Winter 2008 (This is a PDF file). My article starts on page 14, and make sure you read the other wonderul and informative articles too.

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Geeks in Love: Belated Valentine's Edition

Our first Valentine’s together my then-boyfriend, Tracy, and I stayed in. Valentine’s Day fell on Wednesday, and as I lived in Kansas City, and he lived in Chicago, I flew in the following the weekend. It was cold; the high was 2° F. On Saturday night we had a very lovely dinner at Gioco’s, but for the rest of the weekend, we watched movies. And if you think we watched sappy love movies, then you would be wrong. The movies we watched included Donnie Darko, Being John Malkovich, and Groundhog Day. We’re just not geeks, we’re macabre geeks.

The following Valentine’s Day we were married. He had gotten me addicted to Mythbusters. In one episode Carrie was wearing a T-shirt. A T-shirt that said “Geek” written in Greek letters. I looked at Tracy and said (OK I yelled), “I have to have that T-shirt!” And not just because I’m a geek. I fell in love with Greek in college. For close to 15 years I have called myself the Greek Geek (I’ve always had the the name Greek Geek Inc. in the back of my mind, in case I ever started a business). So when I saw the T-shirt, I really had to have it. My Geek bought it for me for Valentine’s Day. You just don’t get much more geeky than that. Or so I thought.

A couple of weeks ago after being tagged a couple of times, I finally filled out the 25 Random Things About Me meme going around on Facebook. I mentioned that I love dead languages (I’ve also had Hebrew and Aramaic), but I still need to learn Latin. So what did My Hubby get me for this Valentine’s Day? Yes, that’s right: everything I need to start learning Latin. There’s Latin Made Simple: A complete introductory course in Classical Latin (Made Simple (Broadway Books)), The Bantam New College Latin & English Dictionary, Revised Edition, Easy Latin Crossword Puzzles, and Carpe Diem: Put A Little Latin in Your Life. Suffice it to say, I have started learning my fourth dead language.

Later that night in bed it hit me (that’s when everything hits me), I realized that he was once again supporting me and encouraging me to do what I wanted to do. One of my top three musts in getting married was that my husband would support my career. I got that must in spades. He totally supports and encourages me to continue writing and continue pursuing my dreams (even if I haven’t started bringing in a decent income yet. That bothers me more than him. OK, it doesn’t bother him at all; it bothers me a lot). In life, in career, in pursuing my dreams, and even when it comes to learning yet one more dead language, he supports me just as I support him in all those things (except for learning dead languages: he learns computer languages). That may not be geeky, but it sure does help to make a good marriage.

(There are various and sundry affliate links in this post.)

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I need to take my own advice

I just glanced through my last post. “Physcian, heal thyself” is one of the phrases that comes to mind. I’m still not doing that much writing. And I’m finding every way out of it that I can: laundry, grocery shopping, “research” (my personal favorite), the cat needs petting, cooking, cleaning, baking. Well everything but practicing yoga or exercising; two other things I need to get on a regular schedule with.

My biggest fear is that I really don’t have anything to say, and once I get it down on paper, I’ll see that I really have nothing to say. What then?

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Politely dismiss fear and have tea with your character

There are things I need to do. I know I need to do them. And there they are waiting for me: Career Women, essays, poems, stories, and a novel. They are all waiting for me. Waiting for me to sit down and to start writing. They whisp and whirl around my head waiting for me to give them substance. They lean in close and whisper in my ear, telling me who the are. Telling me their stories. And I want to write these stories, their stories. I really do.

Then the Wall comes. The Wall in my head. A block, writer’s block, whatever you want to call it. It’s there, and the Wall has brought friends. Every Inner Critic that has ever stuffed itself into my head is there. Those fiends. “You’re never going to finish.” “You don’t have the focus and the stamina.” “You’re not smart enough.” “Everyone else has docorates; you think you can stand with them?” “You’re just going to procrastinate, find other things to do.” “You’ll never make this work.” “You’ll never finish this.” “Why are you  doing this to yourself?” The infernal, internal Critics. Without fail, day, night, or in the wee hours of the morning, there they are. There’s no hiding from them. They are always there. But there is something else too. These were there before the wall and the bullies showed up.

My creations. The characters I live with; I bring to life. They are still there, waiting for me. Waiting for me to give them substance, to breathe life and form into them. They twist and turn through the wall and around the barriers, calling me. Asking me to write them. They want to tell me who they are, what they do, and the weird things that keep popping up into their lives. They want me to stop paying so much attention to the distractions, the Walls, to Critics, to all the other things I should be doing. They want me to sit down and tell their stories while they swhirl around the room, whispering words in my ears. They want me to tell their stories.

So much of the time I don’t. The Wall, the Excuses, and the Critics get in the way. All I see is them. I lose sight my own creations, my muse, my word. I have to make my way back. Back through the Excuses, back through the Critic’s lies, back to my Fears. I look at my Fear, knowing it’s not going anywhere, and make a decision. I look at Fear, and I make that decision. Right behind Fear and little to the left a character flits around the corners of my vision and visits my dreams: Morrighan. I don’t know who she is yet, but I will find out. I look Fear in the eye, and say, “Come back later.” I introduced myself to Morrighan. “Let’s chat,” I say. She smiles as we walk toward the table with the journal and the tea. She has been waiting a long time for this.

I got the idea to talk about my blocks and fears from Havi Brooks. She recently published posts that have made me start to see my own blocks and fears in a slightly different way. Here are the conversations Havi has had with her blocks: Conversations with Blocks, Part 1 and Conversations with Blocks, Part 2.

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I'm sorry that I haven't been around

Getting things squared away at my house in Kansas City has taken longer than I thought it would. The insurance company just decided to pay the claim on Friday. I thought that they had decided that and sent the check two weeks ago. When I called last week to find out what the hold-up was, I found out that they had found other things to quibble about. But it finally went through, and I received a check to get started with the repairs in the house. I’m glad. A lot of work needs to be done: the wall between the bathroom and kitchen needs to be rebuilt, and the ceiling and tile in the bathroom replace. In the kitchen the ceiling and cabinets need to be replaced. The hard wood floor in the living room will be replaced along with the carpet and padding in the bedroom and the flooring in the utility room. I have a general contractor and plumber, and I’m hoping the work can be done by the end of the month. I would love to have it rented by April.

That being said, I plan to start posting three times a week. And I really need to get back to writing. I’m doing a lot of reading and outlining, but hardly no writing. It is time to get back to actually writing posts, book proposals, and just daily journaling. It’s time to tell the fear that I have nothing to say to SHUT UP, sit down, and just write. I have plenty to say; I just have to stop listening to the damn inner critic.

The post about Esther that I promised would be up at the beginning of January will be posted next week, period, no excuses.

So what do you do to shut your inner critic up and do the creative work you’re called to do?

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