Shawna R. B. Atteberry

I should get back to regular blogging later this week. Holy Week was very busy, and I am getting back into my normal routine. Since I haven’t written much, I am going to give a little more link love to The Daily Episcopalian. In A Comprehensive Solution, Sam Candler nails why I decided to be confirmed into The Episcopal Church last year. Here’s a taste:

At its best, the Anglican tradition of Christianity resolves conflict gracefully. And it does so, rarely by taking “the middle way,” which has long been another name for the Episcopal Church (the “middle way” between Catholicism and Protestantism). I believe the Anglican tradition of Christianity often finds truth on both sides of theological and cultural disputes. The Anglican Communion of Churches finds “the comprehensive way,” affirming truth on both the traditional and the progressive wings of Christian community. The Anglican Communion of Churches might better be called the “via comprehensiva,” the comprehensive way.

I believe this “comprehensive way” was responsible for resolving other conflicts in Episcopal Church history, too. It explains how the early Protestant Church in the United States of America could be related to the Church of England but also separate from it. It was the comprehensive way that held the Episcopal Church together during the tragedy of the American Civil War. The comprehensive character of Anglicanism and the Episcopal Church also enabled us to meet the rise of science and higher literary criticism in the nineteenth century with grace and faith. We found a way to read the Bible with both faith and reason.

The Christian Church inevitably involves conflict. Usually, there are persons of good Christian faith on both sides of the conflict. The particular Anglican tradition of Christianity is a way of dealing with conflict gracefully. Obviously, our history has not always been clearly graceful. Nor is it always graceful right now. But the tradition which guides us is truly a graceful one.

From generation to generation, the Episcopal Church seeks to honor the universal claim of the Christian gospel while also honoring local authority and indigenous faith. That is another inherent challenge – and conflict—in all churches. How can we be obedient to both global and local authority? How can we honor both the gospel and our local culture? It is a journey and task entrusted to us by our Lord Jesus Christ himself.

Make sure you read the rest of the article. It has a great history of the beginning of The Church of England that’s worth the trip.

My friend Lainie Petersen has a wonderful tea blog, Lainie Sips. Lainie decided that she wanted to learn all about a tea, and she shares her experiences with us. She is also singly-handed responsible for getting me addicted to tea (particularly to East Frisian Tea and any flavor of chocolate roobios). Today the U. K. Tea Council recommended her blog in its Tea News. Congralations Lainie!

I have been doing some housecleaning, and updated my blogroll and other links, which desperately needed it. Here are some new people to go introduce yourself to:

Heather Goodman at L’Chaim explores the intersection of faith and art. She also has excellent book and movie reviews.

Kate Andres at Riot Wife is an artist, student, activist, and homemaker. She has the ability to cut through the crap and get to the point with amazing insights. (Make sure you check out the picture of her and her hubby on her About Riot Wife page.)

I fell in love with chanting the Psalms at the Benedictine monastery, Mount St. Scholastica. Chantblog helps me keep up that love here at home.

Scot McKnight at Jesus Creed is the Karl A. Olsson Professor in Religious Studies at North Park University here in Chicago. He always has something that will make you think along with wonderful conversations at his blog.

Gabriel McKee at SF Gospel is the author of The Gospel According to Science Fiction: From the Twilight Zone to the Final Frontier. He looks at religion through the lens of science fiction and popular culture.

For fellow Episcopalians, or those who just want to know more about us here are some sites for you:

Anglican Centrist

Daily Episcopalian

Episcopal Life and Episcopal Life Online

And of course, The Episcopal Church

There is a start to my housecleaning. I hope you enjoy these people as much as I do. What new people have your discovered? Who’s making you think differently about things today?

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?

Many of us suffer from the winter blues, and I’ve read two posts this week that are excellent on that subject:

How the Seasonal Blues Work by Chris Brogan

It’s nothing external, really. It’s a set of thoughts that trigger some kind of experience inside, that triggers some kind of overall feeling that I associate with this time of year. It just happens. I deal with it. And then the next year is here. Truth is, I need this feeling, every bit as much as I need other feelings.

Why? Because it makes me work harder. It makes me think deeper. It makes me try to be a better person. Everything about this time of year is as important to the person you think I am as the smiles and the good will and all the power and passion I bring to things.

Winter Hibernation by Amber Naslund

I’ve always been incredibly atuned to nature. Outdoors is a very spiritual place to me, in all it’s facets. And winter especially brings on a set of emotions and reflections that are perfectly suited to the waning of daylight, the settling of snow on the branches, and the quiet air that hangs puffy and soft after a snowfall. We leave behind the remnants of a year, blanketing them in wet and white and cold.

I can’t also help but take stock this time of year of all the things I have and others don’t. How feeble and minor my issues are compared to some. How simple and exhilarating small things can be. It’s a time where I tuck into my own thoughts. Like kneading out knots in a well worn muscle, it’s painful sometimes, but always delivers a release and renewed determination to work again.

Go read both their articles, and let them know you stopped by. How do you deal with your seasonal ups and downs?

Sphere: Related Content

The X-Ray Technician Schools has listed me in their Top 100 Christian Bloggers. They have a lot of good sites listed. Go take a look. Thank you Sarah, for listing me.

Cynthia Johansen at Christians Do It Better has listed me in her Top 100 Christian Relationship Blogs (#75 under Christian Values). I think this is the first time I’ve been in a top 100 list. Thank you Cynthia!