Shawna R. B. Atteberry

Chicago Grace Episcopal Church will be having two Ash Wednesday services including imposition of ashes on Wednesday, February 17. The first service is at 12:15–1:15 p.m. The second service is 6:00–7:00 p.m. with a soup and bread supper following the liturgy. All are welcome to come. I will be attending the service in the evening. Our church is on Printer’s Row, 637 S. Dearborn, right next door to Kasey’s Tavern, and our sanctuary is on the second floor.

Tonight we say good-bye to the alleluias. This hymn from The Saint Helena Breviary helps us to tuck them away until Easter.

Alleluia, song of gladness,

hymn of endless joy and praise.

Alleluia is the worship

that celestial voices raise

and, delighting in God’s glory,

sing in heaven’s courts always.

Alleluia, blessed Salem,

home of all our hopes on high.

Alleluia, sing the angels;

Alleluia, saints reply;

but we, for a time on this earth,

chant a simpler melody.

Alleluias we now forfeit

in this holy time of Lent.

Alleluias we relinquish

as we for our sins repent,

trusting always in God’s mercy

and in Love omnipotent.

Blessed Trinity of Glory,

hear your people as we pray.

Grant that we may know the Easter

of the Truth, the Life, the Way,

chanting endless alleluias

in the realms of endless day. Amen.

A huge thank you to Bosco at Liturgy for having it all typed out, so I wouldn’t have to do it. Bosco also posted a Shrove Tuesday mediation.

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. Am I the only one procrastinating on choosing a Lenten discipline? To be honest, I’ve been procrastinating on writing this article most of the day. I tweeted that I was going to write this blog post around 11:30 this morning, and I’m just now starting it at almost 6:00 p.m. I figured I wasn’t the only one dragging my feet on choosing something to do or give up for Lent, so here are a few of things I’ve thought of.

Lectio Divina

Lectio Divina means divine reading. It is a slow meditative reading of a passage of the Bible or a spiritual book. There are three movements of lectio divina: meditation (meditatio), prayer (oratio), and contemplation (contemplatio).

• Meditation/meditatio: Read the passage three times out loud, slowly. The first time simply read through. The second time be aware of any words that pop out at you. The third time read until you reach the place that spoke to you on the second reading. Ask yourself: Why does this stand out? What is it saying to me? Why is the Spirit bringing this to my attention? Mull it over.
• Prayer/oratio: Take whatever you find to Godde in prayer. Whether it’s gratitude, sorrow, joy, or repentance, pray about what the passage has said to you, and your response to it.
• Contemplation/contemplatio: Choose a word from your reading or prayer that best expresses your experience during meditation and prayer. Close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. Spend a few minutes in silence, listening to Godde. If your mind wanders silently say the word you chose.
• If you want, journal your lectio experience.

Online resource: Garden of Grace

The Daily Examen

The Daily Examen is a thoughtful look at the day to see how we saw and responded to Godde’s grace through what we did, our responses to the people we met though the day, and our emotions. IgnatianSpiritality.com says

The Daily Examen is a technique of prayerful reflection on the events of the day in order to detect God’s presence and discern [God's] direction for us. The Examen is an ancient practice in the Church that can help us see God’s hand at work in our whole experience.

Here is one way of practicing the Daily Examen from Ignatian Sprituality:

• Become aware of God’s presence.
• Review the day with gratitude.
• Pay attention to your emotions.
• Choose one feature of the day and pray from it.
• Look toward tomorrow.

IgnatianSpiritality.com has many different examens listed at their site.

The Daily Office

The Daily Office is praying through the day. Prayers are said in the Morning, at Noon, in the Evening, and at Night (before bed). In the longer offices of Morning and Evening Prayer two or three psalms are said or chanted, one or two passages of Scripture are read, then there  is time for prayers. In the shorter offices of Noon and Night (or Compline) a short psalm or a portion of a psalm is read or chanted and two or three verses of Scripture are read before prayers.

Two places you can pray the Daily Office online are at The Online Book of Common Prayer (click Daily Office on the menu) and Mission St. Clare. Mission St. Clare has the hymns in each office in karaoke so you can sing along. Fun!

If you’re like me and can’t pray on the computer, you can order the Book of Common Prayer* from Amazon, along with Phyllis Tickle’s The Divine Hours.* If you want a Daily Office that is gender inclusive, The St. Helena Breviary: Personal Edition* is wonderful.

Hospitality

Hospitality is one of the bedrocks of Christianity. Jesus liked to eat with people (especially people he wasn’t supposed to eat with) a lot. Jesus instituted Communion during the family meal and celebration of Passover. Early Christians gathered together to eat and share their resources with one another. Early in our history we started feeding people who couldn’t feed themselves. One of the most basic practices of Christians is feeding each other and feeding other people. I know, I know, a lot of people fast or give up a certain food group for Lent, but giving up food has never been a spiritual discipline for me.  Probably because I grew up with the skinnier-is-better and the “Diet! Diet! Diet!” culture, I just cannot consider giving up food to be a spiritual discipline (also my birthday always falls during Lent, and I’m eating my meat and cake!). If fasting is your thing, then go for it. However, I do make a suggestion: put aside the money you saved not buying sweets, pop, or meat, and at the end of Lent, give the money to a food pantry or homeless shelter. This is a personal preference: I much prefer to add something than just give up something for Lent.

Back to hospitality and food. If, like me, you like to feed people and feel it’s an important part of your spirituality here are two ways to practice hospitality during Lent:

• Invite friends and family over for meals at your home. Decide how many times you want to provide hospitality during Lent. Then start meal planning and inviting.
• Volunteer at a homeless shelter or food pantry to help feed the hungry people in your community. Provide hospitality to those who need it the most.

A last resource that has all of these disciplines plus more is Marjorie J. Thompson’s Soul Feast: An Invitation to the Christian Spiritual Life.* It’s a good resource that you will go back to again and again.

I hope this helps you in deciding a discipline to bring you closer to Godde during Lent. Do you have anything to add to the list? What are thinking of giving up or adding for Lent? I’m leaning toward Lectio Divina myself. It’s been a long time since I practiced it, and it has always been one of my favorites.

*Affliate links

This has been a time of reflection for me. Normally by this time in Lent, I am just ready for Easter to get here and be done and over with it. But not this year. This year I am not minding staying in the self-examination of Lent. I’ve journeyed through this Lent with Jan Richardson’s Garden of Hollows: Entering the Mysteries of Lent and Easter. It’s been a journey of acknowledging my hollows, my empty spaces, and the wounds that need healing. A Year of Loss and New Beginnings came out of this reflection. I needed to write about what happened last year. I needed to tell my side of the story. It was necessary for that wound to heal.

I have lived with hollows of depression, fear, anxiety, weakness, and procrastination. And it’s been okay. I haven’t gotten lost in them. They aren’t big canyons that I can never crawl out of. They are hollows, but there is an ascending side as well as descending. I have experienced a great deal of peace this month. It’s okay to admit to my problems and weaknesses. It’s okay to live with them and just let them be. It has been a time of letting go. Letting go of the demons that drive me that shouldn’t.

Not that the demons have gone any where. But their voices are not as loud. I’m not procrastinating as much. Fear is not freezing me as often. I’m having more ideas, and I am writing more. I’m exploring. I’m going to be taking some risks. It feels good.

This last week of Lent will be spent quietly. I plan on continuing daily prayer and centering prayer, letting myself breath, and allowing my hollows just to be. I plan on writing and posting, cooking and laundry, community time and solitude. And I’ll see where me and my hollows are on Easter.

Sophia wrote: The pastor of my grad school parish once gave a fascinating reflection, at about this mid-point in the season, called “How to Survive the Mid-Lent Crisis”! As I recall, his main point was that by halfway through the season we have often found it very challenging to live up to our original plans….But, he suggested–on the analogy of the healing and reframing of our life plans that can happen during a mid-*life* crisis–that that can be even more fruitful.

So here’s an invitation to check in on the state of your spirit midway through “this joyful season where we prepare to celebrate the paschal mystery with mind and heart renewed” (Roman Missal). Hopefully there’s a good deal of grace, and not too much crisis, in your mid-Lenten experience!

1. Did you give up, or take on, anything special for Lent this year?

I am practicing centering prayer and writing on this blog everyday.

2. Have you been able to stay with your original plans, or has life gotten in the way?

I haven’t been able to practice centering prayer twice a day as I intended, but I am practicing it in the morning. I have a missed a day here and there blogging, but I’m doing much better than I thought I would.

3. Has God had any surprising blessings for you during this Lent?

I will be preaching for the first time at Grace Episcopal on Pentecost!

4. What is on your inner and/or outer agenda for the remainder of Lent and Holy Week?

To get up to practicing centering prayer twice a day and do more writing. I would like to have the book proposal for Career Women of the Bible done by the end of April. I would also like to sell some writing.

5. Where do you most long to see resurrection, in your life and/or in the world, this Easter?

With the depression I suffer from. It’s been bad this week, and I would love to live without that cloud hanging over me.

Instead of leading The Great Litany by myself, the music minister and I sang it together. It went very well, and I received compliments that I sounded good. I don’t mind chanting, but I think next time I want something shorter. About half-way through the litany, you think, “Good night this is long!” But all went well.

I will be doing some blog housekeeping this week. For those of you who have linked to my blog, I plan on updating my sidebar to include you and other wonderful blogs and sites I have found. I am also going to start going through past posts to correct the HTML code that didn’t come out right when My Hubby last updated my Wordpress account.

I hope all you had a worshipful and restful day, and better weather than we’re having in Chicago.

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?

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