fasting – The Consolations of Writing

Pancake Tuesday

Normally a Saturday ritual, it seemedwe should mark this day with pancakes too,a breakfast-table recollection of how feasting and fasting so often cohere. Even, I thought as I mixed egg and milk the night before, even mark the way that air fills the batter like pockets of life, as these very ordinary, meager elements ofContinue reading “Pancake Tuesday”

The Consolations of Lent

Comfort sits, unexpected, in our waiting with weakness. No giant leaps needed, only the baby steps of the heart slowly learning contrition. Begin with incapacity, then the slow-dawning knowledge that you are nothing but dust. Dust transfigures at His breath. Exhale in the sigh of your Lenten frailty. Then inhale, inspire. O brother in ourContinue reading “The Consolations of Lent”

L is for learning, L is for Lent

This year I do not so much give up my temptations as face the temptation to give up. Perhaps it was so for the forty desert days when stone may have seemed a fair alternative to bread. Yet stones, when given the chance, can become a chorus of praise. So this year I teach stone:Continue reading “L is for learning, L is for Lent”

Closed Til April (Glenroy Lent #7)

Nothing else open at this time, only this one ageing witness to morning weakness. Yet even the shop at the station’s closed – “til April”, as though the station itself were fasting. In uncomfortable chairs, a man sleeps, unlikely to remember the morning trains, and outside the transit of ash to dawn, a vermilion promiseContinue reading “Closed Til April (Glenroy Lent #7)”

Lent 10: Friday of First Week

The old garment is bursting; the new patch will not fit. Well-known threads fray everywhere; holes take place of whole. Who is this man? He takes the dross and debris, sits and eats with them? He takes our pious sackcloth and flings it on the heap where sin should be. Reversal confuses: the bridegroom standsContinue reading “Lent 10: Friday of First Week”

“Fast from… Feast on…” – Streaming Page CXVI Day Four

When I was younger, comfortable in low-evangelical churches where Lent was not observed, the season and its observances always seemed a semi-Catholic imposition. Our school chaplain would wear purple and people gave up eating sugar. That was mostly all I knew about it. When I came slowly to understand its value, it came with theContinue reading ““Fast from… Feast on…” – Streaming Page CXVI Day Four”