Living word by word

where Pentecost is a real holiday

Blessed Pentecost from Germany, where it is an honest-to-God holiday, both yesterday and today (Pfinstmontag).

That is not to say that a lot of people are going to church. We are in a heavliy Roman Catholic region, where there are crucifixes and tiny chapels all over the rural landscape, not to mention gorgeous churches in every little Dorf. Nevertheless, the town where we are staying is now reduced to being part of a 3-point parish, so there was no mass said there yesterday.

Instead, we headed into the city center (20 minutes by bus and streetcar-- even on a Sunday schedule!), and heard High Mass at the cathedral. It was Mozart's Mass in C Major with the Archbishop presiding, so it was standing room only. That was just about the only thing happening downtown that day -- a stark contrast to the day before, when the streets were absolutely packed for a market-day-preceding-two-holidays.

The Germans also celebrated Mother's Day yesterday (though their Father's Day coincides with Ascension, and thus was already over). You'd think that would mean the option of a nice lunch at a cafe in the afternoon, but not so. Most places, if open at all, were only serving drinks. At this point we were a good hour from home and starving. We did manage to find a "Do"ner Kebab" place open all day (basically what we call gyros). To paraphrase Luther, "better an open Turk than a closed Christian."

Although the early part of the day was exceedingly quiet, we did notice that by 6 p.m. a lot of the Gaststa"tte were indeed open and full of customers. No Mother's Day brunch in Germany, but plenty of options by dinnertime.

April

The kids came home from Kinderstube (our German-immersion preschool) with a new "Spruch":

April, April
Er weiss nicht was er will
Mal Regen, mal Sonnenschein. . .

April, April
It doesn't know what it wants

Witness last week:

and this week:

Easter's date

Still confused about why Easter's so dang early this year? Unable to believe that spring technically has already arrived?

I thought I understood the whole dating of Easter, until I picked up Mapping Time, in an effort to understand why Passover is sometimes on a different timeline. Well! I guess I didn't know as much as I thought I did.

There are nearly 30 fine print pages on the dating of Easter and its fraught history, containing sentences like:

  The 19-year Metonic cycle contains 12 common years each consisting of 12 months or lunations and seven embolismic years each containing 13 lunations.

In any case, I know understand -- sort of -- why Passover and Easter are sometimes nearly a month apart. The best story of the book:

Before the days of Google, an Englishman was wondering when Easter would occur the following year. Knowing that Easter depended on both the equinox and the lunar cycle, he contacted the obvious experts --astronomers at the Royal Observatory. The astronomers took his call and said they'd get back to him. They did -- after consulting the Book of Common Prayer.

 

the advantages of knowing your liturgical year

Three good reasons to know that Easter is a season lasting 50 days:

1. When Easter morning looks like this outside, you can still know that spring will appear before the season is over.

2. When the "Youth Easter breakfast" gets moved into May, you can still argue that it is still an Easter breakfast

3.  When the Easter bunny doesn't get around to your house until Easter Tuesday, your children can still fully enjoy their chocolate as an Easter treat (and the Easter bunny can take full advantage of those 50% off specials).

Pre-celebration

    I have to chuckle at the official pronouncements of the Roman Catholic church about that all-important issue, namely, should St. Patrick's Day be celebrated during Holy Week? Official answer: No.
    It's a question they won't have to answer again for about 150 years, but this year the proper day to carouse in honor of the Irish bishop is March 15, not Holy Monday.
    I've often given myself a day or two "off" of Lent in the midst of the season. My baptismal day, March 10, almost always falls in the midst of Lent, so that's a little Easter.  This year's Lent was so early that I've had to give myself any number of dispensations: no, Valentine's Day didn't count for Lent (chocolate-consumption must be observed). No, my birthday did not count as part of Lent (and wouldn't have even if it hadn't fallen on a Sunday). And since it was a big birthday, the dispensation lasted, oh, a week or so.
    But now, I'm running out of time. Time to buckle down before the whole season is over. Daylight savings this weekend already! That will be corporal discipline indeed.

more kid evangelism

    My daughter got REAALLY into Valentine's Day this year. I have to admit I was less than enthusiastic about guiding her through writing twenty-five Valentines, since on her own she'd make lovely personal creations -- for about 3 or 4 kids. But 25? This calls for mass production, so we were reduced to a very basic "to" and "from" on each one. Most of these she wrote on Wednesday night in the middle of Lenten vespers -- in the front row.
    But the pay-off was this morning, when somehow she got hold of a pad of little Post-its, and went around writing love notes to all ages and manner of folk at church and sticking them on them. An ambush of affection. It was quite sweet.

Lent is coming

Those of you who know me know I’m a calendar/ reading of the day/ devotional junkie. Or at least, when I buy such books I imagine that I would use them regularly if I just had the right one. I know this is just another form of consumer fantasy, but I can’t help myself.

Anyway, here are the faves for this upcoming Lent

Reflecting the Glory by N. T. Wright

OK, this one is old, but Tom Wright is one of the most accessible serious exegetes around, someone who manages to bridge the evangelical/liberal gap and really digs into the text. Although this book fits well into the Lenten/ Easter cycle, it doesn’t have to be read that way.

 

Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter

I’m excited about this resource because of the authors compiled here: G.K. Chesterton, Madeleine L’Engle, Dorothy Day, and a few 20^th century authors who are still living, like Frederick Buechner. Rather than arranged around days, this one is organized by theme, moving from passion to resurrection. More than 40 reflections, fewer than ninety, so it won't take you all the way through the Easter season.

 Living Simply, an ELCA Hunger Calendar

Just what it says. We're going to use this one at home because it's full of tangible actions we can do with my kids. 

 And here’s a fun one for those of us with  China on our minds: Brushstrokes: a series of meditations on Chinese characters  written by an Episcopal priest who has lived in China for nineteen years. Makes me want to learn Chinese calligraphy!

On the tenth day of Christmas

On the tenth day of Christmas, I still don't know all the things my true love has given to me. Yes, there are still gifts under our tree, even for the kids. I know, people will think we have aliens for children, but it really is possible to stretch the gift-giving out for twelve days, and some of the enjoyment that goes with the gifts as well. If anything, as the new year begins and routines resume, the hardest thing is finding the time to all sit down together to open them.

Actually, probably the biggest argument against this prolonging of gift exchange is that there are aunts and uncles and grandparents who start to wonder where they rank in the order of things. It's not a speed dial hierarchy; we really don't order the gifts in any particular way except to make sure that the first gifts after the stockings are some things that can be played with on Christmas Day. But still, I get the sense that some relatives think we're either handcuffing the children to prevent them from opening more, or just plain disappointed we didn't dive into their boxes first.

Today we made sure the wise men were "on the way" to the creche in time to arrive there by Epiphany. Somehow we got into a discussion at breakfast about the textual accuracy of "three kings," which prompted my daughter to go through various permutations on how more than three magi could have offered three gifts. "Well, two magi could have brought one gift each, and and two more could have just brought one together, OR six magi could have . ."(and so on ).

It's really a shame that the Passion story doesn't invite the same playfulness that the Nativity does.

Epiphany - The Real Gift of the Magi

After all my insistence this Advent about how little I care about the historicity of the virgin birth,  Jesus’ birthplace, and so on, it would be a little inconsistent of me to go through the usual round of debunking that goes on with the wise men: they came to a house, not a manger; there’s no evidence there were three; they were not kings but magi. Yes. So?

Who were they? The only thing that seems very clear is that Matthew wants us to know they were pagan. They were from “the East,” and most likely astrologers. Not Torah-observant, as far as anyone can tell. The Church has at least had the grace to remind us of this fact every Epiphany and point out that outsiders came to worship Jesus, to offer gifts, and in some sense, to reveal who Jesus was.

But their origin in the East has another layer of meaning that eluded me until I recently read Richard Swanson’s Provoking the Gospel of Matthew, in which he points out that visitors from the East were most likely coming from places that, for the Jews, meant empire, tyrranny, and exile. Visitors from Babylon and Assyria had been Very Bad News for Jesus’ people for many generations, and the memories evoked by Rachel’s weeping in chapter two would be memories of seeing God’s people marched off to exile in the East.

The fact that these pagans show up to worship is also a reminder that not all the exiles returned. Some faithful Jews remained in Babylon, and others no doubt slid eastward in their religious observances as well, blurring the lines between Jew and Pagan. Perhaps some of these never-returned exiles were ancestors to some of the Magi. In any case, Matthew’s readers would be reminded that God’s promises had seeped beyond the bounds of Palestine, and even beyond the bounds of official Torah observance, generations ago.

Who are the Magi coming to us today, clear that they are not one-of-us but ever so curious about Jesus, and so, so generous with their seeking and their seemingly impractical gifts? How do we receive them?

Guten Rutsch

Happy slide into the New Year! (See my post from last year, if you're not a German speaker.)