Lent began over a week ago.  For those who don't know what Lent is, it's the period of 40 days before Easter which has long been used by the Christian church as a time to take stock of your life, especially the spiritual elements, and reflect on your future.  It's probably better known to most people as a time in which something is given up.  When I was a child Lent was quite a severe time in which you were expected to really do something effective in terms of giving up things.  Nowadays, many people take the giving up aspect fairly lightly, and give up things that really weren't greatly necessary in the first place.

Still that's better than taking no notice of the period at all.

There are a number of traditions associated with the Lent/Easter period.   On the day before Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, the church celebrated Shrove Tuesday (related to the word 'shriving' or ridding yourself of things).  Shrove Tuesday was also known as Pancake Tuesday because pancakes were a feature of the day.

The first day of Lent, Ash Wednesday, is so named because on that day a cross-shaped daub of ash is put on your forehead with the words, remember that thou are dust, and unto dust thou shalt return.   (Although they probably use more modern language in most places now.)

The next really big occasion in Lent is Palm Sunday, which celebrates the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem on a donkey, being given great acclamation by the crowd who broke palm branches off the trees and waved them - a sign that he was a king.   Palm Sunday comes a week before Easter Sunday.

And the Friday before Easter Sunday is known as Good Friday, in spite of the fact that the day commemorates the day Jesus was crucified.   Now the tradition related to Good Friday is that it's the day on which we have hot cross buns - the cross being of considerable significance.   So it was something of an irritation to me to see hot cross buns in the supermarket yesterday - when Lent has barely started.

Which brings me to the point of all this discussion.  Retailers, it seems to me, are guilty in this current society of being great underminers, the diabolos of traditions.  The selling of hot cross buns on all sorts of days of the year is one example.  The determination of many retailers to push for being able to be open on Good Friday, Easter Sunday and Christmas Day is another example.   For some reason these business people think they're missing out if they're closed for three days of the year.  How do they think shops used to manage in the past when hardly anything was open all weekend, every weekend?  Yet plenty of businesses thrived in those times.

I don't hold much with Santa Claus as a tradition, but it really gets up my nose when the whole idea is used as a tool for retailers: there are Santa Clauses everywhere, which is not only confusing to children, but crazy in general.   Do we need a Santa in every shop?  Some bewildered children must wonder if he goes hopping from one shop to another as they hold their mother's hand and enter one store after another.

Okay, rant over - pretty much.  I don't think there's going to be a change to the way retailers behave until people stop thinking there's actually such a thing as retail therapy.  And that ain't going to be tomorrow.

Blankets

There's a great poem by Barbara Hamby called Ode to American English, in which she does a scatter-shot approach to the marvellous way in which English is expressed in the States.   It's very hard to quote from it because it has no stopping point, but here's a sample:

I miss the mongrel plentitude of American English, its fall-guy,
       rat-terrier, dog-pound neologisms, the bomb of it all,
the rushing River Jordan backwoods mutability of it, the low-rider,
       boom-box cruise of it, from New Joisey to Ha-wah-ya
with its sly dog, malasada-scarfing beach blanket lingo
       to the ubiquitous Valley Girl's like-like stuttering...

You can see the whole poem on Hamby's site.

This post is about blankets, specifically personalized baby blankets like those on the left, but let's also celebrate whatever we can find out of my digital cuttings that relates to the subject. One of the writers I catch up with occasionally is Kim Fabricius, a somewhat anarchistic Christian pastor with a wicked sense of humour (and I mean 'wicked' in its current sense of outstanding, but also in the sense of very cheeky). He wrote a Good Friday sermon in 2008 which was posted on the Faith and Theology site this year.   (Fabricius doesn't seem to have a site of his own; most of his material that I've come across has appeared on F&T)

Fabricius is as hard as Hamby to quote briefly, so here's a decent chunk near the beginning of the sermon (in which our theme 'blanket' briefly appears):

This sermon doesn’t have three points, it’s got three words: Lose your faith! (I warned you I would be sacrilegious.) Yes, lose your faith. Lose your faith in God. For as the French mystic Simone Weil insisted, there is a kind of atheism that is purifying, cleansing us of idols. Lose your faith in the god that the cross exposes as a no-god, a sham god. Lose your faith in the god who is but the product of your projections, fantasies, wishes, and needs, a security blanket or good-luck charm god. Lose your faith in the god who is there to hold your hand, solve your problems, rescue you from your trials and tribulations, the deus ex machina, literally the “machine god”, wheeled out onto the stage in ancient Greek drama, introduced to the plot artificially to resolve its complications and secure a happy ending. Lose your faith in the god who confers upon you a privileged status that is safe and secure. Lose your faith in the god who promises you health, wealth, fulfilment, and success, who pulls rabbits out of hats. Lose your faith in the god with whom your conscience can be at ease with itself. Lose your faith in the god who, in Dennis Potter’s words, is the bandage, not the wound. Lose your faith in the god who always answers when you pray and comes when you call. Lose your faith in the god who is never hidden, absent, dead, entombed. For the “Father who art in heaven” – this week he is to be found in hell – with his Son.

Phew!  Imagine hearing that piece of fire coming at you from a pulpit...!

Here's another radical person: Tamie Fields Harkin, an Episcopalian minister from Alaska.   She presented a list of things to do if your really wanted to attract young people to your church - and they don't include any of the usual bumpf that's regarded as youth ministry.   Her 19th point is:
19.  Make some part of the church building accessible for people to pray in 24/7.  Put some blankets there too, in case someone has nowhere else to go for the night.
Sounds like she was anticipating the Occupy movement, and the way in which some churches are suggesting they open their doors to those who'd be sleeping in tents on very cold nights.  

Okay, I know this post is very loose in terms of how it's using it thematic material, but just go with the flow and enjoy the contrasts.  

Here's an extract from an email one of the Presbyterian ministers wrote shortly after the devastating February earthquake in Christchurch, NZ: 

I walked home from what remained of Knox [his church] yesterday afternoon surrounded by scenes of devastation far worse than on 4 September.  Whilst visiting a parishioner I spoke with one of his neighbours, whose husband was at that time unaccounted for in the Pyne Gould Guinness building in town. I walked for a while with a barefoot young woman whose workplace in the city had collapsed, and who told me of seeing a woman giving birth on the footpath. Later I passed others heading on foot with blankets and little else for Hagley Park, and wondered how they fared when the rain began to fall a couple of hours after that. Dinner was sausages cooked on the outdoor barbeque;  I've drained the leaking hot water cylinder upstairs into several large water containers so can probably manage with that, whatever food there is in the fridge and a bucket toilet for several days. 

There's a sense of just getting on with things, of having to; but the quiet desperation is apparent.  How do you start to deal with the enormity of the problem.  Christchurch is still dealing with it, and has another major earthquake since this date.  

Finally, an example of those church bulletin bloopers that appear in emails every so often:

This evening at 7 PM there will be a hymn singing in the park across from the Church. Bring a blanket and come prepared to sin.