Image with words

A beautiful day.
Though cloudy.
A bit windy.
Slightly chilly.
Though improving
tomorrow, only
to slide back
to the 50s.
I hope that we don't slide back to the 50s for too long. Can it already be Tuesday? Can tomorrow be Wednesday?
I feel bad about the bland church, and I've been considering ways to make its blandness work for it (and how helpful it would be if in CIFs churches would be honest and say "we're a rich white church and our best days are behind us. We enjoy paying lip service to concepts of growth and fidelity to the gospel, but really we just like to hear a sermon that doesn't challenge us so we can go home and watch TV." Or "we're thoroughly dull and afraid of our own bodies. The sound of our voice in a crowded room, when unaided by alcohol, spooks us." etc): one way would be accepting worship time as a time for drama in a low key Beckettian sort of way. Or farce in a high toned Beckettian sort of way.
It's difficult saying goodbye to Lent. Lent with its red carpets and parades. Lent with its lentils, each pea a little Lent, so that eventually you've gone from a bowl full to a mouth full to a stomach full of Lent. Lent barreling down the bowels to the Jakes. Odd isn't it? For Christmas retailers go on a 4 month odyssey of banging the drum; the assertion is made that consumer goods are a great substitution for love and forgiveness. For Christmas we've got Santa. Then for Easter we've got the Easter Bunny and people break out their best attire. The Easter parade, The Easter bonnet (with all the thrills upon it). But what does Lent have? Valentine's and Mardi Gras are carefully scheduled before it and thus take most of its glory. Lent is left to wander about in rags as it were, starved, a slow fast, with people moaning about giving something up (though the taste of this seems to be lost now a days). Show some enthusiasm. I hope that in these waning days of Lent that we all can savor the denial of it.