 St Alban’s Episcopal Church Bolivar, Missouri Shrove Tuesday, Mardi Gras March 1, 2022 Ash Wednesday March 2, 2022  Mardi Gras/Fat Tuesday The words of course mean, “Fat Tuesday” which refers to the historical practice of using up whatever milk, butter, sugar and fat was left at the end of a long winter in a final celebration before the Lenten fast. This is why so many churches have pancake dinners on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, (even though in most cases now, hardly anyone is “using up” anything, nor is the Lenten fasting as serious a spiritual practice as it once was.) Mardi Gras celebrations across the world are grand parties, parades, complete with elaborate masking and other acts of make-believe. You can do ridiculous things when no one knows who you are. And that is part of human nature too. Our usual parties at St. Alban’s before COVID included both of these elements. Pancakes, costumes, masks, and games – with children especially pretending to be what they aren’t. It’s fun – and it is serious, too. We do spend so much of our energy pretending, don’t we? Mardi Gras just makes that clear – visible. Shrove Tuesday Lent is a time of un-masking. And that leads us to the day’s other name, Shrove Tuesday. The old English word, “shrove” is the part tense of the verb, “shrive.” To be “shriven” is to have obtained peace through confessing one’s sins and hearing the words of God’s forgiveness. At Grace-St Luke’s Episcopal Church in Memphis some 20+ years ago it was the best part of the whole Mardi Gras celebration. It sounds silly to many now, but it wasn’t. The dinner was always great, the hilarity, the fun was Memphis-wild, but then people lined up in the church, outside the small chapel, to be able to tell the truth about who they really were behind those masks – literal or metaphorical – and what they had done or failed to do. Mother Virginia Brown was an extraordinary confessor, who made truth-telling simply joyous. People left feeling new, re-newed, fresh, ready to make a clean beginning on Ash Wednesday. Sometimes people say that confession is one of the Episcopal Church’s best-kept secrets. It is. But it doesn’t need to be.  Mardi Gras at home We do hope to be able to have a normal celebration by next year, but for this Tuesday, at least, you might try to do something small, fun, and yet meaningful with your own family. Kids love dress up – and they love it when their parents dress up, too. Why not gather up some silly combinations of clothing and dress up for dinner – pretend to be anybody you like. Use funny accents, pretend to be king – or actress, or dump truck, or dinosaur. Pancakes are easy and kids can help – or simply buy donuts and eat them as an extra treat. If you still have palms from last year – burn them. At church those palms that usually make such a great fire became the ashes we will use tomorrow. But you can do it too, – small, symbolic. And you can admit your own failings to children as the evening closes. And help them to acknowledge their small failures as well. Learning to tell the simple truth is an excellent spiritual practice for us all. It is especially good when truth is embraced by the even truer truth: nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus Our Lord – nothing. Help them know that, especially. Ash Wednesday We will have Ash Wednesday services at noon and at 5:30pm But if your children aren’t able to come to the Ash Wednesday service tomorrow, you can also mark their foreheads yourself with the ashes you have made or come and take some home from church, and let them trace the sign of the cross on yours. Cathy+ will be there most of the day, so just stop by and she’ll be glad to give you some to use at home if you want to do that. The words are easy – and children can ponder their meaning as well as adults can.   |
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