VOL. 133 | NO. 45 | Friday, March 2, 2018
Memphasis
Dan Conaway
Lent Is Complicated
Dan Conaway
REPENTANCE. FORGIVENESS. AND WAFFLES. Lent is complicated.
People: Have mercy on us, Lord.
Celebrant: We confess to you, Lord, all our past unfaithfulness: the pride, hypocrisy, and impatience of our lives.
For those of us who observe it, we’re supposed to use these 40 days as a reflective time of penitence … to wander in the wilderness if you will contemplating our mortality, our many faults, transgressions and weaknesses … and to do that absent Scotch or chocolate or other self-imposed sacrifices … and to feel guilty should we not do all of that. In other words, we’re supposed to do things that will make us officially miserable more than any other time of the year.
Or not.
You see, Lent is also the time of the Calvary Episcopal Church Waffle Shop. Boston cream pie with enough booze in there that they ought to stick a little umbrella in the whipped cream and call it a specialty drink. Wonderfully eggy and oily mayonnaise and tartar sauce, chicken hash and corn sticks, shrimp mousse and chicken salad, tomato aspic and chicken noodle soup, spaghetti and rye bread, corned beef and cabbage. And, of course, sausage and signature waffles – pried by campaign-seasoned veterans from a battery of vintage irons.
People: We confess to you, Lord.
Celebrant: Our self-indulgent appetites and ways, and our exploitation of other people,
People: We confess to you, Lord.
Celebrant: Our intemperate love of worldly goods and comforts, and our dishonesty in daily life and work.
Those are words from the Litany of Penitence we recited on Ash Wednesday as Lent began – words that ring so true right now.
Celebrant: Accept our repentance, Lord, for the wrongs we have done: for our blindness to human need and suffering, and our indifference to injustice and cruelty,
People: Accept our repentance, Lord.
Celebrant: For all false judgments, for uncharitable thoughts toward our neighbors, and for our prejudice and contempt toward those who differ from us,
People: Accept our repentance, Lord.
Celebrant: For our waste and pollution of your creation, and our lack of concern for those who come after us.
You see, sitting elbow-to-elbow in the Calvary basement breaking waffles with the city, I think the responsibility in those words is shared at table, and by taking it, hope is shared as well in the words that follow:
People: Accept our repentance, Lord.
Celebrant: Restore us, good Lord, and let your anger depart from us:
People: Favorably hear us, for your mercy is great.
We’re a mess. But we’re not alone. I’m pretty sure that the famed preachers from across our city and land that mount the pulpit for the Calvary Lenten Speakers Series up in the church will be reassuring us of that very thing.
As to, “From dust you came, and to dust you shall return,” perhaps we should do as the Rev. Amy George suggested from our pulpit on Ash Wednesday. Substitute, “From love you came, and to love you shall return.”
I’m a Memphian, and The Waffle Shop is open.
Dan Conaway, a communication strategist and author of “I’m a Memphian,” can be reached at dan@wakesomebodyup.com.