Lent

Lent again.  Already.  Once again the birthday is during Lent.  Oh well.  Should be used to it by now. 
Lent is supposed to be a time of spiritual self-examination.  It is a time when some people give something up in order to take away a distraction or a self-indulgence.  Others add a discipline, something they need to do to improve their spiritual life.  (And sometimes their physical life.)  For Lent this year, I am going to try a couple of things.  I am going to try to make fewer negative comments out here in the real world.  Online, I do a pretty good job of keeping things mostly positive.  I do all right at it at work, but here at home, where I get tired and grumpy, and my only audience is my poor long-suffering husband, I get really negative about life, the universe, and everything. 
I am also going to try to regulate my sleeping habits a bit better.  I might be less grumpy, tired, and negative if I got the proper amount of sleep.  (Ya think?)  Doing so is not easy, as both of us tend to be night owls, and getting to sleep before midnight can be a challenge.  Getting up early is a real challenge for me.  I am not fully conscious until after 8 am.  It just does NOT happen. I may get up, and function on some level, but my brain is NOT fully functional before 8 am.
There are specific traditions observed in our worship services during Lent.  No alleluias.  Not anywhere, not any time.  Somebody in the congregation goofed after the Ash Wednesday service and tried to add the "alleluia, alleluia" to the Thanks Be To God at the end of the service.  The clergy didn't add it, but someone in the congregation was responding a little too much by rote.  The Psalm is sung to a different melodic pattern during Lent.  That started Wednesday evening.  Today, first Sunday in Lent, was the Great Litany, or as we refer to it, twice around the figure 8 around the nave Sunday.  The Litany is sung in procession, and my part was dicey this morning because some notes would NOT come out.  Thankfully, the whole congregation sings those responses, so it was easy to hide the fact that my voice is having a major malfunction.

In general, Lent is supposed to be a reflective, somber season.  Not easy to do while the rest of the world is going crazy with cute bunnies and candy, and other stuff getting ready for Easter.  Holy Week has a lot in common with Passover.  Many believe the Last Supper was a Seder.  The rituals we observe for Maundy Thursday, the celebration of the Last Supper, are very solemn indeed.  The altar is stripped, and any leftover Hosts and wine are taken to an "altar of repose", usually in the small chapel in the Education building.  On Good Friday, we will worship in a church that has no linens on the altar, no light burning in the Sanctuary Lamp, and no flowers.  Only a plain wooden cross is placed there, in front of the high altar usually.  In this spare season, we still gather every Wednesday evening for a dinner, and an Evensong service, and then, for some of us, choir rehearsal. 
Of course, Sundays are feast days, even during Lent, so we have our usual worship services on Sunday mornings, with the differences I mentioned for Lent. 
It is always hard for me to find a discipline for Lent, and to stick to one.  I grew up in a church that did not observe Lent as such, and so I never really got the habit of giving something up.  I hope that I can manage this year to have a Holy Lent, as we are instructed to do when the ashes are placed on our foreheads on Ash Wednesday. 
May this season of reflection be for you whatever you need it to be.  And if you are not a Christian, then may it still be a time of reflection for you as the world prepares to re-awaken from either the cold of winter in this hemisphere, or the energy-draining heat and drought of summer in the Southern Hemisphere. A season of preparation for the season of change.

Liturgies

Liturgy is a noun that refers to the prescribed form of public worship as set down in the Book of Common Prayer, for instance, or any book or order of worship designed by any denomination. 
Liturgy is a way of doing things.  An order, made with conscious design, to get us together and keep us together as we worship. 
I find that many aspects of my life besides church can be bound by liturgies of their own.  Certainly, having a set order to things that need to be done regularly is comforting, and often helpful.  My daily lesson plans were in effect a liturgy for the conduct of the school day.  Things go in a certain order for a specific reason, are done a certain way, with certain words, to keep the lesson consistent, and in part, to comfort the children. 
Liturgies are comforting.  You know what to expect and when it's coming up.  They have the disadvantage of letting your brain coast on occasion, and you really shouldn't be doing that in church, the idea is to focus on worship.  Same with the lessons at school.  If we got too routine, the kids could respond while half asleep, and that isn't doing their minds any favors.  So, for different days and seasons, liturgies change.  Just often enough to keep you on your toes and paying attention.  A response may be different, the order changed just a little, just enough to keep you from getting TOO comfortable.
Daily life is a whole series of little routines that could become liturgy, if we use them as a way to be grateful for the little things we need that are provided for us daily.  If you have children, and/or pets, you know the importance of routine and order, and the strict adherence thereto, in getting anything accomplished, especially in the morning. 
At our house, we have the liturgy of the Cat in the Morning.  She must get up and get under Matthew's feet as he is getting dressed, just to keep his coordination sharp.  She must then see that he gets out the door and off to work on time.   Then she must make sure I am up, and the bed is made, so that she can have her breakfast.  After that, she makes sure I leave for my walk, and then goes to take her morning nap.  Having to work around the cat's liturgy of gratitude for her people and her food gives me a set order of things to accomplish while still half asleep, and serves to get me out of bed, and thinking about the day ahead, and about the nature of life, the universe, and everything.  
When I taught school, daily routines were the glue that held our collective sanity together.  Taking roll, saying the pledge, going over the day's seat work assignments, making sure homework was collected, taking the lunch count, these things got us together and started on our day.  They got us focused on the learning to come. 
Those common experiences, those routines, or liturgies, cemented us together as a community in school, in our homes, and in our places of worship.  There is an old joke I always think of when I muse about liturgy:  How do you find the Episcopalians in a Star Wars movie?  Anytime somebody says "May the Force be with you." they respond "And also with you!" 
Our responses are comforting and familiar.  (Though those of us who do Rite I will say "And with thy spirit.")  The Pledge of Allegiance is comforting to some people because it is something they learned in childhood, something they, and everyone they went to school with knows by heart.  It is common to them, even if they have nothing else in common.  Psalm 23 is something that is very familiar to many Christians and Jews as well.  It has been memorized by many, and is a source of comfort.  It is something those who know it have and cherish in common. These things bind us together and comfort us.
If we look at our daily routines with an eye toward gratitude for all we are fortunate enough to have, they can become liturgies, our lives can become worship even in the smallest details.  If we look at our interactions as a community, whether at work, worship, or school, we can make all those occasions a prayer of gratitude for our shared lives, for the knowledge that we are all in this together, all coming at life from different angles, but all of us here, and not knowing how long, and trying to make the best of it.