Over the years I’ve done various different things for the season of Lent (see here). This year I haven’t really got anything planned beyond a simple Bible reading plan and sending off for the (free) MDG praying cards from The Social Justice Commission of the Anglican Church. With all the changes coming up in the next month or so, keeping it simple is preferable.

• Caritas Lenten reflection programme 2008 | Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand - Catholic series
• Assembly of Confessing Congregations – Following Jesus - Discipleship in the Gospel of Mark. Link via Uniting Church (South Australia) - UC E-News - January 16, 2008. Related link Pancake Day - What is UnitingCare Pancake Day?
• UCA VicTas - Lenten Resource 2006 - Description of using “a series of Retablos styled boxes that contain images, objects and stories to allow the community to reflect, and remember Christ life and teachings as we move towards Easter.”
• e~mergent kiwi: Lenten 7-pack a spiritual resource for your Lent
• Church Mission Society (CMS) | Lent resources | Mission Shaped Intro - Free course which could fit with a Lenten series - link via jonnybaker: mission shaped intro. See also
  • Church Mission Society (CMS) | Get involved | For churches | More church resources | Lent Resources
  • Church Mission Society (CMS) | Lent resources | 40
  • jonnybaker: lent

Just Church is a free programme for use by churches, Christian groups and ecumenical bodies. It’s designed to help you embed a concern for poverty and social justice issues in the life of your community.

It looks like it’s well supported by various church and para-church organisations. The course material can be downloaded free, though printed copies are available for a small fee (and there’s a DVD you can buy with additional material, such as video, to supplement the base course materials).

There’s also a (free) package for doing a Lenten series using the materials. Definitely worth checking out for a look.

The antipodean Lent starts tomorrow with Ash Wednesday, where the nights, and not the days, continue to lengthen, and we move into autumn and towards winter. Not that you can tell at the moment, with all the heat and humidity.

In the past I’ve tended to give things up for Lent (coffee, I think) to serve as a reminder to myself to be more reflective as I approach Easter. In the past couple of years I’ve tried a different tack, to add something into Lent rather than taking something away. Recently, this has been to commit to a daily series of reflections specific to Lent. One year it was a book by Tom Wright, last year it was Faith Odyssey (see Greenflame: Star Lent). Sometimes not filling the gap left by giving something up, leads to it being unconsciously being filled by something else - like the year I found I had upped my cola intake without noticing, while giving up coffee for Lent.

So, yesterday I walked down to my local Christian bookshop to see what things they had that might be good to use this season. However, they had nothing (it was all arriving sometime soon, they said), and so today I tripped across town to another bookshop who had a selection of Lenten and Easter books on display and picked up a couple. I have no idea what they’ll be like, so it’ll be an interesting journey, I hope. the first is Voices from the Desert - A spirituality for our times by Leslie Griffiths (SCM Canterbury Press), while the second is Mirror of the Soul , a series of 40 reflections from the Psalms.

And speaking of filling things up, with today being Shrove Tuesday, we had pancakes tonight, cooked in the new frying pan I bought today. A bit of an experiment while I got the hand of the pan’s thermodynamics, and definitely no tossing of pancakes until I’m used to the pan’s weight. Pancakes turned out okay, and were eaten simply with lemon and sugar.

By next year, maybe I’ll have had some more thoughts on writing a Lenten series oriented around comic books - Lent by Lantern Light?

Related links:

• Maggi Dawn’s posts over the past couple of days - maggi dawn: Giving things up for Lent and maggi dawn: Fat Tuesday.
• Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand // Resources for Ministers: Special Services
• e~mergent kiwi: Lenten resource: together or separate

Pancakes were a success yesterday - though one of the visiting children suggested we should change churches if we had to give something up during Lent. In actuality, it’s more Kim and I who recognize the church seasons rather than where we attend where they aren’t really part of the culture.

And the blog should have seasonal purple on it now - try refreshing the browser a few times if it doesn’t appear when you get here initially.

Pancakes tonight with the kids and their friends too.

A series of modules looking at John’s Gospel and how one might be “at home” with God. The book is aimed primarily as an evangelical tool to connect with people in the workplace but we’re adapting the material to work with our more devotional group. The things about it that struck me positively included:

• It is presented in an engaging fashion - mixing text, images, activities.
• It treats the people using it as intelligent persons.
• It shows its “exegetical underwear” (Thanks to Steve for the metaphor)
• It had a sample chapter I could download to have a look at. (http://www.agape.org.uk/workplace/downloads/soj.pdf)
• David Wenham (NT Scholar) consulted on it and I loved his little book The Book of Signs : John’s Gospel : Good News for Today
• Inside the cover it says “Multiple copies of this document may be made for group use.”
• It respects the literary devices and imagery in the text.

We took a stab at it for the first time last night and it seemed to go well. I don’t know what the other Agapé stuff is like but this book seems like a good resource for getting into John’s gospel.

If Lent is linked with “lengthen”, as in days heading into spring, should the Antipodean equivalent be called “Short”, as we lose the sun a little more each day. Looking for some Aus/NZ Lenten poetry that captures this.

Jesuits in South America saw the hammer and nails of the crucifixion in the flower, St. Francis is said to have seen visions of the passion flower vine entwined around the cross, and early Spanish missionaries recorded accounts of seeing the flowers during church holiday seasons, especially during the Lent and Easter holidays.

Thinking about symbols for Antipodean Lent & Easter the passionfruit might be one that has a southern hemisphere “taste”. Passion Week might be “Passionfruit Week” with Easter eggs replaced with the new fruit of the vine.