It’s the Ember Wednesday of Pentecost today.
Happily, a quiet day at work (if you’re my employer, hello?), which is why I’ve had the time to finish my assigned work and try twice, unsuccessfully, to scan the pages for the Pentecost Octave from my 1949 St Andrew Daily Missal, which I keep at my desk. Oh, and to read up on the Ember Days. Wouldn’t you agree that’s much preferable to, say, watching a viral video on an eagle stealing a bunny from a baby fox again and again? (It’s an amazing video, that said; rightly suited for this day, on which we give thanks to God for creation!)
Quite frankly, I can’t claim to be an expert on them or anything, but that’s alright by me. I suppose the scourge of our age might be the hordes of people who, after looking something up on Google, are all too quick to speak as experts. But perhaps I’ll put some links and thoughts down, and come back to them another day.
Last Friday, I was walking down the street (most likely from the cathedral), thinking about Pentecost and the Ascension. My thoughts drifted everywhere, as usual, and I happened to think about people who don’t get to go to mass–whether’s it’s weekday mass, or on feast days. I thought also of Maria Augusta Trapp’s Around the Year with the Trapp Family, which is about family life and the liturgical year, and I started thinking, What does it take to live on the liturgical calendar? The thought seized upon me–feasts happen without you! Feasts happen even without mass being celebrated! If a tree falls in a forest–if a feast-day is on the calendar–the answer is yes.
Living in the world as we do, we unthinkingly live by secular calendars, whether it’s the Ministry of Manpower’s public-holiday calendar, the school year, or the paycheck cycle. Or the Julian calendar. (Hahahahaha /nerd joke) But the point is, the natural calendar that the Ember Days remember is part of the underlying rhythm of the dance into which God has invited those He created in His own image, in a way that the solar or lunar calendars are not. So is the liturgical calendar. The realisation unmoors you from “the real world”, but I reckon, only to induce you into a more real world, in the way that God is all that is real. Especially these days (and in this place) where seasons are roughly imaginary…
So these Ember Days: fasting, penance, thanksgiving… and reality.
On Sunday, I met one of the little toddlers at the local old-rite mass. I squatted down to say hello, and he came running over. But he’s a shy one, and when I asked, “Where’s your mama?” he decided to answer by running right back to her. (Amusingly, when a friend came out of church, she stared at me crouching on the floor and asked, what on earth are you up to?) I had a thought about what I might use to bribe him win his affection next time, and somehow, while looking up ideas over breakfast, I found this website: Like Mother Like Daughter, a blog contributed to by Leila Marie Lawler (of The Little Oratory) and her daughters.
Its tagline is “… because it’s important to maintain the collective memory.” So it is! The blog is full of beautiful prose and photos and, oh, the answers to questions that one day you might have needed the answer five minutes ago, such as how to get children to do the dishes and talk, and some cute homemade (not intimidatingly amazing) quilts… you know, stuff I like reading. Things about laundry and house-cleaning. How else are you supposed to learn this stuff?! (Well, speaking as someone who left home early.)
Maybe I’m feeling domestic, on account of the house-organising and other stuff, like watching A Quiet Place and encountering rousing success with homemade mayonnaise (it’s so easy you won’t believe it). But I enjoyed this about canning and Embertides.
the lexical form 