Shrove Tuesday

The ingredients for some luxury pancakes at last year's Shrove Tuesday parish event - the real lemons are out of camera shot - honestly!

It's Shrove Tuesday - 'Pancake Day' as it's become known in our ever more dumbed-down culture - personally, I think the rot set in when the telephone directory became the 'phone book' and it's now reached the stage where we are being told people can't understand the meaning of 'drowsiness,' [here] a triumph for the British education system - or should I simplify that and just say 'schools?'
Yet it's still a day when even the diet-conscious  make pancakes, and we should be grateful for the teaching opportunity this survival gives us but, sadly, even those in the 'catholic' tradition (there are a few of us left within Anglicanism - for a couple more Lenten seasons anyway) don't rush to join the queue to be 'shriven.'
Still, it's not all doom and gloom and inevitable decline; as we know, there are some very welcome signs of renewal around, and evidence of a growing desire to see a 're-enchantment' of Christian life and culture.

And after the pancakes, tomorrow we begin the penance of Lent with ashes, either sprinkled on our heads (I understand that was the custom when the Latin rite clergy were tonsured) or, inscribed as a cross on our foreheads.
There's a superb article [here] by Fr George Rutler - "Why we need Lent."  (Thanks to the NLM)
Required reading for all of us as the Church's springtime begins.

The day is come, the accepted day,

When grace, like nature, flowers anew;

Trained by thy hand the surer way

Rejoice we in our spring-time too.