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Permalink: http://www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk/709
Fulcrum Subject: Pastoral Other articles by Jody Stowell are available from this site Discuss this Article on the Fulcrum Forum See the 5 comments on this article Rejoicing in the Desert: or Rose SundayBy Jody Stowell
KENYAN DESERT ROSE
Fast and Feast, Life in the Midst of DeathI wonder how your Lenten fast is going? However you are experiencing Lent this year, we are coming to the middle of the Lenten season and are invited to take a pause in our fast this Sunday, with observance of the mid-fast Sunday: Laerete Sunday or Rose Sunday. Coming from an Evangelical tradition, I have not found myself in churches where the tradition has lent itself to acknowledging the mid-fast practices of the Church calendar. However, I have always thought that part of ‘renewing the Evangelical centre’ is to notice where we might learn from other traditions of Christian spirituality, and Rose Sunday has a rather rich beauty to it which I would love to see enjoyed more widely. The mid-fast practices which are seen in the more Catholic end of the Anglican spectrum are found in both Advent (with Gaudete Sunday) and Lent (Laerete or Rose Sunday). In both these seasons, the mid-fast practice is the Sunday which lies in the middle of the season (the 3rd Sunday of Advent or the 4th Sunday of Lent) and is there to lighten the restrictions of the fast. In some churches this has meant that flowers and song return to the church for that Sunday. But the practice is much deeper and richer than the symbols that surround it. Laerete (and Gaudete) means to ‘Rejoice!’. In a period of fast, it is a way of reminding the spirit that, even in the fast, the feast is to come. Even in the Desert, the rains are coming. Even in Death, there will be Resurrection! The name ‘Rose Sunday’ comes from the practice of wearing pink vestments that day (the same thing happens on Gaudete Sunday, and the Advent candle wreath often holds three purple candles and one pink candle to symbolise this Sunday). However, it made me think of the vital pink of the Desert Rose: a rose that springs up despite the lack of nutrients in its immediate vicinity; a rose that announces the tenacity of life, despite being surrounded by barren land. If we explore this image, we can find some rich images which can nourish our own faith and spirituality, regardless of whether we find ourselves in the Desert or in a fertile and pleasant land. Have you given up, taken up or opted out?The Church calendar can be felt like a curse or a blessing. We might find that, in our lives, we are in the midst of the Desert, but the Church calendar says we should be feasting, instead of fasting. Or it may be that our lives are dutifully obeying the ebb and flow of the Christian story throughout the year, or that the dissonance between the two is so painful that opting out is our only choice. Observing the mid-fast practice offers a way along the cracked path that we might find ourselves walking. So that there is recognition that whatever ‘season’ we find ourselves in, we are reminded that there is a time for everything. Our own practice throughout Lent can help us to keep in touch with the truth that our own life experience is not the only reality that needs to inform us. In my own Lenten practice I have found that when my life is following an even path, to remind myself of sacrifice and Desert, even if only in a small way, is to recall myself to the truth that my life and my experience are not the centre of reality, as important as they are. The same is true of the alternative practice of ‘taking up’ something which we consider a positive addition to our lives of faith: to proclaim in our practice that there can be abundance even if our life is experiencing a wilderness moment. But even if our own Lenten practice is absent because the gap between life and Church calendar is simply too wide, or whether our life mirrors the season perfectly, Rose Sunday teaches us that in the midst of the Desert, then we are still called to ‘Rejoice!’. And Rose Sunday teaches us that when we are forced into the Desert by the Church calendar, even though we do not feel like it, that Easter contains a Cross as well as a Resurrection! All these are elements that must be owned and inhabited in our Christian journey, and perhaps in our Lenten journey especially. There is Incarnation and all the messiness of life that goes with it. There are moments of joy where we know the love of God more deeply and hear the words ‘this is my child, who makes me very glad’. There are moments when, against those telling us otherwise, we must set our face towards actions that may look set to fail. Rose Sunday teaches that, despite appearances, there is beauty in a barren land. Rose Sunday tells us that there must be a Cross. Rose Sunday tells us that there must be a Death. And Rose Sunday proclaims that there will be a Resurrection.
May your Lent be blessed and your Easter glorious!
Discuss this Article on the Fulcrum Forum Forum Posts About This Article:Posted by: Bowman Thursday 5 April 2012 - 07:45am O Lord and Master of my life! Take from me the spirit of sloth, faint-heartedness, lust of power, and idle talk. But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to Thy servant. Yea, O Lord and King! Grant me to see my own errors and not to judge my brother; For Thou art blessed unto ages of ages. Amen --Traditionally attributed to St Ephraim of Syria. This is the recension from Old Church Slavonic. Final thoughts on Lent and this prayer here. Posted by: Bowman Thursday 22 March 2012 - 09:07am The night may be dark and long, but all along the way a mysterious and radiant dawn seems to shine on the horizon. “Do not deprive us of our expectation, O Lover of man!” - Alexander Schmemann Jody Stowell's image of "Rejoicing in the Desert" recalls the "bright sadness" that readers of the Orthodox scholar Alexander Schmemann associate with the Great Fast. By this phrase, Schmemann--and, I believe, Jody-- meant the state of a heart whose fasting and prayer has so quieted the mind's chatter, that the undistracted spirit can be alert to things as they truly are. "Bright sadness" or "rejoicing in the desert" is both to mourn what has fallen and to hope for what is promised. Anyone who has, be it only once, taken part in that night which is “brighter than the day,” who has tasted of that unique joy, knows it. On Easter we celebrate Christ’s Resurrection as something that happened and still happens to us. For each one of us received the gift of that new life and the power to accept it and live by it. . . Is it not our daily experience, however, that this faith is very seldom ours, that all the time we lose and betray the “new life” which we received as a gift, and that in fact we live as if Christ did not rise from the dead, as if that unique event had no meaning whatsoever for us? We simply forget all this — so busy are we, so immersed in our daily preoccupations — and because we forget, we fail. And through this forgetfulness, failure, and sin, our life becomes “old” again — petty, dark, and ultimately meaningless — a meaningless journey toward a meaningless end... We may from time to time acknowledge and confess our various "sins," yet we cease to refer our life to that new life which Christ revealed and gave to us. Indeed, we live as if He never came. This is the only real sin, the sin of all sins, the bottomless sadness and tragedy of our nominal Christianity. Now, may a thousand Lenten study groups blossom, as that is our custom. And may all Lenten retreats be occasions for the silent reflection that stills anxiety. But often a return to the heart of Easter requires a more personal journey through penitence and hope. Ordinary confession, fasting, psalms, and almsgiving may do much to lighten the load. As with any desert travel, a caravan of companions can be very helpful, and midweek eucharists are oases along the way. We must prepare. What would Pascha [Easter] be without the white quiet of the Holy and Blessed Sabbath? The solemn darkness of Good Friday without the long Lenten preparation? Yet is not the sadness of Lent made into a "bright sadness" by the light which comes to it from the Pascha it prepares? If today the liturgy of the Church has ceased to be for so many people the deepest need and joy of their life, it is, above all, because they have forgotten,or maybe have never known, the essential liturgical law of preparation and fulfillment. They experience no fulfillment because they ignore preparation, and they ignore preparation because they desire no fulfillment. Then indeed liturgy appears as an irrelevant survival of archaic forms, to be enlivened by some "concert" or by artificial and tasteless "solemnity." The rejoicing of that desert journey is the mood, not of an hour, nor of a weekend, but of the long season that it takes to cross the wide expanse. While the "bright sadness" of this journey lasts, even the savor of passing time is different. Little by little we begin to understand, or rather to feel, that this sadness is indeed "bright," that a mysterious transformation is about to take place in us. It is as if we were reaching a place to which the noises and the fuss of life, of the street, of all that which usually fills our days and even nights, have no access--a place where they have no power. All that which seemed so tremendously important to us as to fill our mind, that state of anxiety which has virtually become our second nature, disappear somewhere and we begin to feel free, light and happy. It is not the noisy and superficial happiness which comes and goes twenty times a day and is so fragile and fugitive; it is a deep happiness which comes not from a single and particular reason but from our soul having, in the words of Dostoevsky, touched "another world." Posted by: Bowman Friday 16 March 2012 - 05:29am 1 Corinthians 9:25. Posted by: User 1198 Thursday 15 March 2012 - 10:41am Thank you. To someone who's wandered in the desert quite a bit recently, this piece was really refreshing, free from rancour, acknowledging the good in others, reminding me of the reality of which the Church's year is a reflection and of the joy that lies before us. I'm encouraged to press on! 
Posted by: Jody
Thursday 15 March 2012 - 07:58am
Dear Friends We have just published my Lenten reflection 'Rejoicing in the Desert: or Rose Sunday'. please use this thread for discussion. blessings, Jody |
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