I’ve been asked a couple of times about what we’ve done on Shrove Tuesday. We have a pancake party for people of all ages at which we do some serious shriving! We decided to make a big deal out of Lent because it makes Easter much more special.
Burying the Alleluia
In the past we attended a big nonconformist church and each week we sang “He is Risen”. This happened every week throughout the year. It would drive Ruth to distraction because there was no sense of rhythm or season. I’d regularly hear “but it is lent” or “it is Christmas” on the way home from church. The word “alleluia” can become punctuation rather than an exclamation and removing it from our vocabulary during lent makes it much more meaningful when we get to Easter Morning.
Someone once told me of an ancient tradition of “burying the alleluia” like a body out in the graveyard. “Isn’t that a quaint ancient thing they used to do?” A quirk of history. Well it got my imagination going. So I bought this box from The Range. A quick trip to Google images and whilst waiting for pancakes we did some colouring. And singing! We sang all of the alleluia songs we could think of. We got it all out of our system. We danced and sang and ate pancakes, and coloured, and laughed and joked and prayed and had more pancakes and then headed out into the grounds.
All of our “alleluias” were placed into the £2 box from the range. Then we dug a hole and buried them. “We’re not going to be saying alleluia until Easter”.
Ash
“Where do you get ash from for Ash Wednesday?”
The fridge.
And everyone else’s fridge. “Last year I gave everyone a palm cross on Palm Sunday. You probably put it on the fridge or the dashboard of the car. Please can you bring it to church next Sunday ready for Ash Wednesday?”
When I was asked where I got ash from I made this video to illustrate how easy it is to turn things into ash. A friend said “and next year you should do that with the congregation and pancakes”.
Lo and behold. We burn things in a wok.
