The pink one

This Sunday will be the third in Advent and those of a churchy nature (well, some at least) will be lighting the pink one, aka the candle for Gaudete, or Rejoice! Sunday. 

Contrary to (confused) popular opinion, this is not the one for Mary.

Once upon a time I used to think of pink as a colour for small girls' tutus, or sugary nougat, or a useful highlighter pen, but since I went into the Church, I've become aware of the liturgical weight of pink during Advent.

Advent is really purple - purple altar hanging, purple stole, purple service booklets, if you have them. And purple candles on the Advent wreath. Even those of a medium churchmanship will light the first on Advent Sunday, the second a week after, and then we come to this Sunday, which is, in most Advent candle sets at least, pink. 

The confusion arises from a clash of symbolism from two different developments of the Advent themes. A more Catholic tradition would see no flowers in churches during Advent (despite, ironically, Christmas trees going up earlier and earlier). Advent themes are, after all, sombre, being the four themes of heaven, hell, death and judgment. Some clergy attempt to stick to these themes and preach on nothing else during Advent, but with community Carol concerts and suchlike, I would imagine only the hardcore manage it (I must admit I'm already on to fluffy reindeers and how to incorporate them into the Christmas message).

Pink vestments -
puzzlingly, one of the priests appears to be combining then with fairy wings

So the pink candle represents a lightening up of Advent sombreness, a kind of 'keep going, we're almost there - rejoice!' and some clergy even wear pink vestments to boot (I admit I haven't gone this far liturgically, though if someone were to gift me a pink stole, I would not be averse...)

So far, so good. The complication arises in that at the same time as the purple, purple, pink, purple thing, there are also four themes to the lectionary readings developing each Sunday. So:

Sunday 1=the Patriarchs
Sunday 2=the Prophets (NB: this typically features a reading about John the Baptist, but that's just to catch you out...it's not his Sunday yet, it's simply to show that he was in the tradition of the OT prophets).
Sunday 3=John the Baptist
Sunday 4=Mary

And there you have it - the first mention of Mary and everyone does an immediate gender association; Mary - that must mean we light the pink one....? Because, pink for a girl, right? Also, pink vestments are worn by our more Catholic brethren (who venerate Mary) therefore pink=Mary.

You can see it on the faces of Vergers up and down the land - standing over the Advent wreath each week, taper in hand, looking uneasy and trying to work out whether to start at this candle or that, anti-clockwise or clock-wise; is it John the Baptist yet, or Mary? Where exactly are we in the Church calendar and why can't religious symbolism be a little less complex?

So, for all you C of E aficionados, just to see where you are on the pink scale, feel free to take this small season-specific liturgical/ministerial test.

On a scale of 1-10, how Advent-pink are you?

1. Never even heard of Advent (not recommended).
2. Saw an Advent wreath once on Blue Peter (it's a start).
3. Love the Advent wreath idea but our church doesn't go in for it (you've saved yourselves a lot of complicated explaining but also missed out on some nice photo opportunities).
4. We have an Advent wreath but I've no idea what the candles stand for (good job you're reading this).
5. All four of our candles are purple (ha!!! possibly more straightforward, but less fun).
6. We have the pink one but I thought it was for Mary (see point 4).
7. We have a pink candle and the pink+John the Baptist clash has always left me feeling mildly liturgically disturbed (me too, as soon as I realised the pink was not for Mary, which happened a full 3 years into ordained ministry).

The last 3, for clergy only:

8. Pink candle; pink stole. 
9. Pink candle; pink stole; pink chasuble.
10. Pink candle; pink stole; pink chasuble; pink walls throughout the vicarage.

Wherever you are on the Advent-pink scale, Happy Third Sunday in Advent.

Midwinter Christingle

Fingers wet from the spilt juice of oranges, and encrusted with gummie bear sugar, I return from the annual Christingle making morning, thinking about sweetness and sharpness, light and dark and the mixed up sentiments of Christmas. 

The front page of the newspaper did for me this morning; somebody's beautiful daughter and her grandmother - one of those photos you proudly display at home on the mantlepiece, never dreaming it'll be seen by thousands - illustrate the news that 6 people died in a freak pedestrian accident as a Glasgow bin lorry went out of control the week before Christmas.

For Ministers there's always a heightened awareness of the piercing sorrow of Christmas, the one Mary, and all mothers, know - the bringing to birth of both the greatest gift and the greatest potential for personal sadness. There's always that pre Christmas phone call from the Undertaker that is particularly dreaded. I came straight from a funeral visit to lead an enormous Christingle service one year and it was one of the hardest things. 

That's why this afternoon in church, the Christingle light will be brightest when the lights go out. It's in the darkness that the light is seen most fully. Because, like the magi's offering to the child who embodies 'the hopes and fears of all the years', midwinter Christmas is always both dark and bright: 

Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume
Breathes a life of gathering gloom;
Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying,
Sealed in a stone cold tomb.

Glorious now, behold him arise,
King and God and sacrifice.
Heaven sings, Alleluia!
Alleluia! the earth replies.

(from We Three Kings).

Sensing Lent 22: The Indiscriminate Sun

The annual Mothering Sunday Service angst draws on apace. 

Tomorrow morning I'll be involved, tentatively, experientially, with the annual drawing together of the conflicting strands of spirituality, theology, psychology and liturgy which is the Church's attempt to straddle the ancient practice of returning to 'Mother Church' (with the attendant family gathering) and the modern supplanting of God, for mere blood ties - thanking mums 'for all they do for us' (which is, at worst, giving mum one day off the washing up, and at best, a large bunch of flowers with no work all day).

As mother and minister, the 'no work all day' thing isn't going to happen for me. Instead there'll be the slightly frazzled collision of priest and mum. The priestly/motherly 'me' will feel the need to portray God as a mother, the need to acknowledge others' sadness associated with perhaps having lost a mother, or not being a mother, or not being reconciled to or physically present with either one's mother or one's own children. 

And that's before we consider the sorrows sometimes associated with being a mother, like those experienced by Mary the mother of Jesus, referred to in at least one of the lectionary readings tomorrow ('sorrow, like a sword, will pierce your own soul'). Oh, great. Add to all that the generation for whom Mothering Sunday is nothing to do with mums, but all to do with Church, who would want to police the use of language thereabouts; and the spiritual atmosphere will be interesting, to say the least.

And then there's the cultural gap between those brought up in the church (like me) for whom Mothering Sunday wouldn't be complete without those posies handed to you by your children in church, and those who will be setting off early in the car to be with their mothers and wouldn't dream of interrupting the day by a visit inside a church building, especially on the morning the clocks go forward, losing you an hour in bed. I have some sympathy.

The warm sun today reminded me of the verse 'he causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good'. God is quite frustrating like that - absolutely no respecter of persons. So for all those people for whom tomorrow is solely about mums and nothing to do with Christianity, there'll be as much blessing as for those who see the two as intimately connected. Just like those who do want a God-angle, those who don't 'feel the need' will enjoy the day sitting down to eat with family, giving flowers and perfume, celebrating love and soaking up sunshine. And it will all be gift; the Giver hidden. Which is cause for a certain humility. The Church no longer owns Mother's Day.

Lent for Extroverts 3: Holy Highway Maintenance

Very unusually for me I went for a pre-breakfast walk on day 3 of Lent, and Lenten thoughts were stimulated, in extrovert fashion, by seeing a highway maintenance truck refilling the water hydrants on the side of the road.

It's perhaps more an Advent image, but the holy highway of the prophet Isaiah can also be a picture of how we 'make way' for God in our own lives. Lent is nothing if not about this clearing of the highway, which tends to get clogged with all sorts of things that get in the way; the pot holes of omission and the confusion of fading lines of divine communication. I'm still grappling with what highway maintenance means for people like me who are energised by the exterior world of people, places and things. Sooner or later, whether we like it or not, there needs to be some withdrawal from all the stimulation, into something solitary and quiet. 

Personally I can't imagine good highway maintenance, for the ordained at least, without effective spiritual direction. I had a spiritual director once who was a bit short on empathy but hot on pithy comment. I was moaning one time that I had no one to talk to about what God was doing in my life and she suggested I consider Mary, the mother of Jesus. After the momentous appearance of the shepherds to the manger side in Bethlehem, after the strange and mystifying words that have been uttered about her baby, it says in Luke 'but Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart'; not 'and she went home and told everyone she could about it.' This has stuck in my mind ever since. 

Lenten 'highway maintenance' for extroverts may involve not doing something that comes naturally in order to go deeper into God. The irony is that you may need to find someone older and wiser to talk to about not talking to all and sundry about what God is talking to you about. Now there's a Lenten paradox.

Candlemas cats

I was having kittens today. 

To be accurate, I got kittens today. On Candlemas. Candlemas cats. Of course they're still very small at the moment. We've been wanting to look after some very small helpless little things for some time. Since we went on holiday without our (now very grown up) eldest son and stayed with some friends who had a cat. It may have been the combination of being exposed to a cat whilst missing a grown up child. The onset of 'empty nest syndrome' can do strange things to you.

Candlemas would appear to be an ancient custom dating back to the 5th Century Church, whereby candles were blessed at the midway point between Christmas and Easter - a kind of church half term celebration that winter is half way through. A last look back at Christmas before we look towards Lent. The reading is from Luke 2:22-40 where Mary and Joseph bring their first born son and present him in the Temple according to Jewish custom, along with a sacrifice of two pigeons - a poor person's offering.

Of course every parent thinks their child is a little bit more special than the rest, but Mary and Joseph must have had an inkling that in their case it could be really true. Simeon and Anna, the two elderly named believers they met in the Temple that day knew it to be true. They were watching and waiting for the Lord's Messiah. Whilst others looked for a powerful deliverer they were attuned to the still small voice. They both recognised it was this baby who would grow up to 'cause the rising and falling of many in Israel' and a sword would pierce Mary's heart because of his calling.

Because you can't hold onto them for ever. It is always hard to let go, let them grow up. Children don't stay children for ever. And kittens don't stay kittens for ever.

25. Mary - for Mother's Day

Holy ground today. Mary the mother of Jesus, and on Mothering Sunday. There will not be another woman in either the Old or New Testament who has inspired so much devotion, controversy and bitter disagreement amongst believers. It must be something to do with her proximity to God.

And the story is familiar, unlike many we have covered already. Not many people outside (and to an extent, inside) the church have heard of Jael, for instance, or of Phoebe, a splendid New Testament woman (number 40 in our Lent list), but everyone has some handle on the mother of God.

In the light of all this, I feel an imaginative rather than a doctrinal stance might be the best approach, along with a sad acknowledgement that Christians down the ages have, literally, come to blows over how to interpret such a crucial, devout and obedient servant of the Most High.

So, Mary, mother of Christ: 

Surprise; horror; obedience; trust; meditation; delight; childbirth; love; marriage; fear; escape; refugee; housewife; mother; worry; ordinary; extraordinary; prayer; wonder; worry; rejection; fear; pleading; terror; calamity; piercing sorrow; silence; love; trust; prayer; surprise; joy; trust; trust; trust.

24. Elizabeth - surprise in middle age

I always think of Elizabeth as old, but age is a relative term so although she had given up hope of having children, she may only have been in her forties (by first century Palestine standards, 'old'). She's had to find other outlets for all those maternal longings.

Until a strange day when husband Zechariah returns from Temple duties unable to speak.

Whether this state of affairs was greeted with horror or glee by his wife, we shall never know, but clearly something momentous has happened (BIG angel; son to be born. Must call him John, even though no one in the family has ever been called that before).

Elizabeth receives her unlikely pregnancy with joy not dissimilar to cousin Mary's, who soon makes a visit. How women love to swap pregnancy tales. Yet these two women are to give birth to the entire cosmic salvation plan of God Almighty, no less.

Elizabeth's profound grasp of the new thing that's afoot is caught in her amazing rhetorical question: 'But why am I so favoured, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?' (Luke 1: 43). 

How does she suddenly equate the God of Israel with this tiny baby inside Mary's womb? It would take most other people an age to grasp; still thousands don't. But Elizabeth knows with a woman's, instinctive, intuitive, embodied, saving knowledge. 

23. Anna - age no barrier

What do we know of Anna, the first of our fabulous females of the New Testament? 

She was a prophetess and lived in the Temple; she 'worshipped night and day, fasting and praying' (Luke 2: 36-8). A role model for Lent then.

The translation of her marital history is unclear - she had either been married for only seven years and was now an 84 year old widow, or was married for seven years and had now been a widow for a further 84 (which would make her over 100...?) Either way, she was more or less now married to God Almighty.

With constant access to the divine, she has no problem recognising Messiah in the baby, Jesus, as his parents bring him to be presented in the Temple, according to Jewish custom.: 'She gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem' (Luke 2: 38).

No doubt to everyone else bustling around the Temple courts that day, pigeons squawking, clink of money changing hands, Mary's was just another baby from a poor-ish home, being brought for Jewish dedication, along with all the hopes and fears new parents always carry.

But not to Anna and her male counterpart, Simeon. They were alive to the divine moment, proving that old age is no bar to spiritual discernment and fervent proclamation. In a youth obsessed society, which is simultaneously ageing more than ever before, we could do with more Annas.

Missing out on Mary

As a Protestant born and bred, I feel I have missed out on Mary. The Catholics have the BVM (blessed virgin Mary) all sorted - but where does that leave my tradition? That's why I'm glad for the Anglican liturgical reminder of Mary, observed today, the fourth Sunday of Advent (okay, so we actually just had our Carol Service but I managed to get the Collect about Mary in at the end.) When Christians get divided, theologically, historically and politically over some major issue, usually one side claim monopoly of ownership while the other side happilly throw the baby out with the proverbial bathwater. So I was heartened when the novelist Catherine Fox wrote an article about her (Protestant) thoughts on the mother of God in a National newspaper a couple of years ago, in an article wittily entitled 'The Virgin Mary can test everyone's assumptions' (pun on the Feast of the Assumption celebrated by Catholics in August.) In it she described how she didn't really consider Mary seriously until she herself became a mother and realised that for all her fierce maternal love, like Mary, she couldn't protect her child for ever. The Pieta, a sculpture of Mary holding the body of her crucified son in her arms, is one artist's depiction of Simeon's prophecy to Mary in Luke's gospel, that 'sorrow, like a sword, will pierce your soul also.' I love the words to a WC Smith hymn, which say 'Then the Spirit of the highest/to a virgin meek came down/and he burdened her with blessing/and he pained her with renown.' This fourth Sunday in Advent I look to Mary for a fresh reminder that bearing Christ in the world today might be a costly undertaking, but one which, like Mary, I want to say yes to.