Tag: Lent

If the Church Were Christian

‘The scriptures say thus and so, but I say…’

This quote has been attributed to several other people.

One of the Bible Guys at my church, a group that I haven’t attended much since the end of the COVID pandemic, posted this in late January. “These sentences are the chapter titles from Philip Gulley’s book, ‘If the church were Christian.’

Jesus would be a model for living rather than an object of worship.   Affirming our potential would be more important than condemning our brokenness.  Reconciliation would be valued over judgment.  Gracious behavior would be more important than right belief.  Inviting questions would be more valued than supplying answers.  Encouraging personal exploration would be more important than communal uniformity.  Meeting needs would be more important than maintaining institutions.  Peace would be more immortal than power.  We would care more about love than about sex.  This life would be more important than the afterlife.

As I shared a decade ago, “Every time Jesus mentioned the equivalent of a church tradition, the Torah, he qualified it with something like this: ‘The scriptures say thus and so, but I say…'”

In response, someone wrote this concerning Lent-

The Call to Fasting

Fast from bitterness – feast on forgiveness.

Fast from self-concern – feast on compassion for others.

Fast from personal anxiety – feast on eternal truth.

Fast from anger – feast on patience.

Fast from words that destroy – feast on words that build.

Fast from discontent – feast on gratitude.

Fast from discouragement – feast on hope.

Fretting

I must admit that not yielding to anger and discouragement is particularly difficult for me.  For instance, I fret most about how Christianity has been co-opted. Last year, I wrote:  “Christian nationalism makes an idol of the nation.”

So I am somewhat comforted by this December 2025 piece from NPR, “Since January [2025], religious leaders from local pastors to Pope Leo have rallied against the [regime’s] detention and deportation of thousands of immigrants. Clergy are filing lawsuits, accompanying migrants to court hearings, and leading protests at ICE facilities across the country. Altogether, this activity adds up to one of the largest surges of faith-based organizing in recent history, and it’s growing.” Amen!

Today, Ash Wednesday, is the first day of Lent. Here’s the origin of the word Lent. 

The origin of the word Lent

Christian and pagan

Gabriel in Leonardo's Annunciation
Gabriel in Leonardo’s Annunciation

A very erudite buddy of mine shared this with our fellow Bible Guys recently. He’s allowed me to share it with you.

Regarding the origin of the word Lent, the name for the Christian fast is a shortening of lenten.

In Chaucer’s day, it was a word for the springtime that had also been extended to refer to the Christian observance coinciding with the season.
Lenten itself began as good Anglo-Saxon lengten, a compound word, the first element derived from Indo-European *dlongʰós=long, and the second, ten, from Indo-European *deyn = day.

Exegesis re terms for Lent in other languages

English is quite unusual in adopting the term Lent. Other Germanic tongues simply use Fast or some variation thereof (German – Fastenzeit, Norweigian – fastetid or langfaste).

Latin, translating the original Greek 40th, established quādrāgēsima, which at 5 syllables was destined to be eroded in Italian to 4 syllables, Quaresima. In Spanish and Portuguese to 3, Cuaresma. Finally and, not insignificantly, farthest away, in French, as Carême to 2.

Slavic tongues all have some variant of ‘great fast’ e.g. Polish – Wielki Post [Slavic p = f].

Dutch situated between the Romance lands to the south and the Germanic to the east has both veertigdagentijd (= 40 days time) translating the Latin and vastentijd (fast-time), preserving the native Germanic term.

Similarly, Serbo-Croatian (the same language, aka Serb when written in Cyrillic and Croatan when appearing in Latin), a border language if ever there was one, has both Latin sourced korizma (cf quaresima) and Slavic, Veliki post.

Hawaiian has Kalema, which at first looks exceptional, but given l = r, must be a loan from Sp. or Por or Fr.

Finally, there is Maltese. Once you know that it is descended from Arabic (although written in Latin alphabet), you can perhaps guess that their word, Randan, comes from Ramadan. In Modern Arabic, though, to come full circle, Lent is known as “aṣ-ṣawm al-kabīr” ( اَلصَّوْمالْكَبِير‎ ), which they tell me means “great fast.”

The takeaway

Apropos of Xian and pagan celebrations, it occurred to me that the practice of aligning the new with the extant, while a cooptation, bespeaks admirable toleration from the victor not always seen after an intense confrontation. It is especially rare, sadly, when the conflict involves successful revolt of an erstwhile oppressed element of the dominant hegemon.

Ides of March rambling: Jesus Was a Socialist

Workism Is Making Americans Miserable. Understand – Aubrey Logan, Rebecca Jade on background vocals.

Pandora's Inbox
Pandora’s Inbox by Dave Coverly. used with permission
www.speedbump.com
Obituary of legendary Albany activist Vera P. Michelson, known to most everyone as Mike.

Thirteenth (2016 documentary about the 13th Amendment).

Patheos: Jesus Was a Socialist.

Listen, papa: let priests marry.

Buddhist robot priest to dole out advice in Kyoto temple.

Fran Rossi Szpylczyn: I Need Help (First Sunday of Lent).

The best thing to give up this Lent is plastic.

Political Notebook: Stupidity and hope.

The Balloon Pops on His Economic Promises.

How to Spot Fake News Online.

Activity At 2nd North Korean Missile Site Indicates Possible Launch Preparations, so the fact that rump and Kim failed to reach a breakthrough in Hanoi may be for the best.

Malaysia Airlines flight MH370: Five years on, here’s why people still believe the conspiracy theories.

Before We Even Think about Candidates for 2020.

Cartoon: A very Peanuts third-party candidate.

More local meteorologists are using their air time to bring climate change down to street level and communicate what this crisis means for their viewers’ everyday lives.

Where is Congress’ Center on Climate Change?

Workism Is Making Americans Miserable.

Jaquandor: On Writing Longhand.

Think you know Abraham Lincoln? New photos reveal the man behind the legend.

The inspiring story of H’Hen Niê, who won Miss Universe Vietnam 2017.

Do Grammar Mistakes Annoy You? You Might Be an Introvert.

Movement And Breathing Breaks Help Students Stay Focused On Learning.

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: robocalls and automation and psychics.

How to make “New York style pizza” at home. (n.b.: too much work for me!)

The People Who Eat the Same Meal Every Day.

Hate tried to come for Brie Larson. Captain Marvel destroyed them.

Boney – a television drama with the worst casting gimmick ever.

Now I Know: New York City’s Secret (Tiny) Subway and Arresting the Rooster and The Writing Was on the Wall and When a Baseball Team Traded for Runs and Too Much Hare in Your Ear and Bernie Madoff’s Other Swiss Bank Account and The Hole Truth About Ballpoint Pens and Domo Arigato, Mr. Robutto and Darts Darts Bo Barts Bananafana Fo… Uh Oh.

STAR WARS: ALWAYS.

AND

Execute order 66.

Loud music.

MUSIC

Understand – Aubrey Logan, Rebecca Jade on background vocals.

The revolution will not be televised – Soul Rebels club mix.

Gustav Holst’s The Planets – Jupiter, scored for five pianos.

Everything Changes – Eytan and The Embassy, also Star Wars parody, plus the identities revealed of the original video.

Coverville: 1253: Tributes for Peter Tork of the Monkees and Mark Hollis of Talk Talk and 1254: Cover Stories for The Who and Townes Van Zandt.

RIP, Hal Blaine of The Wrecking Crew, Hall of Fame drummer.

Andre Previn has died at age 89.

K-Chuck Radio: The “cover band” phase of popular bands and Olivia Newton-John does make you feel mellow.

Monkees Screen Tests

NPR’s ‘Jazz Profiles’, hosted by Nancy Wilson; Miles Davis: ‘Kind of Blue’ (2001).

They Really Don’t Make Music Like They Used To.

Ash Wednesday: What is hell to you?

I opined that the old guy was in his own hell, and Catbird agreed.

I don’t think a whole lot about hell. Well, not since I was growing up with the concept constantly slipped into every third sermon I heard.

One of the things that started my long withdrawal from church in my twenties had a hell of a lot to do with what some said happened after death.

Specifically, it was the notion that everyone who didn’t accept Jesus as their savior was going to some fiery pit in the next life. That would include someone in a remote village in Nepal or person on a tiny island in the Pacific. (This is why we “needed” so many missionaries.)

Still, I think there is a “hell.” My good friend Catbird is reading “The Da Vinci Code,” which I’ve never even started. The motivation was partly because the book is on the PBS “Great American Read” list.

But it was also because some old acquaintance of Catbird’s said it was the work of the devil, which made it more enticing. My friend emailed the acquaintance to ask what event or character had informed his opinion, figuring he had never actually read the story. He replied that Catbird was going to hell and that his words were a warning.

Catbird shared the opinion that both heaven and hell are what one chooses to make of one’s circumstances. A life-altering experience has deeply informed my friend that death is nothing to fear.

I opined that the old guy was in his own hell, and Catbird agreed. And from appearances, it seems “entirely self-inflicted… and possibly addictive.” Catbird heard on the radio about the door to hell being locked from the inside and thought that it applied especially well to him.

So what is hell to you? Is it a physical place after we leave this mortal coil? Is it something else? Does it not exist at all? Maybe you’re hedging your bet.

This Lenten discussion immediately brought to mind a song written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong: You Make Your Own Heaven And Hell Right Here On Earth, recorded by The Temptations and Undisputed Truth.

Advent as Lent-lite?

“I’m not a Christian but I used to have a very strong respect for what they stood for.”

liturgical cycleIt seems that Advent, the season we’re in now, doesn’t bring me as much joy as it does for others. Someone, I don’t remember who, recently suggested that Advent is Lent-lite.

And I submit it may be true. Just as the Lent precedes the Easter Resurrection, so too is the waiting for the birth. The songs can be somber and in minor key.

It may be Seasonal Affective Disorder, “a type of depression that reoccurs during the winter months and typically lasts until the spring or summer.” The early snow did not help.

Back in the 1980s, I used to go visit my parents’ house in Charlotte, NC January, around Martin Luther King’s birthday. The perfect timing was mandated by doing seasonal music at church and the heavy retail period at the store I worked, FantaCo, followed by doing inventory just after the first of the year.

But I reckon that I also become despondent over how the season has been taken over. Mark Evanier said, “I’m not a Christian but I used to have a very strong respect for what they stood for,” and I knew too well what he meant.

When Christianist apologists act Unchristian, when they “show that on immigration, race, and poverty, white evangelical Protestants have surrendered moral judgment and social responsibility, ” it makes me somewhat angry, but mostly incredibly sad.

Alternet suggests the so-called “war on Christmas” for a proxy war for white supremacy. And it sounds about right.

Then Christmas Eve arrives. It still involves waiting, but it is now of a very short duration. The music that we sing generally has a special magic.

The service has some of the structures of the previous years, yet it always has something new. I trick myself into believing that, for a short while at least, all IS right with the world.

Ramblin' with Roger
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