The Church of England has launched several initiatives as Lent approaches.
See the Love Life Live Lent website, and the CofE press release Church gives out ‘tweets’ for Lent. The Twitter feed is at http://twitter.com/c_of_e and for Facebook users, there is this.
Also see the Shrinking the Footprint website, and the CofE press release Cut the carbon this Lent, says Church of England.
And don’t forget the communion-wide campaign for Zimbabwe, see Anglican Communion joins Prayers for Zimbabwe on Ash Wednesday. Posters and fliers can be downloaded from USPG announces Archbishops’ Appeal for Zimbabwe. To donate online, go here.
Does Twitter, a hyper method of communication based on instant gratification and constant concern (anxiety?) over the world’s perception of one’s activity, really make sense as the vehicle for Lenten reflection?
It just feels too…twitchy.
Twittering away in Lent … well, Haiku is twitter-sized and can be quite profoundly provocative.
Old fogey that I am, I regret the devaluing of something that Cicero wrote so eloquently about [and I so INelegantly translated long long ago]: amacitia – friendship. Facebook not only trivializes the word ‘friend’; it also has turned it into a verb.
Oh well – they don’t make buggy-whips like they used to, either!
We prayed for Zimbabwe at the early Mass this morning (Ash Wednesday), it seemed entirely appropriate to remember our sisters and brothers in that needy country today, of all days, when we lament our participation in the world-wide systemic forces of hatred and consumerism which the Mugabe regime is still perpetuating in his neck of the woods. May God help us all to look, this Lent, to ways in which we can lessen the tensions by sharing the load.
Jesu mercy, Mary pray – for Bishop Stephen Bakare, and all who minister in that fraught environment.
“Facebook not only trivializes the word ‘friend’; it also has turned it into a verb.” We had a sermon that said the first point a few weeks ago. It started with the story of the guy who had a Real honest to God party, invited his 500 Facebook “friends”, but no-one showed up, so what was their friendship all about? I am not a Facecrack addict, and frankly, I don’t get the attraction of letting people know that ‘Ford is in the bathroom’, or whatever it is people feel obliged to let people know about themselves on Facebook. But I’m… Read more »
And me, please, Ford.
“And me, please, Ford.” I’m an Anglo-Catholic who buys into it hook, line, and sinker. Of course you! Everyone’s welcome at the banquet, why not at the pub where we argue too? And just to let you know my vintage, and the spirit behind it, do you remember those posters that used to hang in many church porches? It had an earthen goblet of wine (since we all have earthen goblets, now, don’t we) and a round loaf of bread split in two (which looked decidedly odd to my eye, only used to three-bun white bread, properly sliced) and the… Read more »
Love you, Ford Elms! Don’t always agree with everything you articulate, but still love you! Best of all, I think, Ford, is your absolutely committed and devoted willingness to engage – on one side or the other, depending on the particular thread. Yet, despite the sometimes pugilistic thrust, I sense a real longing for resolution across the divide. Keep it up, Ford.
Yes Ford, you are wonderful in your entertaining and sardonic whit, and I find myself agreeing with you on the issues that matter. Now, if you could leave your smoke at home, I’d love to entertain you in the land of High Solemn Morning Prayer!
“if you could leave your smoke at home” We only do smoke 9 or 10 times a year, just enough to give the closet Methodists something to grouse about. And I haven’t been to a good sung Matins in years, I would leap at the chance to sing those Canticles again. I take it you are across the pond from me. I have friends moving to London for a year in April, and I may just make it back that way soon. We had a ball last year, though I don’t understand how you people can live, when the numbers… Read more »
Wrong pond. Up the St. Lawrence, up the ditch (Welland) and across the lake, Ford! And you’ll have to get a taste for perogi’s
choirboy, we’re closer than I thought! I go to TO from time to time, I have friends there, and have been so often, I don’t need a map to find my way. My familiarity is best for the downtown, which is why I call Bloor-Yonge “the top of Yonge Street”. If you’re near TO, next time I’m there, I’ll allow myself to be dragged away from Solemn High at Smoky Tom’s for a good sung Mattins.
Ford, when we talk about ‘Inclusive’, we don’t mean that inclusive! – However, I believe the Candaians grow a particular species of privet hedge, whose leaves, when rubbed together, give off a pungent odour – something like incense. Perhaps you should take some along to Welland.
Agape to you and choirboy.
Little further up the lakes guys. Think ‘Mistake’ on the Lake (Erie). Flaming Rivers.
Toronto is on the Lake Ontario, on the lower (north) end of the Ditch.
I could always come via newfie-land on my evensong junkie fixes to England. A pint of Alexander Keith’s would be mighty nice.
“newfie-land” Indescriminate use of the N word is not advised should you ever stop on the Rock. It is not a word many of us like to hear, being loaded with stereotypes that, you may not be aware, seem to inform some very high decision making processes. Here, that word is taking on the meaning of expats who go away from home and employ all the stereotypes they can come up with in their pining to return to a Newfoundland that really never existed anyway. We’ve moved on, had something very much like the Quiet Revolution in Quebec, and our… Read more »
Hasten to think about having a beer with anybody who doesn’t have a sense of humor and cannot look lightly upon their homeland with self-deprecating affection to colloquial faults. We all have them (this is from somebody whose country elected an idiot to ruin his country for eight previous years and has forebearers from the wrong side of the Ohio River). I’ve learned to look in the mirror and laugh. You should too Ford.
“I’ve learned to look in the mirror and laugh. You should too Ford.” You know, choirboy, I have been laughing all my life at ethnic jokes recycled to make fun of insulting stereotypes of us. But these insulting sterotypes even inform federal decision making towards Newfoundland. Don’t forget, one of the government arguments against us having a say over the offshore was that it would cut our equalization payments. There’s a Newfie joke, formally a Polack joke, that says the same thing about winning the lottery. The Canadian government, and in many instances our “fellow countrimen”, have not defended us… Read more »