The Anglican Communion sees Lent as an annual time to reflect upon the largeness of the sacrfice Jesus made for Man. Traditionally it has been a penitential season, where people "give up" something dear to them in order to walk, best they can, the path of self-sacrfice our Lord walked in those 40 days when he was tempted and tried. To that extent, Lent IS in the Bible-- though not named as such.

In our parish, Hardi invites a slightly different and specific emphasis-- that of one of using the Lenten season as an annual commemoration of our closeness to the Lord, and a renewed effort to be closer to Him-- something that can only happen from OUR side because of the free will with which we are created.

Some of the "distance" from Him is the way we hold ourselves separate from Him due to our feeling badly about whatever we have been doing that we feel is wrong-- like a child will avoid parents when they've done wrong and like I avoided and delayed making an apology just today to a fellow Mudcatter about something. Our Lord is always close and always ready for us to acknowledge that and turn to Him. Lent, with the related Scripture readings of the season, brings that point to the fore.

Our Saturday Night service, then, has none of the traditional, lugubrious "how bad I am" hymns, but focuses in a celebratory way on the love our Lord manifested in His sacrifice and on the fact that He understands our natures, having shared our nature during His earthly pilgrimage. While we don't celebrate what was done to Him exactly, we do celebrate that His act made our redemption a sure and certain reality which we are free to accept and/or reaffirm, at any time.

For years our band struggled with what music to use for Lent-- the hymnal stuff is so dreary and so unsuitable, as it happens, for acoustic instruments. Last year I changed my music-planning focus completely for the Lenten music.... now, there are spirituals mourning what was done to Him alongside uptempo, happy-sounding songs of celebration in anticipation of the annnual commemoration of His sacrfice, as well as songs asking Him to be near us in the temptations and very-human struggles of life in the world. This worked so well LAST year that we used a similar approach for Adent, another season of great anticipation that more usually has a similarly penitiential tone.

Field-recording our Lenten music is underway, Jerry, and I'll send you some of it. I'll have to look back in muy planning book, but I believe we started off Lent with your "Fields of Clover."

~Susan