Shrove Tuesday

Shrove Tuesday is a day of celebration as well as penitence, because it's the last day before Lent. Lent is a time of abstinence, of giving up things or taking on new spiritual disciplines.  To shrive means to be released of the guilt of one's sins.  Traditionally people would go to confession on this day and/or on Ash Wednesday. 

Thus, Shrove Tuesday is the last chance to indulge yourself and to use up the foods that were not traditionally allowed in Lent. In the old days there were many foods that observant Christians would not eat during Lent: foods such as meat and fish, fats, eggs, and milky foods. So that no food was wasted, families would have a feast on the shriving Tuesday, and eat up all the foods that wouldn't last the forty days of Lent.

The need to eat up the fats gave rise to the French name Mardi Gras; meaning fat Tuesday. Pancakes became associated with Shrove Tuesday as they were a dish that could use up all the eggs, fats and milk in the house with just the addition of flour.

Thus, on that note, I begin this day with a prayer from Walter Brueggemann.

The God who Yearns and Waits for Us

We are strange conundrums of faithfulness and fickleness.

We cleave to you in all the ways that we are able.

We count on you and intend our lives to be lived for you,

and then we find ourselves among your people

who are always seeking elsewhere and otherwise.

So we give thanks that you are the God

who years and waits for us,

and that our connection to you is always from your side,

and that it is because of your goodness

that neither life nor death

nor angels nor principalities

nor heights nor depths

nor anything in creation

can separate us from you.

We give you thanks for your faithfulness,

so much more durable than ours. Amen.