June 22, 2006

• as a postulant, one of the things i am required to do is send a letter to the Bishop (of my diocese) every Ember week. 
  

• The Ember Days are four series of Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays which correspond to the natural seasons of the year. Autumn brings the September, or Michaelmas, Embertide; winter, the Advent Embertide; Spring, the Lenten Embertide; and in summer, the Whit Embertide (named after Whitsunday, the Feast of Pentecost).
  
• The English title for these days, "Ember," is derived from their Latin name: [Quatuor T]emporum, meaning the "Four Times" or "Four Seasons."
  
• The Old Law prescribes a "fast of the fourth month, and a fast of the fifth, and a fast of the seventh, and a fast of tenth" (Zechariah 8:19). There was also a Jewish custom at the time of Jesus to fast every Tuesday and Thursday of the week.
  
• The first Christians amended both of these customs, fasting instead on every Wednesday and Friday: Wednesday because it is the day that Christ was betrayed, and Friday because it is the day that He was slain. (And we now know that this biweekly fast is actually older than some books of the New Testament). Later, Christians from both East and West added their own commemorations of the seasons.
  

  and so now, the Anglican communion, along with the Roman Catholic church, observes this Ember day tradition, with the entire week after the specific Ember days of Ash Wednesday, Pentecost, Michaelmas, and the First Sunday of Advent, considered to be Ember Weeks.  by requiring that we postulants write to him at these times of the year, Bishop Councell is guaranteed to hear from us at least four times a year.  since Pentecost was the 4th of June, my letter to him was ... slightly... overdue.

  
  

  it's hard to think of what to write to a Bishop, even if Bishop Councell is a warm, caring, radically inclusive Bishop.  every time we have met as part of a group during this discernment process, he has made me laugh... we were at dinner, and the priest across from me, Canon Elizabeth Geitz, was talking about organizing a clerical convention to take place in Atlantic City.  unaware that the Bishop, who had been talking to someone else, had started to pay attention to our conversation, i began to tell Canon Geitz the best places to eat vs gamble in Atlantic City... the Bishop proceeds to "write" on the tablecloth a checklist for me "knows Atlantic City... knows where to gamble..."  later that weekend, i was wearing a zippered hoodie, and Bishop Councell comes running over to me to proclaim that he loves curious george (unbeknownst to me, the head of the cartoon monkey on my t-shirt was visible above the zipper).... plus his favorite movie is "this is spinal tap", and he and i were howling over that... so you would think it would be easy to write to this man...

  
  

  it is not.  the letter is supposed to be about what you are learning in seminary and your walk there, however, i was asked to defer a year before going to school (we had too much debt and no money), so i am not in seminary.  also, the letter cannot be longer than a page, and judging by the size of my posts, you will recognize how hard that is for me.....

  
  

  and so my letter is two weeks late... *sigh*