Seven whole days

Three years ago, Seven whole days was privileged to break the news of the so-called Blue Book’s color. Last time, it was crimson. This year, the color will be “salmon pink.” The 7WD news team has learned this from Secretary Gregory Straub, who shared the news at the Province I General Convention orientation in Westborough, MA.

So now we can all sleep a bit better, sure in the knowledge the a salmon-colored book will soon adorn our bookshelves, whether in bits or atoms. Yes, my friends, the so-called Blue Book will be available as a free PDF or an ebook, or as a traditional book, suitable for use in holy processions. At this time, 7WD has not learned if the ebook version will be free. We suspect not.

While I have your attention, let me reiterate what I said here three years ago. Calling a book “blue” when it is not, in fact, blue, is the height of ridiculous insider church-speak. If it’s not blue, let’s not call it blue. Instead, how about report book. Or something. Let your blue be blue, as Jesus (almost) said.

That is all.

UPDATE: The offical color is Pantone 169M. It’s a bit more pink, less orange/salmon than the swatch above. Couldn’t find a good swatch to use as an example here. You’ll just have to buy the book to see it.

This is one of the meditations I wrote for the annual Lenten meditations of Episcopal Relief & Development. This is the concluding meditation, for Easter Sunday.

It’s easy to miss the point of Easter. The truth is, the lilies, trumpets, dresses and beloved hymns usually don’t help us out. And don’t get me started on eggs. Amidst all the familiar and cherished traditions, we can lose sight of the simple and startling claim at the heart of Easter: a person who was dead came back to life.

So it is today. We say that Christ is risen. We say that Christ is present when the church gathers. But what does this mean for us? What would it be like if we really, truly believed the things we say on Easter Day?

Christ’s new life means that we are free. Death is just about the worst thing that can happen to us, and if we don’t need to be afraid of death, we don’t need to be afraid of anything. We are free to live as God calls us to live.

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Perhaps before the week is out I’ll write a more serious post about Easter. For now, this tickled my funny bone. Enjoy. And think about what churches would say if we had to be honest. “The Episcopal Church welcomes you!” Really?

From HappyPlace. Go check out the whole set. Tip of the Easter bonnet to Nicole Seiferth, who alerted me to this signtastic gem.

As we think about the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ this week, I hope we’ll get past Anselmian atonement theory to look at other facets of Christ’s death. Mind you, I’m not — unlike some others — objecting to atonement theory per se, but rather suggesting we might look to the ancient church and to the scriptures for complementary views. Take, for example, the vanquishing of hell. This year, I will miss hearing John Chrysostom’s brilliant Easter sermon at the Great Vigil, which puts everything about Easter, about Christ’s death, and even about our life into a transformational and simple message: God’s love is stronger than anything else. Christ’s resurrection is the proof of God’s power and love.

Anyway, that’s the real point of this blog post. But today GraphJam had a cartoon which seemed timely. Perhaps if you are preparing for Palm Sunday you’ll welcome a few seconds of levity. And then there are opportunities to ponder the question: are there, in fact, vending machines in hell?

Wave of the candy bar to GraphJam and Pleated-jeans.

ASBO Jesus once again manages to encapsulate an entire conversation into one cartoon.

Church buildings aren’t inherently bad, but they certainly aren’t inherently good either. Too easily, they distract us from the real point of church (as many of us learned as children). With help from George Herbert, I’ve written about church buildings here on 7WD. More specifically, I’ve had things to say about restrooms.

Call me crazy. I think the Episcopal Church might be better off if we more often had to do our thing outside the red doors and stained glass we love so much.

If Forward Movement decided to sell liturgical furniture, this is the sort of thing we’d offer. A company called Little Mountain Productions is now selling the iPulpit. You guessed it. It’s a pulpit for your iPad. When I preach from a text, this is exactly how I do it: using my iPad. Paper is so 2009.

Of course, for Episcopalians, that giant Bible with all the highlighting is going to be a prayer book / hymnal combo. And more would probably sell if they could figure out how to stick an iPad into an eagle lectern or something.

What tickles my funny bone is that the URL for this thing is “…gamestands.html”. Game stands. But all kidding aside, using an iPad for preaching is no game. It offers few advantages over paper, except that I won’t get pages out of order. I also like that I can tweak my sermon in my office between services, and the iPad is automagically updated. This seems to me the way preaching should work in our tech age.

One of these days, I’ll rant more about preaching and rave about using my tablet for preaching and teaching.

Wave of the giant Bible to pastorgear.com and a certain bishop who sent me this link. Also, Forward Movement is not going to sell furniture. That references was for illustrative and humor purposes only.

Sure, you might be wanting to celebrate St. Valentine’s Day today, to take part in the consumer holiday of choice. Here at 7WD headquarters, we are commemorating St. Cyril and St. Methodius, the saints who are remembered in the kalendar of the Episcopal Church today.

That said, here’s a little something for all of you St. Valentine’s Day lovers. Enjoy!

Hey, I finally had some idle time to get some photos online. Here are a few photos from Sydney and Bangkok. Enjoy!

Two samples. You can try to figure out which is which.

Please visit my flickr site and leave comments or feedback. There a lot there, but there are several collections to visit if you like travel photos, Episcopal Church stuff, or Anglican Communion stuff.

There has been loads of conversation lately about restructuring the Episcopal Church. I’ve followed much of it, though I’m still getting my thoughts in order to post here on 7WD. Short version: we need to put everything, and I mean everything, on the table and then structure our church for 21st century needs.

There is great urgency, and now is not the time for a decade-long series of incremental tweaks. We need to start with a clean slate and be bold. That will require some agreement as to the mission of the church, which will not be easy. But there is one easy thing the next General Convention can take care of in ten minutes, just to prove that we have our priorities straight and can get things done quickly.

Our canons are in the wrong order. If you haven’t perused the canons of the Episcopal Church lately, head on over to this page, where you can download them. We don’t need to rearrange every canon, but I think we can fix the order of the Titles within the canons.

At the moment, we’ve got the cart before the horse. Let me explain.

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A few people have asked me why Forward Movement got involved with Lent Madness. It’s a fair question. Nancy Davidge from the Episcopal Church Foundation asked me, and I have give an answer which she posted on the Vital Practices website.

Don’t let the laughter and the saints wearing sunglasses fool you. St. Paul challenged us to be all things to all people. Lent Madness is helping us connect with people who won’t connect through pamphlets or church suppers. Lent Madness makes us “fools for Christ,” but we’re definitely for Christ.

Read the whole article. And visit Vital Practices often. By the way, let me just say, “Tim Schenck.” He gets touchy if I mention Lent Madness without also mentioning that he created it.

Oh, and if you haven’t “liked” Lent Madness on Facebook, now would be a good time.

As many 7WD readers will know, Fr. Tim Schenck has been my archnemesis for several years now. It started small, but our archrivalry really blossomed during the Great Jelly Bean Wars of Oh-Ten (see here, here, here, here, and here). Well, despite our mutual archnemesistastic relationship, Tim and I found ourselves working together on Lent Madness. Being an archnemesis with your partner in a global venture is tricky. So we’ve decided to give up our designation as archnemesis for the duration of Lent. See below for our announcement, which Tim is also releasing on his blog.

Dateline: Somewhere between Hingham, MA and Cincinnati, OH.

Be it known to all present, either bodily or online, that as of Ash Wednesday in the two thousand and twelfth year of our Lord, certain persons, of necessity in the present time, are hereby setting aside a designation of Archnemesis, and laying aside the enmity that has existed from the beginning, until the end of the Lenten Fast. Whereas, to cooperate on Lent Madness for the edification of all Christendom, Father Schenck and Father Gunn shall thereby set aside their feud until the New Fire is lit at the Great Vigil of Easter. After that, anything is possible.

Now I just need to make sure this isn’t a ruse so Tim can gain some sort of advantage.

Today is the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple, also known as Candlemas. The Nunc dimittis is the theme song for today. Enjoy.

Here’s some lovely music from a previous year on 7WD.