Lent and Joy

Dear Friends,

Yesterday, I went to the dentist—hang in there, this isn't about the dentist. Afterwards, just to ruin all the good cleaning and polishing and because it was a spectacular day and because I felt like a walk and because it's now been a year since I drank a cup of coffee that I didn't make, I walked down to Mad Priest Coffee. I love that our city has a coffee shop called Mad Priest Coffee.

There, I had the most delicious cup of coffee I can ever remember having. Maybe it was the spectacular day. Maybe it was that I didn't make it. Maybe it was that it cost just a little too much, and I was going to enjoy it. I don't know, but it was amazing.

I almost felt guilty. It's Lent, after all. Who says we should enjoy a beautiful day and a nice walk and a cup of coffee we didn't make during Lent?

Or, then there's today. It's appropriately rainy and gross in a very Lenten way. And while I'm a little stressed out for a variety of reasons, I'm also brimming with thankfulness. Today, at the church, we will offer thanks for Tucker's Teepee, which has been a place of joy for so many of our kids over the years. We'll pray in hope for what that spot will become and how the memory of Tucker Hunt will continue to grace our campus and our lives. So much to give thanks for.

And there's more. Later today, our church will become a clinic. The church has long held that the Eucharist is medicine for sinners. So it seems appropriate that today the church, where we've so often received the Eucharist, will become an actual clinic, where COVID vaccines will be given to faculty and staff of this place as well as a few other independent schools in the area. I'm thankful that I'll be able to receive it—for the scientists who developed it, for those who participated in the clinical trials, and for the hope of a healthier future it brings to all of us. But I'm even more thankful that our teachers will receive it, who have braved being face-to-face with this virus. They have persevered in the middle of the pandemic. They have acted with an astounding selflessness to care for our students.

So, even in the middle of this rainy, nasty day, I can't help but give thanks for so much.

Which brings me back to yesterday—what do we do with joy, with gladness, with thanks in the season of Lent? Should we feel guilty for a good cup of coffee and a beautiful day?

No. Not in the least.

Anyone who has planned worship with me knows that I am a bit of, perhaps too much of, a stickler for doing what the prayerbook says without addition or subtraction. But, that's what I do. And, the prayerbook says in Lent that we are to remove the alleluias from our worship.

But stickler that I am, I still love it when, whether in my car on the way to school praying with the kids or in an actual church service, a few little "alle..."s slip out before we can remember our Lenten abstinence from the joyful shout. They're like little glimpses of Easter joy in the midst of Lent. They never fail to bring a smile to my face because it reminds me that nothing can stand in the way of the resurrection. Not rain. Not a pandemic. Not the prayerbook's limitations.

So find thanks where you can and joy wherever it is. Lent is not a season for misery. It is a season for turning always more closely to Jesus, and there is nothing in all creation more joyful, more hopeful than that.

God bless,
Fr. Quinn+