Clean Monday

"The springtime of the Fast has dawned, the flower of repentance has begun to open..."

Yesterday at church, I learned a small handful of new things. First, I learned that the Great Lent officially starts today, known as Clean Monday. I wasn't sure if it had already started last week or not. Apparently Meatfare Sunday through Cheesefare Sunday (one week) is a preparation time. You get ready. Today, we buckle down. You're also apparently supposed to thoroughly clean your house. We'll see if that gets done. It needs to be. The symbolism and the fact of it are not lost on me. :)

Apparently, there is a tradition (though it is not recommended that most people do it. In fact, they recommend that most do not, and if you do, it needs to be under a fair amount of guidance from your god parent or confessor) where some people do not allow anything - not food, not even water - to pass their lips from Communion on Sunday yesterday til the Service of the Pre-Sanctified (but don't ask me what that is) on Wednesday night. YIKES.

Also. And this was cool. At the end of the service yesterday, we had what's called the Ceremony of Mutual Forgiveness where every single person asked forgiveness from every other single person in the church, and it was mutually granted. (They had quite the system rigged up so that eveyr person actually met with and shook hands with everybody else) It was odd, because though I've been going for 4 years, I've only just started being more involved with the church and hardly know most of these people at all. But it made me think. It's possible to commit harms against people you hardly know, and it's possible to do it without even knowing. So I suppose it wasn't just an exercise. It did make me want to go into work and ask people's forgiveness there. I didn't. I was a bit of a chicken. But what good is it, really, to fast and pray with the intent of approaching God when things with your neighbor are still a mess? :-/