Some thoughts on Ash Wednesday from a newly minted Anglican

Plus: Cold berry muffins, books in the wild, and more

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1. A take I haven’t written elsewhere

Some thoughts on Ash Wednesday from a newly minted Anglican

(via)

I was talking with another author recently, and he told me he’s working on a project which has more practical guidance for readers than his previous books included. My experience, I told him, is that practical stuff is much easier to write—after doing the research and outlining, I wrote all 7,000+ words of Untrustworthy’s habits chapter (“A building plan”) in a single workday—but much more difficult to live with after it’s on the page. The momentary pressure of careful argumentation is far less, but the work of not being a total hypocrite regarding one’s own advice is far more and far longer lasting.

It was an apt conversation for the run-up to Lent. Today is Ash Wednesday, the start of the church calendar’s 40-day period of repentance and fasting (or some other practice of spiritual discipline) which concludes with the celebration of Easter. It’s also my first Ash Wednesday as a member of an Anglican congregation, which means a more formal observance of Lent than I’ve experienced in churches past. (I still consider myself an Anabaptist but am not a member of a Mennonite community since our move from Minnesota in 2021.)