If I shrive you, I hear your testimony, or your confession, and I offer understanding, or forgiveness. AI may try to tell you to shrive means to confess. It’s actually the other way around. It means to listen.
Hence Shrove Tuesday, the term Episcopalians and Anglicans use for this night before Ash Wednesday.
Hundreds of years ago, churches began serving pancakes to use up all the tasty stuff people were giving up for Lent. These days, I would prefer people just gave up failing to shrive one another and pledged themselves to listen, understand, and forgive all the time — to personify the hospitality of friendliness and relationship.
The Church of Our Saviour in San Gabriel was the soul of hospitality tonight, inviting the people of Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church in Altadena for pancakes and fellowship. St. Mark’s lost its church buildings in the wildfires. So many stories — folks who lost their homes, folks not able to get back into their homes, folks, on top of all that, dealing with the ongoing disturbances of life. People were shriving up a storm tonight.
Kathy and I stopped by to see the Revs. Carri Grindon and Jeffrey Stoller Thornberg, the COS and St. Mark’s rectors, and their folks. As usual, COS’s Hannah Riley had organized the children to put on a wonderful show, a fitting alternative to whatever was happening in Washington. Folks’ masks and beads lent the flavor of Mardi Gras. Now on to a Holy Lent — but may the glorious holy shriving continue.
