sometimes i make a startlingly poor episcopalian.

for all my proclamations that i love and feel comfortable with the liturgy, it took me many minutes of thinking, searching, bcp-browsing and the like to remember that the daily office is on a two-year cycle, not a three-year cycle. i had *finally* determined that it was year c, and was all ready to look up the thursday readings for 1 lent, when i realized that what i actually should have determined was that it was year 2. leave it to the anglicans to have not one but two more-or-less mechanized systems for chunking up the bible.

...and then i skipped the OT reading, and was bored by 1 corinthians, and accidentally read next thursday's gospel instead of yesterday's. so basically i'm going to hell.

before that happens, however, i'm enjoying this year's "daily lent thing," which is to spend some time each day writing down a prayer. my mother sent me a pretty embossed blank book with a magnetic trifold cover, which is home to these little musings.

i wish that i were one of those people who could just effortlessly concentrate, and live a perfectly fulfilling internal-only prayer life, but i always end up thinking about other things. lately it's been grad school and the prospect of future public-intellectual status; sometimes i agonize, or fantasize, about food; occasionally i end up composing rebuttals to people with whom i've disagreed in the course of the day. in any case, i'm not so great at the whole prayer-focus thing. hence the book, and the writing.

as an aside: lent is such an interesting season out here. in grand forks, lent is just one more component of winter. i've missed easter services due to blizzard. but in pennsylvania, while it's not spring yet, you can tell it's coming, which makes for a much nicer symmetry with the season's purpose, which is preparation.