By Sister Doreen, SSJD
The Anglican Church of Canada observes Ember Days of solemn prayer, traditionally kept at the turn of the four seasons: winter, spring, summer, and autumn (Wednesday, Friday and Saturday after Advent III, Lent I, the Day of Pentecost, and Holy Cross Day). They can be helpful in engaging people in intentional and deep prayer for the whole ministry of God’s people, for mission and outreach, for giving thanks for the seasons and harvest, and for peace and unity.
Ash Wednesday is a symbolic occasion of reflection and prayer, reminding people of their mortality and sorrow for sins, as well as the wIn our world today, intentional and deep prayers are really the anchor of stability in the seeming chaos and anger that seems too often to take a front seat in the news and in what we see and experience around us. Both the words ‘intentional’ (deliberate and purposeful) and ‘deep’ (profound and rich) give meaning to the real point of keeping seasonal ember days.ill for change and the hope of forgiveness.
As I thought about embers, the real heat of any fire is in the embers – marshmallow roasts as kids were always a time for crowding around the embers of the fire after the flames had died down. Camping trips and cooking over campfires was always a time of carefully building a fire that when at its prime had burned down to a bed of ember coals, where the heat of the embers could cook and roast, without the flames burning whatever was on the fire. Somehow this experience and these thoughts coincide with the words intentional and deep. We come to Ember Days knowing that we are at the heart of what makes and keeps life alive and new. They are times when we deliberately focus on the need for counting our blessings and giving thanks. It is a time of seeking a deep spiritual renewal, both personally and communally, and for giving thanks for each other.
Ember Days give us an opportunity to evaluate our relationship with creation, to renew our concern for the earth, and to focus on seed time and harvest time. We are the protector of God’s handiwork. Worldwide we are all concerned with how far short we fall as God’s stewards and protectors, and each of us in our own circumstances are called to do our part to reverse the downslide of climate change and environmental suffering.
It is a time when Psalm 85 springs to mind: “Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other. Truth shall spring out of the earth; and righteousness shall look down upon the earth.” It is a call to peace, unity, and merciful justice.
Ember Days are also opportunities to reflect upon our own life and vocation: to ponder whatever ‘work’, job, business, or ministry; whatever the circumstances of our daily living – to see these as a vocation, a calling. Whatever we are given to do or choose to do – to see whatever it is that we are doing as a vocation adds a ‘holy’ dimension to it. It allows us to see how we are responding, holding it as something ‘holy’ – be it a ‘job’, family life, care for our neighbours, our acts of kindness and hospitality. It reminds us of Brother Lawrence’s encouragement to see whatever we are doing or are given to do as an opportunity to practice the presence of God.
There is wisdom in setting aside times of intentional and deep prayer, a call to deeper spiritual practice. We all know how important it is to have intentional times to renew, to seek, to heal the broken parts of ourselves and our relationships and our earth – how necessary it is to open our hearts, to put forward some intentional effort for change and conversion.
In Joyce Rupp and Macrina Weiderkhr’s book The Circle of Life, there is a mini poem that begins the preface of their book. This poem has always been a lectio divina opportunity for me in whatever circumstance I am in – in whatever pondering over subjects which I find myself in. For me this is so when I consider how well I am using Ember days to enrich my own life and service in the world today.
They wrote: “every book has a birthing ground, a moment in time and space when it is just a bright idea flaming forth with spontaneity. Then it becomes a dream resting in someone’s heart and mind wondering if it will ever see the light of day.”
Ember Days are my opportunity to try to bring that dream into the light of day through intentional and deep prayer and committed action, the greater growth and wholeness that are needed in my day-to-day life, in the day-to-day life of those around me, and in the day-to-day life of the world and cosmos that I live in.
Ember Days call us to a birthing of new growth, to fruitfulness, to surrender, and to waiting; to incorporate these into our inner life’s routine. To begin to see all life as a vocational call, a thanksgiving call, a metanoia (change of heart) call – this is the focus of Ember Days coming to us as gift four times during the year in the different seasons of the year, and in the different seasons of our own life experiences – both personally and worldwide.
In Common Praise, the hymn book of the Anglican Church of Canada #466:
How clear is our vocation, Lord, when once we heed your call: to live according to your word, and daily learn, refreshed, restored, that you are Lord of all, and will not let us fall.
But if, forgetful, we should find your yoke is hard to bear; if worldly pressures fray the mind and love itself cannot unwind its tangled skein of care: our inward life repair.
We mark your saints, how they became in hinderances more sure, whose joyful virtues put to shame the casual way we wear your name, and by our faults obscure your power to cleanse and cure.
In what you give us, Lord, to do, together or alone, in old routines or ventures new, may we not cease to look to you, the cross you hung upon, all you endeavored done.
Yes! Yes! “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon you” Isaiah 60:1.