Today is the last day before the Lenten Season of fasting: Shrove Tuesday, Pancake Tuesday, or Fat Tuesday, or, in French, Mardi Gras.

To “shrive” is to be forgiven your sins, as in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet where the latter is to be “shrived and wived”. Shrove is the conjugation of that verb in the simple past tense.

Today is the day to eat all the food in your house so that you won’t be tempted during Lent. The name “Pancake” Tuesday comes from the ease of eating pretty much any kind of food in pancake form: got onions, cheese, and chicken in the ‘fridge? That’s a tasty, savory pancake! When I was in Catholic School we all got as many ‘cakes as we could eat today — parent-volunteers hung out all morning cooking and you could drop by whenever you liked for a paper plate of flapjacks, butter, and syrup. Good times.

In 2005 I celebrated Lent with a Ramadanesque daylight fast. Nothing puts you more in touch with the rhythms of nature than eating strictly according to them. You feel the lengthening of the days as the world is reborn into Spring.

Today is also the last day to settle on the terms of your personal jihad — in the sense of “holy struggle” — over the coming forty-four days. Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent and the fast, when the faithful are anointed with oil and the ash of burned palm crosses saved from last year’s Palm Sunday.

The palms commemorate the fete of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem riding a donkey — a highly political action in the context of ancient Judean society which intentionally fulfilled a number of Jewish Messiah prophecies, and ended up precipitating the Passion, the Crucifixion, and eventually creating the Christian faith.

Here’s Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s Millennium version of that same event. The subtext here is that the Pharisees and the crowd completely misunderstand the scene. They think they are glorifying Jesus and he’s frustrated with them because he’s trying to get them to glorify God (also note the hair-based symbolism — in this scene, the longer your hair the holier you are):

Essentially this religious season mirrors the rebirth of nature, hope, etc. in Spring.

Via Savage:

I’m brushing up on my atheism. Ran across a London bus:

I’ve been asked to represent a young female relative before the Almighty, to be her godfather. This involves answering questions which will induct her into the Catholic Church — basically filling out the application form for her. Then the priest will spiritually brand her for eternity or until excommunication.

In the final days the Catholics’ crossed third eyes will burn and glow, repelling the slobbering, machete-chopping hordes of hell like blood-soaked Jewish houses during Egypt’s final plague. Or so I’m told.

I’ve been asked to hook her up with a super-powered magic soul tattoo, backed with the currency of my own. So what about my state of grace? You can’t leave the Catholic Church — you have to be expelled — but I’m not exactly in a spiritually pristine condition. I’d feel guilty receiving communion without confession, or dire need.

Forgive me father, for I have sinned. My last confession was fifteen years ago when I served as an altar boy. In that time I’ve solemnly denied the existence of God, practiced witchcraft, committed adultery, stolen, done drugs, intentionally poisoned people, killed things… In fact, in the interest of time let’s say that I’ve broken every commandment and most ecclesiastical rules, some thousands of times. I did unto my neighbor whatever the hell I wanted. Oh, right: I also blaspheme — a lot.

The happiness-rush you get from confession is something that must be felt to be believed. It’s like adolescent attraction — there’s a tug at your solar plexus and a spinal rush, you get warm all over, your hair stands up and you can’t stop smiling. It feels like falling in love, or being tied and lashed by someone who cares; the ultimate back-scratch.

In any case I want absolution, but won’t repent — I’m not trying to correct all of those “flaws”. I’d just be apologizing to follow the letter, not the spirit, of the rules. Most of those things gave me spiritual insight that a lifetime of toeing the line couldn’t.

Escaping Catholicism is intellectually rewarding but emotionally crippling. Do I want to be responsible for putting this girl through that? What’s the cost/benefit of having kids re-fight my battles? Someone raised atheist never communes with the divine and never mourns the death of God. They miss dizzying mental highs and lows, but probably end up more “normal” — if that’s desirable given our societal mental disturbance fetish.

The most valuable lesson of the church is that it is possible — necessary, even — to set up social systems which stand outside the workplace, outside the media, and outside government. There are higher laws than those of man, and that’s easy to see when you’re raised in an alternate system.

The worst lesson of the church is that you’re an imperfect, lacking being who can never truly be happy. This is a terrifically awful lesson to teach children, even by osmosis. I’ve come to understand this is one of the most destructive memes floating around our world, one even atheists suffer under. Original sin: It is a bitch.

Those are all heavy-shit concepts to lay on adults, let alone babies. I feel like I might be unfairly signing this girl up for a twenty-year-long psychic obstacle course.

I guess it’s not about me, but her. What’s my spiritual fiduciary duty? What’s in her best interest? I think, on balance, that you could have a worse spirit-guide than me. She’s going to be baptized no matter what I say, so I might as well come along on the journey and see if I can smooth the bumps.

Chances are she’ll totally ignore me anyway.

The Catholic Church has agreed to re-accept disaffected Anglicans 475 years after the church split for political reasons.

This sudden spasm of ecumenical love is in response to thousands of conservative Anglicans looking for a church that is more in keeping with the traditions they grew up with, two simple rules that the Catholic Church still fully endorses but which the Anglicans have let fall by the wayside:

1. No broads.
2. No fags.

Sounds manly!

The best description of the Christian faith I’ve heard recently is that it’s a millennia-long game of telephone: “Love everyone!”, whisper whisper whisper whisper whisper, “God hates fags!”

This is the first time since the 16th century that the doors to communion with Rome have been opened to Protestant congregations — so act on this once-in-five-centuries offer now, before it’s too late!

This opens a convenient loophole for Catholic priests who want to get married: convert to Anglicanism, get ordained, get married, convert your flock to Catholicism, and The See will let the marriage stand. Which, basically, means that St. Peter’s Church isn’t against married priests per se, just against Catholic priests marrying — which smacks of “I couldn’t, so why would I let you?”

Of course, there is a pay cut to worry about: Vicars make about ten times what the average Father does. If you got into Anglicanism for both a love of money and a hatred of fags it looks like you have some soul searching to do.

Via Will, Ireland declares blasphemy punishable by a EUR 25,000 fine.

Although it provides for exceptions to prosecution if a “reasonable person” finds literary, scientific or other significant value in a work, it would allow for atheists to be prosecuted for denying the existence of God, a denial that clearly causes outrage in many.

Remember in the boom when Ireland gave tech companies tax breaks? This is how they’ll recoup it all.

Programmer: Jesus fucking Christ I hate C++.
Manager: Keep talking. You just lost your Christmas bonus.

Islam is Malaysia’s state religion. The ruling body of their religious apparatus has instructed the population not to practice yoga because it is non-Islamic spiritual instruction. The Tyee ran a laughably-hypocritical editorial on this that starts by defending yoga as non-religious and ends by speculating on how yoga can undermine fundamentalist religion. Some of the best comments:

• A demystified yoga is simply stretching for snobs: clearly, you’ve got to maintain a high degree of mystification…to retain the cachet which keeps yoga ahead of aerobics on the urban trend scale.
• I’m turned off by the New Age language that I’ve so often heard from practitioners…[are] the ‘spritual’ (whatever that means) trappings…integral to yoga practice, or is a non-mystical yoga practice possible[?]

The yoga classes I’ve been to are fairly light on the metaphysics (“body energy” has a pretty straightforward reduction to scientific concepts). But as an atheist, I’ve always been uncomfortable ending the class by chanting a word in an archaic language in an obvious prayer position. The most common translation of “नमस्ते” is “the Light within me honors the Light within you” – I assert that neither of us has any such “Light”.

I believe that Westernized Hatha Yoga is quite separate from the other, Hindu-Buddhist, practices of Yoga. It is not religious but it is clearly spiritual. As our society demonstrates, spiritual practices offer a serious alternative to religious practices, so defenders of Islam are consistent in targeting yoga. It appears that yoga-like physical activity can be repackaged for other religions, but I’m still waiting for secular yoga.