Pancakes and Ashes

For the last several years, I've been observing Lent. I grew up Baptist, so traditions like Lent were not something I was exposed to. I came to Lent through some special services at my (surprisingly Baptist) college, and through my own desire to spend some extra time focusing on God in the weeks leading up to Easter. I've never attended an Ash Wednesday service (Baptists don't really have those), but as I understand it, the ashes are there to remind us that we came from dust and we will return to dust. In other words, we owe everything to God, who created us, and one day we will all die. (Cheerful, I know.) What's the point of all this focus on death? Well, it seems to me that it places Christ's death and subsequent victory over death through His resurrection in context. We remember that all must die, so that we can rejoice that one day Death itself will die and we will live forever with the risen Christ. So that's why I observe Lent.

But this post is really about pancakes -- that is, about the day before Ash Wednesday, known as Mardis Gras, or "Fat Tuesday," and known by some as "Shrove Tuesday" or "Pancake Tuesday." (Read all about why, here). To be honest, I've always seen Fat Tuesday as a silly tradition. The idea that we should get out all of our sinning before big bad Lent comes to take our fun away seems akin to the idea that an engaged man who is truly in love with his wife would need to have a crazy, stripper-filled Bachelor party before going away to the prison of marriage. Marriage is not a prison! If you really love your bride-to-be, you don't need strippers. (But I digress...) The point is that Lent isn't about taking fun away; it's about focusing on what brings true joy, without the distractions that can sometimes come from God's very good gifts that, though good, can replace God in our lives if we let them. But my aversion to Fat Tuesday came before I knew about its other name: "Pancake Tuesday." So, now, I'm all about Fat Tuesday -- not because I'm deep or spiritual -- but because I'll take any excuse to eat breakfast for dinner. 

On the pancake bar: walnuts, chocolate chips, blueberries, banana slices, whipped cream, and cinnamon. (Plus butter and syrup, the old stand-bys)

Our first creations: Blueberry cinnamon for Adam and Banana-Walnut-Chocolate chip for me. The latter, by the way is heavenly dessert in a pancake. So delicious.

I always find flipping the pancakes to be a challenge.

Adam's cat pancake from round two. On a related note, sharing the cooking process with my kitchen-averse husband was one of the most fun parts of this experiment.

My second pancake: banana blueberry, topped with more bananas, blueberries, walnuts, whipped cream, and the usual butter and syrup.

The funny thing is that though I came to Fat Tuesday solely for the pancakes, eating all that delicious food actually accomplished two good ends: 1. I remembered God's goodness, because pancakes and chocolate chips and whipped cream and all the rest are "beautiful extras"; 2. I marked the beginning of Lent in a memorable way. What could have easily passed me by as an ordinary Tuesday ended up being a time of celebration to lead me in to the reflection and repentance of the Lenten season.

In case you're wondering, I'm not giving anything up this year. Instead, I decided to take a page out of my friend Renea's book and add something good, but useful. This year, I'm adding daily readings from "The Jesus Storybook Bible." There happen to be 40 chapters from the start of the book to Jesus's resurrection, so it's perfect for the 40 days of Lent.