Yesterday was Mardi Gras. Most of you probably know that. What you might not know is that my childhood years were spent in New Orleans, and so Mardi Gras is a fun day for my sister and me. We even had an impromptu Mardi Gras party here at the casa, complete with crappy king cake from Tom Thumb, and beads from the girls dress-up stuff. I have two favorite memories of Mardi Gras. The first is sitting in this contraption that my dad rigged up (and lots of other dads, too) that involved my sister and I sitting next to each other on top of a ladder as we watched the big truck parades. We always wound up with more beads and doubloons than we needed. Thinking back I'm amazed that our mom let us sit on that thing... The second is us playing Mardi Gras in the backyard with our friends. A few of us would perch on the monkey bars and throw beads and doubloons to our friends on the ground, then we'd pick up all the beads, and trade places. I'm sure that sounds like a weird childhood game to honey, who hails from PA, but it was so much fun.
So, yeah. New Orleans is in my thoughts today. It's distressing that the NOLA I read about in the paper doesn't reflect anything of the wonderful place that lives in my memories. I'm sure that mom & dad would say that there wasn't anything really all that wonderful about it...but it was a great place to be a kid.
Anyway, because yesterday was Mardi Gras, today is Ash Wednesday. We've got friends at Trinity Fellowship Church (an evangelical church that lots of DTS folks attend), and they celebrate Lent. They even have a 2007 Lent Devotional & Prayer Guide written by men in their church body (I haven't looked through it yet, but plan to). They also celebrate the Triduum, which is a 3-day Easter service that begins on Maundy Thursday, continues Good Friday, and is completed Easter morning. We've celebrated the Triduum several times, and it always prompts some great reflection. I just love this time of year! Spring seems to be springing, and Easter is on it's way. He is risen!
9 months ago
7 comments:
mardi gras on the monkey bars sounds like so much fun!
It was, Lin! I can still remember that crazy backyard like we were there yesterday. When we went through NO a few years ago, we drove by the house, and Chris tried to take a pic of the backyard - it was so humid that the lens was all foggy, so no pictures, sad to say!
Liturgucal evangelicals, now that's my kind of people.
When I used the word "advent" with the girls in my youth Sunday School class late last November, they looked at me like I'd made it up. When I explained that Advent is what the Christmas season is called in the Church calendar, one asked, "The church has a calendar? We name seasons on it?"
Yeah!! Mardi Gras!! We went to Dodie's Cajun Restaurant Saturday night and they were celebrating, it was fun...and I must say the food was really good. I'm always leary of cajun food outside of La., but I was impressed.
Jen, that is too funny about the church calendar... If Chris had his way, we'd be going to an evangelical church that celebrated the entire church calendar. He LOVES it. And I do too, for that matter. Highly recommend celebrating the Triduum.
Bek, it's always exciting to find good cajun food in Texas!
That ladder was some contraption, wasn't it? I always had nightmares of some drunk knocking it over, and you and Jen tumbling to the pavement beneath a Mardi Gras float! But that never happened, thankfully!
The king cakes from Gambino's bakery in E NO were the best, but one thing I remember from Mardi Gras is the sense of oppression at the parades. Yeah, oppression, when you're watching a parade where the floats are decorated with themes of mythology, or witchcraft, or voodoo, and the krewe members are, for the most part, drunk...There's a real sense of evil in the air, unfortunately, when it's party time before Lent.
I can totally see how that happened, Dad. Thankfully I don't remember any of it... Would've loved a real King Cake this week! Nice to see a real name, like Gambino's. All Jenny & I could remember was Delchamps!
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