If it's the joke I think it is, it's not specific to Burger King; the version I remember just uses "...never be able to eat in that restaurant again."

Unlike Tom Whitmore @ #6, I don't think I've heard Safeway used -- the set-up as I know it always involves eating a meal -- but we might still be thinking of the same joke; I can see how it could be done.

None of this really helps, does it?

The children were lined up in the cafeteria of a Catholic elementary school for lunch. At the head of the table was a large pile of apples. The nun made a note, and posted on the apple tray: "Take only ONE. God is watching."

Moving further along the lunch line, at the other end of the table was a large pile of chocolate chip cookies. A child had written a note, "Take all you want. God is watching the apples."

The question is: since it is arguably pro-procreation, is it a joke of which Rick Santorum would approve?

The other question: will the debate tonight feature two people prominently sporting their Toner Cartridge Incident to highlight differences with the Bot?

It's the last week of Lent, and a guy goes to Confession.

He says, "Bless me father, for I have sinned. I can never go back to Church again."

"It is difficult for me to imagine a sin so grave that a penitent can never return to Church," the priest says. "Tell me about it."

"Well," the guy says, "My wife and I had decided to give up sex for Lent. And, while it was difficult, we were managing well enough, until this morning. Over breakfast, she asked me to pass the sugar. Our fingers met; our eyes met; and without a further word we were pulling off each others' clothing. We made mad, passionate love right there on the table."

The priest says, "This is no sin. You are married to one another and marital relations are pleasing to God within the bands of matrimony. While the practice of denying ourselves small pleasures during Lent is admirable and helps us recall the solemn occasion, it is not a requirement of the Church, but only a matter of individual practice. You may certainly return to Church."

"Okay," says the guy, "but we can never go back to Burger King again."

John Smith was the only Protestant to move into a large Catholic neighborhood. On the first Friday of Lent, John was outside grilling a big juicy steak on his grill. Meanwhile, all of his neighbors were eating cold tuna fish for supper. This went on each Friday of Lent. On the last Friday of Lent, the neighborhood men got together and decided that something had to be done about John as he was tempting them to eat meat each Friday of Lent, and they couldn't take it anymore. So they decided to try and convert John to become a Catholic. They went over and talked to him and were so happy that he decided to join all of his neighbors and become a Catholic. They took him to Church, and the Priest sprinkled some water over him, and said, "You were born a Baptist, you were raised a Baptist, and now you are a Catholic." The men were so relieved that now their biggest Lenten temptation was resolved. The next year's Lenten season rolled around. The first Friday of Lent came, and just at supper time, when the neighborhood was settling down to their tuna fish dinner, came the wafting smell of steak cooking on a grill. The neighborhood men could not believe their noses! WHAT WAS GOING ON? They called each other up and decided to meet over in John's yard to see if he had forgotten it was the first Friday of Lent. The group arrived just in time to see John standing over his grill with a small pitcher of water. He was sprinkling some water over his steak on the grill, saying, "You were born a cow, you were raised a cow, and now you are a fish."

http://chewbacchus.org/

I find this amusing, but I am not a Christian, so what do I know?

...which is why I get my ashes in the evening. Feels too much like praying on street-corners otherwise. And I'm afraid my ex-Catholic colleagues will think I'm judging them, or that my non-Catholic colleagues will think I'm going to try to convert them.

(I'm OK being out to y'all; I stand on my non-evangelical non-judgmental record. But colleagues don't necessarily know me well enough.)

Having said that, I did actually bring a colleague with me to evening Mass today. But she needed to get a Mass card for the deceased father of yet another colleague, so tagging along with me ensured finding a friendly and English-speaking priest.

It was...strange...being visibly faithful to a colleague. Even one who is also a friend. It was more difficult, in many ways, than being naked in front of colleagues, which I have also done.

Abi, I'm with you about preaching on street corners - I used to go to the evening mass, but I've arranged in the past several years to have ash wed. afternoon be mostly client-less, and my dinner guests will probably be have ashes as well. It's the one time a year I wish I had bangs.

Hyper-Local News: I did indeed attend 8 A.M. Mass, where there was a smallish turnout of about fifty people or so; I suspect noon Mass was a bit bigger, and I'm pretty sure the 7 P.M. Mass will be quite large. (I had schedule conflicts for both of the later ones, but the meeting to which I am going tonight takes place in the church building at nearly the same time as evening Mass, so I might see a bunch of people to say hi to.)

Also, I need to get or make a button that says "Another Minnesota Catholic for Marriage Equality." Would have been nice to have it today. If I'm going to fly my colors because of wearing the smudge all day, I might as well also stand up for something that matters pretty intensely here right now.

We also talked to them about coming over for Houston's Art Car Parade in May; they'd fit right in. They had never heard of art cars! (And in a lot of art car parades they wouldn't be allowed, but Houston has categories for bikes and "contraptions", which includes things built on Segways and golf carts and riding mowers -- basically anything that's not a bike or a car. We even had a giant traffic cone one year that was foot-powered; 4 guys inside it pushing.)

slend: verb. To slim down. See also: slender

slender: noun. One who slends.

slent: past tense, past participle of slend. e.g. "Did the elephant lose weight? Why, yes! It slent."

Ah, knowledge! Easier than science.

It would seem the exact opposite of walking around with your forehead marked.

That's not why I was looking at Krewes . . . .

Origin of LENT
Middle English lente springtime, Lent, from Old English lencten; akin to Old High German lenzin spring
First Known Use: 13th century

"It is both lenses together which make vision." —R.A. MacAvoy*

*Quoted from memory

Also, as regards ashes-on-head: I was raised California Surfer Protestant, and I have to say that I always wished I belonged to a church that did the ashes thing. I love how solemn and communal it is.

Yep. Sometimes even us nasty evangelicals.

Nancy C. Mittens@39: "Can anyone explain why the (Episcopal) Gospel reading is the one from Matthew about not being public when you pray?"

Because the same sequence has got Jesus's commands about fasting in it. There aren't *that* many direct commands from Jesus to Christians in the New Testament (& those that there are are mostly versions of Old Testament ones such as "love your enemies"), but this is one of them.

"And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you."

The repetition of "they have received their reward" is a great bit of rhetoric. Works in many different voices. One imagines the original hearers thinking of the first-century equivalent of bankers with large bonuses.

My husband and I were noting yesterday that there were far fewer people sporting ashes than in our last city, but that the total amount of ash on display seemed equivalent. (Probably it's less a trait of Indiana Catholics and more a function of the people in our area of observation having gone to the same mass with the same ash-generous priest.)

:-)

I seen to remember writer Carrie Vaughn saying that her religious upbringing was mostly Air Force with some catholicism thrown in.

In my household, my atheist husband and I observe scrupulously Pancake Day (I got to eat pancake-like things for breakfast AND dinner on Tuesday, because the in-laws were in town so we did brunch at Ann Sather's and then dinner at Walker Brothers', yum), which is the day before "Oops! I walked into a sooty priest"-day.

Of course, m household also observes Dead Guy On A Stick Day in about a month. Some of my friends refer to instead as The Feast of the Sacred Zombie. Our observation of this feast is not celebrated with any particular food, but rather by going over to my grandmother's for the reuniting-of-the-tribe.

Holy Zombie Day is always enlivened, for us, by the fact that my grandmother has a rather twee painting on her wall of your standard-issue blandly bearded Jesus in robes holding a plateful of round puffy loaf (meant to be unleavened bread) up in an offertory manner. It is cut into 8 wedges. My Jewish stepmother, my atheist husband, and I always nudge each other and whisper, "This is the pizza of our oppression, which we have brought out of Egypt ..." to each other.

I hope my other Fluorospherians know that this flippancy on our part comes from a sort of fondness, and not from any dislike of religiosity in general (or Catholicism in particular) on our part.

I just miss the round of set feasts and holidays, and so have populated my personal idiosyncratic calendar with a variety of same: from Pancake Day to Pi Day on March 14th (when we eat pie) to the SCA New Year on May 1st through various and sundry others. As one of my coworkers remarked when I'd wished him Happy New Year repeatedly for different New Years, "Wow. You celebrate a new year every 48 days [on average], whether you needed one or not!"

A friend of mine once did a whole lot of research into various New Years, and discovered that literally every day is celebrated as such somewhere in the world (and that's not counting moveable feasts such as New Yam Day). He made a calendar at least one year...

* The result of improper kerning.

Which characterization of course reminds me that Frozen Dead Guy Days is coming up. (Are coming up?) Complete with coffin races.

Don't forget to celebrate Green Eggs and Ham Day on March 2, Theodor Giesel's birthday - or if scrupulous about meat-eating in Lent, on September 24, the day he died.

You can buy green eggs, but unfortunatly its only the shell that is green, so a bit of artificial colour helps. And wash down with GIN and tonic with lime in it - ideally from Juniper Green organic gin (surprisingly cheap and sounds vaguely Cthulic)

No, no, no. In this thread, we share punchlines, not set-ups.

Priest, putting Ash on 2-year-old's forehead:
"Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return"

5-year-old: "I don't think he'll remember"

Grape jelly gets its color from a pH-sensitive compound which turns green in alkaline conditions. Eggs being slightly alkaline, you can get green eggs by putting grape jelly on them. I've seen it work on both fried and scrambled.

I have no idea if this was known to Dr Seuss at the time of his writing of the Great Book.

Saints' days are always the day they died. So it really should be the 24th.

That was when, as they say, "he became his admirers".

The frozen t-shirt contest, on the other hand.... (It's actually a race to put one on, is it?)

I hadn't heard the grape jelly thing but it makes me wonder whether the original wasn't really supposed to have been Green Eggs and Jam with a(n un)fortunate typo on a qwerty keyboard...

Thanks. The juxtaposition of, "Don't make a fuss about how holy you are!" and, "Smear ashes on your head for everyone to see!" always made me wonder. As a child and teenager in Catholic school, I always had ashes in the morning and wasn't allowed to remove them, and it never occurred to me as an (Episcopalian) adult, I could just wash them off!

Mary Aileen @63: My husband was the first person I'd ever heard call that color 'green' -- I always heard it as silver or grey as a kid!

Trivia point: a sliced hard-boiled egg can be used to substitute for Liver of Sulfur if you want to antique a piece of silver jewelry. Put the piece and the egg into a zip-lock bag and leave them for a few days. The yolk emits sulfur fumes that will do the job as well as the professional compound, just a lot more slowly.

I've always wanted to make a calendar of holidays (of every sort, from holy to secular) and then try to celebrate them all (in my usual half-assed way, anyway). I wonder if I could convince my work that I need to take a year off for religious reasons.

*Googles*

Ah, apparently the process doesn't take as long as I thought. But they still warn you to open the bag outside!

I've been trying to have a small Diwali celebration for a couple of years, but that's our busy season and it keeps not being possible.

That definitely counts as Too Much Information!

One of my favorite New Years is the traditional Tohono O'odham (a Native American tribe from southern Arizona) New Year, which comes with the first monsoon rains and the saguaro fruits of midsummer. You don't need to live in Tucson or the surrounding area very long before the first summer rains become one of the most anticipated events of the year, and it absolutely makes sense for it to mark a new year. (When the missions came through, this got co-opted as the Dia de San Juan on June 24, which is a little early but a good time to start looking for rains.)

Of course, one of our catchphrases was "Welp, that's it, I'm going to Hell." FWIW.

When the bread is particularly delicious, I've been known to say "Wow, Christ has a particularly tasty body today!"

I would not say this in the hearing of people who didn't know me and understand that I mean it as humorous irreverence. I would not take communion in a Roman Catholic church at all, since the understanding of communion is different there, and I don't qualify to receive under those rules. I also sometimes don't go up if the celebrant is a guest whose understanding of communion I'm not sure of.

Shared meals as community ritual predate Christianity by quite a bit. That said, I don't want to deceive anyone, or offend anyone inadvertently.

Geoff Slattery, an Australian chef (who had previously been a sports writer), came up with a very good Green Eggs and Ham recipe. It's scrambled eggs, with pesto, served with ham and asparagus.

I have been forced to the conclusion that many Catholics combine this injunction with Augustine's Qui cantat, bis orat to conclude that you shouldn't sing so that people can hear you.

My friend assured her that they do in fact sing. (And they do. My schedule hasn't permitted choir rehearsal attendance for a couple of months, so I won't be in the choir for tomorrow's concert, "Me 'n' You 'n' Vatican Two," but I should be back in after that.) But I'm given to understand that there are plenty of places where Not Singing is the unfortunate norm.

Me, I'm all Don't Make Me Quote John Gorka about that.

The Methodist church where I grew up uses real bread and grape juice. Once, after the "This is my body" part, my little sister exclaimed "Yum! Jesus is sourdough!"

I think it was the other sister who stood up in the middle of a Christmas hymn and started belting out "Hallelujah with a shiny red nose...!"

Schmutz Wednesday is, of course, preceded by Schmaltz Tuesday.

(I live in a house where we refer to Erev Christmas, so...)

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get back and see how Miles gets out of trouble on Novaya Zemlya Kyril Island.

I apparently grew up in the church that sings.

We had high mass late in the day, so there wasn't a big deal regarding the decision about wearing the ashes.

The thing that even more strongly marked the beginning of Lent was Stations on Friday. Ash Wednesday comes but once a year, but Stations goes on throughout Lent.

Incidentally, my current church sings—but only because we had a priest a few years back who actually lectured on why it was important. He's the same one who joined the "cry rooms" back to the main church—"a well-intentioned but ultimately mistaken idea." The idea was that we are all part of the Church and should take part and not segregate.

So is anyone else glad that Jesus didn't do the loaves and fishes bit at the Last Supper?

At least #92 is unusual?

I did (Methodist) church choir back in the 70s, and we'd occasionally have ecumenical choir concerts with about five local churches. They were held at the Catholic church, which had the largest building. The monsigneur there had a booming bass voice, with the kind of projection that I suspect he didn't need to bother with a microphone for services. I don't know if their congregation sang, but their choir was great.

I'm really glad St. Joan's (where I'm going now) is a singing church. Even if they don't sing in parts from the congregation, and even if it's all this newfangled music. *grin* Though I do miss the country and bluegrass of House of Mercy, where I visited for a bit. (Their house band, the House of Mercy band, was great. Haven't heard the new incarnation of it, which is called the Blood-Washed Band, but I expect they're pretty good too.)

Speaking of Lent, some folks might like Nadia Bolz-Weber's blog posts over at Sarcastic Lutheran. She's an "emerging church" pastor, she's fierce, and she's a hoot. And fierce. And plain-spoken. Let's put it this way: one of her recent posts in reference to the comments on a CNN story about her and five other "Women in Religion To Watch" ended like this:

"In the end it made me sad a) that this was such clear woman-hating and b) that Atheists and conservative Christians would be represented in such a hateful way by the commenters on the blog. I know Atheists and conservative Christians who are loving and level-headed and who teach me things I would never learn from my fellow progressive Christians. I don’t agree with either group, but I yesterday I was offended on their behalf."

Also, at the end of her 40 Exercises for Lent, the last one is:

"Day 40: Pray for your enemies (you probably have new ones by now) then decide which of these exercises you’ll keep for good

Yeah, a lot of modern Catholic churches, including our parish's recently-built church, has no cry room--instead, there's a small room away from the church where you can pipe in the sound from the mass, but where you can't see anything and the room isn't really arranged to be child-friendly or a sensible place to be at Mass. So this room always has two or three families with crying children, and the entryway outside (where you can look through the glass doors and hear the Mass) are always full of noisy/active small children and parents comforting crying or screaming babies.

elise @96, I'm going to have to look up that blog.

Good for him. It's been a long time since I had to worry about attending services with a babe-in-arms, but I remember "cry rooms" with a distinct lack of fondness. Every time I got exiled to one, I found myself wondering just what the guy who said "suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not" would have had to say about the whole idea.

Just like being