Looking ahead, and some thoughts on Lent

I discuss a preview of the upcoming Drop In, another interview you should check out and the beginning of Great Lent. All over a cup of coffee!

Today’s Review will be a bit stream of consciousness, update, highlights, preview kind of thing. This week I’ve been working on editing the next episode of The Drop In, which I’m over the moon to share is an interview I did with Ric Hordinski a week ago at his recording studio, The Monastery, in Walnut Hills, a neighborhood in Cincinnati. Ric talks about how he got started in music and what led to the founding of a studio in an abandoned church in a storied neighborhood of a midwestern city. I have such a high regard for Ric as a guitarist, songwriter, producer, and human being.

I learned quite a bit about his story and about the music industry over the past three decades. One thing I try to do with The Drop In is leave enough flexibility in the interview to get a glimpse into what really gives the artist joy and motivation. To me, the best parts of the interview with Ric were the parts where we nerd out a little. So, yes, we talk Eno and Lanois, Prine and Isbell, and dive into what makes a great song. I can’t wait to share it with you all. I’m also upping the game on the production of The Drop In, starting with this one. I’m hoping it will go live next Friday.

Ric Hordinski, in his creative laboratory, The Monastery Studio

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My wife and I spend many hours in our 1874 Victorian home's upstairs creative spaces, separated only by a narrow hallway. She gets to overhear me working on a mix or trying to get a take right. Much of ML’s work is done via the written word, so I usually only get to see into her process when I cross the hall to check in, or on evenings we listen to music together and work in her creative space. She reads drafts to me, and I look over her shoulder sometimes. Recently, though, she’s been doing more recorded work. Over the past weeks, I’ve been overhearing a particular interview she did with a friend of ours, Aaron Morrison.

Aaron is a fellow Crawfordsville native and a person of faith who, like so many of us, struggles with what American Christianity has become. Aaron is passionate about Jesus and also about issues of social justice. He’s active in our community and a founding member of a recently formed Mutual Aid Group. As ML has been editing the interview, I’ve found myself drawn into listening to it. Aaron speaks so clearly and compassionately about his experience but also what keeps him going and motivated, in his faith and in his service. The interview drops on ML’s substack on Sunday. I highly recommend giving it a listen. Also, I know I’m biased, but her most recent posts about the beginning of Lent are excellent and worth checking out as well!

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This past week was the first week of Great Lent for Orthodox Christians. It’s an intense week, with services every day that include lots of prostrations. The fast begins, so the body is adjusting to all of that. It’s really a beautiful season, though. I’m learning to receive it as beautiful and a privilege to get to participate in. The older I get, the more I find that I can simply enter into it and know that it will be what it needs to be. I used to let the idea of the intensity, the concept of the spiritual battle, almost become a thing in and of itself. Maybe I’m just too tired now, or have seen too much sorrow around me, to have much interest in the valorization of suffering or self-imposed deprivation apart from any real connection to the actual needs and hurts of those who do not have the luxury of extra services, keeping the fasting calendar precisely, or discussing the finer parts of Lenten Triodion.

The morning Clean Monday (we call the first week of Lent “Clean Week”) was spent at the Miami Correctional Facility, the most recent prison to add ICE detention in Indiana. Because of the nature of the work with Indiana AID I don’t go in wearing clergy garb, but I did have a black dress shirt on. The Slavic guys in there sniffed me out as an Orthodox priest. A man from a Balkan nation asked if I was a Christian; he mentioned that he was Orthodox, so I revealed my clergy status. Word got around then, and one Russian called over to his friend, and with humor in his voice, indicated that the friend needed to come over here and confess his sins to this priest. We’ll work to try to get Bibles in their language into the prison. We hear about their cases; some have hope, some do not, some are asking to be deported so they will not be in these conditions anymore.

I’ve been wondering if perhaps this is part of why the Lord instructs those of us entering into a voluntary fast to anoint our heads and wash our faces. While it is clearly a warning against making a show of fasting, maybe it is also connected to those who do not have a choice to fast, those who, by the way, Jesus associates Himself directly with when He talks about the Last Judgment. Those who are not able to find shelter, to find clean water or sanitary conditions, those who do not have access to nutritious food, those imprisoned and detained, they do not choose to have faces not clean or not be anointed with oil. Their sorrowing faces are not chosen and are not for pious affect. There is no “Lenten feel” or ascetical feats in these conditions. There is no valorization of suffering. There is simply hunger, and sickness, and fear, and isolation, and injustice.

If our Lenten exercises shelter us from this, push us towards a “silence” about things, or further silo the Orthodox “experience” from the real suffering in the world, I am convinced that something is wrong.

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Well, I sat down thinking this would be a short post, but alas, the coffee and music (this morning’s selections were Wrest, Brandi Carlisle, and Over the Rhine) evoked more than I expected. I’ll leave it there for this week. Stay tuned for The Drop In next Friday, and make sure and check out ML’s interview on Examined this Sunday.

All the best,

joel

My favorite mug, from the Monastery of All Celtic Saints (Iona), and Mungo the Antifascist Irish Squirrel looking on.