Welcome to the New (for a time) Crusty Old Dean

It is time to reveal Crusty Old Dean's Lenten devotions. As you can see, COD had availed himself of the different blogger templates and chosen an appropriately violet covered one for the Lenten season.

There are two Lenten devotions Crusty Old Dean will dedicate himself to, including those Sundays in Lent. Sadly, unlike our Eastern brothers and sisters, Western Christians never have gotten this number of days in Lent thing right, so there are those Vegas/international waters/Massachusetts dog track-like seven Sundays in Lent, places which don't seem to fit into the normal space-time continuum. Unlike in the Orthodox Church, where Lent starts on a Monday and they throw down the fasting and devotions to the bitter end.


COD digresses.

The first Lenten devotion is a desperate attempt to piggyback on the excellent work that Scott Gunn is doing at Forward Movement and gain some free publicity by trying to expose the dark side of Lent Madness. Is it promoting gambling? An effort to collect our personal information? Forcing American understandings of holiness on the rest of the Communion? Is Gunn on the take from the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music to promote traffic to their site researching their votes? Check for periodic efforts to unmask the Wizard and see what really is behind it all.

(In addition, this is in service of Crusty Old Dean's attempts at branching out and developing his crustiness in new ways during this Lenten season. With Scott's archnemesis on a Lenten hiatus from their eternal, Highlander-meets-Zoroastrianism-meets-Howard-the-Duck-and-Garko-the-Frog battle of good and evil, Crusty Old Dean is looking to audition for B-list, second-tier nemesis status. Like Mysterio is to Spider-Man or Impossible Man to the Fantastic Four or Apocalypse to the X-Men -- preferably a step above people like Paste Pot Pete or Chemistro.)

The second is completely unlike the first: Crusty Old Dean will take a break from boring people on the intricacies Episcopal polity which entertain only about 2% of the people in a church which is less than 1% of the population as a whole. Crusty Old Dean will be showing his alternative side, writing about stuff that has very little to do with, well, everything else written here in the past few months.

As a teaser: up next, what Crusty Old Dean is reading right now! Well, not right now, because I'm reading this sentence. You know, Russian has two different words for "now" (COD took eight years of Russian -- see, you wouldn't know that, because COD has never written about it). One means "right now", like "I'm studying Greek right now" meaning you're doing it while you're speaking it. Or, a different word, "I'm studying Greek right now" meaning in general, like you're taking a Greek class this semester. Anyway, COD means it in the second sense.

Coming up: What COD is reading right now! (again, second sense in paragraph above)