Lent Madness isn’t just about saints, discipleship, voting, formation, and chuckles. Like the rest of our culture, it’s about commerce. So here’s your chance to stock up on Lent Madness goodies.
First of all, you can’t tell the players without a program. Get thee to the Kindle or Nook stores and buy a copy of Calendar of Saints: Lent Madness 2013 Ultra-Revised Edition. This venerable title began life as book of devotional essays on the saints by Canon David Veal. Last year, we revised and updated it to include all the official saints of the Episcopal Church calendar (none of the trial use clutter) PLUS all the saints in Lent Madness. This year, it has been Ultra Revised to include all the saints in Lent Madness 2013. Besides author David Veal and editor Scott Gunn, this year’s contributors include several celebrity bloggers and Lent Madness luminaries: Laurie Brock, Megan Castellan, Penny Nash, Tim Schenck, Heidi Shott, and David Sibley. Janet Buening on the Forward Movement staff added an essay and pulled the whole thing together. So, anyway, there’s lots of great stuff here — it’s a devotionally oriented look at the saints.
For this year, we slashed the price to just $4.99. You can buy it on Kindle or Nook. If you want a paper copy, just place your Kindle on a photocopier and make your own. We promise not to sue you for copyright infringement if you do this, as long as you use a photo of yourself at the copier as your Facebook profile pic and tag “Lent Madness.”
Second of all, since you are probably a bit sleepy after thinking about books, you are going to want a shiny new coffee mug. If you insist, it can hold other beverages too, up to eleven ounces. This year’s mug features the Lent Madness 2013 logo, as well as the reigning Golden Halo title holder, Mary Magdalene, with a word to this year’s bracket of saints: “Good luck filling my shoes!” Buy your mug for the low bargain price of $10 from Forward Movement. Get another one (or ten more) and the price plunges to nine bucks.
Third of all, and finally, you are going to want to track the results of Lent Madness in real time on your living room wall, right? For this you’ll need a giant, poster-sized bracket. We have just the thing. New this year, you can buy yourself a 36″ by 24″ full-color bracket to record the winners of each match. Brackets are just ten bucks, or two for $18. Buy one for your parish hall bulletin board, another for home, and perhaps a third for work. It would not be completely out of line to get one for the car and several for your neighbors.
Keep an eye on the Store page. If we think up more stuff, we’ll put it there. Got an idea for something you want to own? Let the Supreme Executive Committee know your ideas.
Buying all this stuff supports the work of Forward Movement, and here’s a promise: If we sell at least $10 million of merchandise this year, we’ll seriously consider getting a purple Lent Madness blimp for next year. Whoever buys the most stuff (minimum purchase, $1 million) can have a free ride on the official blimp with the SEC. Hey, it could happen. Or not.
Celebrity Blogger Week: Canon Heidi Shott
Celebrity Blogger Week continues with the irrepressible Heidi Shott. Most closely identified with Queen Emma, last year’s Cinderella saint, Heidi has turned down numerous offers of free trips to the Aloha State. Something about being impartial. Plus she’s nervous about the chances of Damien of Molokai this Lent.
Heidi Shott, entering her second year as a Celebrity Blogger, is Canon for Communications and Social Justice in the Episcopal Diocese of Maine. She is a member (and past Vice Chair) of the Standing Commission on Communications and Information Technology and served as Chair of the Episcopal Life Board of Governors. She worked on the Office of Communication’s video news team at two General Conventions, hosting “The Daily Wrap” in Anaheim in 2009. In Indianapolis she hosted an interview blog at www.indy300.net. Praised widely for her writing about faith in daily life, Heidi writes for a variety of publications and blogs. She keeps the blog Heidoville. With the departure of their twin sons for college, she and her husband Scott are milling aimlessly around their home in mid-coast Maine where they root for the Red Sox even when they lose. Follow her on Twitter @heidomaine.
As the token non-seminary-trained member of the Lent Madness team, I am honored to represent the underrepresented lay order for a second year. No. I really am. It’s not like we should pretend that Lent Madness is a proportional democracy or something. While coping with last year’s copy deadlines and the demands of scrounging up kitsch and amusing saintly anecdotes about people who weren’t always amusing — think St. Augustine — was stressful, it was a pleasure to be involved. I learned an enormous amount about these faithful followers of Jesus, with the bonus of discovering a kindred spirit in Enmegabowh’s wife, Iron Sky Woman. Also, I learned how to spell his name without looking it up. That Queen Emma of Hawaii made it all the way to the Golden Halo round was the icing on the cake.
Well, I have a pretty awesome corner office at the Episcopal Diocese of Maine, one floor above the Bishop’s. Since I’m pretty fidgety and my desk is directly over his, I suspect he finds my toe tapping pretty annoying but is too kind to say anything. It’s something we don’t discuss. I’m very fond of my aged mini-rex house rabbit, Hester. I fear he — Hester’s a he, long story — will die soon and have contemplated having him stuffed. Members of my immediate family find this prospect disturbing and have taken to buying fake rabbits to offer me comfort in advance of his demise. Recently I’ve been looking at photos of taxidermied rabbits online and confess that, on the whole, they don’t look so good or very comforting at all. In other animal news, I’m an avid scuba diver and take great pleasure in identifying many species of tropical fish and critters whenever I get the chance. Here in Maine I live on a millpond where, hypocritically, I don’t appreciate close encounters with fish or critters while swimming in the pond.
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