Lent Madness

Today Margaret of Scotland takes on John Cassian and we hear two accounts of relics as they both seek to get “a head” to the next round. The Quirks & Quotes continue with the winner facing Enmegahbowh next week.

In a spirited and emotional battle, Dietrich Bonhoeffer defeated Brigid of Kildare yesterday 54% to 46%. This match-up inspired poetic responses from many Lent Madness partisans. Bonhoeffer will face Jerome in the Elate Eight. Check out the updated bracket to see how things stand heading into tomorrow’s match-up between Emma of Hawaii and Paul of Tarsus.

Margaret of Scotland (1045? – 1093) was a Saxon princess, great-granddaughter of Ethelred the Unready, perhaps born in Hungary and certainly raised there before returning to England as a young girl. She arrived in Scotland by accident, shipwrecked in the Firth of Forth during flight from England back to Hungary after the Norman invasion of 1066. There she caught the eye of King Malcolm III, who convinced her to marry him despite her desire to become a nun. Malcolm had come to the Scottish throne after killing MacBeth, who some years before had killed Malcolm’s father Duncan, which you may have read about in high school.

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If Tuesday was the battle of the Killer C’s (Cranmer vs. Columba), today is the battle of the Killer B’s (Brigid vs. Bonhoeffer). The victorious “B” wins a date with Jerome in the next round. But that’s getting ahead of ourselves — it’s time to focus on cheap grace and a lake of beer (somebody please write a limerick!).

Yesterday Evelyn Underhill won in a romp over Monnica 71% to 29% setting up an intriguing match-up against Mary Magdalene in the Elate Eight. Be sure to check the updated bracket to see the upcoming “Madness.”

Yes, even the 20th-century martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) had a few quirks: He decided to become a theologian as a boy; during his post-doctoral year in New York, he disliked the fact that American students always kept their doors open (i.e., no privacy); he failed his driver’s license test more than once; and his enthusiasm for bullfighting both amused and confused his students.

Quote from a 1939 letter to Reinhold Niebuhr:

“I must live through this difficult period in our national history with the people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people.”

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The Round of the Saintly Sixteen continues with a match-up between two heavyweights from the British Isles. Thomas Cranmer and Columba — the “Killer C’s” — face off against one another for a trip to the Elate Eight. Only one will advance to the next round in this the fourth of eight battles comprising the current round while the other will be left to “gather up the crumbs under thy table.”

Yesterday, in a battle that ostensibly took place on the vast plains in the middle of the United States, but really happened on your respective electronic devices, Enmegahbowh knocked out David Pendleton Oakerhater 54% to 46%. He joins Mary Magdalene and Jerome among those who have earned a spot in the Elate Eight. Check the updated bracket to see the big picture of Lent Madness (metaphorically speaking — there’s not actually a mural depicting Scott and Tim).

Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556), architect of the English Reformation, was eventually arrested and tried for heresy. Weakened, broken, and sentenced to be burned at the stake, Cranmer recanted his Protestant beliefs. However, from the pulpit of the University Church in Oxford, he dramatically reversed himself and testified to those beliefs on the day of his execution, March 21, 1556.

Before Cranmer’s last sermon, there was a different sermon by Henry Cole. It was Cole’s unenviable task to explain to the crowd why someone arrested for heresy, who subsequently repented, should still be burned at the stake. Diarmaid MacCullouch’s award-winning biography of Cranmer describes this as “a problem in canon law which Cole had little choice but to acknowledge openly.”

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Another manic Lent Madness Monday kicks off with a match-up focused on the western United States. Enmegahbowh squares off against David Pendleton Oakerhater in this Battle of Native Pride. Is it unfortunate that these two ended up in the same bracket? Perhaps. But we also know that neither one of them ever backed down in the pursuit of Gospel Truth.

While we never know how these thing will turn out — that’s up to all of you — the Oakerhater camp did get an early jolt of mojo in an article about Lent Madness that appeared in yesterday’s Oklahoma City Oklahoman. And after a first-round teaser,”Celebrity Blogger” Heidi Shott finally gives us the goods on Enmegahbowh’s wife.

Make sure to check out the updated bracket and if you need a refresher on Enmegahbowh or David Oakerhater from the previous round, you can go to the bracket page and scroll down to find links to every previous Lent Madness battle (thanks to Bracket Czar Adam Thomas for thinking of this and making it happen).

One hundred and ten years may have passed since the death of Enmegahbowh, but the voice of “the one who stands before his people” sounds remarkably contemporary.

At age 25, fed up with missionary work as a Methodist and vowing to return home to Canada, he and his wife Biwabiko-geshig-equay (or Iron Sky Woman or Charlotte, as she was christened on their wedding day), boarded the ship John Jacob Astor bound for Sault Ste. Marie across Lake Superior. The worst storm in many years sent the ship back to shore but not before Enmegahbowh received a visitation from the prophet Jonah. Many years later he recounted the experience to Bishop Whipple of Minnesota,

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Today in Lent Madness it’s the long-anticipated Battle of the Curmudgeons: Philander Chase vs. Jerome. To put it into rhyme (and demonstrating a nuanced, if gender exclusive, use of French), “I do declare, this is not a touchy-feely pair, mon frere.” Will the Kenyon College mafia again rise to put Philander over the top? Or will Jerome’s jihad put an end to this Cinderella story? Many plot lines, but only one will make it to the Elate Eight.

Yesterday, Mary Magdalene trounced Joan of Arc 74% to 26% to advance to the next round. Make sure to check out the updated bracket courtesy of our unsung Bracket Czar and Celebrity Blogger Adam Thomas. This beautiful bracket even got top billing in yesterday’s Houston Chronicle article about Lent Madness.

As this is the last clash of the week, we do wish everyone luck in dealing with their Lent Madness Withdrawal (LMW) this weekend. If you’re feeling particularly lost, feel free to call the Lent Madness Counseling Hotline (LMCH) 24-hours a day. You might recognize the digits as you dial since they’re quite similar to Scott’s home number. Lent Madness insomniacs are encouraged to contact the LMCH at all hours of the night — just ask for “Scott.” (Please note that after-hours calls may be transferred to our Hingham call center.) And we’ll see you all bright and early Monday morning as the Round of the Saintly Sixteen continues with Enmegahbowh vs. David Oakerhater.

“Well, this will do!” exclaimed Bishop Philander Chase upon seeing the “landscape of unsurpassed loveliness and beauty” that would become the site of Kenyon College near Owl Creek in Knox County, Ohio. Lawyer Henry B. Curtis recorded Chase saying these words, his way of expressing “delight and satisfaction.”

This exclamation seems to be as laconic as Bishop Chase was wont to become; indeed, he subscribed diligently to the lengthy and complex sermon, which, to be sure,was the style of the day (making it difficult for this author to pick out quotations for you, dear reader). In preaching at the consecration of three other bishops, one moment stands out. Perhaps the Bishop was thinking about the vista of Kenyon when he preached,

“Once more: not only in the main and leading features of the Law and the Prophets do we see the illustration of the truth contained in the words of the text, but the same appears in those things which, were it not for the importance of the subject, might be deemed of small moment; the revelation of God, in this respect, being like his works in nature. It is not only in the sun, in the moon and in the planetary system, and the vast order of the Universe, that the wisdom, the power and the goodness of God appear: but even the flowers of the field in their minutest examination, by microscopic glasses, equally gratify the taste for divine knowledge in every humble and diligent inquirer.”

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