As you leaf occasionally through your beloved copy of the Book of Common Prayer (BCP), you may have noticed mention of “Ember Days.” These observances turn up on the liturgical calendar four times a year, and each consists of three days: the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday after St. Lucy’s Day (December 14), Ash Wednesday, the day of Pentecost, and Holy Cross day (September 14). As you may have deduced, we are currently in the vicinity of the Ash Wednesday Ember Days….

C.S. Lewis’ book titled The Great Divorce is a parable about the cavernous gap between heaven and hell. Lewis presents hell as a place filled with people who can’t let go. They carry the things they disliked about other people while they were alive, or they find new ways to be righteously indignant with those around them. As they hold on to these resentments and express their annoyances, they move further and further apart.

The story focuses on a small group of people on a bus that takes them to the very edge of heaven. Before they can go on, each of them meets a person from their past that they wish they could avoid. An artist meets a competitor and doesn’t want to give up his insistence that his school of training was the best. A woman has manipulated those closest to her and doesn’t want to give that power up in the afterlife….