Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, six weeks before Easter. All sinful and indulgent food should have been used up on Shrove Tuesday. Shrove Tuesday, known in the United States as Fat Tuesday and also time for Mardi Gras, in England is Pancake Day.
It all started long before Betty Crocker and Aunt Jemima, allowing housewives to use up all the white flour and other ingredients forbidden during Lent by making pancakes.
At a time when everything was governed by the church bells, tradition has it that a pious Olney housewife was frying her pancakes way back in the year 1445 when the church bells rang to summon the faithful to pray. Not wishing to be late and not wishing to waste her pancake, she rushed to church, frying pan in hand, thus starting the famous Olney Pancake Day race.
Since 1445 housewives have begun frying pancakes at the church's first "pancake bell." At second bell they assemble in the market place, pan in hand, and at third bell run the three-quarters of a mile to the church. Pancakes must be tossed twice along the village street and once up the church path. The winner receives the kiss of peace from the verger in the porch.
"Amazing grace, how sweet the sound..." So begins one of the most beloved hymns of all time, written by John Newton around 1772, minister of Olney Church for 16 years.
Newton did not start out as a preacher, but had a very different and exciting life. Newton was born in London in 1725, the son of a commander of a merchant ship, which sailed the Mediterranean. At 11 years old, he went to sea with his father and made six voyages with him before the elder Newton retired. In 1744, John was caught by the Press Gang and impressed into service on a man-of-war, The H.M.S. Harwich. Finding conditions on board intolerable, he deserted but was soon recaptured and publicly flogged and demoted from midshipman to common seaman.
Finally, at his own request he was exchanged into service on a slave ship, which took him to the coast of Sierra Leone. He then became the servant of a slave trader and was brutally abused. Early in 1748, he was rescued by a sea captain and ultimately became captain of his own ship, one which plied the slave trade.
On a homeward voyage, while he was attempting to steer the ship through a violent storm, he experienced what he was to refer to later as his "great deliverance." He recorded in his journal that when all seemed lost and the ship would surely sink, he exclaimed, "Lord, have mercy upon us." Late in his cabin he reflected on what he had said and began to believe that God had addressed him through the storm and that grace had begun to work for him.
Newton was not only a prolific hymn writer but also kept extensive journals and wrote many letters. Historians credit his journals and letters for much of what is known today about the 18th-century slave trade.[[In-content Ad]]
