Lent Blog

Well, this is the end of the story… 

And also the beginning of the story… 

For my story, this is the end.  It has been a funny journey over the last few weeks since I started this blog.  Fittingly the action for today is to ‘share a story about what happened during Lent’.  So today I will talk about my journey through Lent and this blog.

I have never done anything like this before and it has been a scary thought.  To put yourself forward to tell stories of your life to people is a funny thing.  I really thought that this would be a fairly lonely task as there couldn’t be many people who would want to share in the ramblings of my life. 

And yet, and yet, I will miss it in a strange way.  Although I have had to find time every evening to reflect on the action that I have done for Lent each day, and have had some challenges with the technology in doing this when I have been away, it has actually been a positive part of my journey of faith. 

Rather than giving something up for Lent, it was different to take something up instead.  Using the structure of the Love Life live Lent series of actions has thrown up both challenges and joys.  What I know now at the end of Lent, is that I have shared more of myself and have done more things without thought of myself.   

So, to all of you who have taken the time to share my actions and thoughts – thank you.  Speaking to Will Harrison – there have been several thousand hits on this site and many people who have set up RSS feeds (so that they could get notification when I have posted something new).  For me, this has been a humbling experience, as I feel that I have been given the chance to give of myself, and to give a little bit of service. 

Just to finish off one action from earlier this week, my girls and I took a home made Easter card round to some neighbours yesterday.  He is a priest who  has given all his life to his service of the Lord and is now in his nineties – and is an inspiration to me and to many.  No more so than his wife who has helped and supported him through all his ministry.  She has been unfailingly cheerful and never has anything less than the most wonderful smile, even though her health has not been the best for the past couple of years.  For all they have done and still do, I echo my thanks. 

So, with my final Easter blog, and the story of the beginning of new life, I can think of no more fitting an ending than to say: Christ is risen – He is risen indeed, alleluia………

As we move towards the end of Lent, the penultimate action is to ‘watch a film about Jesus’ life’.  Having moved past the crucifixion, we are now at the time of waiting for the resurrection.  It is a sort of limbo time – between the certainty of death, and the promise of new life – the time for mourning. 

The BBC have their new series that they are broadcasting on the death of Christ ‘The Passion’.  The last instalment of this series is tomorrow – but this is not the programme that I am going to reflect on today. 

The BBC has also been investigating the Turin Shroud, and had a very interesting programme tonight that was saying that there is still no known way that the image was created.  They were also saying that there are also several historical reasons why it could be older than the carbon dated age of 1325.   

All of this shows that there is still a mainstream desire to make films and programmes that follow the life and death of Jesus.  For all the supposed secularisation of the world, the spiritual and religious aspects of the world are still key aspects of our popular culture.  Long may this be the case………

The action today in the Love Life Live Lent series was to ‘spend five minutes in silence at 12 noon’.  Now this sort of prescriptive action can be quite difficult to achieve in the fast paced world we have today, when time is often not our own. 

So, where was I at noon today?  Well, sadly – I was on my way to the supermarket to do the weekly shopping with one of my girls.  Although I had not wanted to be doing this today, it was the only time this weekend that we could fit this in. 

The five minutes at noon that I spent driving, I also spent thinking.  Thinking about the suffering that Jesus went through on this day.  Thinking about the suffering that is in the world today.  Thinking about the suffering that some people I know – are suffering today. 

I find it harder and harder to have the time to sit back and take time to really think about the bigger picture.  Life is just so busy and so hectic!  So, it was really nice to make myself think for a few minutes about the bigger things in life.  The trick to carry forward, is to keep making the time………

With today being Maundy Thursday, there is a modern slant on today’s action – which is to ‘polish someone’s shoes for them’.  This is a modern take on Jesus washing the disciples’ feet at the Last Supper. 

Talking to my mum today, she has had her own Maundy Thursday experience.  She had her hip replaced six weeks ago, and today was the day that she could finally get rid of her compression stockings.  As she has been wearing these (not the same pair of course) for the last six weeks, her skin underneath had seen better days!   

So, she got a family friend to wash her feet and felt just so much better.  The fact that it was Maundy Thursday was just a quirk of fate really – it was only when a friend of hers pointed out what the day was that she got the symbolism. 

Now I haven’t quite got a dozen people to clean their shoes for (and no, I’m quite happy not to get any more thanks), but I have got a dozen shoes to clean – as there are six of us.  So, that is what I am away to do now – they are lined up and waiting for me………

I’ve never really been one for sending an Easter card.  There are so many special days and events, and for each one there is a special card.  I find it an interesting game to look at the ‘seasonal section’ in the supermarkets and to see that there is never now a time when there isn’t something to celebrate.  

We have gone from Christmas, to Valentine’s day, to mothers day to Easter without hardly pausing for breath.  In fact, Easter eggs were being sold in one supermarket just after Christmas – and before the New Year! 

Anyhow, coming off my soapbox, the reason for thinking about this is because the action for today is to ‘make an Easter card for a neighbour’.  As I have been away all day, and only got back this evening, I have not had a great deal of time to do anything creatively today.   

So, I am stretching the action a bit (or maybe being creative about how I achieve it) and am going to do this over the next couple of days.  I am going to get my girls to help me and we are going to make a card for some lovely neighbours, who are not in the best of health, who we have known for the past ten years.  I may not be actually managing to do this today, but have made the commitment today to do this, and I am sure that it will be well received – especially as my lovely girls will come with me to deliver it………

Forgiveness is one of the things that we are asked to do as part of our Christian life.  It is also one of the hardest things, I feel, for us to do as human beings.  We remember things long after they have ceased to be really relevant to the rest of the world and can harbour grudges and sleights for years. 

Today’s action is to ‘forgive someone who has been unkind to you’.  I have been thinking about this action today and how I would interact with it.  Today sees me away from home at a conference in Telford, so I am not in my normal environment of meeting people I know.   Not that it means that the people I know are normally unkind to me, it is just that the people you don’t know will not normally go out of their way to offend you in any way. 

So this set me thinking about things in my past that I have maybe forgotten, but not really forgiven.  It can sometimes be a real challenge to all of us to try to live that life of selfless forgiveness that we know we should.   Which brings me to D – he was someone I used to work with, who I felt had once, many years ago,  sold me up the river good and proper!  Although he apologised soon afterwards and said that he felt there was little else he could do, I was quite resentful at the time.  This had also rankled with me for some time afterwards, and I think this has been sitting heavy on my heart for all these years.   

So, for what I feel he did to me at the time, I really do forgive him.  To me, it will always be a sadness what he did, so not forgotten, but forgiven.  Life moves on and so should we………

The action today in the Love Life Live Lent series is to ‘carry a burden for someone who can’t manage it themself’.  This is a classic ‘Good Samaritan’ action that is just a simple thing that most of us can do every day.  Or is it… 

I was thinking about how I would cover this action, and, as ever, thought that I would see how the day unfolded to allow me to do this.  In the simplest terms, my two year old daughter sorted this out for me this morning as she was trying to take a big bag of books to the childminder.  Although she had stuffed the bag full of books, she found that she was struggling to carry it – so handed it to me just outside of our door. 

However, I have been thinking a bit deeper about this and it is not just the physical things that we all have to carry.  There are all of the other bits of the world that we have to carry with us every day – in our hearts and in our heads.  It is this that I have been really thinking about as I spend a reasonable amount of my time trying to help people who are struggling with the cares of life.   

The world seems to be so busy today and the expectations seem to be so great, but we all suffer from the relentless pressure and stress of life.  One of the key principles I try to live with is to look around me at the people I come into contact with and to try to talk to them about life and maybe to share some of their burden.  I feel very blessed with my life and just want to be able to give a little bit back………

As we move into the last week of the Live Life Love Lent series (www.livelent.net) the focus turns, in Holy Week, towards God.  As we have been looking outwards for the past six weeks, so now we start to focus on God and our relationship with him.   

The action today is to read about what happened on Palm Sunday.  I was really glad to be able to do this today through the service in my local church.  Of course we were focussing on Palm Sunday, but it was done with a really lovely twist this year.  Our Sunday School acted out the gospel reading today and showed some of the excitement that we can imagine accompanied Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. 

This was followed up by our vicar talking through the story with all the children at his feet.  As you can imagine, with a group of children they didn’t always answer his questions in the way that he imagined – sometimes with hilarious effect.   

In all, it just felt like church should do – all of us were, I think, touched at many different levels by the messages we heard today.  All of us went away, carrying our prayers of hope to take forward this week.  One thing I must just mention is that one of our congregation was commissioned as a Street Pastor on Friday night – to work with those who are out and about in Lincoln on an evening.  This is great work, being done selflessly, by a group of volunteers, who are backed up by a team of prayer supporters.  I have nothing but admiration for all of them, and the great work that they are doing to be relevant Christians to today’s world………

As promised on Monday, I am doing the action that was set out for that day, today.  The action I am doing is to ‘cook or eat food from a cuisine you haven’t tried before’.  This has actually turned out to be a bit of a challenge to me as we have a fairly eclectic diet and eat from a variety of countries on a regular basis. 

To digress a little, I just want to reflect on the Diocesan Synod that was held today.  It was a very good meeting.  Not just because I wasn’t chairing (and all thanks to Canon John Patrick for his sterling work today), but also because there was a great deal of debate today.  So often it seems that there is not a great amount of debate about the motions on the agenda, but today, there was a large range of comments and an obvious great deal of thought and prayer that had gone on beforehand. 

Whilst the debates today were about finance and deployment of resources, I really hope that, as a diocese, we can invest as much effort  and energy in debating more kingdom facing motions over the months and years ahead. 

Anyhow, back to today.  We have been really blessed with our girls in that they have been generally very happy to try new dishes of food.  When your two year old is asking to try the curry and then is eating it for several weeks running, then I sincerely hope that we are giving them a wide ranging set of experiences for their tastebuds to work with over their lifetimes. 

I love cooking and tinkering about in the kitchen – which Sue tolerates with good grace – or is it just that she gets food cooked for her!  So, to find a different cuisine was a bit of a struggle. After a deal of thought (and a bit of looking in cookery books) I came upon something we have never tried before.  So we had a lemon chicken tagine, with lemon and garlic couscous to eat tonight.  We have never had Moroccan food before, so this was a first! 

I tried to ring a change with the drinks as well – I think I was trying too hard, but never mind.  So the girls had a sour cherry lemonade and we had a different type of wine.  I couldn’t find Moroccan wine to match the food, but we are just finishing off a nice bottle of Lebanese wine from the Bekaa Valley.  Truly it is a very small world………

Jambo!  Or should I say bonjour, guten tag, dzień dobry, holà or malo e leilei.  These are all different ways of saying hello.  This is the action for today – to learn how to say hello and goodbye in different languages.  So, today I am greeting you all in Swahili, French, German, Polish, Spanish and Tongan! 

I didn’t know, until I started to look at this, but there are over 2796 languages in the world today and it would take a very long time to greet someone in all of them!   

So maybe I should just settle for saying Saluton!  That is the way of saying hello in Esperanto.  The basic rules and words of Esperanto were proposed by L. L. Zamenhof at the end of the 19th century. Within a few years, people started learning it and formed a worldwide community.  Since then, Esperanto has been in use (and freely evolving) just like any other language. 

Language can often be a barrier to people getting on together – although sometimes it feels to me like this is an excuse rather than a real reason.  It is sometimes the same for us as Christians that we think we can only ‘talk’ to people of the same exact beliefs as ourselves, and other Christian groups – Methodists, Catholics, United Reform Church, Baptists etc are somehow so different that we don’t have anything in common.  This is why I am really happy that our Fresh Expressions group here in the diocese is thoroughly ecumenical.  We are all talking the language of God and redemption – to us, our universal language. 

So, goodbye, au revoir, auf wiedersehen, do zobaczenia, adios, po’uli, Ĝis revido.  Or, in any language – God go with you………