Looking at Lent sideways

Yesterday a Year 6 girl at Christ the Sower decided to come and ask me if she could give me an ashen cross on my head to mark the start of Lent. I consented, was duly marked and instructed to leave my sins and turn to the gospel, said Amen to her and walked around for (nearly) the rest of the day with this sign on. In this season of humility, I felt blessed and proud that she had asked me. Eventually, before yesterday’s Parent Information Evening, I rubbed it off as it was beginning to look less like a cross than a smudge….but this feeling of blessing persisted and I began to ask myself why I felt so ridiculously encouraged by this. The picture, I can assure you, is NOT ME!

In a fantastic couple of recent posts, Nick Baines (Bishop of Bradford) talks about Positive Lent and explores at length issues around religion in society. Both are worth a read, particularly the latter, which I found interesting as it opened up some of the same terrain in the religious world (bad expression, but you know what I mean) that this blog is trying to explore in the educational one.  Here is a quote from the second of these two posts that I found really helpful, even attitude-forming in my own mind:

Religious institutions are healthy (both internally and externally) only when they develop the courage to be reflective and honest. Passion and fundamentalism might reinforce the sense of ‘rightness’ of particular individuals or communities, but they run the danger of leaving no space for self-criticism. Indeed, self-criticism within the community can be seen as a weakness, a loss or lack of faith – when, in fact, it is the very evidence of genuine faith.

Here is another quote from the post, talking about the nature of faith:

Faith involves two things: first, clarity about the object of that faith; secondly, the courage to go out from our fundamental starting point and see what’s out there. Faith might need courage and a teasing curiosity, but it cannot grow from fear. Faith is always curious, daring, open and adventurous – because it always assumes that not everything has yet been nailed. If every question has been answered unequivocally by our faith system, then faith is the wrong word to use to describe what we think we have. Faith assumes that there is more to know, further to go.

The post is a summary of a lecture called “Questioning Faith”, given on Monday night at the University of Bradford and the whole text can be seen here. Really encouraging and engaging.

But the other thing that got me encouraged is that Lent really is a deeply positive experience. Nobody ever puts a subtraction or a division sign on your forehead – it’s a plus, for goodness sake! It’s a positive. It’s a mark that reminds us of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ that was intended to change and transform us, forgive and restore us, to reach us and weep with us.

So whatever you have decided to give up or change or mark for Lent (I was challenged last weekend to take seriously the memorisation of scripture again – so that will be my Lent thing), do it in the knowledge that it is part of the cycle of celebration – not just of being Christian, though that is important for all those families at Christ the Sower who walk in that faith, but for being Human. a time to reflect on and to celebrate the changes in the inward parts of our lives.