lurchersontheedge

Today, St Cybi’s, Holyhead played host to children from Ysgol Parchedig Thomas Ellis, Ysgol Llaingoch and Ysgol y Parc as we marked the beginning of Lent.

I realise for the purists we are a week late. That is because of the little matter of Lent beginning during half term.

Lent is a journey. I guess it can start at different points. The children all left with a bag containing sand and a card with the words, ‘you are a person who is loved by God and God is pleased is with you’.

My Lenten devotions start with that particular truth, and the sand reminds me that much of what I know about God has often be fashioned in adversity.

Dancing waves

I wonder how your Lent is going so far?

I hope that you are being gentle with yourself. I think that is absolutely key to keeping a good and holy Lent. In the past, I have set myself lots of targets, failed, felt guilty and sometimes pretended that I had not really set them.

It is good be able to simply carve out time.

Yesterday, I watched the waves in Trearddur Bay. The sun dancing upon the crest of the sea, and for a moment, I managed a sense of stillness.

You don’t need to be confronted by the power of nature to be stilled. I am stilled as I remember my home towm, the steel city of Sheffield.

I am stilled as I read the Scriptures and attempt to pray. Perhaps, as we begin to enter the second week of this holy season, I will remember to be still a little more.

Buttermere Lake

I am afraid these are not the thoughts of a profound thinker, but my own as I watched the sunrise with my faithful hounds today; Pippin and Samwise.

Lent can be a bit like that. It is a journey, and by going on the journey we do not know how it will end. In a sense, that is not true, it will end of Easter Day. But in another sense, it is completely true, we do not know how it will end, as we do not know how we will have changed by living through Lent.

I realise that appears to be quite a deep thought for this time on a Sunday morning. However, I am going to leave it there: for today I am going to enjoy the moment.

water and sand do go together sometimes

One of the dangers for Lent is that we try to take on too much. We can fall into the trap of giving up something that we enjoy and in many ways helps us be who we are. (This is not always the case) We can also take things on, sometimes too many.

I am trying to find sometime to read every day, and also write. Writing something in this blog every day is part of the discipline. I also need to produce a couple of proposals for publishers as well, but that is not Lenten discipline, it is keeping a promise. My initial intention was to read a book a week. I have now had to rethink that. Reading should not be a route march on to the next piece of literature. It is meant to cause us to think.

I am reading H is for Hawk at the moment. This morning, I came across the rather wonderful phrase: ‘solitude is the cure for loneliness’. I have still chewing on this phrase a couple of hours after the words beginning to sink into my being.

Those who are solitary are not usually lonely. They have discovered how to be. Lent is for that. Discovering who we are. Surely that is one of the things Christ was doing in the wilderness. Of course, in the wilderness, he was not completely alone: the wild animals were with him, as Mark’s story of Jesus puts it, and the angels ministered to him.

That is enough for today. My faithful hounds remind me that they need to be fed.

Ashing done, although as I type, I can see some of the ash still ever so slightly on the tips of my fingers: a reminder perhaps of my mortality. Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return were words that I repeated a number of times as I was marked and marked by the sign of the cross.

Today is about beginning to slow down and edging towards a pattern for this season. I am also old enough now to know that this pattern will take time, and what worked last year may not work a second time. Then again, maybe it will.

I have nothing in the diary today and tomorrow. I need to learn as I edge towards a pattern not to allow things to miraculously appear in the timetable.

That involves not being busy, which is a key part of a feast.

One of my desires during this holy season is to create space.

At Messy Church in Morawelon last week (10 February 2015), we created a prayer tree. It was painted by an ordinand (someone exploring whether to be a vicar or not), and leaves were placed on it with the names of those who the community wanted to remember and pray for.

How do we create space in often frantic and frenetic diaries?

I think the first step is to remember to take a breath. Simon Parke seems to sum up this well and a poem he has written: http://simonparke.com/blog/post/feeling_my_path

Create space and breathe a little today

I have neglected the blog a little. I could use my traditional excuse of being too busy, and with it promise that I will try harder to post more in 2015. Therein lies the challenge, I choose to be busy. I do not have to be busy. My diary does not entrap me without me allowing it to do or colluding with it. I am sure much of my busyness comes from a desire to be needed. I don’t have to feel guilty about taking time off, walking the dogs, spending time with family. I allow myself to be dictated to.

What I am going to attempt to do is say no a little more. I have been warned. It would have been easy to say: you have been warned. But that would be to sidestep the responsibility that is mine.

There you go: an epiphany type moment.