Saturday 13 February 2016

From Ashes to Hope

This week I went to York Minster to start Lent with the beautiful ancient ceremony which gives Ash Wednesday its name:  receiving a cross of ashes on my forehead. Why ash? Because it is a symbol of mourning and mortality, given to each person with words echoing those I last heard at my father's funeral in late December: "remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return". To many, Lent is a time of giving things up, of disciplining the body and reflecting on our frailty and failures. While this is valuable, it raises the question of what the purpose of discipline actually is. What are we training for? 
In her sermon, the Dean encouraged us to think differently about Lent: rather than trying to punish ourselves because we are not perfect, let us put in the effort to pursue excellence.
We were encouraged to reflect on how both life and Lent are short, that we need to grasp hold of life with both hands and invest in living it to the full. And for most of us, this doesn't mean doing more different things as a dilettante doing a little bit of this and a little of that, but doing a few things to the best of ability. Consider for example the Minster: the architecture, the stone masons, the glass conservators, the choristers who have trained for years to sing the solos in Allegri's Miserere (a setting of Psalm 51 traditionally sung on Ash Wednesday which makes your heart soar with them). These are skills which allow each person to make a real contribution to our common life, but they take a level of single mindedness that some would call anti-social, unbalanced or even selfish (will you spend all your time on just one project, like writing a book or practising your stone carvings, when there's so many other things you could be doing?) But who else will do that for you? God has called us to be co-creators with him, which is an awesome responsibility. He is with us always, but he will not do for us what we can do for ourselves because otherwise how will we become mature?
After all, both Ash Wednesday and the funeral service are just as clear that death isn't the end of the story. Lent is about preparing for Easter, for resurrection, in the sure and certain hope that we belong to God who has promised to renew the earth. Therefore we are encouraged to invest in the hard, the slow, the occasionally dull practice day after day which allows us to become truly competent, for the resurrection means that "nothing we do for the Lord is ever useless" 1 Cor 15:56. 
Lent is a time of preparation where the natural world echoes what we are doing ourselves: digging the ground, planting and making ready to bear fruit in the spring and summer. So this Lent, I encourage you to savour all that is good and learn to delight in it. As Wesley put it, do all the good that you can as long as ever you can - which I suggest is most likely to happen if you train, practice and discipline yourself for a single purpose, not a scattergun approach. 
So what am I doing for Lent? I have recommitted myself to the skills I've been working on for some time: learning Dutch, training for a long cycle ride later this year and investing in developing my own and others' engineering skills.

Liked this? See my series "In Grief and Hope" on my book blog at: www.EdBucks.co.uk 

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