A View From The Vicarage - March 2021
Dear Friends
The Morning Prayer Reflection for Ash Wednesday began with the following: “Lent is a snowfall in the soul. Just as snow makes us see our landscape in a different light making us renavigate our environment and wonder at the sight of our own breath, so Lent invites us to distil, reimagine and remember the fragile miracle of our own self.”
I found those words by Canon Mark Oakley profoundly moving and for me, a timely and welcome reminder of what Lent calls and encourages us to do and to be. For many of us Lent has become the ecclesiastical equivalent of “Dry January” or “Movember” an opportunity or a challenge to give up something that we really shouldn’t have been doing anyway. But if that’s the way that we view Lent then surely we’ve missed a trick!
Let’s go back to Mark Oakley’s metaphor snow (and we’ve seen some this year!) fundamentally changes the landscape. For a start it drains landscape of colour. A snow-filled landscape is one that looks very monochrome with the majority of the things which give shape and colour to the environment either obscured or obliterated – snow covered trees especially deciduous ones appear stark and gaunt with the blankets of snow covering bare branches denuded of leaves.
Even the built environment looks and feels different – houses acquire an eerie beauty with roofs covered in snow and window ledges looking like white eyebrows. Regular lines are softened and ungritted roads and paths begin to resemble glaciers or lines of icing.
A snowy landscape looks and feels different, indeed it can feel quite disorientating when familiar landmarks are changed or hidden.
While a landscape of freshly fallen snow seems to exude a purity and cleanness – which, of course, it all too quickly loses.
If you subscribe to Mark Oakley’s theses then those changes to the physical landscape reflect the alterations to our spiritual, moral and emotional landscapes which Lent encourages us to attempt during the six weeks of Lent.
The various activities offered during Lent even a surreal one like this one are all designed to help us to as Mark Oakley puts it: distil, reimagine and remember the fragile miracle of our own self.”
You, in common with many others may well be feeling after a whole year of Coronavirus restrictions that the fragile miracle of your own self is feeling more fragile and vulnerable than usual and, therefore, the hard disciplines associated with lent are unhelpful. Well snowfall isn’t harsh, it’s gentle, it changes not with a loud bang but a gentle whisper and I’m sure that all of us need that “gentle whisper” this year more than ever.
At the hear of Lent, as at the heart of the Christian Gospel is one word “love”, the love that is the divine spark at the heart of the universe, the divine love which became human in the person of Jesus Christ and the love which is the birth right of each and every human person made in the image and likeness of the God of Love.
So as you “distil, reimagine and remember the fragile miracle of your own self” this Lent don’t forget that you are loved and you are lovely and all that Lent is calling you to do is simply polish the diamond so that it’s facets reflecting the overpowering love of God shine more brightly. And that’s snow joke!
Wishing you a holy, blessed and happy Lent
With my love and prayers as always.
Ben