Message from the chaplain - 16 February 2018

Claudia Coustas small

On Wednesday 14 February, we marked the beginning of Lent with Ash Wednesday (and Ash Thursday) services in the chapel. On Ash Wednesday, we are all given the opportunity to have a small cross of ash gently rubbed on to our foreheads, as a symbol of our “dying” to our old selves during Lent and preparing to rise again, anew, with Christ on Easter Sunday.

This week, I watched a short clip in which Bishop Martin Seeley, the Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich, and Bishop Mike Harrison, the Bishop of Dunwich, shared their thoughts on what they referred to as a “disruptive Lent”. They asked the question, “How do we disrupt our lives in Lent to such an extent that we see God differently, and we see other people differently?”

I was struck by this notion: how indeed do we listen to God speak into the blind spots in our lives, unless we go about our lives differently? This is also a different way of looking at giving up (or taking up) something for Lent. Rather than doing so as an end in itself, let us consider “what patterns we are in, that need to be disrupted?” As a first step, the bishops suggest, “change who you are talking to, and change what you are talking about”.

Revd Claudia Coustas

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