Lent 2025. Why yes, I do have a smudge on my face

[DeanElderberry]

Here we go. I've been to mass, have a cross of ashes on my forehead, have managed not to eat any sweeties or drink any alcohol. Ten whole hours. Am trying to behave myself. There were about 40 other adults in the village church as well as teachers accompanying ca 40 children from the primary school, which was pleasant.

I heard a poem I liked and went looking for it when I came home - didn't track it down, but this is good too.

https://dangerandgrace.wordpress.com/2020/02/26/ashes/

I hope everyone gets the help and support they need as we all prepare for Easter.

Thanks Deano

I am feeling sad that my church ( aka the Rector) has decided not to run a Lent course this year.
I'm doing my own by reading/listening to some interpretations of the Bible.

That is a shame - there's something about a group dynamic, particularly in Lent.

We have some inter-parish thing tomorrow, where I suspect my stress on the scriptures, including the OT, and the PP's more touchy feely chanty approach may clash slightly, but I hope we'll work through/with/around it.

And there's something in town on Friday for the world day of prayer, which I've never been involved with before. Which reminds me to check the readings for it and Thursday for 'hard words' booby traps.

Yes I agree. Lent is an ideal opportunity to do a group reset, learning from and supporting one another.

"Hard words"- those lists of tribes and "so and so beget so and so" are full of trippings up!

And those names where the aiaia doesn't know when to stop.

Thank goodness I can ask Google.

These are the readings for the next Sunday/vigil masses. All about God's protection and the power of God's words as found in Scripture. I'll need to read them out loud to myself (and the cats) to really get a handle on them.

www.agapebiblestudy.com/Sunday_Readings/Sunday_Readings.php?Sunday_Doc=Lenten_Season/Lent_1_c

I'm singing on Sunday. Luckily no difficult words in praise songs! 😁

off-thread reference removed. I must go and prepare my penitential (yet paradoxically delicious) lentil pie for later, and do a bit of work in the garden.

As a 'church' we also are not doing anything specific for Lent.

@DeanElderberry lentil pie sounds delicious! Oooh, my weirdly wired brain has just made me smile at 'lent il' 😄

Lentil pie is like shepherd's pie but with lentils (cooked with onion, carrot, celery, herbs) as the bottom layer. Dead easy but the lentils and the mashed potato both need to be cooked in advance. Then the whole thing can be stuck in the oven for half an hour. It's easy to batch cook and freezes well.

I went to mass in a different church today as I had a very upsetting experience in my own before Christmas and I am still feeling wrung out and traumatised by it. I remembered how lovely Ash Wednesday was last year, all by candlelight and I just wanted to keep it that way in my mind.
The lovely young priest talked about forgiveness. I forgive the one who did this to me but it is very hard to move on when I am hurting so much. But then Jesus suffered and was lonely too.
For many reasons that would take ages to explain, going to another church permanently is not something I want to do, nor is worshipping alone.

My own experience is that sometimes the best you can do with forgiveness is pray that eventually it will be complete, work at not thinking too much about the parson who harmed you, and at not trying to harm them.

The advice in a few places in the OT is to tell them what they did, and that you can only start the forgiveness process after that. Which makes sense, but is often not possible for all sorts of reasons.

Because the little kids were in church this morning we had the Guardian Angel prayer twice, and the priest encouraged us all to say it, the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Glory Be every day for Lent. Not a bad suggestion, and even though I'm old I have become very attached to that prayer since Covid - I like to imagine a big feathery supporter hovering there, somewhere.

Thank you for the recipe 😊 Real comfort food.

Went to Mass last night, different church to usual, but that was just a better time of day for me.
I must go to confession during Lent, its the one thing I always try to do each Lent.

So far so good on the giving up booze front. Sweet stuff - well, when the friend who organised the World Day of Prayer evening had gone to trouble of making gluten-free flapjacks for me it would have been churlish not to eat one. I'm not sure what the excuse for the second one was.

We're being encouraged to do three (at least) forms of giving through our church - donate all our little 'brown coins' to the education fund for a village in Uganda our priest has worked with. This raises a lot more money that you'd expect and is very popular with our own primary school children. Trócaire, nationwide collection, are aiming to help poor communities worldwide who are badly effected by the changing climate, with a special focus this year on Guatemala. And we have a 'giving tree' with tags prompting us to buy gifts for people, many of them homeless or otherwise stressed. I scrutinised the options when I nipped into the church to drop my 1c,2c,5c coins in the box, and chose 'deodorant for an older man' so some lucky chap is going to get one of those natural salt things that lasts for ages.