Planning Ahead

People frequently ask me what I am going to do next. Usually they are wondering what I will be doing after my current training placement is finished. However the end of this placement is still a long way ahead. It's too soon for me to be deciding what to do next.

So I am much more interested in what I am going to be doing during the next few weeks, or even the next few days.

Today in Winchburgh, three of us had a very productive planning meeting, looking at the next few weeks. We have decided to try out some new ideas in that period leading up to Easter which the church calls Lent.

Lent always begins 40 days before Easter. Since Easter is always on a Sunday, this means that Lent always starts on a Wednesday. It is called Ash Wednesday, because one of the old ceremonies for that first day of Lent involved marking oneself with Ash, the ancient symbol of mourning and despair.

Easter moves around from year to year, and this year in the UK we will celebrate Easter on 12th April, thus making Ash Wednesday 25th February - only two weeks away tomorrow.

The eagle-eyed among you may have calculated that there is something strange about my arithmetic. Ash Wednesday is more than six and a half weeks before Easter Sunday, working out to be exactly 46 days before Easter Sunday. What's going on?

Well the answer is that the 40 day period of Fasting that is Lent does not include Sundays. On Sundays the church celebrates the resurrection and presence of Jesus. So Sundays are not to be mournful and despairing Fast Days, but are rather to be Feast Days. There are 6 Sundays in Lent, so that subtracting those from the 46 elapsed days gives the 40 day period of Lent.

So if you were thinking about Fasting for Lent - you get Sundays off!

And if you are wondering what I am going to be doing next - the answer is - our Lenten projects. And you can find out more about them on my Lenten Reflection blog here.