Dear Friends
A friend and I were laughing the other day at the realisation of our propensity to apologise even if we have done nothing wrong.
She had been telling me about a car accident which she had been in. Someone had gone into the back of her but within five minutes she found that it was she who was apologising profusely for the whole situation. I am sure that there are many gender and psychological explanations that can be given for this but I will leave the writing of that letter to the psychologists amongst us. Instead our shared experiences led me onto thinking, oddly enough about Lent.
During this month we once again get out our frying pans and pretend that the gritty bits in the pancake were already in the pan and not from the floor. Its also that time when were think about what we are going to give up as part of that ancient tradition of Lent which prepares us for the joys and indulgences of Easter. However, it struck me that our annual subduing of the flesh has become a bit like the proverbial apology before we have done anything wrong. Instead of seeking God through study and a simplification of life, the season of Lent seems to me to have become more an act of penance to assuage a sense of guilt for something that we have never even committed.
The Archbishop’s Lent Book this year is ‘Barefoot Disciple’ by Stephen Cherry and he seeks to address our BSE (blame someone else) culture with the rediscovery of the virtue of humility. Whether we are folk who either instinctively blame another or blame ourselves, both reactions reveal something quite profound about what we think about ourselves today. To put it simply, there is an awful lot of guilt going around. Historians rather patronizingly call the Middle Ages the age of guilt but it seems to be going strong in 2011 and can be seen everywhere from the angst of parental treat buying, to the desire to live anyone else’s life except our own. I am sure it is guilt that drives the aggressive response from the person who blames you when they have just driven into the back of your car.
Humility is perhaps one of those words which elicit a shudder of puritanical perfectionism from the best of us whilst the simpering Uriah Heap springs to mind. We often believe that humility is to do with humiliation and self degrading acts that will help us to be the perfect people we would like to be. By giving up chocolate or alcohol, taking on study or ‘good’ acts, Lent becomes a perfect time therefore to work at holiness through humility. However, the essence of humility is not the search for perfection through self denial but rather it is the loving search to know oneself in the light of God’s love for us. Once we begin this search we are, of course forced to confront that sense of guilt and failure which blinds us to who we truly are in the eyes of God. But this is only the beginning of the journey and as we hold this brokenness before God’s love, he will begin to heal us and reconcile us not only to himself but also to ourselves.
I know that it is very unfashionable but I want to suggest that this Lent you do not afflict yourself with self-inflicted penances for your sense of guilt and desire to be a better person but rather take the time to examine your conscience and hold before God’s love those things of which you are ashamed and regret, allowing him to raise you up an know the full sense of the resurrection joy.
Emma
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