Thoughts on Lent

Ash Wednesday today, which marks the beginning of Lent.

I was very chuffed last week to receive a string bag order from a school where the PTA is encouraging parents to give up plastic bags for Lent. What a great idea!

Here is my household, things are a bit awkward.

Yesterday I had the privilege of 'inducting' some new mums into running the Pancake Race -- which is now a new-ish tradition -- at school. We probably raised more money than the last two or three pancake races put together. Brill.

My son brought his Palm cross from last year back to school to be burned for Ash Wednesday.

But Ash Wednesday this year is also the eve of Chinese New Year where typically we would have a reunion dinner with lots of good food. I remember often waiting up till late (especially when my sister was a nurse working shifts, or my father would wait for hours at the barber's to have his hair cut) till every one was home to have this dinner.

The pictures we see of the millions of Chinese trying to get home in snowbound China is testimony to how important is this act of the family eating together. Then the feasting and festivities are supposed to continue for another 15 days.

In the middle of Lent ....

A friend from Singapore said the Catholic church there celebrated Ash Wednesday on (Shrove) Tuesday so that the Chinese believers could have their reunion dinners/feasts today.

All a bit odd, maybe, and there are thoughts of serving two masters, I suppose.

Yet when I think a little beyond these calendrical conundrums, it is obvious that Lent is not the only time we should reflect on the suffering of Jesus. I do not have to feel guilty about not doing something which in fact I do pretty much every day.

And as for being Chinese, the Tower of Babel was God's idea, so it cannot be so bad that I feel I need to celebrate that part of my heritage.

It comes back to what my husband was taught when he first became a Christian: there is biblical Christianity and there is cultural Christianity.

Back to Organic-Ally.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Upcycling clothing labels -- don't throw anything away!

Image
Over the last two years I went through a period of buying new clothes to replace some "holey" ones. Each time I find a hard board label that comes with a punched hole and string, I say to myself: these are too good to go in the bin , even the recycling bin. (I am not sure if mixed materials like cardboard and metal can be recycled.) As I started to write this, I googled and learned that these are called "string" or "swing tags". They are basically custom "travel tags" which you can buy at stationers. In fact, there are crafters who personalise travel tags and sell them on market platforms (five for £3.50!). This is what I did for Christmas 2023. I started with these tags, all of sturdy cardboard, with punched holes. I removed the strings, but kept them, and you can replace them later. I then found my stash of Christmas cards from last year (ie those sent to us and saved from the bin). On the spot, decided to cut them into 1/2 inch strips. They co...
Read more

Going organic -- slowly

I was 'in conversation' with another happy customer. He tells me that "when things need replacing we try and replace them with an organic/fairtrade option". I think that is just such a sensible way to go. Like him, we are slowly switching over to organic bedding. Although the definition for 'need replacing' is slightly modified in my case. My son and I both have sensitive skin and some things have been making us itch. I wonder if it is the cheap cotton sheets we've been using. Up till now we've been buying bedding on the basis of whether they look good. For example, son was into anything to do with space/exploration, so we went and got him bedding with a 'space' theme on it. At that time I had no idea what harm conventional cotton was doing and the effect of conventional cotton on the skin. Some places offer such 'cheap' options that we -- I, really -- had succumbed to the temptation and had bought what I thought would suit us and our s...
Read more

Linguistic Hegemony: Cockles and Muscles

(A shorter, less controversial version of this was published in the Straits Times online section on 11th October. I had assumed that the Editor was not going to run it. Apologies for the overlaps.) The English-Singlish debate has thrown up a vociferous group defending the use of Singlish, largely because they see Singlish as being tied up with a Singapore identity. (I tried to explain how being a good Singaporean should not preclude us from learning to speak good English in a letter to the press .) This group seems to be made up of people who are able to speak (or at least write) excellent English when they choose to. There is a deafening silence, at least in the English cyber-media (and understandably so), from the Singlish-speaking group who could most benefit from learning to speak good English. If I were a Marxian sociologist (not the same as being a Marxist, nota bene ) I would say that this ‘good English’ group own the “means of production” and the ‘Singlish’ group do not. In or...
Read more