ash wednesday

Last night was our Ash Wednesday service. Our fifth one now, and the first one not to involve burning things!!

We borrowed St Alban's church - which we use for high days and holy days. The focus for the service, coming through the readings particularly, was a call to a life of integrity - where our inner life and our outer life are in sync and one is not running ahead of the other. It's not healthy to put on a show for people - being the person we think people want us to be - whilst we are somewhere else on the inside. Similarly, it's not healthy to develop our interior life and not express this in our engagement with the world - then it just becomes a private piety.

This led to us talking about the masks that we wear - what do we try to project to people about who we are, and who are we really?? We then spent some time making masks from card and clippings from lots of different magazines etc. On one side of the mask we collaged what we show to those around us. On the other side we collaged who we felt we really were.

We then used the ashing as an affirmation of this essential, often hidden, identity. A recognition that God knows who we really are and loves us in all our brokenness.