Dunblane Cathedral Magazine February 2008
6 pages
Published by
Dunblane Cathedral
Copyright :
All rights reserved
No.
196 February 2008
FROM THE MINISTER
http://www.
dunblanecathedral.
org.
ukADDRESS
The True Wilderness
“What is my life? What am I all about? Be able
to say, in twenty-five words or less, this is who I
am; this is what I do”...
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No.
196 February 2008
FROM THE MINISTER
http://www.
dunblanecathedral.
org.
ukADDRESS
The True Wilderness
“What is my life? What am I all about? Be able
to say, in twenty-five words or less, this is who I
am; this is what I do”
EASTER will be as early
as it gets this year.
I can
never remember the ancient
formula for deciding it, so I
looked it up again.
In 325 the
Council of Nicaea stated that
Easter shall be celebrated
on the first Sunday that
occurs after the full moon
that appears on or after the
spring equinox.
The equinox,
the first day of spring, is
March 21.
Therefore Easter
will always fall on a Sunday
between March 22 and April
25.
A March 23 date, such as
we have this year, is a oncea century event.
It won’t
happen again till 2160.
So
there you have it.
Forty Days
Though the date of Easter
varies, the season of Lent
which precedes it always lasts
for forty days.
So Lent begins
almost unnaturally early this
year on February 6.
The forty
days, of course, is based on
the forty days which Jesus
is said to have spent in the
desert being tempted by the
devil.
That word ‘tempted’,
however, is a bit of a mistranslation, for it really means
‘tested’.
Lent is not about
denying ourselves chocolate,
or that second gin & tonic,
but about finding out what
we’re really made of, who we
are deep down inside us.
One of my heroes when I
was a student was a man
called Harry Williams.
He
wrote several books which
influenced me greatly.
He
was a deeply troubled man,
who wrestled for much of
his life with the fact that
he was gay.
The books he
wrote reflected the pain of
his journey towards selfdiscovery and acceptance.
One of his books was called
‘The True Wilderness’.
a picture of ourselves we
try to make others see.
But
sometimes that image is just
a mask we wear, a disguise
we put on to stop the world
seeing who we really are.
Sometimes it’s a disguise we
wear to hide from ourselves
who we are.
So who are we really? What
are the shadows in us, the
things we won’t face up to,
the devices we use to cover up
or disguise who we are? What
are the props, the comforts we
use to make us feel good about
Harry Williams, who went
through his own personal
desert, said that that
experience of loneliness, and
the struggle to discover who
you really are, is the true
wilderness.
And it belongs to
us all.
Who am I?
Who are we, really? We all
have an image of ourselves,
don’t we? And we all project
an image, a role we act out,
Harry Williams said that
there’s a wilderness inside
us all.
The wilderness is
not something out there.
It’s not about the outward
circumstances of our lives.
Most people’s wilderness
is inside them.
Because the
wilderness experience is
about not knowing who you
are, and therefore feeling
terribly alone - boringly
alone, or despairingly alone,
or terrifyingly alone.
We
try to relieve that loneliness
in all sorts of ways - with
constant chatter, or with
religion, or with gin, or by
keeping ourselves busy.
But
these tactics only work for a
limited time, leaving us after
one short hour or two exactly
where we were before.
ourselves? Without them we
are exposed, like someone
dependent on painkillers
whose prescription has run
out.
Recognising what you use
to fill the emptiness, and
learning how to deal with
it, I think is what Lent is all
about.
Leaving it behind is
like entering the wilderness.
It is hard.
It is awful.
But
it is necessary - necessary
sometimes to encounter the
world without anaesthesia,
in order to find out who
we are.
And that is the true
wilderness.
You Are Dust
Lent begins on Ash
Wednesday, and on that day
some people go to church in
the morning and there they
kneel as the priest marks on
their forehead a cross made
from the ash of the burnt
palm branches from last
year’s Palm Sunday.
And as
the ash is marked on their
forehead the words from
The Sacrament of Holy Communion will be celebrated
during Morning Worship on Sunday 24 February and at
3.
30pm in the afternoon.
A Joint Service of Thanksgiving
will be held in St Blane’s Church at 6.
30pm using
individual cups and unfermented wine.
Holy Communion
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