Weird TV last night, when I looked up from my laptop at a drama and saw a group of nuns cheerfully watching the crowd burn an effigy of a Roman Catholic. Such was the big finish of ‘Call the Midwife’.
It is raining this morning and at 67 I’m just beginning to experiment with tying my bootlaces a different way – reef style instead of granny style.
Lent is coming, and numbers are powerful. Forty days, like Jesus in the wilderness, or Moses on the mountain, or the forty years for the people in the wilderness. There’s also twelve apostles/tribes of Israel, and seven crops up here and there as well. It’s a deliberate connection with the Old Testament heritage. There’s different things people do in Lent, like giving something up, or taking something up, or spending time reflecting. Maybe the wilderness time is a chance to wriggle free of old habits, of previously unquestioned ‘necessities’ of life, to throw everything up in the air and see where it all comes down again. It’s like going for a long walk and life reduces to food, water, shelter, warmth, health – and these things can be needs that are felt in our guts again.
PS I think I’ve clicked the button that enables comments – but some deeper magic is preventing the box from appearing.