Welcome everyone to the season of Lent. On Tuesday a Highlands and St Catherine’s crowd gathered in the lower hall and ate pancakes. There we began to think about this 40 day journey that stretches out before us. We begin with Ash Wednesday and it will end on Good Friday. Lent is our yearly opportunity to take stock, to slow down, and to sink into the narrative arc of the Christian faith enough that we can be shaped and formed by it once again.
And the thread that we are following through the season is “Weird in the World.” Aaron Miller in his book of that title wrote, “Christians are called to be weird enough in the world as it is, that when God gets the world God wants, we’ll fit right in.” In other words, the “world as it is” has yet to fulfill the dream God has for the world as it could be. And anyone trying to shape their life according to the radical-love world of God looks kind of weird. That is a weirdness to aspire to. That is our path for the next 40 days.
And throughout Lent you are invited to wake up every day and remind yourself, loving our enemy, or to slowing down in a world that loves speed, or praying for a dictator may look weird, but it is just the right kind of weird. God’s kind of weird.
And the cross out front of the church that is covered in cloth? You wondered about that? It looks kind of weird. Well, that is a “Clootie Cross,” based on the Celtic tradition of the Clootie Tree (literally “clothie tree”). Clootie Trees in Scotland were trees, often growing by wells, where people would tie strips of cloth and say a prayer for healing, for strength, for gratitude. The Clootie Cross in our front yard marries the Lenten journey to Good Friday with this practice of prayer a public place. It is an outward and kind of weird reminder that we are called to walk a different path, with values and practices that may look weird in the world as it is.
So stop by. Sit on the bench in the front garden. Take a piece of cloth. Think about your life and the world as it is. And tie a strip of cloth as a sign and a commitment to be Godly weird in the world.
Blessings, Will