Be Kind, Be safe, Be respectful, Be responsible, Be resilient, Be ready

Dear Parents

I have taken part of an article written by Jim Quillinan to assist us in our Lenten preparation, it is titled Not Lent Again!

Many years ago, when I was studying to be a teacher we had to wade through a large and very boring tome but one thing stuck with me. It was the term ‘entering behaviour.’ In other words, find out what the students already know and can already do and build on that. Always start with the positive. The same applies to life – we don’t get anywhere much by focusing on the negative, on how wrong or inadequate we or others may be but rather on how we have been gifted and blessed, then build on that.

During Lent, Joyce Rupp, author of ‘Jesus, My Companion in My Suffering: Reflections for the Lenten Journey' suggests that we do much the same: So I focus on the fruits of the Spirit and their potential to be deepened and strengthened in my life. This motivation is much more effective for making a change.

The author of Psalm 139 wrote:

When I was being made in secret, fashioned in the depths of the earth,

your eyes could see my unformed substance.

You knit me together in my mother’s womb.

Nothing about me, from beginning to end was hidden from your eyes.

For so many marvels I thank you.

You have made me to be so wonderful.

I praise you for you fill me with awe.

I wonder whether we actually do see ourselves as being made to be so wonderful, as a ‘marvel’, blessed by God and gifted with grace, that we are in the mind and heart of God from beginning to end. In Matthew’s Gospel, we find the parable of the weeds among the crop. Don’t pull them out now, the farmer tells his workers – wait until the harvest time when the crop has fully grown, then pull them out. That is a reminder that we are a mixture of light and darkness, selflessness and selfishness, virtue and vice, grace, and sin, we can be sincere as well as two-faced. Like the farmer, tend the crop, and make it grow to harvest time – in other words, focus on the positive, count your blessings, build on them, and make them grow. Eventually, sincerity will weed out insincerity, selflessness will weed out selfishness, and grace will weed out sin.

The following has been used by many famous people, not the least of them Nelson Mandela. “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.

We are born to manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us. It’s in everyone, As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” We do not have to make God present, but to make ourselves present to God, to make ourselves sensitive to the richness of God’s grace that is already present and active in our lives if we let it.

Keep smiling

Cathy

Building going on...