Rev Rosie writes March 2025

Rev Rosie Bunn
Rector of All Saints Church, Belton
and
St Peter & St Paul Church, Burgh Castle

Is March the month you start spring cleaning? The days are getting longer and hopefully the sun is shining a bit more, which means we notice the dust or cobwebs in the corners or places we don’t go into much. Tim and I have been trying to sort through many years of accumulated stuff in readiness for our move in May, and we’ve found more dust than we would have liked, and lots of things that bring back memories – both good and bad
 
Tuesday 4th March is Shrove Tuesday, when traditionally we enjoy pancakes and perhaps have lots of fun both in tossing them, but also in deciding what to have with them. Are you a lemon and sugar person? Or a banana, chocolate sauce and ice cream person? Or perhaps you have a taste for the savoury – chilli or cheese, or both? However you might prefer to eat pancakes (or you might be like Tim and really NOT like them!) the reason we eat them developed from the Christian church and the season leading up to Lent. During Shrovetide people were expected to use up what was left of their richer foods, in readiness for the six week period of Lent. So pancakes helped in using the eggs, milk and butter up. It was the practical side of what was to be spiritual preparation during Lent for the celebration of Easter
 
Lent begins on Ash Wednesday; this year the 5th March. Traditionally, the previous year’s palm crosses are burnt to ash, and used during a service of penitence. Lent is rather like a spiritual spring clean. It is an opportunity to consider where we are in our attitudes, habits and behaviour. Are we becoming more or less like Jesus? Jesus being our example to live by. Are we carrying un-forgiveness or resentment or bitterness? Have we acquired habits that are unhelpful or unhealthy? How are we at being kind and gentle? At being understanding and loving to the people around us? Lent taken seriously, spiritually in our lives, can be the same as having a good clear out and spring clean of our homes. It really is worth considering
 
Just like in the cleaning of our homes we need someone to help us reach the points we can’t reach ourselves, God is more than willing to help us reach the parts that only he can reach. This is especially helpful if forgiveness, resentment or bitterness is our problem. Just ask! In my experience, He is more willing to help than we are to ask
 
At the end of March – on the 30th March, actually – there is the celebration of Mothers’ Day, or Mothering Sunday as some prefer to remember it as. So Lent isn’t all doom and gloom, or denying yourself any pleasures. Mothering Sunday was originally a day when people returned to their mother church, the church where they had been baptised, or their parish church or cathedral, as part of their Lenten preparations. Mothering Sunday was also given as a rare day off for domestic servants, so that they could go to their home church, usually with their family
 
The Mothers’ Day we celebrate, has its origins in America, but it is celebrated on the day given to Mothering Sunday in the UK; this is the fourth Sunday in Lent. It is a celebration of mothers, but in church we usually give gifts to all the ladies in the church that day. For those of us who no longer have our mothers with us, it is a time to remember them with thanksgiving. For some it is remembering a person who mothered them at certain times in their lives, when they needed it. In the Bible, God describes himself as like a mother. In the Old Testament we read on a number of occasions: “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you....” In the New Testament, Jesus is recorded as saying: “how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings...”
 
What might you do this month in terms of spring cleaning, in your home, and/or in your life? Tim and I certainly have a lot of sorting to do, some of which will be spiritual preparation for Easter, and for what follows in life after that. May we all know God’s presence in any spring cleaning we seek to do, and his blessing in what we achieve

Rev Rosie Bunn

images courtesy of Village Voice