When I am such an appalling dancer, it sometimes surprises me how important rhythm is to me, whether it's the regular sounds and the vibration of the train that I'm sitting on as I write this blog, or rhythm in music or in poems. I like that regular pulse that echoes the 'thump thump' of my own heartbeat.

The life of the Christian Church has its own rhythm, of course, a regular rhythm of feast and fasting, of celebration and preparing to celebrate, of rich music and then wondering silence. It's all a bit like the Pete Seeger song Turn! (to everything there is a season) itself inspired by wisdom from the Bible's book Ecclesiastes. There is a time, a proper time, for partying, just as there is a time for packing away all the streamers and balloons and allowing life to be a bit simpler and more streamlined. Times of fun are followed by times of seriousness and repentance - you can't have one without the other - life which was just a party would turn us silly, vain and selfish; life which was all seriousness and puritanical would turn us boring and unattractive.

Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday are all about that pulse of the rhythm of church life. On Shrove Tuesday it was traditional to empty your cupboards of foodstuffs that would be off-limits for the six weeks of Lent - meat and cheese, fat and eggs. Which left you with a problem - what to do with them? The answer, of course, was to have a massive blowout. Filled pancakes were the ideal way to do this. In Latin countries this became a party with lots of music, colour and excess, Carnival (literally 'farewell to meat'). It was time to to turn out the cupboards of one's soul, and to lay bare all those lurking dark corners in one's life, so the faithful went to confession to be 'shriven' which is where we get the word Shrove from.

The next day was and is  Ash Wednesday. Ash Wednesday begins the great season of fasting and abstinence for the Church. It's not the only season for fasting, but it is the longest. That's really it's benefit. Lent is long enough to embed a real change in your life, whether it is giving up a luxury or taking on a new spiritual challenge. Most of all, it's long enough to get established in a rhythm of prayer. If there is one thing that I think we should all look to do perhaps that is it, to pray more, and pray more regularly and enjoy more in prayer the relationship we have with Jesus.

Fr. Tom