How many pancakes do you have to eat to get bored of them? Does it ever happen? Asking for a friend… [206]

Ash Wednesday is tomorrow

As you know- our service is online in the usual way, the service is here:

and before you settle down at 7.55 tomorrow night I would very much want to say to you that the best way of getting into the service tomorrow is:

1. Have a candle to light at the start of the service, and also a small dish of garden soil which is moist enough that you can mark the sign of the cross on your forehead
2. Have already decided how you will keep Lent this year, using the booklet here:
   • as well as other ideas and inputs you may have come across
3. Have finished what you need to do in the day so that you can listen to the music at the end of the service and then continue in prayer and reflection for a time afterwards to help you carry some of the ideas and insights and sense of groundedness from the service into the weeks ahead.

Also, can I thank everyone who has donated food or drink or sent cards for the Staff at the RBH and for the Foodbank? The response to both appeals has been really positive, both from the Church and from the community, and Jean Vaughan has done an amazing job of filling the boot of her car and taking bags and bags of foot to the RBH, Wokingham Hospital and local Surgeries as well. Thank you so, so much for your generosity and kindness- it has been massively appreciated and will continue to be appreciated too.

I also attach the first session of the Lent Course for those who couldn’t come along tonight to the Live Session.

Bertie is in need of some new recipes to fill his days- he needs some new ideas and they don’t all need to be choose related. (In fact, it would be good to have some healthy options in there, given how much the buttons on his second-best waistcoat were complaining after lunch today.) Do please email them in!

And if you are intending to join in with Parish Morning Prayer in Lent, then the Zoom link is here:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/75320064518?pwd=aGhMVlRVamozZkI4QWI4WmZJVFRXUT09

Meeting ID: 753 2006 4518

Passcode: 024453

We meet at 8.30am on a Mon and Thurs and everyone is welcome. It might be helpful if you can download the Daily Prayer App on your phone beforehand so you have all of the words to join in. It is free and it a blue square in a white circle.

Mary Cassidy has sent this link to a website which is a handy way of getting ready for Ash Wednesday- it is not long but is well worth your time-

The Ashes We Receive

A Prayer for Ash Wednesday from Fr Tony Kemp

Praise be to you, O Lord, that by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.
Give us the grace to own in true penitence the ashen cross signed upon our foreheads;
The cross of baptism, of absolution, of blessing and peace, of the rites of our final journey.
May we know our mortality, seeing that all is dust, yet all ending in the joy of harvest.
As we enter this time of self-denial and solemnity we hold in our hearts all those who
Suffer an enforced wilderness of deprivation, hunger, homelessness, and depression.
Lord help us find the balance between our inward stance and outward concern for others;
To strive for the coming of your kingdom of justice and equality here on earth as in heaven.

Amen.