• A Preface for Ash Wednesday

    The following preface was written to mark the beginning of Lent and reflects the language and character of the Lenten material in the Scottish Liturgy 1982 and Daily Prayer of the Scottish Episcopal Church

    Dear Friends in Christ, it is the custom of Christian people to prepare to mark the time of Christ’s passion and resurrection by a season of penitence and fasting.

    The church calls each of us during these forty days to repent of all that causes harm to ourselves, harm to our earthly dwelling place and harm to our relationship with God.

    By carefully keeping these days, Christians take to heart the call to repentance and the assurance of forgiveness proclaimed in the gospel, and so grow in faith and devotion. In turning our hearts towards God, we discover anew the boundless grace of God.

    For God will help us to create beauty even within the turmoil of this chaotic world and will help us to gather a harvest of joy and gladness from lives of sorrow and care. Today and every day, God calls the wandering exile home.

    We are invited therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy word.

4 responses to “Diversity Champions”

  1. Kenny Avatar

    We’re in there at 101 I think.

  2. Kelvin Avatar
    Kelvin

    Well, wishful thinking, Kenny, but I don’t think we are.

  3. Rosemary Avatar
    Rosemary

    Tell you what, while we tackle discriminaton on the basis of gender – and that may take some time – how about taking age discrimination head on? Because I am totally sick of being discriminated against because of my age when I know if I did not ned to give it, I might easily get the job otherwise. It is just an idea in somebody’s head …. like sexual orientation. How we do the job matters – not how young or how straight we happen to be.

  4. kelvin Avatar

    Yes Rosemary. In this area, at least, there is some progress to report in the church. We are just in the business of removing some age discrimination from the Code of Canons. We’ve been urged to do so on the grounds that that’s what employers who want to avoid prosecution do.

    I kind of wish we did things because we thought they were right rather than because we fear prosecution. It has alwas seemed rather odd to me that the same people who say that clergy are not employed in one breath insist we remove age discrimination on legal grounds in another.

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