Start-Stop : A Confession on Shrove Tuesday

The Creation of the World, Fernand Leger, 1923

Start:Stop at St Stephen Walbrook offers busy commuters in the City of London the chance to start their day by stopping to pray and reflect for ten minutes. This is my reflection for Tuesday 25th February 2020 - Shrove Tuesday. Good morning and welcome to Start:Stop. In many Eucharistic liturgies it is common to say together a ‘memorial acclamation’; “Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again.” The season of Lent, which begins tomorrow, is a time when we are particularly encouraged to pause in the space after that second comma; to consider how we have filled this in-between-time after Christ’s resurrection and before His second coming.

START STOP - Going green - what’s the bloody point?

Exiles by Matilde Damele on show at St Stephen Walbrook in September 2019

Each year the period between September 1st and the Feast of St Francis of Assisi on October 4th is set aside by the church as the Season of Creation, when we are called to focus our prayers and actions on our stewardship of the earth. Today marks the middle of a week-long series of protests which are aiming to draw international attention to the climate emergency. These 'Climate Strikes', which have been led by young people, were started by the Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thurnburg who has said “This is the moment in history we need to be wide awake. Dreams cannot stand in the way of telling it like it is, especially not now.”

I think in the Bible it is especially the Books of Wisdom that “tell it like it is” - with frank assessments of the difficulty of living faithfully in the here and now. I have chosen a reading today from one of these - the Book of Ecclesiastes;