Christian Heritage Tour of Cambridge

1st of March Apparently it is the beginning of Lent today, Ash Wednesday. An appropriate day to visit the chapels and colleges in Cambridge and do a Christian Heritage Tours. It was good. It seems Cambridge was at the heart of the English Reformation with the continental reformers writings being shipped up the Cam, and read and discussed by Latimer and Ridley and Tyndale and the like at the White Horse Inn. Went to the place outside of St Mary's the Greater, the University Church, where in the 1521 they burnt Luther's books.

Last night was Shrove Tuesday, you eat pancakes and generally make a pig of yourself getting rid of all the rich food in the pantry so that you can starve for the next 40 days to identify with Christ, before Easter. I ate too many and had Maple Syrup and Chocolate topping, to keep in step with the tradition.

Ash Wednesday, (not Ash's nickname the day) is remembering the old dust to dust, ashes to ashes, funk to funky, (no that's not part of it), anyway you go up for Lord's Supper and the bloke down the front rubs some ash on your forward so every one can see you're being pious.

Which is ironic 'cause latter this arvo I went to St. John’s for Evening Song and they read from Matthew 6 where Jesus specifically says not to make a big deal about it all and just act normal if you're fasting.

It reminds me of the first time I came across this thing. It was in Orange and Martin and I decided we needed to kick in more with the Orange & District Ministers Association. So we put our hands up to host the next meeting at Martin's Shed at the back of his house. We bought all this steak and marinated it the night before. We fired up the Barbie and started cooking the steaks. The first bloke to arrive was one of the Anglican curates. He had this black mark on his head, so not knowing anything about all this stuff asked him if he'd been working on the car or something. He then explained what it was all about and how from here on in you lay of the rich food. So much for the steaks! The only people who were eating that Wednesday were Martin and Me and a couple of the Penties, everyone else was on bread and water!

Anyway I digress. St. John's Evening Song was beautiful. It was recorded by the BBC. Though there wasn't much congregation participation. It was more like a concert. Everything was sung. I started laughing at the end of the performance. Everyone was standing while the joker on the huge organ upstairs was giving it a whirl. Really winding this thing out! And he hit this really deep, sustained note that started reverberating a piece of wood or panelling just behind me. It sounded like someone was breaking wind. Which is one of the things that got me laughing, then I started wondering if the organists had hit the allusive "brown note" and it was having it's affect!

I tried not to laugh too much, just in case something happened!