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Father Christopher Jamison, Benedictine Monk:

听

Today is Ash Wednesday and I鈥檓 wondering what to do for Lent. What to do for Lent, not what to give up. Giving up is fine but taking on something extra can be even better. For example, a group of students and teachers from an English state school recently visited Africa. For the past thirty years, their school has been sending older students to Tanzania to learn about the country and to help a local community where they鈥檝e built up connections. Last year鈥檚 group was travelling with local people when they were stopped by an armed gang who fired machine guns over their heads, beat up many of them and forced the students to hand over their money. This terrifying ordeal lasted 90 minutes. With the help of the local community, the police quickly arrested the gang who will soon stand trial. So how did the group react? Firstly, with the approval of their parents, they decided not to give up on the trip but to stay and complete their projects, strongly supported by local people. Having returned home, the group wanted to redouble their efforts to help the people of that community; they鈥檒l continue helping local schools and even look at ways of supporting the rehabilitation of prisoners, such as the men who attacked them. Turning the other cheek can sound passive but these students have made it a very active choice. They haven鈥檛 stopped doing something, they鈥檝e decided to do something extra. Lent can be a time of extra generosity and there鈥檚 even a web site that suggests 40 acts of generosity to carry out on each of the forty days of Lent. It鈥檚 not about money, it鈥檚 about attitude, like the attitude of those students and teachers. During Lent, wake up and say: what generous act can I do today?