Belated reflections on Lent

Having made quite a big deal of my 'study' plans for Lent, it doesn't seem right to just leave things hanging, so here's a brief - and really very late - overview of how it was for me. It was a useful time of reflection, but not, perhaps, in the way I might have anticipated.

I've enjoyed the discipline of having a period of time in which intentional reading, studying and reflection was a daily expectation, even though there have been days, and even weekends, when I didn't get round to doing any of those things. I've already reflected a little on 'meditating' on John 13-18:14 in the car on the way to work each day and on some of the new ideas and themes that I became aware of.

One of the themes I wanted to intentionally revisit during Lent was leadership, specifically the challenge of sensing a call to, and gifting for, leadership but not having a recognised role in which to exercise it. I've found James Lawrence's Growing Leaders a really useful tool, and it's been great to reflect on the chosen / call / character / competence / context framework for leadership that's at the heart of Arrow and Growing Leaders leadership training.

But the implications of revisiting leadership didn't really hit me 'til after Easter, when I was thinking about the future and reflecting on my current paid work. I felt really challenged by the fact that I'd become really passive about my leadership, almost hiding behind a lack of defined leadership role as a reason not to exercise leadership. A couple of great conversations with a colleague convinced me that I needed to stop belly-aching about the lack of leadership at work and recognise that actually it was my responsibility to step into the gap and start leading.

So I have. Conversations about organisational drift and lack of vision have been replaced by commitments to change. Action has been taken. Decisions have been made. But the really great thing is that it's been a team effort (and I use the word 'team' advisedly in the light of reflections on Growing Leaders). It's been a real reminder to me of the fact that I have a responsibility to use my gifts, in the same way that others have a responsibility to use theirs - if I abdicate that responsibility then I can't complain if others do the same.

But the theme that's stood out more than any other over the six weeks of Lent is collaboration. I think it's surprised me for a number of reasons but mainly because I realised that I'd confused collaboration with extroversion and had fallen into the trap of thinking that because I'm an introvert I therefore do things most effectively on my own. This, I now realise, is nonsense. Yes, there are times when I need to step away to reflect and assess, but I also really need opportunities to think out loud with others, to share ideas, to be part of something bigger than just me. But making that happen can be a challenge for an introvert, particularly a single introvert. Just saying.

So that links to another theme - courage. I'm not alone in being the kind of person who, when life gets a bit challenging, tends to retreat into the safe and familiar. There are times when that's entirely appropriate, but there are also times when that can be the start of a spiral downwards into unhealthy introspection and, at worst, a touch of depression. The irony, of course, is that the point at which I feel most like retreating is precisely the point at which I need to reach out to other people, to be vulnerable, to ask for the support and help that I need. My experience is that when I do that, I always end up better off. But it takes courage and that's something I lack.

The flip side is that I've also rediscovered the importance of doing stuff by myself when the option is that or not doing it all. In the last couple of months I've been to the cinema by myself three times (which I think is twice more than I've done it in the whole of the rest of my life!). Why not? It was that or missing out on stuff I really wanted to see.

And in the process I've begun to rediscover theatre and cinema as something that genuinely energises me. In fact, my new default thinking place is the café at the Curve Theatre in Leicester. That's largely because it's nice and close to work and therefore a good place to head on my short days and it's generally almost entirely empty. But it's also because it's a creative place. The bit of me that's still the eighteen-year-old who chose her university on the basis that walking round on the interview day felt  like being in Fame likes being in a place where you can overhear slightly pretentious conversations about getting into drama school, or indignation at one-star reviews in the local paper, whilst smiling to herself and maintaining she's above all that. But it's helped me remember that that's where I've come from, that the arts, and performing arts in particular, have played a massive part in shaping who I am.

So it's been an interesting few months. Now I'm trying to figure out what to read, reflect on and work towards for the next few...

PS The beady-eyed of you will notice that there's no mention here of the reflections on Shakespeare and John that were initially the focus of my Lent study. That stuff hasn't disappeared, but its significance has changed and it didn't seem appropriate to focus on it in this post. Maybe another day...

Life before death?

The afternoon of my last blog post I finished reading Caitlin Moran's autobiography, How to be a woman. I realise Ms Moran is not everyone's cup of tea, but last year we bonded over a shared experience of being passed over for the part of Mary in the school nativity, and we're the same age and therefore destined to become best friends should we ever meet in real life.

Actually, I suspect age and early Christmas rejection are probably pretty much the only things we have in common if her autobiography is anything to go by. Certainly one view we don't share is a belief in life after death (I do; she doesn't). But she has some interesting things to say about how what we believe about death shapes the way we choose to live our lives, and I think those of us that believe death isn't the end would do well to think seriously about what she has to say. So to help you do that, here she is...

Personally, I like the fact that we’re going to die. There’s nothing more exhilarating than waking up every morning and going ‘WOW! THIS IS IT! THIS IS REALLY IT!’ It focuses the mind wonderfully. It makes you love vividly, work intensely, and realise that in the scheme of things, you really don’t have time to sit on the sofa in your pants watching Homes Under The Hammer.

Death is not a release but an incentive. The more focused you are on your death, the more righteously you live your life. My traditional closing-time rant […] is that humans still believe in an afterlife. I genuinely think it’s the biggest philosophical problem the earth faces. Even avowedly non-religious people think they’ll be meeting up with nana and their dead dog, Crackers, when they finally keel over. Everyone thinks they’re getting a harp.

But believing in an afterlife totally negates your current existence. It’s like an insidious and destabilising mental illness. Underneath every day – every action, every word – you think it doesn’t really matter if you screw up this time around because you can just sort it all out in paradise. You make it up with your parents, and become a better person and lose that final stone in heaven. And learn how to speak French. You’ll have time, after all! It’s eternity! And you’ll have wings, and it’ll be sunny! So, really, who cares what you do now? This is really just some lack lustre waiting room you’re only going to be in for 20 minutes, during which you will have no wings at all, and are forced to walk around, on your feet, like pigs do.

If we wonder why people are so apathetic and casual about every eminently avoidable horror in the world – famine, war, disease, the seas gradually turning yellow and filling with ringpulls and shattered fax machines – it’s right there. Heaven. The biggest waste of our time we ever invented, outside of jigsaws.
Only when the majority of the people on this planet believe – absolutely – that they are dying, minute by minute, will we actually start behaving like fully sentient, rational and compassionate beings. […] When everyone in the world admits they’re going to die, then we’ll really start getting some stuff done.