KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 23 February
Turn thou us and so shall we be turned
Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the penitential season of Lent in the Christian understanding. It is an intentional period that emphasizes the idea of self-examination and reflection and the exercise of self-control by fasting and self-denial. It has its counterpart in the ascetic traditions of other religions and philosophies. This year, for instance, the Christian Lent and Easter and the Islamic observance of Ramadan will overlap; Ramadan begins on March 22nd and ends on April 20th with Eid al-Fitr. Lent began this Wednesday, February 22nd; Easter is April 9th.
Ashes are imposed on our foreheads as a sign of repentance which is the idea of our turning back to God from whom we have turned away. The ashes are imposed with the words which recall us to creation, to our being the dust into which God has breathed his spirit. In other words, Lent – an Old English term referring to the lengthening of the days – seeks our being renewed and re-created. It is the intentional journey of the soul seeking the good which is found in God and in the motions of God’s love.
The practices that belong to the disciplines of Lent involve the whole of our being: body, soul, and mind and as such are an important reminder of our lives as embodied beings and of our lives in community. The good that we seek for ourselves can never be a private good, a matter of mere self-interest. One of the great images against the good as self-interest is in Plato’s famous image of the Cave. The prisoners chained at the bottom of the cave mistake the images or shadows for reality. But in being turned around (how? By the eros or desire to know?), there is the discovery of the things themselves, the physical objects and events in time and space, and then, the ascent of the mind to mental realities such as in mathematics that are abstractions from the material world, and then to the Forms or Ideas that belong to the true knowledge of what things truly are. Beyond the line in the interrelation between knowing and being – different forms of knowing in relation to different forms of being – there is the Good which is the unity of the being and knowing of things as the principle upon which they depend. Going up the line is like going out of the Cave but here is the crucial ethical point.
The Good is for all and not just for the privileged few and all of the forms of knowing and being participate to some degree or other in this intellectual structure of reality. Thus Plato argues that those who have made their way out of the Cave have to return to the Cave in order to teach and guide those who remain in the Cave. His famous image is that either kings become philosophers or philosophers become kings. Either way what is emphasized is the priority of knowing in relation to human life individually and collectively. But that turning back to the cave by the philosopher highlights the ethical concern for all.
Lent (and Ramadan, too) are not simply self-serving but belong to our lives together. They seek to strengthen the idea of individual responsibility and service which belongs to the good of all and not simply for the few. In a world where the pressures to out-source our thinking to machines is increasingly so great, Lent recalls us to ourselves as knowers and lovers of the Good, a Good which is all-inclusive. Thus the disciplines of Lent speak to our human freedom and dignity as responsible agents and not just things to be manipulated by defaulting to thinking like machines. Lent in this sense is about reclaiming what belongs to our humanity.
(Rev’d) David Curry
Chaplain, Head of English & ToK teacher
Chair of the Department of Religion and Philosophy
