It's that time of year where everything becomes sombre and introspective - Lent! Lent starts with Pancake Day and Ash Wednesday this week and lasts until Easter.

Below is a reflection on the significance of Lent and its potential impact:

Seeing Lent as a desert or wilderness season is significant. To move into a bit of symbolic wilderness is to risk finding out something about yourself that maybe makes you a bit uneasy.

The other thing, though, is to be aware that some people spend an awful lot of their life in the desert. Someone whose partner has died or who struggles with depression or who is dealing with some deep family crisis might feel like it is wilderness year ‘round. If that happens to be you, then maybe Lent can give you a language and a practice that could help you believe there is a way across the desert. If, on the other hand, your life is pretty good and your day to day concerns fairly routine, then Lent could well help you to be more mindful and prayerful of those for whom life just isn’t quite so easy to navigate. In other words, though we might choose a personal Lenten discipline very much on our own, part of what it should do is to deepen our connections with those around us.

Why Bother With Lent? - Jamie Howison