Shrove Tuesday

As winter nears its end and the supply of food that we have laid in for the cold barren months is running low, we peasants make a virtue out of necessity, by fasting and praying in the cold hungry months to come.
Summer is the time of work and there hasn’t been much to do in the winter months, with the short days and the cold and the rain, the snow and the ice. There has been precious little to do except laze around by the fire, drinking ale, telling tales, and chewing hemp.
So Lent, which starts tomorrow, on Ash Wednesday, is a time of cleansing, both physical and spiritual, a preparation for the full blooded living we engage in between Easter and Martinmas.
Nowadays, in Post-Society England, Shrove Tuesday is more commonly known as Pancake Day, a minor Annual Regulated Fun Day.
But in my day, back in the fourteenth century, we would have a last binge of winter gluttony, before confessing our sins to the local priest (if he wasn’t sleeping it off somewhere) who would then absolve us and we would be all set for Lent.
We would turn our minds to our own sins, but also to the sins of our society. So we would repent of our own anger and lust and greed, but we would also repent of crime that is done in our name.
Unfortunately, here in the twentieth first century, there is little concept of sin.
The nearest approximation is the idea of fairness.
Unless everything is equal, unless the mountains and the valleys are flattened, then it is unfair.
You are not sinners, you are the victims of unfairness.
There is no need to repent of being unfair.
It is always the Other who is unfair.