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To be beacons of light, love, and happiness during Lent we focus on the three pillars of Almsgiving, Fasting, and Prayer. Our Lenten project this year will focus on almsgiving for Streets Alive Mission. We will be focusing on bringing in different food items throughout the course of Lent, such as, canned fruit, vegetables, or soup. The second pillar, fasting is a topic we discuss in class and practice in our canteen on Fridays. Kayla does not sell items containing meat on Fridays. Friday items range from egg or tuna salad to cheese pizza, and as always, smoothies are available.

We started our prayer journey by going to Mass at St. Martha’s Church on Ash Wednesday. We will gather weekly as a community to pray and reflect on our theme “Rooted in Christ”. Please come join us in prayer each week. Every morning, to start our day, we pray together as a community. We also pray together every morning as a staff and this year we are using the resource Jesus Daily: 365 Interactive Devotions by Aaron Tabor.

Our Van Tighem Virtue focus for Lent is Kindness. The focus is to treat people with dignity and to respect all rights and property. We have made a Lenten calendar which contains acts of kindness that staff, students, and families can do each day. Jesus did not perform random acts of kindness but treated everyone with dignity and respect. As a result, we are trying to focus on intentional acts of kindness as opposed to random as we want to teach students that kindness is integral to how we should treat one another by following Jesus’ example. Research is showing that kindness has a positive effect on not only the giver, but also on the receiver. The Dalai Lama says that “when we feel love and kindness towards others, it not only makes others feel loved and cared for, but it helps us also to develop inner happiness and peace.” We are hoping to start a wave of kindness through our Lenten calendar. Our wave will branch outside of our school community when staff will be performing acts of kindness around the city on our professional development day on Friday March 24. Join us in spreading happiness and love around our community.