by Sue Duby
We walk. A lot. Over 4,000 miles since landing in Northwest Arkansas. Chuck clocks every step. Our hunt for new trails is rivaled only by our search for great coffee shops!
Our morning walks never get old. We’ve got the routine down. Grab the coat, gloves and hat (at least in the winter!). Bend for a quick tie of those well-worn tennis shoes. Wait for Chuck’s coaching chant, “Let’s do this!”. Head off in a tandem rhythm of purpose and determination. Often landing on the cart path of a nearby golf course.
We know each bend in the creek, the lone crane who often greets us with his one-legged stance, the turtles who dive deep when we pass by their pond, flower beds bursting with color and our favorite maintenance worker who always smiles with affection when we wave. Most days, we’re alone. We chat, we stay quiet, we laugh, we ponder. Often cruising along in “our zone”, hardly aware of our surroundings.
We know it all so well. All great delight. . . except for the wet shoe saga. At one point, the cart path crosses a spillway of cascading creek water. We’ve learned tip-toeing techniques that usually allow for a sprint across without a soaking. However, any recent rainfall guarantees a cold, squishy finish to our journey.
One day last Spring, we found ourselves sighing, a few steps from the spillway, ready to soak our shoes yet again. For no apparent reason, we both happened to glance to the right and notice another walker. Strolling across nearby grass, stepping on to a small footbridge and crossing the creek to the other side. We turned to each other and jointly exclaimed, “What??!!! All this time… for over 2 years… why did we NEVER see that bridge?!!!”
photo by Sue Duby
We quickly followed. Across the grass, across the bridge, pausing on the other side of the creek, looking at our dry shoes and smiling together. Since that wake-up moment, we’ve carved a well-worn path to that bridge, with dry shoes every time!
The bridge wasn’t “new” in the sense of being freshly created. It’s been there for years, well worn by foot traffic. But it was “new” to us. Somehow, our eyes never saw it until that crazy day of awakening! One definition of “new” is just that… “already existing but seen, experienced, or acquired recently or now for the first time”.
Such a mystery. To have something there all the time and not see it. To struggle through a journey with obstacles and never realize there’s another way in clear view. To be stuck with a mind fretfully “looping”, without trusting a solution will make itself known by resting and waiting on Him. To be weighed by decisions needing to be made, forgetting He has a best path forward. To know that when we find ourselves feeling “stuck” in our ways, He’s faithful to continue to show us “better ways”. Often when we least expect. And always in His best timing.
May 2021 be a year of fresh vision. Of eyes that see what we missed before. Of His hand illuminating great surprises along the way. Of delight in discovering His “best paths” in each day. Of trusting that He is the God of the “new”… in all ways, in all things, forever.
“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man imagined,
what God has prepared for those who love him”I Corinthians 2:9 (ESV)
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by Christine Sine,
Has it ever occurred to you how artificial the face we present to the public is, especially now when we are working at home? No pressure to dress up. The only time I put on make up and jewelry these days is when I am getting ready for a Zoom call or a video recording. The “me” you see isn’t the real me. There is so much messiness behind the scenes – a pile of tottering boxes that support my iPhone with my scrolling tele-prompted script, a precarious stack of cushions on my chair because my tripod won’t get my camera low enough to record effectively, and a couple of old lights scavenged out of the garage to illuminate my face.
The everyday me
The public figure me
That messiness plays an important part in my life though. It has taught me to improvise and be creative with what is lying around. It has encouraged me to learn new skills and to break out of the rigid boundaries of the past into new adventures. It has also taught me to rely on others who have the skills I lack and it has grounded me in a more resilient, more sustainable way of life.
There does come a point however when the messiness of pioneering gives way to a more ordered structure – the framework that says “I am here to stay”. Godspace is growing. Online events are proliferating and we love doing them. Perhaps now is the time to get rid of my stack of tottering boxes and buy a ring light. Maybe a new chair that isn’t 100 years old, that doesn’t squeak and is easily adjusted up and down. And shades to cover my office windows so that I don’t have to hunt for a new place to sit for an afternoon webinar without the sun streaming in and blinding the audience.
I don’t have to embrace this growth, I realize. I can pretend that one day I will be able to go back to doing things exactly the way they were. I can make do with my tottering pile of boxes until they fall and bury me in the middle of a webinar. Yesterday’s ways are OK for tomorrow I rationalize but deep down I know it is not ture and I don’t want to miss out on where God is nudging me to go.
What are the lessons for my spiritual life, I wonder?
Messiness is often the prelude to a new way of life and a new normal that God wants to establish in us. We improvise for a while drawing on the left overs of the past. We embrace new realms of creativity and lean heavily on our spiritual directors and soul friends for support and encouragement. But in the process, we grow and that growth takes us beyond the tottering boxes to new ways of practicing our faith.
I think that the messiness of the way that many of us have operated over the last year reflects that. Our spiritual life has gone through a phase of messiness where we feel that our public face has been precariously held together by a tottering stack of beliefs from the past, anxieties, fears and uncertainties. But in the midst, we have changed and grown. Now we need to replace these, especially the fears and anxieties with something more stable, for us to not just survive but to continue growing.
Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t think we need to throw out everything from the past. Without the foundations it gave us we would not have become the resilient and creative people we already are. However I do think this is a great time to re-evaluate the way we want to practice our faith into the future both as individuals and as churches.
I encourage you to take time to prayerfully look around at the practices you have engaged in over the last year. In what ways are they different from your pre-COVID practices? Which of these practices have most effectively sustained, nourished and grown your faith? How do you continue to incorporate these in your life?
Now, look back to pre-COVID days. What practices have you let go of over the last year that you realize are not necessary to sustain you into the future? How do you reshape your life without these practices? What practices have you been forced to let go of that have left you feeling bereft and malnourished? How can you start rebuilding those into your life?
We still live in challenging times, but they are also exciting times of opportunity and continued growth. I hope that in the messiness that still surrounds us that you will reinvent your life with a strong foundation for the future.
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Here is the contemplative service from St Andrews for the 5th Sunday after Epiphany
A contemplative service with music in the style-of-Taize for the Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany. Carrie Grace Littauer, prayer leader, with music by Kester Limner and Andy Myers.
Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-710-756 with additional notes below.
“Even in Sorrow” – composed by Kester Limner in March 2020 for the people of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Seattle, shared under the Creative Commons License, Attribution (CC-BY).
“Bring Your Peace” – words and music by Kester Limner, shared under the Creative Commons License, Attribution (CC-BY).
“In God Alone My Soul (Mon Ame se Repose)” and “Kyrie for February 7, 2021” are songs from the Taize Community. Copyright and all rights reserved by GIA/Les Presses de Taizé. Kyrie intercessions written by Kester Limner.
“By the Mark” is written by Gillian Welch and David Rawlings.
by Diane Woodrow, photo above: Bewts-y-coed, Conwy April 2018 taken by Diane Woodrow
I have been chewing over this blog for a few days now and each time I go beyond a paragraph it becomes either a rant or way too personal but last night, as I led down to sleep, it all fell into place.
I believe too often we heal the surface but do not clean out what is causing the wound. I think of friends who have gone to the doctor’s or even to hospitals and have got medicines, had operations, taken antibiotics etc, Yet if one googles the NHS diagnosis will say “caused by stress or anxiety”. But very rarely does anyone take time to find out what is causing the stress or the anxiety, or if they do then it is again treated superficially rather than getting to the heart of it. But that is because getting to the heart of something is hard work and painful.
The piece that brought this blog to a place I felt I could share with others was when I read the introduction to David Olusoga’s “Black and British: A Forgotten History”. He recounts of how when he was a young teen, himself, his mother, two sisters, a younger brother and his grandmother, were driven from their home by repeated nightly attacks where the perpetrator would throw bricks through their windows and of how over time all they had was boarded up plywood where the windows should have been. He recounts the terror they felt along with the sleepless nights and the well meaning, but misguided advise of a teacher. Eventually the family were moved to temporary accommodation but when he crept back into the estate he saw a swastika and the words “NF Won Here” daubed across the plywood windows. How do we delve into that pain, that fear, that helplessness, that terror of David’s family and too many other families like his? Changes of law are surface things. There needs to be real listening and real hearing and real learning.
As I pondered this I got to wondering why would someone want to abuse a family like this? What fears and anxieties were they harbour? Are we willing to talk to the perpetrator as well as the victim? But also there is another group in this tale – those who kept quiet and said nothing. Those who lived in the same street, the same neighbourhood, went to the same school, and who would have been friendly to the family and yet did not step in and help. Is it like the school playground where, once one person is being bullied, the rest can relax because it isn’t them? How do we look at the wounding within all these groups without getting judgemental?
Well the obvious answer is Jesus and that I would not deny. But I do wonder how often we are holding similar fears, similar needs to be top dog, to turn the other way, to keep our heads down and just do our stuff within the deep psyche of our churches? I think of the story of the Good Samaritan where good and godly men walked on by, not because they were bad but because they were afraid or relieved that it wasn’t them. Again these are wounds that need to be healed but often get overlooked. We do like the simplicity of good guys/bad guys even though each of us is more complex than that if we real look within ourselves.
I’ve a friend who said her family are praying about the lawlessness of this country and the churches need to have more of Jesus in them but as they have really engaged with praying they have realised that they need to deal with their lawlessness within themselves and their deep need of more Jesus. Too often we point the finger outwards and don’t look at ourselves.
So we know God wants to heal us, as Christine Sine reminded us in her blog on Monday, but do we want to lay ourselves bare and let God heal us? Do we want to let go of the boundaries we have build around ourselves to keep us safe that we have built so long ago that we don’t know they are there? I believe every time we can turn aside when someone is suffering, or make sure we keep our own group safe then we have ignored the walls that we have build. But can we really be ready to stand up for the victim when they are being bullied and abused? Can we also be willing to love the perpetrator and find out why they do as they do? We can if we are willing to pray more, to heal our own deep wounds and stop being afraid of what might become of us.
Things like the basics we are doing at the moment to deal with Covid-19 – wear masks, don’t gather in groups, keep 2m distance, sanitize – are great starting points, as are regular health checkups, eating well, exercise, etc, – are all great. As are changes to the law regarding racial, gender and other issues where there has been discrimination. But these are only a first step. We need to change our hearts. That is something we can only do if we spend time really looking at our wounds and really wanting to clean them out.
Create in me a clean heart, O God.
Renew a loyal spirit within me. Do not banish me from your presence
and don’t take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and make me willing to obey you.
As Psalm 51:10-12 says – it’s got to start with me not them!
Original post taken from Aspirational Adventures.
Prayers for the Season of Lent and Easter are now available as a download for only $6.99!
by Lilly Lewin,
Since many of us are not meeting in person this year, how do we do Shrove Tuesday online? At thinplaceNASHVILLE, we are having pancakes together on the Sunday before Shrove Tuesday and then again on the day with our Tuesday night group. We are each going to make our own pancakes prior to gathering and eat dinner together online via Zoom. You could do this as a breakfast/brunch gathering too. Just let people know ahead of time what your plans are. And if you don’t have a church that is doing this, get some friends or family members together via Zoom and host your own Shrove Tuesday Pancake Gathering. And since I’m a freerange Christian, I say that you have freedom do have your pancake gathering any time between now and the first week of Lent which begins this year on February 17th.
Once upon a time, Shrove Tuesday was the day to clean out all the sugar, fat, etc from the pantry and get ready for the Lenten fast to begin on Ash Wednesday. Thus, pancakes were made from some of those ingredients.
Since pancakes aren’t very good cold, I would eat first and then do the prayer practice together.
get your ingredients together
If you are leading the online worship gathering this year, gather various pancake making ingredients and have them on a table so they can be seen by other participants. If you are doing this gathering at home or in a small group, have a centerpiece created with various pancake making ingredients and supplies. This creates the visual you can use to pray with together.
RECEIVE THE LOVE . Use this imaginative prayer before you eat.
Imagine the pancakes cooking on the griddle. Perfect pancakes, light and airy, browned just right.
Picture them stacked on a plate, rich butter on the top. Perhaps with blueberries or strawberries added in, or on the top. Perhaps filled with chocolate chips and topped with whipped cream! The butter melts. The syrup flows. Your pancakes might be plain but they are still a gift from Jesus. Imagine these abundant pancakes as a gift from Jesus to YOU!
Allow this image to represent the Richness and Abundance of God’s Love for you. The Richness and Abundance of Jesus’s Love for each of us today and always! Let’s taste and receive this Love today and each day between now and Easter. And all God’s People said, AMEN!
The Richness and Abundance of Jesus’s Love for us today and always! Let’s taste and receive this Love today and each day between now and Easter. AMEN
AFTER EATING YOUR PANCAKES begin the devotion/worship time. To transition from the food to the worship you might light a candle, saying IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER AND THE SON AND THE HOLY SPIRIT. AMEN.
ASK: What are the ingredients you need as you prepare for your journey with Jesus this Lent? Ask Jesus to show you tonight as you look at the ingredients….
pancakes
At thinplaceNASHVILLE, we talk about using the forty days of Lent to fall more in love with Jesus.
ASK:
What ingredients do you need to add to your life in order to fall more in love with Jesus between now and Easter?
Have participants consider all the different ingredients that go into pancakes… flour, salt, milk, eggs, baking powder, oil or butter…
Flour… add more faith, trust, prayer, reading, creativity, walks with Jesus, time alone, silence, what else?
What new ingredients does Jesus want to add? or do you need to subtract an ingredient or use less of something?
Less worry, less news, less social media for examples.
Do you need to change out artificial for real ingredients? Or be more organic?
You can have participants have a piece of paper to write down the ingredients they need to add or subtract. They could even have a recipe card to do this on that you design and send out, or a coloring sheet with ingredients drawn on it to color in.
When we gather in-person or online, the key is participation. Let people know what they need to have ready and at thinplace we call these “props to pray with”… For this gathering people will make their pancakes ahead of time. And then have several items to pray with. Small dish of Sugar, DRYER LINT, A large spoon.
Have participants pick up their spoon and hold it. How is God mixing you together this Lent? What is being stirred up in you as you prepare for Lent, as you prepare to journey with Jesus this year between now and Easter. What new recipe is Jesus inviting you to create with him? How can you fall more in love with Jesus during Lent this year? Ask Jesus to show you.
Give people time to pray between each question. Pause. Don’t rush. Let the Holy Spirit teach.
The word SHROVE comes from SHRIVE… to be forgiven for one’s sins. Let’s read/listen to JOEL 2:12-17
Have 3 people read the passage. We usually read it from three different versions including the Message and the NIV. (lectio divina)
SHARING: Give people the opportunity to share if they’d like to share. What did you notice? What word or phrase did God highlight for you? You can also invite people to share about their ingredients… what they’d like to add or subtract this Lenten season.
Take out your DRYER LINT (CONFESSION)…. Sin acts like lint, clogs up the system and causes problems between us and God. We need to clean our dryer lint trap before drying a load of clothes. We need to get rid of the LINT, the junk that is clogging up our lives. HOLD YOUR DRYER LINT…. Consider all the LINT that is clogging up your life right now. All the things clogging up your life and getting between you and Jesus? What is the LINT that needs removing as you begin the season of LENT? (allow people time to consider this and pray). Ask Jesus to show you and talk to him about these things.
Jesus, thank you for cleaning up the LINT of sin in our lives. Thank you for forgiving us and making us clean each day and every time we ask. AMEN.
AS YOU END YOUR TIME TOGETHER:
HOLD YOUR SPOON AGAIN. What ways can you stir up good things in the lives of those around you? How can you bring the sweetness of God’s love to your friends, neighbors, coworkers? How can we be salt and light to those around us even in a pandemic? Make a plan. Consider what flavors we want to bring into our World this week and in the weeks ahead. TASTE THE SUGAR. Receive the Richness and Abundance of Jesus’s Love for you today and always! Let’s taste and receive this Love today and each day between now and Easter. And all God’s People said, AMEN!
STIR UP GOOD THINGS
If you are looking for a way to pray through Lent, check out our downloadable prayer kit: 40 Days toward Love. You can use it on your own, or with your family, or buy it and send the PDF to your whole church.
40Days toward Love
You can find other resources for Lent and Easter too at freerangeworship.com and The Community of Iona has a downloadable Shrove Tuesday Service… that uses ingredients too.
©lillylewin and freerangeworship.com
Available now in our store! Check out our New Lenten Bundle which includes the downloads of A Journey Into Wholeness book, Lent/Easter Prayer Cards, and 40 Daily Ideas Guide for Lent!
For many of us, this past year has felt like we have been in a desert. The familiar routines and ways of life have gone and in their place, boredom for some, and for others, the stressful juggle of home education and work – a number of us are struggling with the financial implications of Covid-19, and loneliness, anxiety and even despair have become our constant companions.
I see this season as a wilderness and I name it such because we have been thrown off course, our plans and goals and dreams are on hold, as though we have wandered from the path and unwittingly, we have stumbled into an unknown terrain. This alien territory throws much at us, and seems to have also sucked much from us.
We find ourselves, perhaps, in a landscape that looks, and certainly feels desolate, unfamiliar and bewildering. We do the daily things that we need to do for our families and for our homes, but these things are not necessarily life giving – this uninvited and unexpected new normal has brought with it pain and sadness, confusion and loss – a weariness hangs over us all, and lack of connection, leaves us feeling empty, and we are grieving.
I have two choices in my response to the landscape that I have been thrust into – I can embrace it and surrender myself to life in this wasteland and to what it potentially might produce in me, or I can struggle with it and kick against it, yielding to the inevitability of loss and isolation. I can plough my own furrow, or choose to adopt a different posture.
I also know, in my head, at least, that Abba Father has not sidelined me, overlooked or forgotten me. He has not abandoned me or given up on me. It is not that He doesn’t know what to do with me. He is not shocked or surprised at what we are all going through, at the difficult decisions we are having to make and at having to bear the consequences of the careless actions of others.
In many ways, we have been stripped and are left bare and naked, because in the desert there is nowhere to hide. The real me is being exposed and I believe that God is posing two questions. To those who have ears to hear, He asks, ‘Am I enough and do you trust me?’. Deep restoration is found here, in the answer. YES, you have to be enough, and YES, I choose to trust you. It is in this YES, whispered perhaps, tentatively at first, but nonetheless voiced from a profound need for encounter and connection, that our hearts can start to heal.
On those days when I am low, I have to choose Him – how can I yield to one that I do not trust? Sometimes these places and seasons of being stripped cause us to turn again, and see what was there all along, though we knew it not. God wants us – a people for Himself. This is all He has ever wanted. I don’t think He cares too much about what we do for Him. His longing is that our hearts be His, and in this, there is wholeness.
Abraham. Moses. Joshua. Jacob. Joseph. David. John. Desert experiences feature in all their stories – it refined them and strengthened them. It honed them and humbled them. The desert prepared them for what lay ahead, and ultimately, it formed them.
Let us not waste our sojourn in this particular wilderness. Let us allow Him to hold us and watch over us, to feed us and care for us, that it, too, may become a redemptive part of our story. I pray for me, and for you, that as we collectively navigate this harsh landscape, we would allow ourselves to be nourished by God alone, and there, that we would find healing.
He found him in a desert land,
And in the howling waste of a wilderness;
He encircled him, He cared for him,
He guarded him as the pupil of His eye.
Like an eagle that stirs up its nest,
That hovers over its young,
He spread His wings and caught them,
He carried them on His pinions.
The LORD alone guided him,
And there was no foreign god with him.
He made him ride on the high places of the earth, And he ate the produce of the field;
And He made him suck honey from the rock,
And oil from the flinty rock,
Curds of cows, and milk of the flock,
With fat of lambs,
And rams, the breed of Bashan, and goats,
With the finest of the wheat—
And of the blood of grapes you drank wine. (Deut 32:10-14)
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by June Friesen, photo by June Friesen,
As I look back over the years of my life many things have captured my attention and time. Those things have changed with time because of where I lived, my age, the age of family, events in the lives of people around me and in the world. While the past year in which we have experienced incredible changes not only personally but also within community these affected each one of us in different ways because we are unique and different.
In order to embrace healing as we move forward, there will no doubt be things in our lives as individuals that will be different. Each one of us will heal differently and at different times. As I think back to an event in my life that happened over ten years ago, I too had to make a definite decision that would/could affect whether I would ever walk again; or if I walked what kind of mobility I would have.
photo by June Friesen
Hiking in Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley with my daughter in law and granddaughter, a step on a leaf covered path had a branch hidden by leaves, my ankle turned, I fell, sitting right on my ankle and heard a snap. As I pulled out my leg I knew I was in trouble… stubborn as I am I crawled up to the cabin where my son awaited to transport me to the hospital. The whole story in itself is one miracle after another. However, the greatest miracle of all is that the orthopedic surgeon said the morning after surgery that it was a real mess and he did not know if I would ever walk again; or at least normally. As an active walker, I decided immediately that I would follow all directions given (as patients tend not to do) and within a year, I was not only walking but also running and jumping – not bad for being 60 years old and still today I can walk, hike, run and jump. BUT the KEY to all of that was following instructions plus prayer.
My friends, the key to all healing and wholeness, whether physical or spiritual, is following instructions. During the past year, we have struggled with a contagious disease that spread worldwide and has changed the course of every life worldwide. For many, it has also affected their spiritual life. The Psalmist shares some encouragement for us in Psalm 51.
Soak me in your laundry and I’ll come out clean, scrub me and I’ll have a snow-white life. Tune me in to foot-tapping songs, set these once-broken bones to dancing. Don’t look too close for blemishes, give me a clean bill of health. God, make a fresh start in me, shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life. Don’t throw me out with the trash, or fail to breathe holiness in me. Bring me back from gray exile, put a fresh wind in my sails! Give me a job teaching rebels your ways so the lost can find their way home. Commute my death sentence, God, my salvation God, and I’ll sing anthems to your life-giving ways. Unbutton my lips, dear God; I’ll let loose with your praise.
There are so many different pictures here and since each one of us is different, we will find the healing in our lives differently than another. Are you and I open to taking action in following God’s direction/instruction that applies to our particular situation? Maybe one needs to clear out the negative thoughts that have been nurtured during this past year. Maybe one needs to mend their spiritual relationship with God or maybe with another/other persons that have been hindered/broken this past year. Many times, I have heard the past year referred to as being a time of chaos. God has now opened the door for us to another year. God is offering to us a new beginning. God has given us all life experiences. These are all gifts that will enable us to find healing. This is an opportunity for us to enable a fresh start/beginning for God. Let us embrace God’s instructions to us so as the Psalmist ends – ‘our lips too will be unbuttoned and let loose with God’s praise.’ Amen.
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