by Christine Sine,
I love breath prayers and the exercises they encourage me to create. I have several that I use on a regular basis especially, at the moment, when such exercises are one of the top recommendations for coping with the stress and anxiety of this season.
I often adapt the breath prayers and the exercises I create in conjunction with them, to the liturgical season in which I find myself or might use invitational prayers to welcome the presence of God in the rhythm of my life. I have prayers for welcoming the new year, for spring, summer, autumn and winter. I have others for seasons of grief and pain or anxiety. All these help me not just to centre myself on God but also remind me that God is present in all the seasons of the year and of my life.
Today’s exercise is adapted from a prayer posted on Facebook by my friend, Bob Holmes, otherwise known as The Contemplative Monk.
A breath prayer is a simple practice that provides a way to leave behind our rational, linear-thinking minds and aline more intimately with our spirits and the spirit of the living God. It encourages us to let our words and our intellect fade away and invites us into holy presence and spirit-filled being.
For this breath prayer, you will need a quiet and comfortable place in which to sit, a candle to light, some quiet contemplative music to listen to and a shawl or blanket to wrap yourself in.
We will begin with a prayer of invitation. The prayer I am using was written to welcome the new year but I continue to use it as a reminder that the year is still emerging in every new day, a sentiment that was reinforced for me as I read Psalm 50:1 (TPT) recently.
The God of gods, the mighty Lord himself, has spoken!
He shouts out over all the people of the earth
In every brilliant sunrise and ever beautiful sunset,
Saying, “Listen to me!” (Ps50:1 TPT)
You may prefer to begin with another Psalm like Psalm 23 or engage in another practice that enables you to relax into the peace of stillness. “The monastics call this entering the cave of our heart. The Franciscans sometimes pray with their head lower than their heart to remind themselves that it’s our heart first in approaching God.” (Bob Holmes)
I am posting this in both video and written form because I thought that some of you, like me might prefer to listen to rather than have to read through the exercise, particularly if you decide to use it on a regular basis over several days.
Let us begin:
Make yourself comfortable, light your candle, wrap yourself in your blanket or shawl, take a couple of deep breaths in and out, relax with the sound of your quiet music and enter the cave of your heart with a prayer.
A new day dawns,
A new year emerges.
Let us open our eyes and our ears.
To see and to hear.
There is hope
In every sunrise and every sunset
All around the world.
The light of hope will guide us.
Let us enter the cave of our hearts,
Entwine our hearts with God’s,
And allow the eternal in us
To welcome the wonder of each day.
Sit quietly, with your hands in you lap, palms facing upwards in a position of receptivity. Relax your shoulders, your jaw and other muscles where tension accumulates.
Relax and breathe.
Take three deep breaths slowly in through your nose and out through your mouth. Follow your breath into your lungs and imagine it infusing your blood and flowing into your heart. Release the weight of the day and slowly center yourself into the cave of your heart.
Breathe in the wonder of this moment.
Let the stillness soak into your being.
Slowly breathe out the fears and anxieties of the past.
Turn your thoughts away from your concerns for the future.
And allow your breathing to settle into a slow natural rhythm, breathing in, breathing out.
Breathe in your awareness of God’s forgiveness.
Breathe out, let go of what holds you bound.
Breathe in your trust in God’s guidance,
breathe out thanksgiving and gratitude.
Hold the name of Jesus in your hands.
Savour the specialness of his companionship.
Loving, compassionate, caring.
Imagine him walking beside you.
Let your face relax into a soft smile
Breathe in quietly saying “Je…” and out again saying “…sus”.
Allow the rhythm of your breathing to take you deeper and deeper into the divine presence.
Hold your shawl or blanket closely around you.
Embrace the presence of Jesus around you and in you.
Imagine him guiding you into the eternal arms of God.
Sense God welcoming you with divine healing and comfort.
You are Beloved, you belong, you are home.
Breathe… embracing your belonging,
Release your gratitude like a dove.
Breathe… allow yourself to feel the joy of God’s presence rejoicing in you.
You are precious in God’s sight.
Take your time, savour this moment of intimacy with the divine.
Soak in the presence of God, breathing in and breathing out.
With your inward breath saying “Je…” and with your outward “…sus”.
“Let all else fall away as you rest in divine presence, being, belonging, home and at peace.”
End with this prayer:
Deep peace, O creator of light.
Deep peace, O giver of life.
Deep peace, O lover of souls.
Let your peace reside in the depths of my being
And take root in the center of my heart.
May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us and abide in us forever.
Amen.
Available now in our store! Check out our Breath Prayer Cards These are available as downloads or as cards
breath prayer cards
Here is this week’s contemplative service from St Andrews Episcopal Church in Seattle. Enjoy! And in case you wonder about the feature photo I post each week – this is of the beautiful stain glass window at the back of the sanctuary at St Andrews Episcopal church. I love the elements of cross and world and holy spirit all woven together.It can provide a powerful image for reflection and contemplation.
A contemplative service with music in the style-of-Taize for the Fourth 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.
“Tis a Gift to Be Simple” – The traditional words and music of this folk song are from the American Shaker tradition, public domain.
“Deep Peace” – is a Celtic blessing song with text and music by Ray Makeover, copyright 2009, Augsburg Fortress. All rights reserved.
“Christe Lux Mundi (Christ You are Light)” is a song from the Taize Community. Copyright and all rights reserved by GIA/Les Presses de Taizé.
“Kyrie for January 31, 2021” – Text and music by Kester Limner, shared under the Creative Commons License, Attribution (CC-BY).
“This is My Father’s World” – is an American hymn with text and music by The Rev. Maltbie Davenport Babcock, 1901, public domain. This alternate arrangement is by Kester Limner, shared under the Creative Commons License, Attribution (CC-BY)
Thank you for praying with us!
I am always intrigued to see what the next Godspacelight theme might be and the direction in which it might send me. This most recent one, Time to Heal, sent me spinning more than a little.
Let me explain. It will say more about me than those who decide the theme, but I heard it in a particular way – as a command, rather than an invitation. Rather like an irate parent who declares, after much procrastinating on the part of a stubborn child, ‘Time for bed!’ I heard something I am sure was not intended – an expectation that we had had quite enough time to feel our pain and needed to get on with our healing.
I know that is not what was meant. It is a script which comes from childhood years, where I was encouraged to not make a fuss, and suffering was minimized as a protection for my parents. So I easily hear to get on, not to dwell, lest I be holding my own pity party.
But I’m not ready to move on from this season. Here in the UK, numbers are still catastrophic. Lives and businesses have been lost. Children are missing school friends and growing up with words like ‘lockdown’ at the front of their vocabulary and trying to ascertain whether the adults behind masks are smiling. The corporate anxiety is palpable. Living on the outskirts of a city and not allowed to travel, I’m longing to see the sea, always my place to encounter God. At times, I’m indescribably sad, though at others I can distract myself in various ways.
So I had decided I could not contribute this time. Until I suddenly realised there is another way to hear that phrase. Not ‘Time to heal – hurry up!’, but ‘It takes time to heal’. Of course! Yes, that I understand only too well. A lot of time. Much more than people think.
William Worden describes the tasks of mourning, a more helpful way to think about it, in my view, than the rather linear way that the oft-quoted stages of grief can appear to be. The first is to accept the reality of the loss: which in this pandemic is not just the tragic toll of death, but so much more. Loss of confidence, of hope, of connection in so many ways. You will have your own list. Take a moment to voice it. The second is accepting and working through the pain. This takes equal amounts of courage and time. Courage not to plaster over the cracks but allow ourselves to feel all that is there and find honest and real ways to express it. Time both because we will not be able to face it all at once and because things will slowly emerge we have not yet seen. Only then can we begin the equally brave task of adjusting to new ways of being which comprise Worden’s next two stages.
God, it seems to me, never rushes us. Jesus walked with his disciples on the road to Emmaus and heard their story, only then putting their sadness in the context of the greater picture of God’s story. So wherever you are on the journey to recovery from this pandemic, or if like me you have not even started it, know that you are held in the arms of a gracious God who holds all your tears in His bottle and who knows your story – past, present, and all that is yet to come. He will help you write the next chapter.
Prayers for the Season of Lent and Easter are now available as a download for only $6.99!
by Tom Sine,
Are you one of those whose life has become totally DISRUPTED BY THESE TURBULENT 2020s?
Would You Like to Join Those Looking for God’s Best in 2021?
Creating your best life-making?
Creating your best community-making?
Creating your best neighborhood change-making?
Creating your best church-making for times like these?
Let’s be clear… we will continue to deal with all of the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, the closure of schools, parents searching for food to feed their children and Zoom worship instead of gathering with friends.
Now all of a sudden, we find ourselves racing into 2021. We invite you to shift your focus from all the disruptions and join those who are finding healing in going for their best. This is your invitation to join those going for their best!
2021 RU Ready?
This is your opportunity to start a Zoom study group of friends to not only anticipate the new waves of change that you, your family and friends are likely to face in 2021… but also ways you can join those shifting from anxiety to healing by Creating Your Best in 2021.
Start a Zoom creativity group to not only discuss: 2020s Foresight: Three Vital Practices for Thriving in a Decade of Accelerating Change.
You and your friends will focus, as the book does, igniting your imaginations to:
Create your best life-making?
Create your best community-making?
Create your best change-making?
Create your best church-making for times like these?
Tom Sine and Dwight Friesen wrote 2020s Foresight : Three Vital Practices for Thriving in a Decade of Accelerating Change to show you how God can ignite our “shalomic imagination” to create new innovative ways to join those going for their BEST in 2021!
First, we will provide a free 45 minute webinar called 2021 RU Ready?, in which Dwight and Tom will introduce you to the focus and format of 2020s Foresight. In this webinar, we will show you:
How to anticipate some of huge waves that are likely to come our way in 2021 and beyond;
how to join those creating their best life-making, community-making, change-making & church-making in these turbulent times, and how to create innovative ways of going for your best that reflect the Way of Jesus.
Second, Tom Sine will also be available to do one Zoom visit with your group, at no charge, to discuss your group’s creative ideas of new possibilities for your lives and communities. Simply arrange a time for him to Zoom into your group. Remember, there are questions at the end of each chapter to enable you and your friends to move easily through 2020s Foresight and as you go for your BEST in 2021!
It all begins with you organizing your group, ordering the books and contacting Tom Sine to send you the webinar and setting a time for his Zoom visit. Contact Tom here.
by Lilly Lewin,
In January, my FreeRangeFriday posts have been about GIFTS… the gifts we need to give and open for ourselves as we go forward into this New Year. We’ve opened the gifts of Compassion, Rest, and Grief…
And now I invite you to open the gifts of GRACE.
Grace for ourselves…
Opening the gift of GRACE rather than the Box of Failure!
If you know me well, you know that I’m really hard on myself. While I have lots of grace for other people, I have a lot less grace for myself.
I am a recovering workaholic and perfectionist.
Maybe you are too.
We’ve all been through a very rough year….
Many of us expected to get a lot done, be more productive, make a lot of bread like some of our friends on Instagram, or clean out all the closets.
I will confess that I have gotten less done, been less productive, been more messy and not felt much creativity. I suffer from anxiety and covid shut me down many days in 2020.
When I don’t feel productive, when my house gets really cluttered, when I feel the weight of SHOULD… like “I should be ok and not anxious,” “I should be more organized,” ” I should__________.” Just fill in the blank! I go automatically and open the FAILURE BOX.
What I’ve realized in the last few weeks is that I tend to open that box a lot!
And I put lots of things that happen in that box.
Stuff other people might think of as no big deal, I automatically put into the failure box.
My husband said, “you know there are other boxes don’t you?”
I don’t think I did know this…
I’ve used the Failure Box for so long that I had never even processed or thought about other boxes!
When I brought this up with my therapist, she asked me what the other boxes might be? She asked me to think of the colors of the other boxes. As a visual learner and an artist, this concept actually inspired me! I drew a few boxes on a piece of paper and thought about what boxes I use… and colored them in.
What do your boxes look like?
Along with the Failure Box… I also have a big box of shame, a box of comparison, a fear box, one named “not enough”, and of course, the performance and perfectionism boxes.
What are the negative boxes you’ve been opening lately?
Just drawing out the boxes helped. And showed me that I really need some NEW BOXES from Jesus! So I went to the Dollar store and bought some actual gift boxes. Tangible Boxes to look at and use for the NEW BOXES… the NEW GIFTS God wanted to start using in my life.
Some NEW boxes
I also read an amazing chapter in Practicing: Changing Yourself to Change the World by Kathy Escobar
She actually has a chapter called “The Practice of Failing”! What?!! You mean it’s ok to fail? It’s ok to be human? It’s ok not to be perfect? To actually realize that failure is a part of being human and I AM JUST HUMAN! Kathy quotes her friend, Joanna, “Self compassion is embracing our humanity, owning that we are a muddled mix of dust and divinity.” WOW! THAT IS TRUTH and FREEDOM!
This allowed me to start naming the NEW BOXES….
I asked Jesus to show me what these new boxes might be! Success, Enough, Creativity, Trust, Safety, Loved Unconditionally, and my new favorite, the IT’S OK TO BE HUMAN BOX!
What are your NEW BOXES?
And this led me to realize that I need to open the gift of GRACE for myself. To allow myself to receive this gift…to really stop, to pause, to open the box of GRACE and unconditional love of Jesus! And not just open this gift once, but daily and sometimes I need to open this gift, this box hourly.
What NEW BOXES do you need in your life? Take some time and ask Jesus to show you! Maybe you need some actual boxes to envision this.
What does the GIFT of GRACE look like in your life…? Do you need to open it?
What if you created a gift of grace box to remind you of God’s great love for you and his amazing grace!
Receive the beautiful gift of GRACE and LOVE from Jesus today so you can continue to move into 2021 as a year of healing and wholeness one day at a time.
Receive the Gift of Grace
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Ephesians 2:8- 9 NIV
Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! Ephesians 2: 7-9 THE MESSAGE
©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!
Believe it or not, it is time to get ready for Lent which begins with Ash Wednesday on February 17th. The Lenten season is quickly approaching so we wanted to keep you up to date on the resources that we have to share!
We are delighted to offer these prayers for the season of Lent & Easter as a new resource on Godspace! As we consider Time to Heal on our blog, we wanted to provide yet another avenue to aid in the healing process for this time before and during Lent. Available in download form, this set of 10 cards spans the season from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday. Each card consists of a prayer and short reflection which provides a focus for your week, enriches your spiritual life and draws you closer to God. There is one for Ash Wednesday and one for each of the 5 weeks of Lent as well as one card for Palm Sunday, Holy Week, Good Friday and Easter Sunday.
Sampling of some cards
Lent & Easter Resources
Because our resource lists are expanding, we have a new page for Lent & Easter Resources! This page will show you everything from Ash Wednesday, Lent, Holy Week, and Easter activities, prayers, liturgies, and at home ideas which have been updated for 2021! Please comment below if you think another resource should be added to our lists! We are always looking for new material to share!
New Downloadable Lenten Bundle
Included is A Journey Into Wholeness book, the new Lent/Easter Prayer Cards, and newly updated for 2021: 40 Daily Ideas Guide for Lent. This downloadable bundle is available for $12.99 (saving you $2 from purchasing individually). Click on the image below to view the bundle details.
FREE Downloads
These free downloads are now available and updated for 2021, so check out Hungering for Life and 40 Daily Ideas Guide for Lent!
Hungering for Life provides a different word as a focal point for reflection each week of Lent and encourages the reader to take photos, draw pictures or write poetry that expresses these reflections. We plan to use this activity during Lent and hope you will join us.
- Ash Wednesday: Preparation
- Week 1: Hunger
- Week 2: Fasting/Penitence
- Week 3: Hope/Promise/Expectation
- Week 4: Thanksgiving/Joy
- Week 5: Darkness/Death
- Week 6: Resurrection/Life
Did you miss our earlier post, Why Do My Prayers for Healing Never Work? Definitely worth reading! Thank you, J. Thomas!
by J. Thomas
I definitely do NOT have the gift of healing. Whenever my wife is sick with a cold, she asks me to pray for her. Actually, when she feels like a cold is coming on, we pray preventive prayers that she would not get sick. Inevitably, she gets sick, and we pray for a speedy recovery. The result – extra two weeks of runny noses and achy muscles. Then, we pray for complete healing, and the cold gets worse, passes back and forth in our household and before you know it, she’s sick again. I pray in faith and invoke the name of Jehovah Raffa, God the Healer. I pray with persistence, with fervency, and based on Scripture and activated by love and Holy Spirit, but I do not feel confirmation in my heart that my prayers had any positive impact. This has happened time and time again for 17 years over dozens of colds, flu-like diseases, and a handful of mystery ailments. I’ve now come to the conclusion that healing is not one of my spiritual gifts. I have others, but for the gift of healing prayers, God has chosen to use another part of the body.
If you read the title of this post and hoped to find answers to praying more effectively for healing, I am sorry to disappoint you. It’s more a question I ask out of frustration. I have some acceptance that I can’t have every spiritual gifting, but I’m really disappointed. I want my prayers for healing to be effective. That’s my hope and goal, and no matter how hard I try, I do not feel a win. Maybe 2 or 3 times, I can claim in faith, but that is a hugely losing record. I can’t answer the question above, but I can share with you how I’ve moved to deeper acceptance and knowledge of the Healer. A perspective that has transformed my relationship with Him, myself, and others.
photo by Oleg Illarionov on unsplash.com
Through the prophet Joel, God says, “I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten.”
Over the last 7 months, I have been experiencing a different type of healing directly from the Healer. Healing from emotional wounds, and specifically, childhood emotional wounds. There is supernatural healing going on in my life. Let me explain. I think the first 20 years of my life was about being inflicted with a host of emotional wounds and forming maladaptive ways of dealing with the resulting pain. I’ve self-diagnosed myself with Childhood Emotional Neglect (CEN), where my parents raised me, gave me food and shelter, kept me safe and even helped pay for college. For some reason, my emotional needs were not met. When it came to meeting emotional needs like feeling loved, valued, and important, there was a cultural, generational, and language gap. I think about how I never expressed to my parents how I felt sad because I didn’t know the word for “sad” in Korean. I grew up in emotional survival mode and got my validation needs met by performing well academically and coping with my loneliness with fantasies of meeting a wife at age 14. I taught myself how to ride a bike in fourth grade. And it wasn’t even until college that I learned that I should brush my teeth in the morning AND at night before going to bed. Those are the humorous symptoms of my CEN, but my family system wounded me with false core beliefs about myself and what’s lower than very low self-esteem? Right, NO self-esteem.
Over the next 20 years of my life, the negative fruit of these emotional wounds came up, and I had to deal with them and pay the consequences. As I worked on issues in therapy and with God, I might have worked through and received healing from two, maybe three, of my core emotional wounds. Three in 20 years is not bad at all as the deep work of self-reflection, reliving childhood trauma, and forming a new mindset is a life-long process.
But here’s the thing, over the last 7 months, I’ve gone through maybe 7 major healing moments resolving a lot of the emotional baggage and receiving an outpouring of God’s perfect parenting – the way he intended before family sin patterns worked its way down for generations. To go to a medical doctor, there is no reportable physical healing. I still catch colds, my body aches, and my right leg is still longer than my left. In the unseen depths in my psyche, there are emotional bullets being extracted, atrophied muscles of self-care getting stronger, and the wounds from beating myself up are on the mend. And even more, the habit of beating myself up is abating one day at a time.
The reason I can testify that these have been miraculous healings is from understanding the way our bodies and God works. With proper medical treatment and rest, our bodies really heal on their own. Common colds work their way through our systems and the most we can hope is to manage the symptoms. Broken bones heal on their own when the bone is set properly. Even emotional wounds have a natural way of healing when we form healthy relationships as adults. The Healer works through natural means and regular people like my therapist, friends, 12-step sponsor, and pastors. The Healer works through the proper administration of medication from professionals.
So where’s the miracle? I see the miracle in two ways. First, when the healing that takes place that might normally take 40 years takes place over seven months – that is the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit. Second, that I can claim in faith that it was the Lord Almighty that did the work in me, that faith is a gift from God. I rarely claim a victory because I don’t want to jinx it. But as for me and my household, I am claiming that the past emotional wounds have been healed. Of course, there is more to come. In the meantime, I am watching God as he restores the wasted years.
Through the prophet Joel, God says, “I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten.”
Feature photo above by Brett Jordan on unsplash.com
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