by Christine Sine
Memory is tied to commitment or the lack thereof. We are often reminded in scripture of our penchant towards forgetfulness.
This quote from Tony Petrotta’s Lenten article in Radix magazine last spring really caught my attention this week. Yes I know I am a little late reading it, but I feel that it has a lot to say to us no matter what the season.
Petrotta goes on to quote from Psalm 106
Our ancestors in Egypt
were not impressed by the Lord’s miraculous deeds.
They soon forgot his many acts of kindness to them.
Instead, they rebelled against him at the Red Sea.[
The whole Psalm seems to be a litany of the forgetfulness of the Israelites and the commitment of God. They forgot God’s miracles and kindness towards them; they forgot God’s instructions; they forgot God’s promise to care for them; they forgot the God who had saved them. Wow! That is quite a litany of forgetfulness, yet in spite of that God remembered them and the covenant God had made with them.
What Have I Forgotten of My Commitment to God?
Reading through Psalm 106 today made me wonder how short my memory is and what of my commitment to God I have forgotten?
Remembering is not always a happy process that I talked about in my post Meditation Monday – Remember When. Yet it is important for us to look back and remember the pain and forgetfulness as well as the joy. And looking at the list of things the Israelites forgot is a good place to start as we look back:
What miracles and kindness has God shown towards you that you have forgotten?
Where have you forgotten God’s instructions and what are the consequences in your life that you have tended to blame God for?
When have you forgotten God’s promise to care for you and worried and lived in anxiety as a result?
When have you forgotten God’s salvation in your life?
When Have I Forgotten God’s Commitment to Me?
Petrotta reminds us that:
In remembering we are reminded of God’s priorities and prompted to respond…. If we remember rightly, we also need to face the memories in which we acted not Christ-like, but more Christ-less.
When have you forgotten God’s covenant with you, God’s priorities and the promise of God’s steadfast love?
What memories have you come face to face with that show Christlessness rather than Christlikeness? Are there ways that God would ask you to respond?
Asking myself these questions this week has been a cleansing process. I have experienced what Petrotta says”
Remembering softens our hearts so that we may once again be open to experiencing God with a thirst and hunger for the things of God.
As I engaged in this exercise I was reminded of the chapter in The Gift of Wonder on remembering where I talk what I learned from John Medina’s fascinating book Brain Rules for Aging Well:
reminiscing increases our social connectedness and sense of fulfillment in our accomplishments as positive memories rise to the surface. When we immerse ourselves in memories of our younger selves we become healthy, our aches and pains are reduced, weight and posture improve, and our dexterity increases. Even our eyesight gets better. (The Gift of Wonder 39)
I think that this is one of the reasons that remembering is so important – it not only strengthens us spiritually, it strengthens us physically and emotionally as well.
So lets jump to another Psalm for advice here:
I will call to mind the deeds of the Lord; I will remember your wonders of old. I will meditate on all your words and muse on your mighty deeds (Psalm 77:11, 12)
Let’s do some meditating this week on the mighty deeds of God. Let’s take time to do a bit of remembering.
by Lilly Lewin
Here is another prayer station from the LOVE WELL Sacred Space I designed for United Methodist Conference YOUTH 2019. The Theme for the conference was LOVE WELL based on Romans 12:9-10. This station had participants design two masks. One, showing what they show the world, or what others see and the second mask was what they WANT to show the world instead. You can use this as a prayer station response, or do this as a large group activity with your entire church, or as a small group activity, or as an individual devotional practice. You will just need enough Mask outlines for each person to have two masks. Have multicolored markers or crayons. We hung our finished masks on a clothes line to display them.
DON’T HIDE YOURSELF BEHIND A MASK
Love others well, and don’t hide behind a mask; love authentically. Despise evil; pursue what is good as if your life depends on it. Live in true devotion to one another, loving each other as sisters and brothers. Be first to honor others by putting them first. ROMANS 12: 9-10
Don’t Hide Behind a Mask.
Too often we don’t show people who we really are.
Too often we hide behind a mask.
We often hide our pain behind a happy face or smile.
And too often, we don’t even tell Jesus about our true feelings. Our hurts, our pains, our frustrations.
And often we don’t share with Jesus, or with our friends the real joys in our life either.
What mask are you wearing today?
What do people see on the outside?
What is different on the inside?
Talk to Jesus about your Mask. Talk to Jesus about the Mask you are wearing.Mask
ACTION:
CREATE YOUR MASK Mask PDF to copy
The Mask I hide behind: WRITE and/or draw
ON ONE SIDE OF YOUR MASK
the things you show the world. What do other people see?
NOW FLIP the Mask…
What don’t they know about you?
What’s on the inside? What things do you hide? Write or Draw that down on the back side.
HANG UP your old mask, the one you hide behind… and give this to JESUS!
The NEW FACE: TAKE another Mask.
What do you want people to see in your life?
What do you want them to know or to notice?
What do you want to give to Jesus so you can show his love to the world?
What face do you want to wear in order to Love others Well?
Talk to Jesus about the NEW face you want to wear in the world.
DESIGN YOUR NEW FACE with words or pictures draw what you want to show the world with the help of Jesus.
©lillylewin and freerangeworship.com
Circlewood Retreat – Saturday, August 10 on Camano Island.
Godspace readers who live in or near the Pacific Northwest are invited to Circlewood’s summer retreat on Saturday, August 10 on beautiful Camano Island. For those of you who were fans of Mustard Seed Associate’s annual Celtic prayer retreat, this will be in the same wonderful forest on Camano. The topic is exploring what it means to be an “Ecological Christian,” and will include learning through group discussion, break-out sessions, and special afternoon excursions (with plenty of time to talk with people or enjoy the peace of the forest). For more information (and to register), visit https://www.circlewood.online/summer-retreat.
On a related note, we recently spent a day with foresters Kirk Hanson and Jose Narjava from the Northwest Natural Resource Group. They are helping us put together a long-term Conservation Action Plan that will help us conserve and improve the health of the forest for future generations.
7-10-19 Interview with foresters from Northwest Natural Resources Group from Circlewood on Vimeo.
We learned a lot – Kirk took a bore sample from a 75 year old Grand Fir tree and we saw just how much water these great trees hold – check out the video!
By Barbie Perks —
Workmanship. One of the challenges about starting over in a new country is finding furniture. The house we are renting is large, and we are not going to bring up furniture that we own, so we have to look around locally for what we need. There are no department stores for us to go into and buy ready-made things.
We took a drive down the main road to see what is on offer. There are any number of people who make items one might need. This carpenter specialises in double/queen/king size beds, and so does that metal-worker, if you want a decorative metal work bed. That carpenter make chairs. Oh look, that one make children’s bunk beds. And that one makes really ornate dressing tables. Everything is displayed on the side of the road. You can watch the ‘fundi’ making his items as well. You get to have a close look at the items and feel them – sadly, the finishing of the products is pretty rough. We saw a lovely pine bed, which in our opinion, still needed at least two more lots of sanding to smooth it down nicely. Yet when coming back along the road, we saw they were already varnishing it.
The flat-pack table and 4 chairs we bought a month ago – made in China – looks nice, but screws were missing to put the chairs together, the rubber on the base of the table legs is a kind of plastic that is falling apart already. Chair tops are missing. Someone didn’t check when packing!
When we moved in, one section of the house still had renovations being done to it, bathrooms being tiled, painted, and plumbed, 3 doors had to be hung. Its two months since we viewed the house, one month since we moved in, and the work is still not completed. The painter painted over at least 2cm of the tiling, the doors have not been sanded or varnished, one corner of the bathroom and toilet still needs tiling finished off.
The question begs: are we being too particular? Should we just accept shoddy workmanship because “this is Africa”? Do we have the right to demand perfection of others? Do we in turn give of our best when we make or produce something?
I am so grateful that God is a perfect Creator, that the things he creates are good in his sight (Genesis 1 and 2)
In Ephesians 2:10 I am reminded that we – you and I – are his workmanship (KJV, ESV), created by him to do good things which he has prepared for us to do. The NIV version talks of us being God’s handiwork. A quick word study expands the verse remarkably: we have been made by God, completely created, changed or transformed in Christ Jesus, to do good, excellent, honourable and useful works – whether in business, employment, anything that we undertake to do, any product, artwork, industry, or thinking we occupy ourselves with, any act or deed we do, things we work hard at – that God prepared beforehand, or in advance, for us to do – so that we should conduct ourselves and our lives, making full use of the opportunities God gives us. Wow, what a reminder of the complexity of God’s creation of you and me!
What is the attitude we are encouraged to have? Peter and Paul both tell us that we are to work as if we are working for God (Eph 6:7) to work wholeheartedly at whatever we do (Col 3:23), to recognise the great responsibility that we have been given by God to embrace all the opportunities he creates and gives to us – to serve, to minister, to provide, to teach, to nurse, to heal, to feed, to grow, to encourage, to share generously, to lead enthusiastically, to mother, to father, to guide and mentor, to create with our hands in whatever way he has gifted us (1 Pet 4:10).
Creator God and Father, you have made me with such love and care, given me so much to guide and help me in my daily walk with you. Would you open my heart and eyes to see the wonderful areas of life in which you offer me opportunities to serve you? Would you in love renew the tired soul, bring joy to the sad one, provide new purpose for the one who has lost focus, that we might all sing your praises again.
By Jenneth Graser —
If you’ve been a fan of Jenneth’s poems, like we have — check out her newly published book of poetry called, The Present Moment of Happiness. This volume of 50 poems is a call to courage, as you embrace the wisdom that abides within your story. Her poetry explores how painful shifts in the seasons we go through can lead to even greater expansion when we trust the process. Featuring 50 poems in 5 themes: live in the moment, hope, love yourself, believe, grateful dreaming. Jenneth writes from the inspiration of her own challenging experiences tangibly, making her poetry accessible to everyone on a spiritual journey.
by Christine Sine
When I walk the seashore, I meet in that one sacred space, both the immanent and the transcendent God. The ocean stretches out as far as my eye can see, and way beyond, just as the sense of the divine lies far beyond any human understanding. And yet that same ocean laps at my feet and deposits all kinds of very ordinary objects on the shore for me to discover as I do my beachcombing – objects that may have stories to tell me about who I am and who God is for me, and how our realities embrace in this ordinary-extraordinary space where the water meets the land. (Landscapes of Prayer: Finding God in Your World and Your Life – Margaret Silf (24,25)
Tom and I have just returned from one of our quarterly prayer retreats. One of the things I always like to do on these retreats is take a book with me to help me focus and Margaret Silf’s delightful book Landscapes of Prayer was my choice for this retreat. As I sat on the beach after a beachcombing forage along the pebbled sand, I read the quote above. It is followed by the story of Jesus making breakfast on the beach for his friends and in her narrative she likens this to a beach BBQ where the aroma wafts across the shore to them inviting them to breakfast and a new beginning.
She suggests that beachcombing is a wonderful way to pray and adapts the Prayer of Examen to fit into this context but as I sat there on Friday holding my very ordinary treasures of rocks and shells, I found myself wanting to create my own process of discernment so I have adapted her questions and added some of my own. Here are the questions and reflections that came to me that you might like to adapt for your own use:
Beachcombing
Beachcombing As Discernment
- What treasures have you discovered in the ordinary landscape of the last few months that caught your attention with delight and joy, bringing you new life as they connected you to God, to yourself and to others? For me the gifts of wonder that have been birthed come to mind – first my book The Gift of Wonder , now three years old, but also the gifts of babies in Australia and Texas that are special gifts of wonder for me. These are the treasures that have transformed what could have been very ordinary time into extraordinary, shaping both my faith and life in unexpected and precious ways.
- Who or what has nourished and enriched your life helping you to find new depths of faith, healing the hurts that still shape you? My husband Tom’s supportiveness and encouragement is the most sustaining and wonderful gift that has built my confidence as I stretch myself beyond my comfort zones. As well as that the garden, both its beauty and its productivity nourish my spirit and my soul relaxing and growing not just me but all who enter it.
- What are the waves that lap at the boundaries of your life sometimes gently bringing rest and calm from stress ago other times crashing like storm waves with tumult and destruction to your well ordered plans? my contemplative practices and my breathing prayers are the gentle waves that calm my soul and nourish my spirit helping me to relax and also find relief from the facial pain that still plagues me. The waves that crash like storm waves are the stories of those at the margins – refugees, houseless people; migrants at the border; LBGTQ community all rejected because of their “risky” lifestyles and poverty deprived lives. Yet I realize as I think about this that it is these storm waves, not the gentle ones that both uncover and deposit new treasures – maybe new understanding, deeper compassion and generosity’ stronger cries for justice welling up from within.
- As you look back over your beach today have you left a trail of footprints that need to be washed away by the loving presence of God – things you wish you had handled differently that have left you with regrets, guilt, anxiety? I always feel that I should be doing more than I am – speaking out more strongly for justice or being more generous and compassionate. This can paralyze me and immobile me. I sit this morning watching as the cleansing flow of the rising tide washes away these regrets and feelings of guilt and I feel refreshed and made new again.
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Pebble question mark
As you bring your prayer to a close gather up your treasures. How will you display them for future remembrances or where will you store them? As I look at my collection I wonder what new creative practices they could stir within me. I hold the rocks in my hand – an ordinary collection of different colored stones – I shape them first into a question mark and then into a circle reminded that questions help bring wholeness and completeness. When I get home they will be shaped into a more permanent remembrance for me, how about you?
- Now as I look to the future I wonder what does God want me to learn from my beachcombing experience that will help shape the months to come? First I realize the importance of my contemplative and creative practices. I need to make are that I protect the time that I dedicate to these every day, no matter how busy I get. Second I need to protect the relational time Tom and I have together and not allow my vocation and travel to distract me from this. Third I must not be too hard on myself when I fell I have messed up, remembering that God forgives no matter what mistakes I make. Discernment comes in many shapes and forms I realize. Usually I expect to come out of a time like this with clearly defined goals, but on this retreat I have also learned the need to relax and allow the waves to shape who I am becoming, even if there are no clear goals that come out of the process.
So Questions can bring completion and wholeness
I’m in Kansas City this week, curating a Sacred Space Prayer Room experience for the United Methodist Church YOUTH2019 Conference. It’s a gathering of students and leaders from all over the United States and beyond. The Upper Room is sponsoring the Sacred Space and hired me to design and curate the space around the theme of the event, LOVE WELL. 
How do we LOVE WELL? How do we LOVE GOD, LOVE OURSELVES, and LOVE OTHERS WELL?
First, I believe that we cannot love well if we don’t have margin in our lives, if we don’t have rest! So I designed the entire Sacred Space around the LOVE WELL fountain where participants can sit down in rocking chairs, lay down on blankets, or sit on a cushion and JUST REST and BE with Jesus. 
I then added small prayer tents, called Poustinias, so students could pray and listen to God or just take a nap in them.
“Poustinia is a Russian word for a small sparsely furnished cabin or room where one goes to pray and fast alone in the presence of God. The word poustinia has its origin in the Russian word for desert. 
Whenever I design a Sacred Space Prayer Room or Prayer Experience, I start with four prayer stations.
1. A Place to Pray for the World, because God blesses the World not just America.
2. A Place to Confess our Sins, because we Protestants are bad at that!
3. A Place to Create Prayers in Art, because that’s how I like to pray and because I want the artists to know that their creativity is prayer.
4. A Place to Rest, because it’s a commandment! and #RESTisHOLY
After creating the design for these four stations, I then build on the theme and/or the Scripture passages being taught at the conference. 
In this Sacred Space we are standing on a hand painted map of the world and praying for different places, countries, and people to be filled with the love of God. I also created some large tag board hearts that people can pick up to pray with as they stand on the map. The art station has two tables filled with supplies to create with and one of my team created a heart outline on the floor that the students are filling in with their art prayers. I created a new confession station for this Sacred Space and it involves building blocks. I like to use everyday items that you will see again to help people remember their experience with God. I also knew that their would be lots of guys at this event and I wanted something fun and tactile to engage them right when you walked in the space. This may be my new favorite station! Participants are writing down with sharpie markers, the things that BLOCK them form receiving God’s Love. They are writing this on the Building Blocks and giving these to God to hold. Letting them go and receiving God’s love!
So what are the things that are BLOCKING you from receiving God’s love today? Talk to God about this. If you have some wooden blocks actually write these things down so you have a visual of them to give to God to remove for you! Here is the signage/directions from this station:
What Blocks you from God’s Love?
To love well we all
need to receive the
love of God.
What stops you from believing in the Goodness of God? What things block you from believing in God’s love for you?
Write these on a block and give them to Jesus to hold for you.
ACTION:
WHAT BLOCKS
YOU FROM GOD’S
LOVE?
Write these things on a block and give them to Jesus to hold for you.
Allow Jesus to unblock these things.
Allow Jesus to hold all the stuff, the junk, the sin that blocks you from receiving his great love for you! Remember that Jesus loves you, RIGHT NOW, JUST AS YOU ARE! You don’t have to get your act together first. Allow Jesus to love you now, so you can love others well.
Take time this week to practice the four areas I’ve talked about above.
and most importantly, REST. Really. Just REST. Take a Nap. Take time to Stop, Be, Breathe and let God love you well.
Sacred Space prayer kits can be purchased in the store at freerangeworship.com There is a great on for Back to School that has stations based on School Supplies if you are thinking ahead.
©lillylewin and freerangeworship.com
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