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Digital Download of Rest in the Moment – 9.99, $6.99
A PDF downloadable version of the book: Rest in the Moment. The twelve meditations in this beautiful full color book are designed to provide moments of refreshment throughout the day or week. The blending together of prayers, reflections, questions and photos invite us to pause, reset and refresh ourselves. Rest is such an important part of the rhythm of our lives, not just a weekly rest of Sabbath, but pauses of rest throughout the day to reset our focus and renew our connections to God. Even my fitbit tells me that I should relax for 2-3 minutes at regular intervals. We all need times when we pause for refreshment and renewal. Just as the night calls us to rest after a busy day and the winter calls us to rest after busy seasons of planting growth and harvest, so too does God beckon us to rest after hours of busy work.
3 Set Bundle of Prayer Cards – 25.99, $19.99
This bundle includes one set of each: Pause for the Day, Celtic Prayer Cards and Prayers for the Day Prayer Cards.
1 Set of Pause for the Day Prayer Cards – 9.99, $8.99
Digital Download of Pause for the Day Prayer Cards – 4.99, $3.99
3 Sets of Pause for the Day – 25.99, $19.99
This set contains 3 morning, 3 evening and 4 prayers to encourage you to pause for prayer during the day. Each card has a short reflection on the back. These prayers are specifically designed to help you pause and slow down at intervals throughout the day. They can be used for individual times of meditation, to begin a time of group prayer, or for spiritual direction, counseling and even for grief counseling. We hope you will enjoy them and share them with your friends.
1 Set of Celtic Prayer Cards – 9.99, $8.99
Download of Celtic Prayer Cards – 4.99, $3.99
3 Sets of Celtic Prayer Cards – 25.99, $19.99
Each set contains 10 prayers inspired by ancient Celtic saints like Patrick and Columba or by contemporary Celtic writers like John O’Donohue. A short reflection on the back of each card will introduce you to the Celtic Christian tradition. These cards can be used by individuals for daily meditation or by groups.
1 Set of Prayers for the Day – 9.99, $8.99
Digital Download of Prayers for the Day – 4.99, $3.99
3 Sets of Prayers for the Day – 25.99, $19.99
This set contains 10 general prayers that can be used as daily prompts or to encourage you to pause at different times of the day. Each card has a short reflection on the back and a succulent artistic theme.
FREE RESOURCES
Advent in a Jar – Free Download!
This is a fun activity to do with kids that provides a context in which to talk to them about Advent and the coming of Christ. Also great for adults! This is a downloadable packet that will walk you through the steps of creating your own advent jar and printable “sticks” to cut out and use that have a variety of activities on them for your family to enjoy as you prepare for the nativity of Jesus.
Color Your Way Through Advent – Free Download!
by Christine Sine
The prayer above is one of the first that I ever wrote and I thought that I had lost it. Yesterday, as I was browsing through some old files, I found it again, and reading through it thought that it was very appropriate for this weekend – a good prayer to say goodbye to the old year of the liturgical calendar and hello to the new. On this weekend, we don’t just welcome Christ as King but we welcome the Holy Spirit who makes it possible for all of us to live as Christ did – a servant king who served rather than dominating, who walked amongst us, rather than sitting on a distant throne.
I hope that you enjoy it as much as I did.
More resources and prayers for Christ the King Sunday HERE
By Lilly Lewin
It’s Black Friday here in the States. I don’t know if this event takes place in other parts of the world, but here in America, Black Friday is one of the biggest shopping days of the year. It’s so big that some stores choose to open on Thursday night! That means opening at the end of a national holiday, Thanksgiving. We’ve just spent a day, supposedly being grateful for what we have, but then our culture encourages us to go out and spend money on things we think we need or we hope will bring us joy and happiness! The contrast of the two days is stark. I tend to avoid Black Friday altogether. It’s actually been a spiritual practice to avoid all shopping on Black Friday. It’s hard to do when all the ads on TV and in email are advertising the “great deals” that you don’t want to miss! There is so much intensity about shopping and getting stuff that it grieves my soul.
Black Friday has me thinking of grief in general. As I was getting ready to host my family for Thanksgiving, I was praying for all the families in California who lost their homes and couldn’t gather around their tables this year. I thought about everyone who lost family member and friends in the California fires. I thought about all people I know who are celebrating their first big holiday without a loved one, parent, spouse, or child. There is pain in the process of going about the day and all the memories of those people and traditions.
I’ve also been grieving the US vs THEM mentality in our country. Here in America, we are divided about so many things. We just had a major election and this did not make us more connected, but rather showed us how deeply we are entrenched on our sides. Hatred and lack of compassion seem to be seeping into all areas of our lives. We seem to have forgotten the golden rule of doing unto others as we would have them do unto us. We seem to abandon the greatest commandments to love God and love our neighbor.
How do we move forward? What can we do?
I think we need to acknowledge our grief in order to move forward!
We need to acknowledge our pain and allow God to begin to heal it.
Grief about the world, our country, and the pain and grief in our personal lives.
As we move into the season of Advent where we prepare our hearts for the coming of Jesus, let’s let the Light of Jesus shine into the darkness that we are carrying around with us.
Last week, I was at National Youth Workers Convention in St. Louis, MO. Over 4000 youth workers from all over the country gathered to learn and be encouraged in their ministries. As a part of the Soul Care Team, we created space for these folks to get their cups filled up, not just “get more information.” There are spiritual directors, the Prayer Chapel filled with Prayer Stations, and I curate the Sanctuary where we teach prayer practices like centering prayer, Benedictine spirituality, Sabbath, and pray the hours. My friend Beth Slevcove leads a workshop on grief. She has a great book on learning to grieve called Broken Hallelujahs: Learning to Grieve the Big and Small Losses of Life
check out the video preview here:
We also had a prayer station in the Chapel that allowed folks to process their grief. People wrote down the things that they were grieving and tied these prayers on to a grape vine.
Grief…
Blessed are Those who Mourn…
WRITE your Prayers of Grief and Regret on a piece of Muslin
And Tie it to the Grape Vine.
Give your loss, grief, despair to Jesus, The True Vine.
What things are weighing you down?
What losses have you experienced this year?
What pain, grief, despair are you carrying with you right now?
What do you need to take time to grieve before Advent?
Make a List and give it to Jesus.
Perhaps you need to burn this list and let it go in that way.
Maybe you need to create a wailing wall of some kind and place your prayers of grief in the
Wall and give them to Jesus to hold and heal.
Maybe you just need to set aside some time to write in your journal or take a walk and talk to Jesus about your pain.
Take time this Black Friday to honor yourself and your grief.
Be still. Be Real. Jesus knows our hearts already and longs to bring us hope and comfort in our sorrow.
Let’s allow Jesus to prepare room in our hearts as we prepare for his incarnation.
Sunday is Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday the liturgical year. I must confess it is not a celebration that is very much on my radar screen and this year with it falling the week of American Thanksgiving, I have given it even less attention. I thought that this celebration must date from the Middle Ages, but discovered recently that Pope Pius XI added it in 1925. He intended it as a day to celebrate and remember Christ’s kingship over all creation, as well as to remind us that all humankind must submit to Christ’s rule.
As you can imagine, this celebration, especially in recent years, been a somewhat controversial day among those Christians who consider the language of kingship outdated or oppressive. For many, the images of kings and kingdoms conjure up thoughts of tyrants. But the kingship of Jesus takes on a very different form than does the kingship of earthly rulers. He came as a vulnerable infant and carried that vulnerability into his kingship of servanthood as we hear in this, my favourite “kingship” song.
Jesus comes to us not as a great conquering military leader who oppresses and abuses the conquered. Rather, he comes as a servant king, the Prince of Peace, the One whose reign proclaims peace, justice, liberation, and above all, service. Jesus turned the whole concept of lordship and kingship on its head:
You know that those who are recognized as rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones make their authority over them felt. But it shall not be so among you. Rather, whoever wishes to become great among you will be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all. For the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. (Mark 10:42-45, NAB).
Images of God, as Lord and King seem foreign in a democratic, individualistic society. But our all-powerful God, is also all-loving, and all-merciful. God’s heart aches to once more be in a loving relationship with his creatures. This is what Christ’s kingship is all about. We must submit to Jesus as our Lord and King, but it is a submission that paradoxically brings with it liberation, freedom from sin and a life of wholeness for us, for others and for God’s world.
I love this powerful image of Jesus as King and the kingdom of God as a place of hope that Foy Vance gives us here:
Jesus knew the popular images of kings and lords and redefined them. In God’s resurrection world, in order to be a ruler of all, Jesus must become a servant of all. Jesus demonstrated this servanthood in his life and miracles. Even the Incarnation is an example of this: God the Son, King of all creation, humbled himself to become human, even sharing the ultimate fate of his captive subjects: death.
Interestingly, most references to Jesus as king occur during the Passion story. The symbol of Christ’s kingship is not a crown but a cross. The Son of God became human and died a horrible death on the cross to release his subjects from captivity. The One who is the true king of our world made this ultimate sacrifice out of his deep and abiding love for the world, a world constantly in rebellion against him. Christ’s kingship is not like a king with a jewel-encrusted crown in purple finery on a gold throne wielding an oppressive rod of iron. Rather, he is the crucified God with a crown of thorns hanging half naked on a cross of shame to set us free from our bondage.
No collection for Christ the King Sunday is complete without this inspiring description of Christ the King of Kings by SM Lockridge.
Here is a prayer that I wrote a couple of years ago for Christ the King Sunday:
Let us praise Jesus Christ our king
for the wonderful things he has done.
He sends out his word to heal us.
He satisfies the thirsty with the water of life.
He fills the hungry with the abundance of his kingdom.
Let us praise Jesus, redeemer and renewer of all things.
May we always trust in his goodness and love,
And have faith in his grace and mercy,
May we always believe he cares about justice and righteousness,
And draw our life from his eternal purposes.
Let us praise Jesus Christ our king and saviour,
May we be filled with the hope and promise of his coming,
And give our lives to follow him.
May we be gripped by his kingdom ways,
And walk with assurance and trust into his grace and peace.
Other Resources for Christ the King Sunday
- Prayers for Christ the King Sunday here
- Service of Worship for Christ the King Sunday
- Other resources for Christ the King Sunday
And after all that serious stuff you might like a little light liturgical dancing for Christ the King Sunday:
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving here in the U.S. This is a celebration that I have embraced with enthusiasm as an opportunity to think about all that I have to be grateful for. In fact a few years ago I decided to start Advent early with a week of gratitude. This year I have extended that to a whole month of gratitude from Canadian Thanksgiving to American Thanksgiving. It is a practice that I find very inspiring.
In some ways this practice was inspired by reading The Gratitude Diaries by Janice Kaplan several years ago. Over a period of a year she focused on one area of her life that she was grateful for each month. It was a transformational experience for her.
There is so much to be grateful for. I think about what I am grateful for in my personal life, what I am grateful for in my marriage, with my friends and the community I live in, and what I am grateful for in the broader community God has placed us in. I am particularly grateful for God, God’s presence in me, in the people around me and in creation. The prayer above was written at the begin of my season of gratitude and these prayers throughout the month.
Lord We Give You Thanks
For more thanksgiving prayers and resources and for some great thanksgiving songs check out our Thanksgiving resource list.
May the blessing of Light be on you
Light without and light within,
May the blessed sunlight shine on you
And warm your heart till it glows like
A great peat fire, so that the stranger
May come and warm himself at it,
And also a friend.
And may the light shine out of the two eyes of you,
Like a candle set in two windows of a house,
Bidding the wanderer to come in out of the storm.
Raindrops on leaf
And may the blessing of the Rain be on you
The soft sweet rain. May it fall upon your spirit
So that all the little flowers may spring up,
And shed their sweetness on the air.
And may the blessing of the Great Rains be on
You, may they beat upon your spirit
And wash it fair and clean,
And leave there many a shining pool
Where the blue of heaven shines,
And sometimes a star.
Barefoot on Maroubra Beach
And may the blessing of the Earth be on you
The great round earth; may you ever have
A kindly greeting for them you pass
As you’re going along the roads.
May the earth be soft under you when you rest upon it,
Tired at the end of the day,
And may it rest easy over you when,
At the last, you lay out under it;
May it rest so lightly over you,
That your soul may be out from under it quickly,
And up, and off, and on its way to God.
I was sent this blessing several years ago. It is so beautiful and I felt appropriate for this season. Enjoy.
by Christine Sine
The Chi Rho page from the Book of Kells is a wonderful image to meditate on as we prepare our hearts for Christmas (and for Thanksgiving here in the U.S.) I was reminded of this as I continued to read through David Cole’s Celtic Advent today.
I pulled out one of my copies of some of the beautiful images from the Book of Kells and spent much of my devotional time running my fingers round the intricate patterns of what is the most magnificent and ornate example of calligraphy I have ever seen. It is probably one of the most magnificent examples of calligraphy ever created.
Most of the pattern is built around the Greek letters XP (Chi Rho) to represent the first word Christi. The remaining words translated h auteum generatio from the opening words of Matthew 1 v18 “Now the birth of Jesus Christ”, are almost lost in the midst of the amazing swirls, knot work, faces and animal figures of the plate. We need a magnifying glass to separate the details of the interweaving pattern and one wonders how the monks created such delicate work in the days before such tools existed.
Legend has it that this magnificent folio was created by St Columba on Iona but our first real knowledge of it is from the Abbey of Kells from which it was stolen in 1006, then buried for three months. When recovered its jewel encrusted golden cover was gone forever. It was gifted to Trinity College Dublin by Charles II in 1661 and has remained there ever since.
Whoever created these pages, they must have poured a good deal of time and energy and I suspect, love into them. Can you imagine the preparatory meditation and prayer that was required? Or the loving reverence and passion for God which inspired and ultimately preserved it. Did the spirit of God hover over them as they painstakingly crafted the intricate figures? Did God, the master craftsman guide their pens and improve their eyesight to create the minute patterns? And then did God provide a wall of protection to keep this loving testament to Christ alive for all of us to appreciate?
A Doorway Into the Life of Christ
David Cole comments that “this artwork was an entranceway, a doorway into the gospel – a contemplative and meditative way into the story of the life of Christ”. I agree and it is a very fitting doorway, one that invites us to sit and contemplate not just the beauty and richness of the image before us, but also of the life of the One whose birth we are preparing to celebrate.
Set aside time today to contemplate this image. Read 1:18 in The Voice, several times: Here finally is the story of the birth of Jesus the Anointed (It is quite a remarkable story) Run your fingers over the intricate (and remarkable) knot work and spirals in the pattern. Allow them to open a doorway into the remarkable story of Jesus’s birth.
Close your eyes and contemplate the image you have been admiring. What comes to mind of the remarkable story of Jesus as you do so?
Respond with a prayer, a poem or craft your own image.
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