~This page is old. Please see our updated Resources for Lent~
With Lent fast approaching I realize that it is time to update my resource lists.
This is one of several posts on resources for the season that you might find helpful. You can check them all out here.
Enjoy.
My Favourite Resources Old and New
Here is a sampling of ideas from around the world some new, some from previous years, that I find myself revisiting each year.
A good place to start is with this mini Lenten retreat
Now check out the resources I have posted on Pinterest for Lent Easter and Pentecost. I add to these regularly so there are always new ideas to look at.
In 2013 Rachel Held Evans published a great list of 40 ideas for Lent that is still one of my favorites.
Cabad.org has an excellent outline for a Christian Seder celebration
Some great resources from Lent Event in Australia
The Episcopal Church has a great section on Lenten Resources. already updated for 2019
Growing a Rule of Life – a very interesting course that encourages us to develop a rule of life as a Lenten discipline. It uses garden metaphors and some fun exercises. I used this a couple of years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it.
And of course of Godspace we have several free downloads:
Maundy Thursday Love Feast and Liturgy
Godspace writer Lilly Lewin also has this excellent free download Experiential Stations of the Cross
And check out the other resource lists, videos and prayers accessed through our church calendar resource page.
Looking for A Little Fun During Lent?
Lent Madness. This looks like fun: 32 saints are placed into a tournament-like single elimination bracket. Each pairing remains open for a set period of time and people vote for their favorite saint. 16 saints make it to the Round of the Saintly Sixteen; eight advance to the Round of the Elate Eight; four make it to the Faithful Four; two to the Championship; and the winner is awarded the coveted Golden Halo.
Chalice Press has just sent me their 2018 Lenten materials including this helpful Lenten Colouring Book.
Another great resource is this: Twenty Reflective Movies for Lent
Litanies for Lent
I love this series of litanies for Lent and Easter by Fran Pratt:
Litany for Lent, Week 1 “Temptation”
Litany for Fat Tuesday
Litany for Ash Wednesday
Litany for Lent, Week 2 “Mercy”
Litany for Lent, Week 3 “Hunger”
Litany for Lent, Week 4 “Thirst”
Litany for Lent, Week 5 “Waiting”
Litany for Palm Sunday, “Fulfillment”
Litany for Good Friday, “Death”
Resurrection Sunday: “Life”
Need Some Daily or Weekly Reflections
Bread for the World always produces wonderful Lenten resources, as well as very helpful information on poverty that challenge us to face the issues of hunger.
Episcopal Relief and Development devotional focuses on creating economic opportunities and strengthening communities,with a particular focus on empowering women. They are available in both English and Spanish and can be downloaded for free.
From the Australian Board of Mission for 2017 Into the Desert
Another great list of resources that is so rich you can get lost in from anglicansonline.org
From Dust to Triumph: Reflections for a Holy Lent – an inspiring collection of Lenten reflections that you can read online.
Also from the Uniting Church Australia this excellent free download of Lenten reflections for 2019
Churches Together in Britain and Ireland have some good study courses available for Lent: Parables and Possessions a six-session study resource based on 2012 the Church of Scotland report of A right relationship with money.; Walking and Praying with Christians of the Middle East. and the 2016 addition Pilgrimage. In 2017 they have added Returning Home: Christian Faith in Encounter with other Faiths and for 2018 their emphasis is on Hope. I love the theme for 2019 The Mystery of God encouraging us to look more deeply into the wonder and mystery of God.
Biola University in 2015 started a great resource – The Lent Project with daily reflections
Want to Focus on Simplicity and Sustainability?
From Simple Living Works: Lets Get Ready for a Simpler Lent and Easter
Eco palms: The University of Minnesota Center for Integrated Natural Resources and Agricultural Management (CINRAM) is working together with the Rainforest Alliance TREES program and Smartwood to certify palms harvested from the forests of Mexico and Guatemala for sale to Christian congregations in the United States and Europe.
The Oil Lamp has shared several helpful links to sites that suggest ways to incorporate a carbon fast into your Lenten practices. I particularly enjoyed this link recommended by Archbishop Thabo Magkoba, convenor of the Anglican Environmental Network in South Africa: A Carbon Fast for Lent. They also have some good basic suggestions for a carbon fast here.
Earth Ministry’s LeAnne Beres wrote this helpful article about taking a Carbon fast a couple of years ago which includes links to other great resources.
Looking for A Devotional
This year I plan to use Walter Brueggemann’s A Way Other Than Our Own
You might also like to check out Richard Rohr’s Wondrous Encounters: Scriptures for Lent
Or The Little Book of Lent with a variety of reflections from authors such as Desmond Tutu, Sheila Cassidy and Rowan Williams
Renovare, one of my favourite spiritual formation sites has some excellent Lenten devotionals
Ave Maria Press has a broad array of Lenten resources available.
Chalice Press also has an excellent array of Lenten materials
Intervarsity Press also has a very expansive and important list of books for Lent.
Need Resources for Church Worship or Lenten Studies
Lent and Beyond – an Anglican prayer blog has some of the best reflections and devotionals around. I particularly enjoyed the Ash Wednesday index and Lent and Ash Wednesday Activities for Families
Presbyterian Mission Agency also has good resources for Lent.
Jonny Baker in the UK always has great resources available for worship. Here is his Lenten link
The Lenten resources at textweek.com as usual form one of the most comprehensive resource lists available.
From Australia: Per Crucem Ad Lucem.
In New Zealand Bosco Peters always has good resources listed
From Canada Prayer Eleven – Ideas for Lent
And from South Africa John Van deLaar at Sacredise is worth checking out
Work of the People has produced some great Lenten studies, reflections & video resources this year too.
The Ignatian Workout for Lent online retreat is well worth participating in.
“40 Lent: What do you give up when the world gives out?” From the Jesuits at Loyola Press. It’s a social media series focusing on the way a group of adults copes with the aftermath of a disaster.
Ann Voskamp also has a great idea for a family repentance box which she posted a couple of years ago.
I highly recommend the resources on the Busted Halo website for Lent.
Start with this 25 Great Things You Can Do For Lent watch this video and spend some time thinking about what you can do for Lent this year.
Please check out our complete list of Godspace resources for Lent through Holy Week including our free downloads.
Obviously this is not a comprehensive list so if you know of other resources that you think should be added please leave a comment here.
When I told my colleague Kristin King Carroccino about my ideas for starting a Lenten garden she sent me this article about what she and her family have done in the past. I love the way she incorporates her own need for transformation with that of the transformation that occurs in the garden.
A few years ago, in an attempt to illustrate to our children the message of Lent, a time of God working in the fertile soil of our hearts to grow something new and a time that we also remember the barren feeling of Jesus being in the tomb at the end of Holy Week, we purchased a square glass container from a local craft-making supply store with the intent to cultivate a simple garden. For the first couple of years, we simply added potting soil to the container, and then allowed it to remain dormant until about half way through Holy Week, when we added a sprinkling of wheat berries to the top half inch of soil, watered them, and then watched them sprout and burst forth into gangly life by Easter morning.
Then, my husband began the process of pursuing ordination as a priest in the Episcopal Church, and found himself volunteering to help with Ash Wednesday services one year at our local parish. Somehow, he managed to bring some leftover ash home later that evening around the time we were getting ready to put fresh, black soil into our Lenten glass container. We decided to place the ashes below the soil in the container, thus adding a silty grey layer below the weight of the blackness above. We often paused over the next few weeks to glance at the stark container on our family altar as we were vacuuming the living room or tossing a toy to one of our cats or watching the kids host an impromptu dance party.
The following year, my husband, now a seminarian, wasn’t able to produce a handful of ashes to bring home on Ash Wednesday, so we created our own by each writing on a piece of paper a habit or characteristic we would like to have transformed during Lent and then burning it outdoors in a large metal bowl. We collected the chunky ashes, which were more tiny bits of white paper than powdery dried palm leaf ashes from church, and made them the foundation of our glass container garden. Now we could even more vividly imagine the transformative process of God taking the parts of ourselves we wished to bury and miraculously turning that offering we gave into the new life of the wheat sprouts sending tenacious white roots down into the dark muck and stretching new green growth to the heavens. Humus offering us humans a glimpse of the Great Mystery.
Yesterday I read this very concerning article in the Huffington Post about Tom Perkins contention that people with more money should get more votes. His idea is that you only get to vote if you pay taxes and the more taxes you pay the more votes you get. He says that the rich are being threatened. Yet the facts don’t show that.
According to another article on CNN:
1. Workers are taking home their smallest slice of U.S. income on record: At around $15.8 trillion a year, the United States produces more in annual economic output than ever before, but it’s not the worker that’s benefiting. Instead, corporate profits now account for their largest slice of that pie on record, whereas the slice for workers has been steadily declining.
2. Inequality has widened: The recovery has been good to families earning more than $394,000 a year, but the other 99% of Americans have barely felt it.
Whereas income for the richest 1% had grown 31% from 2009 to 2012, income for the rest of Americans has barely budged in recent years, growing just 0.4% over the same time period.
That means the richest 1% of American families have captured 95% of the income gains in the recovery, according to economists at the forefront of income inequality research, Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez.
The concerning thing to me is that the rich and powerful have more clout than ever. The influence of the Koch brothers on the recent government economic upset shows that. And through misinformation and media clout they can make us believe that their views are right.
So what does the Bible really say about wealth? That is not an easy question to answer and there are many interpretations of Jesus’ words on the subject. One thing I have noticed however is that when the rich interpret what Jesus says it usually justifies their wealth, when the poor interpret it usually emphasizes their exclusion.
How we interpret what the Bible says depends on who we stand with. Perhaps that is part of the reason Jesus encourages us to identify with the poor because when we do we really see his perspective not just on wealth but on life. Blessed are you who are poor for yours is the kingdom of God the Beatitudes tell us (Luke 6:20 NIV). Perhaps that is because only the poor really see the values and priorities of God’s kingdom. We need to see from the perspective of the poor in order to really understand what God wants to say. Unfortunately so much of what we interpret about money in the Bible tends to be from the perspective of the wealthy. And we want to believe it because consciously or unconsciously we hope that one day we too will be wealthy.
Ched Myer’s has really helped me understand this perspective. His perspective on The Parable of the Talents is both revealing and challenging. His views on Sabbath Economics have helped to transform my thinking and move away from the conditioning of the wealthy
We need to not just know what the Bible says but why we believe it. Matthew 6:24 tells us that we cannot serve both God and money. But we certainly keep trying.
It’s Valentine’s Day, to be honest not a celebration that I have ever really approved of. I see it as yet another commercial venture to encourage us to buy and consume more – especially chocolate. I struggle with it a lot because it seems to me that the love we celebrate on this day is the very antithesis of the love of God. It started out as a religious celebration commemorating the life of St Valentine, one of the early Christian martyrs but today is more a celebration of romantic love and another opportunity for the consumer culture to have us all out there buying lots of chocolates, roses and other gifts that we don’t really need. I was overwhelmed as I walked through the supermarket yesterday by the array of red flowers, red chocolate boxes and red cup cakes that were strategically placed to jump out at me as I entered the store. This is not what love is about.
And I struggle because most chocolate is not ethically produced. An article in Huffington post last year states:
According to an investigative report by the BBC, hundreds of thousands of children are being purchased from their parents or outright stolen and then shipped to Ivory Coast, where they are enslaved on cocoa farms. Destitute parents in these poverty-stricken lands sell their children to traffickers believing that they will find honest work in Ivory Coast and send some of their earnings home. The terrible reality is that these children, 11-to-16-years-old but sometimes younger, are forced to do hard manual labor 80 to 100 hours a week. They are paid nothing, receive no education, are under fed, and are often viciously beaten if they try to escape. Most will never see their families again.
But chocolate is good for us and it is easy to ignore its dark underside, especially on a day like this. And love is good for us. My husband Tom sees this as a day to affirm his love for me and for others, something that I always deeply appreciate. And God is a God of love. Affirming love for God, for each other and for God’s world are extremely important.
So what do we do about it? Here are some suggestions:
- Start the day by reading Paul’s wonderful description of love in 1 Corinthians 13. Read it in a few different versions (available at Biblegateway.com)
- Read some of the wonderful love poems of Christian saints. My favourite is Fall in Love by Father Pedro Arrupe. I also love this reflection on How to Love God by Mother Teresa
- Be generous with your love. The New American Dream suggests rebooting Valentine’s Day as Generosity Day, seeing it not as a day to receive gifts of love but to give them. They suggest saying “yes” every time you are asked for a donation, a handout or a request. Give a $5 tip for a $2 cup of coffee. Bring in lunch for your co-workers. Certainly something to consider.
- Be generous with your gratitude. I think this is also a good day to show gratitude to those who love you and whom you love. Make phone calls to friends you have not spoken to for a while. Tell them how much you appreciate them.
- Reach out to those who produce your chocolate and other favourite Valentine’s gifts. Watch The Dark Side of Chocolate with a group of friends and consider ways to make a difference in the lives of those who suffer for our indulgences.
Let me know what you plan to do this Valentine’s day in the spirit of the love of God?
Yesterday I visited the cardiologist. It is probable that my heart is OK but the mere mention of words like cardiac hypertrophy and atrial flutter made me feel my mortality as I never have before. As well as that we held an MSA Board meeting on Saturday at which we raised the question: What do Tom and I want to be doing in 5 years time? The last 24 hours have encompassed a lot of soul searching and reflecting. What do I hope to accomplish before I leave this earth?
My thoughts first went to places I want to visit – Alaska, Galapagos Islands, trans-Siberian railway, one more trip to Iona. The list could go on forever. How embarrassing that the first ideas that come to my mind are shaped by my culture and not by my faith. So with some prayer and reflection time under my belt I have come up with another list that I know I will continue to shape over the next few weeks particularly when Tom and I go on retreat next week.
- I want to grow in my faith especially in my ability to love God and my neighbours, to be more compassionate, generous and hospitable.
- I want to live in a way that is more considerate of God’s good creation and of those at the margins of society.
- I want to focus my energy on resourcing those who want to be change makers in the future. I would like to continue equipping followers of Jesus with spiritual practices, life skills and creative imaginations that strengthen their faith and their ability to reach out into God’s world. Which I think means being able to focus more on writing, and retreats as well as gardening and hospitality.
- I want to see Mustard Seed Associates grow into the Centre for Imagination and Creativity that we desire. In other words I would like to see the Mustard Seed Village constructed and rooted in an intentional community, providing a place for others to gather and imagine and create new forms of life and faith that address the challenges of tomorrow’s world.
- I want to see the Mustard Seed House continue to thrive as both a model of sustainability and as a place for gatherings where people can be strengthened in their faith and life. Part of the uniqueness of MSA is our desire to develop both an urban and a rural community as places to gather and create as well as to model sustainable life and sustainable faith.
Part of what grappling with my own mortality has done for me is to help me focus on what is important. I realize how easily all of us are conditioned by a culture that tells us buying and consuming are our main purpose. But as followers of Christ that should not be the case. Above all else, I want to be faithful to God’s call on my life. When I do come to the end of my life, I want to be able to look back without regrets.
What about you? What does your bucket list look like and how does that reflect God’s calling on your life?
As you know we have a lot happening at MSA for the season of Lent. Why you might ask? This is not a tradition that many of our protestant churches practice. But I think it should be. Lent is about preparing your heart for the coming of Christ. So we do hope you will join us. And if you are in Seattle come get your heart prepared for journey with a day of reflection and refocusing. This year’s retreat is a full day because last year so many people commented “It wasn’t long enough”. If you would like to attend the morning sessions only let us know.
When: March 1st, 2014 9:30a.m. – 4:00p.m.
Where: The Mustard Seed House, Seattle, WA (510 NE 81st St.)
I will facilitate this MSA retreat which was very popular last year. The season of Lent awakens in all of us a hunger for deeper intimacy with God. Yet we are often distracted by busyness, worry and work.
At this retreat we will explore the simple things of everyday life – breathing, drinking a glass of water, running, picking up a stone or taking a photo – that open our senses to the God who shines through every moment and enlivens every creature.
We will spend time developing spiritual practices for the season of Lent and beyond and we will spend time in quiet reflection as well. We might even work on starting our Lenten gardens.
Cost: $50 (includes lunch)
Add a copy of A Journey Into Wholeness: Soul Travel from Lent to Easter for only $12
REGISTER HERE.
Food and faith Steering committee
This morning I read an interesting article from YES magazine entitled Relearning the Skills of Community. As I read about their check in time, and provision of mutual support I thought – that sounds very much like forming Christian community to me. That’s what we do in our MSA team meetings. That’s what movements like the New Monasticism and Parish Collective are trying to accomplish.
I have the same response when I read books like Imagination First and Business Secrets of the Trappist Monks. And when I hear that young social entrepreneurs are living in community, practicing mindfulness and holding each other responsible I think – that sounds like spiritual disciplines without the spirit. But then I think is it really without the spirit?
Then I get together with the Food and Faith Initiative Steering Committee of Seattle Tilth’s Just Garden Project. As we talk about churches, synagogues, mosques and Hindu temples growing food and helping to sustain those at the margins with their produce, I think: This is God at work.
I believe that all of these movements are God at work. Young millennials are leaving the established churches in droves. As consultant Kn Moy shared with us recently:
The largest generation in U.S. history — the 80 million Millennials — has come to view religion (and the Bible) as judgmental, homophobic, hypocritical, and too political. Today, only ten percent of Millennials are “religiously affiliated.” Of that number, 59 percent will become “religiously unaffiliated” before they enter college. (That is, they will leave their churches.) And, unlike the Boomers, they will not re-affiliate when they marry and have children. So, basically, the Church, as we know it, will disappear in a couple of generations.
God has not abandoned the young millennials, or the millions from other generations who have left the church in the last few decades. God is at work spreading the salt of the kingdom throughout the world. I think that we need to be less about trying to get people into church and more about trying to help them recognize the presence of God in their everyday lives. Helping to recognize the ways that mindful meditation draws us close to the living God is an important part of what followers of Christ have to offer today. Helping seekers after community to draw close to the love of God which is at the centre of their interactions, even if they don’t see that, is hugely important. Helping those who love to get their hands dirty in a garden to interact with God and story of God that are revealed in their labours is a wonderful achievement.
Not all followers of Christ call themselves Christians and I suspect that even less will do so in the future. But the spirit of God is still very much at work transforming, renewing and making all things whole. My question is: will be recognize this and join in, or will we stand back because it does not fit our preconceptions of how God operates.
God rarely works according to our plans. The Jews looked for a powerful king who would triumphantly lead them into the glory days of a physical kingdom. They got a humble servant instead whose kingdom was ushered in through the renewal of suffering, death and resurrection.
I wonder how often we miss what God is doing because we assume we know what the next steps will be. Perhaps it is time for all of us to look around and ask:
God what are you doing and how can I be a part of it?
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