22nd Annual Celtic Prayer Retreat
It’s not too late to join
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| We’re counting down to the Celtic Retreat! This year’s theme: “Celebrate the Newness”.Join us at Mustard Seed Village on beautiful Camano Island (Washington State) and enjoy times together in worship, prayer, meditation on scripture, creative activities, and the celebration of the Eucharist/Communion.
We’ll also have plenty of alone time for wandering the prayer trails, walking the labrynth, and relaxing quietly. And of course, there’s always time for conversing, conspiring, and dreaming! We will have programs designed especially for children and teens. The younger kids will expand their imaginations with Kendra Long, and teenagers will explore igniting their own creative spark with Cindy Todd. Only one week left to register for the event. This is a great opportunity to get away from it all and enjoy the company of fellow sojourners on The Way. Come just for Saturday, or join us the whole weekend for camping and more informal times of conversation, prayer, and meandering the prayer trails. Be sure to register before midnight, August 7. Here’s a quick breakdown of activities:
Saturday – The Main Event
Sunday
Hope to see you there!
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The wait continues and my emotions go up and down.Today the chaplain visited. She told us we have good coping mechanisms. Though I don’t always feel it I know that it is true, and you are all helping. Prayer, long morning walks listening to the kookaburras and photographing the cockatoos on the roof, sharing the story on my blog and the writing of poetry all help. And now I find myself grieving for the things I could/should be doing – like preparing for the Celtic retreat next week and getting ready to go on vacation with Tom. Life does go on but it feels the fabric has been ripped.
Tears, tears, tears,
So many tears.
I shed them for my mother
And her suffering.
I shed them for myself
And the turmoil of my pain.
I shed them for my friend
Fresh diagnosed with cancer.
Tears that drain me dry,
Tears that shout this is not right,
Death does not conquer all,
Christ’s sacrifice is not in vain.
God has the final victory,
Death’s slow embrace,
Will give way to God’s eternal light.
Scott Simon with his mother – via Today news
In the last couple of days several people have sent me links to NPR host Scott Simon’s tweet feed about the death of his mother. Like me he has not been embarrassed to share openly the pain, the tears and the heartache of these final days. I read and cried through this poignant article of how his mother became the collective mother to 1.2 million people who followed Scott on twitter, finding great comfort in what he shared. Many of his followers I suspect remembered their own moments of loss and grief as they read what he wrote. Some I am sure will be better able to cope with death in the future as a result.
I too have been amazed by the comfort others find in my journey. It makes me realize how important it is to share these types of events. We are all vulnerable people, so afraid of death, embarrassed to share how deeply it scars us, afraid to admit the ache it leaves inside us. We go to great lengths to hide from it and to hide it from the world. Yet it is one of the few certainties of life.
Thank you for continuing to share this journey with me. I still have no idea how long my mother’s final journey will take. I would like it to be quick, I don’t want to see her suffer, but I also realize it is in God’s hands. Thank you for your prayers and support and comments – they are much appreciated.
I continue to sit by my mother’s bedside. Thank you for your prayers and supportiveness. Particularly appreciate this poem sent to me by Heather Jephcott
You Lord are my place of safety
Since finding you I need no other
Having experienced your shelter
I knew I need look no further
You keep me secure
locked in Your vastness
You are my maker, creator of all
the one whose giant hands
hold this entire magnificent universe
You not only made me
but gave to me a place of safety
a place where I am secure,
locked in this sanctuary
a place of peace, hope, love and joy
you not only hold the keys
but are this place
You save me from the onslaught of the dark
helping me to cope with times of sadness, difficulty
You are the rock on which I build my life
no shifting sand that varies with the days
but solid, safe, secure
You save me from the worst in me
keeping my brokenness for your use
within your kingdom
to remould it into something of beauty
where you are king and I am not alone
You fill me with hope
calmly expressing that you are
all the security I need now and
throughout the eternal ages
this hope glows bright now
becoming stronger, more dazzling
each passing day
On July 27th a dedicated team demonstrated the ultimate support for Mustard Seed Village by installing the final support beams on our first building.
Thanks to the extreme generosity of Greg and Nathan Abell, Martin Bayley, Brad Glenn, Dennis and Andrew Todd, and many others who have been praying and have helped in advising and procuring supplies, all the remaining beams were raised today by 4:30 p.m. Our team of volunteers were exhausted.
Tom exclaimed, “Thanks be to God for the miracle of having all the beams up!!!”
We are looking forward to seeing most of you at the annual Celtic Retreat, Saturday August 10 during which we’ll have a luncheon dedicating of the erection of our first facility in the Mustard Seed Village.
There are still plenty of opportunities to volunteer your construction talents to the project! Next up, we need to get the roof on as soon as possible! If you have carpentry skills and are interested, please contact us and let us know.
Thank you for your continued prayer as the Mustard Seed Village dream unfolds. You can join us in God-inspired future through prayer, volunteering as we continue construction on the village, and through contributing financially. If you haven’t already seen it, please check out Graham Kerr’s invitation to support construction of the village.
Check out more photos in this Facebook album
Cutting the birthday cake
I am sitting here in the hospital beside my Mother’s bed watching her life slowly ebb away. It is only a month since our joyous celebration of her 90th birthday. Just after we left she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and her condition has declined rapidly.
It is the hardest but in some ways the most important thing I have ever done. I am now staying at the hospital sleeping on a couch beside her bed. Sometimes I read to her or recite her favourite poems. Sometimes I hug her and assure her of my love. She is still conscious and I thank God for these precious last days with her.
It hard to watch your mother die,
To watch the spark that gave me life
Grow dim.
To see the much loved face
Grow gaunt and lose its smile.
To hold the hands
That once held me in love
And try to comfort through the tears.
It is hard to watch a mother die,
To watch this last hard journey
Grow harder every day.
To know I will not share
Tomorrow’s moments of delight
Until I too prepare to cross the veil,
And on the other side
Find once more that loving smile.
Today’s post is by Kimberlee Conway Ireton, author of The Circle of Seasons: Meeting God in the Church Year and the forthcoming memoir Cracking Up: A Postpartum Faith Crisis. Kimberlee is a regular contributor on prayer to this blog.
“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.”
—Philippians 2:5
“Spiritual transformation in Christ moves toward the total interchange of our ideas and images for his.”
—Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart
As I drive home across the Ballard Bridge, a new billboard advert looms large in my vision. Most of the time, this billboard’s message is tame. Annoying, but nothing that jars or upsets me.
Today, though, my eyes are bombarded with the image of a beautiful woman in a sexually suggestive position and the enormous letters of a lascivious message, both of which are trying to tell me that if I buy this particular product, I’ll be a sex goddess like the model on the billboard.
I look away quickly as I realize what I’ve seen. I feel assaulted, this image calling to mind all manner of others I’ve seen over the years, all of them clamoring for my attention. These are not the thoughts I want to occupy my mind.
As my year of prayer unfolds, I want more and more to be more like Jesus, to have the mind of Christ. In Renovation of the Heart, Dallas Willard insists that our thoughts, when captured for Christ and fed on the images and ideas that Jesus himself fed on, will transform our entire lives. But he warns that there are special dangers that we must guard against. One of the gravest is the images we admit to our minds.
Images are powerful things. They make ideas concrete and accessible. In the case of this billboard, the image elevates the idea of sexiness to an ultimate good. And because images work on us at the level of emotion, they are not under rational control.
I have long known that what I see affects me deeply. It is why I long ago stopped watching TV news and later stopped watching TV altogether. What I am learning now is that I am not alone. Images affect everyone on a level that is beyond rational control, working deep within us to shape our ideas about reality—and so shape who we are.
This, I think, is why St. Paul exhorts the Philippians to focus their thoughts on good and true and beautiful things:
Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. (Phil 4:8)
Willard emphasizes that heeding St. Paul’s instructions “is a fundamental and indispensable part of our spiritual formation in Christ.” We become who we are largely because of the thoughts that fill our minds. And the thoughts that fill our minds in turn depend largely on the images we feed them.
This is why the billboard near the Ballard Bridge bugs me so much. And the thought that my six-year-old daughter and all three of my sons are seeing it, too, makes me sick to my stomach. Young as they are, that image is shaping them even more than it’s shaping me. It makes me angry.
But one thing my year of prayer is teaching me is that everything can be a call to prayer. So I take the sickness I feel in my stomach and I take my anger, and I let them direct my mind to Jesus.
Over the weeks since that billboard appeared, it has become a call to prayer. As much as possible, I studiously avoid even glancing at it as I drive across the bridge. Sometimes I forget it’s there, and I see it before I remember to look away. Either way, whether I see it or manage to avoid it imprinting on my brain again, I pray.
Mostly what I pray is the Jesus Prayer: O Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Have mercy on us, sinners all. Have mercy on the men who see that billboard and are aroused by it. Have mercy on the women who see it and are ashamed of their own bodies because of it. Have mercy on the company who thought it would be a good idea to put up this billboard.
I can’t always control the images I see, but I can control how I consciously respond to them. I can let images both beautiful and base call me to prayer—beautiful images to praise and awe of our even more beautiful God; base images to intercession for our fallen world that so desperately needs Him to save us from ourselves.
If you want to join me in getting rid of the garbage that clutters our imaginations, why not begin by eliminating from your life one magazine, TV show, or website that regularly serves up ugliness, unkindness, or smut? It’s always a good idea to replace a bad habit or thought with a good one, so make a plan: what will you do during the times that you usually engage with these images you’re eliminating? You could read or memorize Scripture, pore over a favorite art book, or listen to a favorite piece of music—something that puts images of beauty, truth, nobility, and excellence into your mind instead.
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