As we move closer to the end of the year and the Advent season, the calendar can fill up fast! There are several exciting events coming up at Godspace as well – take a look below for dates and more information.
Facebook Live with Christine Sine and Lilly Lewin
The next Facebook Live is on November 9th, 2022 at 9 am PST (check my timezone). These sessions are free to join if you are part of the Godspace Light Facebook Community Group. Join Lilly and Christine a lively discussion of Celtic Advent and how they celebrate the season.
If you cannot join us live, look for the recording on Christine Sine’s YouTube channel.
Special Facebook Live with Graham Kerr!
We will have a special Facebook Live on Thursday November 17th at 9 am PST (check my timezone) to launch the Godspace Community Cookbook! The cookbook contains recipes and stories from those in our community, and we are thrilled to show the final product to the Godspace community for the first time. Join Graham Kerr and Christine Sine as they introduce the cookbook and share their own experiences with cooking and hospitality.
If you cannot join us live, look for the recording on Christine Sine’s YouTube channel.
Advent Quiet Day
Feeling overwhelmed by the busyness of the holiday season?
Advent is a little longer than usual this year and many of us are also looking for quiet pauses during the season. Join Christine Sine on Saturday, December 3rd for Advent Quiet Day, a morning of scripture reading and quiet reflection that will be for many of us a much needed oasis of quiet in the midst of a chaotic season. This retreat will be LIVE via Zoom from 9:30 am to 12:30 pm PT (check my timezone) but if you are booked already, you can sign up to watch the recording at your convenience after. Standard registration is $39.99, or there are economic hardship/scholarship options as well – sign up HERE!
Epiphany Day: Save the Date
Advent is so busy that this year, the joint retreat with Lilly Lewin and Christine Sine will be later in the season. Save the date for January 7th, when they will host a day-long Epiphany retreat. They will talk about some fun practices for Epiphany as well as reflect on how to prepare for the coming year.
Did you know? Godspace has many resources available for the season of Autumn and the season of Thanksgiving! From harvest helps and reflections, holiday guides, an online retreat, litanies/liturgies, prayers, and more – check it out on our Seasons & Blessings page!
All images and writing by Kate Kennington Steer
Last time I wrote:
[Story] telling [is] an integral part of Justice, making it about recognition and release, celebration and gratitude. Each telling is unique: God’s created world, and peoples, is infinitely, wondrously varied. If the stories of trees and stones are revelatory gospels where Spirit can be read; how much more so might the Spirit pour out, in loud acclamation, from the stories of precious people who currently do not know how to make their voice, their story, their gospel, be heard? … Is offering encouragement to others, urging them to tell their story, an act of justice? Is that small invitation, “tell me about it, show me how it is for you”, only applicable in the end for those with the means (financial, social, educational, emotional, physical, technical etc) to provide themselves with a way to connect to that ultimate citizen-broadcast medium: the world-wide-web? Surely not.
(If you missed the post, you can read it here).
So, now I find I am asking this question: who will carry out this deeply radical act? Who will make time to hear one person’s story today? Isn’t encouraging someone, especially someone who is without whatever means/medium they need to tell their story, to make their story heard a deeply political act? For story-telling is a dangerous act: sharing stories might be how we heal the world. One act of encouragement sparks another, which sparks another, and so on. Such a chain reaction sounds very like how the Kingdom might be built, doesn’t it?
As for my ‘work’, it is rapidly becoming apparent to me that each painting might be an opportunity. Each painting may be an ‘entertaining strangers unaware’ moment; what if an angel disguised as a painting is just waiting to bless the onlooker and to enter into a dialogue with them, releasing them to tell their story in their turn? Blessing one person might be the encouragement they need to tell their story, and hearing that story might be how we heal the world.
Is this so fanciful? Isn’t this exactly what the work of Spirit might do to build kingdom…?
Each story is a guest, just as each body is a guest. So, in that spirit of encouragement, here is a little more of my story:
Since May I have been trying to create a gratitude project around a ‘big’ birthday. I want to raise money for and also to raise the profile of a small charity with a massive impact: creativeresponsearts.org.
Creative Response, working across one small, English county offers a safe haven to those who due to mental health issues, learning difficulties, or physical impairments are in need of finding a place to be. The charity aims to provide a place where ‘vulnerable adults’ might express themselves, to provide a place to receive release and the beginning of healing for old wounds, to provide a place to receive relief, a place where people might know that in this one safe haven they are recognised, heard and seen. Creative Response welcomes each participant and each arts worker beside them, enabling them gradually to be seen in all the splendour of who they are – in fact, as who we all are: as beautiful, precious, wounded, healing souls.
Creative Response has (literally) been a life-saving organisation for me over the last twelve years. Yet I recognise that gaining access to, let alone receiving such precious support is all too often an issue of justice. It is subject to the whims of governments and the prevailing fashion in spending priorities, or postcode lotteries, inaccessible spaces, tech poverty, immigration policies, gender barriers, age limits, NGO aid camps, clean water and sanitation, lack of trained specialist personnel, mental health prejudices, racial prejudices, and gender barriers (to name just a few).
God forgive us, for the list of injustices we inflict on one another in this world is endless, and should be heart-rending. We should grieve for and with all those who feel isolated, misunderstood, abandoned, overlooked, vulnerable and unseen. Yet alongside our righteous anger, our communal lament, there is also a vital need for communal enthusing.
Enthusing one another is surely about sharing our hope; it is about flexing our rejoicing muscles daily. It is about sharing our deep gratitude for what we have been given.
How can I summon up enough energy to be enthusiastic enough, to encourage another person to tell their story? Can I be enthusiastic about listening? Can I be enthusiastic about telling my own testimony of gratitude? Can my enthusiasm be the release valve which encourages one other person to look for hope around them? Can my own determination to keep looking with paintbrush or camera in hand be the means of releasing one other person from what binds them and keeps them silent? Can my paltry offerings really be made by the Spirit into the means of showing one other person how to pause, how to see where they might find their hope, most especially when all else feels at its most desolate?
This is my passion, and my passionate prayer. I can do none of it under my own steam. With the power of the I AM behind me? All is possible. So let me encourage you to be encouragers: pausing to look for the possible. Share your own ways and means of threading a thriving belief in hope through all that is unjust and without peace in our world. With your own story of thanksgiving heart-rooted deep within, may you begin encouraging the ones around you whom no one has bothered to encourage before.
We all need the Wholeness of God…this resource includes reflections and activities for coping and thriving during the COVID-19 challenges in search of shalom as well as hope for restoration during and after this period of social distancing.
Last Wednesday during a Godspace Facebook Live event, Lisa Sands Scandrette and Mark Scandrette shared about their recent pilgrimage experiences in Europe. Lisa walked St Cuthberts Way in Northumbria and then attended the Shetland Island Wool Festival, while Mark walked the Camino de Santiago in Portugal. Both had wonderful experiences and insight into pilgrimage and their own travels. Their pilgrimage blessings follow:
Lisa’s Pilgrimage Prayer
May you connect deeply with this place as you journey.
May those who come before you inspire you to continue their best work and longings.
May you know strength and agency in your body–your legs, your hands, your mind, your heart.
May spaciousness fill your heart, soul and mind.
May God be in every step, every creature, every piece of wool that runs through your fingers.
May you hear God’s invitational whisper each day in wind, waves, the jubilations of birds.
May you recognize the face of God in your fellow travelers–hosts, passers by, new friends.
May your hands be open to give and receive the abundance this day offers.
May you create quiet to sit, to settle, to notice, to reflect, to contemplate.
May you see, hear, taste, touch, smell–experience the hospitality of God at each turn.
May you find companionship with yourself, emerging stronger, more beautiful, more truly you.
May you have courage to explore your curiosity and engage in the new and unknown.
May you clothe yourself in beauty.
May you revel in the connection of co-creation, mindful of the thread that leads you back to the source of all things.
Mark’s Pilgrim Prayer
Watch the sunrise
Walk in the light of the Divine
Want love, joy, peace, mercy and justice.
Seek wisdom
Tell the truth
Create beauty
Love courageously
Watch the sun set
Die to the small separated self
Eat and drink,
laugh and cry
Listen and tell stories with a grateful, undivided heart
Sleep in peace
Dream of a new world
Awaken to eternal life
The full recording of their conversation with Christine on Wednesday can be found below or on here on Christine’s YouTube channel.
Feeling overwhelmed this holiday season? Make space for a moment of peace on December 3rd for Advent Quiet Day. Join Christine Sine for a morning of scripture reading and quiet reflection to pause and reflect during the busy Advent season. This retreat will be LIVE via zoom from 9:30 am PT to 12:30 pm PT. Click here for more details or to sign up!
As you know October and November form my gratitude season and each year I work to intentionally create gratitude practices that draw me into the presence of God and remind me of the many blessings in my life. I created my gratitude garden a few weeks ago and it provides a great focus for my morning reflections, but as American Thanksgiving approaches I find myself seeking for something more. More than anything I need practices that make me feel a little more intentional about this season of thanksgiving.
Gratitude pumpkin
On Friday evening we painted gratitude pumpkins with our community members. I originally planned to paint leaves. Unfortunately autumn was so slow in coming this year that I couldn’t gather enough leaves to paint. Hence the gratitude pumpkins. It was a fun evening with some serious reflection on gratitude as well. Part of what it made me realize is that I often need fun to ignite my gratitude.
Painting gratitude pumpkins
Another practice I reinstituted this year is a gratitude scavenger hunt. This is adapted from the exercise at the end of the gratitude chapter in The Gift of Wonder. I will focus on a new arena of my life every few days and will hunt for new items that I am grateful for. I think it this a great preparation for the end of the year and our celebration of Christmas. Will you join me and celebrate this important season together?
Here is what I invite you to do.
What Will You Need?
Get yourself a gratitude journal. I like an 8 x 11 1/2 sketch book like this Wirebound, Pentalic Sketch Book, or if you want to do something a little more special, permanent, and decorative you might like to try this Vintage Hardcover Three-Ring Binder .
Get a stack of Post it notes or small cards to label what you are grateful for.
Gather some decorative pens, pencils or crayons. I love paint pens which I think are perfect for the vintage hardcover binder but colored markers will also work and are cheaper. Be aware that they might bleed through sketch pad pages though. The paint pens seem expensive up front but I use them for painting rocks, leaves, and wood so they are lots of fun to have around and seem to last for years. Make sure you get ones that are not water based. I learned by experience that the colours in these run when you spray them with Mod podge or similar acrylic glue.
Gather some magazines and photos that will help you make a collage of your weekly gratitudes.
Get a glue stick. If you like to do craft projects or have a kid who does you probably already have this around the house. Otherwise get the cheapest one you can find as you will only need a little or if you belong to a buy nothing group see if someone has one they no longer need.
What Will You Do?
Read through the chapter on cultivating gratitude in The Gift of Wonder. I have just re-read this in preparation for my own season of gratitude and I hope you don’t mind me tooting my horn a little but I really do think it is an excellent start to our gratitude season.
Set aside time once a week for your gratitude reflection. This is the scavenger hunt part. Over the next few weeks we will work through the different parts of your life hunting for and in some cases uncovering the things you are grateful for. Quickly write each item on a post it note.
Write in your journal. In large letters at the top of a fresh page write Ten things I am grateful for in my… (prompts to follow). Make your list, writing each item in a different color and follow it with a sentence that describes what your life would be like without that item. You might like to break this up through the week and do 2 items for each day of the week.
Set aside another block of time for your creative exercise. You might like to create a collage, write a prayer, create a wreath or write a song.
Sunday is my gratitude day. I usually block off half an hour or more to think about what I am grateful for, but for the next couple of months I plan to spend more time on both the gratitude gathering exercise and the recording exercise. I am not sure how this will work with my busy travel schedule over this time period but I am sure that I can make something work.
Weekly Prompts
Some of the prompts are fairly generic and can be used every week so choose from these and then apply the specific prompts below. Or if other ideas come to mind use those instead (and share them with us for future gratitude seasons).
- Name someone that makes your life better.
- Name something you are particularly proud of.
- What makes you laugh?
- What are you grateful for that you would like to share with someone else?
- What is something unique that you are grateful for?
- Find something that makes you feel safe.
- Find something that makes a beautiful sound.
- What is something unusual you are grateful for?
- Name one beautiful thing you are grateful for.
- What recent lesson are you grateful for?
Week 1 – Gratitude for your life.
- Name an experience from your life you are particularly proud of.
- What or who has made you want to laugh this week?
- What is one talent you are grateful for?
- What is one thing about your body you are grateful for?
Week 2 – Gratitude for your family.
- Name your favourite childhood memory.
- Name a special attribute of a family member you are grateful for.
- One thing you recently learnt about a family member that you are grateful for.
- One way God has blessed your family that you are grateful for.
Week 3 – Gratitude for your friends.
- Name one friend who makes you laugh.
- One thing you have learned from friends that makes you feel special.
- One way your friends have helped you grow.
- Name the friends who have stuck with you through good times and bad.
Week 4 – Gratitude for your home.
- Describe something that smells amazing.
- Think of something you used today that you tend to take for granted that you are grateful for.
- One thing that represents your culture that you are grateful for.
- One thing with words on it that you are grateful for.
Week 5 – Gratitude for your workplace.
- Name one person who makes you smile.
- One aspect of your work you are particularly grateful for.
- Name one lesson you learned this week that you are grateful for.
- Name one characteristic of your workplace you are grateful for.
Week 6 – Gratitude for your community.
- Name one of your neighbors you are grateful for.
- Describe one aspect of your community you are grateful for.
- What is your favourite community site that you are grateful for.
- What is one thing about your community that makes you feel strong.
Week 7 – Gratitude for your place of worship.
- What is one thing about your place of worship that you are grateful for?
- What is one thing about your faith community that encourages you?
- Name one place in your place of worship that makes you feel close to God?
- Name one thing in your place of worship that shows a vibrant color you love.
Week 8 – Gratitude for nature.
- What is one of your favourite beautiful places?
- What is one particularly good taste for you.
- What about the current season are you grateful for?
- What place in nature of gives you rest?
Once you have written your lists take time to reflect on what you have written. Allow the Holy Spirit to reach deep into your soul and bring a response. Decorate your list. Create a collage from appropriate magazine images and photos. Write a prayer or a song. Paint a picture. Whatever rises up within you, DO IT.
P.S. You might also like to check out Ten Tips for Expressing Gratitude.
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It’s almost time to get those jingle bells ringing – let Godspace be a resource to you as you prepare! We offer many devotionals, gifts, prayer cards, free downloads, retreats, and more. Check it out in our shop under the category of Advent! You will also find many resources for Celtic Advent, traditional Advent, and Christmas under our resource page Advent, Christmas, New Years & Epiphany
A contemplative service with music in the spirit of Taizé. Carrie Grace Littauer, prayer leader, with music by Kester Limner and Andy Myers. This service is provided for your enjoyment by St Andrews Episcopal Church in Seattle. The church also hosts a live Taize style service on the first and third Sunday’s of each month. The next live service will be November 5th.
By Tom Sine
Christine and I recently celebrated our 30th anniversary. We reflected back on the early days of our marriage here in Seattle. We also celebrated our wonderful three decades of life, marriage and learning how to share God’s generous hospitality with good friends in Britain, Australia, New Zealand and the United States and Canada. However since the pandemic began our traveling has cut back and we do miss the hospitality of our friends in Britain and down under.
I suspect many of our friends don’t know that when Christine and I began our journey together over three decades ago we decided to make hospitality as a major part of our shared life. When we settled in Seattle we bought an ancient house that was built in 1910 before the First World War and the first global pandemic. It was surprisingly inexpensive back then. It consists of three two bedroom apartments stacked on top each other. Christine did a great job of directing a little remodeling on all three floors.
Christine lived in community on Mercy Ships, before we were married, where she headed up the medical ministry. I lived in community with a small household for Christian men. Not surprisingly we purchased this three apartment house to create a modest Christian community we call Mustard Seed House.
Mustard Seed House Oil Lamp
For 30 years we have been inviting younger couples to live in the other two units. We always offered them reduced rent which is becoming increasingly important for Gen Y and Z as rent prices are soaring in Seattle. Christine and I have so enjoyed life with our new friends as we all tried to help one another life our best lives as people of faith. So many good memories.
To join us in Mustard Seed House Community we ask them to share a meal with us once a week where we share about our faith and issues in our lives and faith, and we garden together once a month and share the produce from the garden. Last year we harvested and shared 100 pounds of tomatoes and 400 pounds of apples. Before the pandemic we enjoyed offering hospitality to large groups of other friends.
After we stepped down from Mustard Seed Associates which we ran out of our garage, we deeded over our 40 acres on Camano Island to Circlewood headed by James Amadon as a Christian Environmental Study Center.
Then Christine started her new blog site godspacelight.com in 2008. I have been surprised and delighted how people all over the planet so enthusiastically not only started tuning into this site on spirituality, prayer and community but also posting on her site. I don’t know of any other Christian sites on prayer and spirituality that engage over one to two thousand Christians a day from all over the planet.
I plan to start posting on Christine’s site virtually every week. Much of my posts will be about Gen Y & Z that I call “the Good News Generation.” Many of the young in our churches that are a part of the Good News Generation, are not only keen in their spiritual practices but they also care much more about issues of environmental, racial and social Justice.
For example, Rebecca Conner, who is Christine’s newest assistant, is a member of the the Good News Generation and is also an active member of the Covenant Church. Like many in her generation she is particularly concerned about the daunting changes facing the environment. She earned a BS in Environmental Science and a BA in Philosophy at North Park University in Chicago. Rebecca has just returned from Fairbanks Alaska where she worked a leader in a Flora Field Crew in an environmental project before coming back to Seattle to work with Christine.
I also am a big fan of Gen Next. In fact in my most recent book 2020s Foresight: Three Vital Practices for Thriving in a Decade of Accelerating Change that I wrote with my co-author Dwight Friesen, I describe a number of the good news generation who live in co-housing to reduce their living costs so they have more discretionary time to work in neighborhood empowerment projects to extend hospitality to people who have been displaced increasing waves of severe weather.
I recently did a Futures Creativity Workshop with a Presbyterian Church outside of Seattle. These church leaders knew their congregation was graying like many mainline churches. However, they hadn’t noticed they no longer had any young families. During they work shop one of the five creative groups came with a creative new way to offer hospitality to young families. This group remembered that they had a large building that was under utilized.
They came up with the creative idea of offering an art class to elementary school students after school to reduce child care costs to young families…which is likely to be very popular and provide a community service.
If you and your congregation are interested in my leading a Creativity Workshop in your church or share how you create innovative ways to both be a difference or make a difference in these turbulent times you can contact me at twsine@gmail.com or 206-524-2111.
This is your invitation to join the good news generation in creating new ways to both be a difference and make a difference expanding God’s hospitality in times like these.
Did you know? Godspace has many resources available for the season of Autumn and the season of Thanksgiving! From harvest helps and reflections, holiday guides, an online retreat, litanies/liturgies, prayers, and more – check it out on our Seasons & Blessings page!
I am a huge fan of Fall! This week we have cooler temperatures in Nashville and it actually looks and feels like Fall for the first time! I had a great time driving out of town a bit and seeing all the trees with their colorful leaves. I am so grateful! It reminds me that Halloween and Thanksgiving are not too far away! I know that our Canadian friends have already celebrated Thanksgiving but we can all use some practical ways to practice gratitude and thankfulness, especially with everything going on in our world. I know I do! And as November begins next week, we all get a fresh start, a chance to begin again and draw closer to Jesus. Here are a few ways I am connecting with God and practicing gratitude and gratefulness this season.
WRITING DOWN and REMEMBERING THE GIFTS: One of my daily practices is to write down the GIFTS of the DAY each morning. I take time to remember the gifts of the day before. I have a small journal where I make a list of the things I am grateful for…from the cold weather to a new job possibility, to a new friend or a good cup of coffee. No gift is too small to write down. I find that taking the time to pause and look back over the day before helps me start the new day with a much brighter point of view. This is like a mini PRAYER OF EXAMEN.
PRAYING THE PRAYER OF EXAMEN: Another practice is the praying the longer version of the PRAYER OF EXAMEN. TRY the extended PRAYER OF EXAMEN on your own. This one is based on the one led by FATHER MICHAEL SPAROUGH whom I met on a retreat the year before covid.
1. Place yourself in the Presence of God. Open your entire self to to God’s Love.
2. Review your day in Thanksgiving. “Savoring the goodness not just counting my blessings”. What made my heart smile today?
Picture Jesus smiling at you!
“Behold God Beholding You!”
3. Reviewing the Emotions and the Feelings of the day. What did you notice as you woke up? Were you grumpy? Grateful? Already stressed out? What surprised you? What delighted you? Did you lose your temper? Did you have conflict? Did you feel lonely or afraid?
Give these feelings to Jesus!
4. Prayer of Review…LISTEN
Jesus receives the negative of the day without judging you! Jesus receives your emotions, fears, sorrows, despair.
BEHOLD HIM BEHOLDING YOU
5. Turning Towards Tomorrow! Looking forward in HOPE. What has the Spirit taught you?
As you look towards tomorrow what good things from today do you want to take into the new day? Ask Jesus for the GRACE you need for tomorrow.
What do you need Jesus to provide for you so you can “BE CHRIST’S MIRROR to the World” ?
Based on Father Michael Sparough’s Examen: LISTEN HERE
Last year at our Season of Gratitude Retreat, which you can still watch and participate in, we created a Grateful Jar. I created a Gratitude Jar Kit that you can download for free at Freerangeworship.com.
You can do this on your own or with your small group, family or your entire church community. Each person or family will need a jar which can be decorated, or you can use a gift box instead of a jar. Each person/family will need a set of the words/phrases printed out and scissors to cut out the words. The idea is to create a Grateful Jar with words and phrases to help you pray and practice gratitude each day. You put the phrases in the jar and each day you randomly pick one out. I close my eyes and let the Holy Spirit choose for me. Read the selection and consider how you are grateful for this and thank Jesus for this. You are free to print out or send out the PDF to your community, just let them know you got it from freerangeworship.com and Lilly Lewin!
You can also use the drawing of the Grateful Jar as a prayer response during worship with your church community or in your small group. Each person will need a picture/handout of the jar and a pen or pencil. Invite participants to consider all the gifts of this week, all the things you have to be grateful for in your life today…
WRITE these things on your jar. Ask Jesus to show you.
Give people time to actually write down these things. After they have finished writing, have participants hold the paper and pray together. If you use slides, you could do this as a corporate prayer, praying this aloud together. If you are using this with a small group or youth group, you could have people share in pairs what things they are thankful for. The prayer can be something like this:
“Lord we thank you that you fill our lives with Good Things.
Even when things are dark and confusing, you give us things to be grateful for each day.
Thank you for all of these things!
Help us to notice and pay attention today and everyday to the good gifts you give us!
Thank you Lord. And all God’s people said “AMEN”
We’d love to hear how you use the Grateful Jar, so send us your stories and pics! And since it’s Halloween on Monday, save a few piece of candy and you can pray with it as a family, individual or a group! Check out Praying with Chocolate and get the free handout here.
Grateful for all you do each day to love and serve others! Thank you!
©lillylewin and freerangeworship.com
Christine Sine and Lilly Lewin inspire ways to get geared up for the coming season of gratitude in this popular online course! Sign up for 180 days to enjoy this retreat at your own pace – including craft tutorials and print-outs plus much more. Check it out in our shop!
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