As we continue to enter into 2020, we have all, I hope gotten our year off to a good start and now we are able to focus on how to sustain ourselves throughout the coming seasons. We had some incredible posts from our friends on our last theme.
Lent starts February 26th, but apart from that we thought that we would like Lent to flow out of our spiritual practices for the whole of the year. Hilary has been reading Henri Nowen’s Heart Speaks to Heart and I as usual, have my John O’Donohue books out. She has been inspired by the concept of the heart beat of God, and I am once more contemplating the concept of eternal breath. So we thought that we would combine what inspires us as we create a new theme on Godspace:
The Heart Beat of God & Rhythm of Eternal Breath
We wanted to leave this a little wide open for our writing community as they have started to send in reflections on their heart beats and rhythms of eternal breath. However today, as a place to start spend a few minutes meditating on this quote from Henri Nouwen that Hilary has been reading in his book, “Heart Speaks to Heart”:
“You did everything to show us your love and your Father’s love. You became a small, dependent child to show us yourself in your weakness; you became a refugee in Egypt to show us your solidarity with all who are driven from their homes; you grew up in obedience to your parents to show us how close you are as we search for true identity; you worked for many years as a simple carpenter to show us how you wanted to be with us in our daily work; you were tempted in the desert to show us how to resist the forces of evil around us; you surrounded yourself with the disciples to show us how to share our vision with others and to work together in ministry; you preached the word of God to show us your truth and how to become, ourselves, witnesses to truth; you healed the sick and raised the dead to show us that your presence gave life to the whole person, body and soul; you were transfigured to show us your divine splendor; you went the long road of suffering and death to show us that you did not want to remain an outsider even in the most painful of all human experiences. You, the eternal Word of the Father, kept making choices that brought you closer and closer to us, to reveal to us the boundless love of your heart.”
One of the practices I have been thinking about that speaks to me both of the boundless love of God’s heart and the power of God’s eternal breath is the Lord’s prayer. A few years ago we published a whole series of posts of the Lord’s prayer for today. I wrote this adaptation and have been re-reading and adapting it this week. I also found a number of other versions that have been created over the years, some of which you can find here (and don’t miss Andrew Jones’ blogger’s version). So we will be exploring this as well.
We look forward to this new theme, The heart beat of God & Rhythm of Eternal Breath on Godspace and we wanted to invite you on this new journey with us!