Return to Our Senses
What are the experiences of everyday life that make you feel close to God or that make you want to respond to our broken world with compassion and love? For most of us it is not pipe organs, pulpits and churches. It is simple things like breathing, drinking a glass of water, running, or taking a photo. Our world is alive with the presence of God, beckoning to us in every moment and through every encounter. We just need help to recognize this.
Lent is a time to reflect on our faith and the practices that sustain it and I want to challenge all of us to consider the experiential practices we can incorporate during the season to increase intimacy with God and concern for God’s world. Is it gardening or painting pictures? Is walking the labyrinth or providing hospitality for those at the margins? Is it participating in something like the $2 challenge or using public transport rather than driving the car? How does this connect you to God and what are you doing to nurture this practice?
Please consider contributing a post about practices you plan to use during Lent and beyond that transform your everyday activities and encounters into prayer and spiritual practices. Posts should be no more than 800 words long and accompanied by a short bio and photos you wish to include. (Please don’t forget to include credits for photos.)
The emphasis for this series comes from my new book Return to Our Senses: Reimagining How We Pray which was written out of my own hunger for experiential forms of prayer that open my eyes and ears and in fact all my senses to new ways to interact with God in every moment. We have just published a study guide that many of our friends and associates plan to use during Lent. I hope that the blog series will provide additional resources for those who want to integrate their faith and their everyday life.
So get ready to join us for Lent.
- Join us for a time of retreat of reflection and refocusing. Establish new spiritual disciplines for the season: March 1st 2014 at the Mustard Seed House.
- Join us in the study of Return to Our Senses and challenge your friends to participate too. The study guide can be downloaded free from the MSA website.
- Share with us the experiential prayer practices you plan to incorporate in your life during this season
- Contribute a post to the series Return to Our Senses in Lent.