New year

Year in Review and Writer’s Accomplishments 2022

by Christine Sine
Purple flowers blooming

As the year comes to a close and 2023 begins, we’d like to celebrate our brilliant and wonderful writers and their accomplishments during the past year! Thank you to all the people who contributed their thoughts and writings to the blog this past year, as well as the larger Godspace community who read and interacted with the blog.

What Happened on Godspacelight?
This has been a very good year for us. The daily posts on Godspace, contributed by 15 writers in 6 different countries, drew an average of over 1,000 visitors a day to the site, with the season from Advent to Easter averaging more than 1,500 visits per day. The fortnightly Facebook live sessions with Christine and Lilly Lewin were also very successful. Not only did we have a chance to discuss topics close to our own hearts like hospitality, Celtic Christianity and pilgrimage, but we also interviewed several fascinating practitioners – Tom Sine, Mark and Lisa Scandrette and Randy and Edith Woodley. Christine enjoyed these so much that she plans to start a podcast in the next few months. Prayers appreciated as she works out the best way to do this.

One of the fun projects for the year was the publication of our Godspacelight Community Cookbook. I loved the way that this brought out new contributors from the broader Godspacelight community. We also published Christine Sine’s new book Digging Deeper: The Art of Contemplative Gardening . We also expanded our Godspacelight Resource centre with easy links to both Godspace posts and resources on other sites. I know I find this valuable when I am looking for a post on a specific topic and think many of you do too. The hardest part of 2022 was the recurrent crashing of the website during Advent. Fortunately fixing this problem will not be as difficult or as expensive as we expected. We appreciate your prayers as we work to update and make Godspacelight an even better place for you to visit.

April Yamasaki
April Yamasaki continues to serve as resident author with a liturgical worship community, writes online and in print publications, and speaks in a variety of venues. In August 2022 she was appointed editor of Rejoice!, a quarterly devotional magazine published by the Mennonite Church. She is learning a lot and enjoying her new role–choosing themes, assigning and working with writers, and shepherding each issue through the publishing process. She is grateful to be working with a wonderful editorial team.
Jeannie Kendall
The highlight for me this year was completing my third book. It will come out next July through Authentic Media, and the title is Heroes or Villains? Exploring the qualities we share with Bible characters. It looks at the positive and more challenging features of the bible characters (greed, loyalty, mercy, protest are just a few). In addition, I continue to work through Luke’s gospel in poetry, which can be found on my Facebook page called Finding Our Voice, Held in Your Bottle, Heroes and Villains.
Diane Woodrow
Although not new this year The Little Yellow Boat is stil out there on Amazon if anyone would like a copy. For the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee event I put together a book of my poems and photographs on Amazon’s Print on Demand to sell at a event I was at. It is called  Inspirations From Walking in North Wales.
But my two greatest achievements are, firstly I am co-running a small Christian youth group of about 4-6 young people. I am given free reign by the vicar I co-lead with to share anything I want and have enjoyed this season challenging the young people on what they think they know about the Christmas story. Secondly I am part of the chaplaincy team at the local high school and have the privilege of talking 1:1 with some of the young people who are about to be excluded. I get to hear the most tragic stories of the losses they have had to go through and the lack of understanding from already stretched teaching staff. I feel so blown away at the way these kids open up and share with me. Hopefully it will help them in the long run. They get under my skin and I spend the time in between seeing them praying for them.
And as I write this I am waiting to hear from two local high schools about being able to go in and run writing workshops. Both schools want them to work along the themes of writing for well being. Something I trained in 9 years ago and thought I would never use.
Revd Sheila Hamil
Ever since Lockdown, right up until now I’ve been working on two main projects.
One I keep adding to, it’s called ‘Lockdown Legacy,’ (see the youtube link on www.sheilahamil.co.uk) where I’ve tried to set in video format all the Christian songs that my friends and I have composed over the years. My second project has been a book of memoirs that I’ve been writing, to do with my childhood, my Christian faith, my family and my call to become a woman priest; but also the story behind songs I’ve written. It has a strange title, “Put the hoover down, go into the bedroom and pray!” I can’t quite decide whether it’s a story to simply hand down to my family, or whether it’s for a wider audience. Prayers about this please.
I also continue to broadcast a half-hour breakfast devotional programme called ‘New Day Dawning’ each Sunday morning here in the North-East of England. I sing in one or two folk clubs sometimes. And finally as a retired priest, I preach and preside only occasionally now, in one or two other churches as well as my own.
My year — Joy Lenton
2022 dawned bright with creative promise because I was busily in the throes of writing a new book. It was published in April this year. ‘Sacred Noticing’ invites readers on a poetic journey of the heart as they observe nature season by season and seek to live more in the moment than they do now.
An unexpected creative blessing also came my way a few months ago when I was invited to join the Good Ground app writing team and share devotionals with its readership.
Lilly Lewin
Like many of us, in 2022, I was exhausted from the roller coaster of emotions and uncertainty of the last few years. Honestly, as we begin 2023, I am still in recovery mode from all the conflict around the pandemic and politics here in America. I just don’t have the margin I once had.  So I knew that I needed some tangible ways to refill my cup in 2022! It turned out to be an amazing year of travel adventures following the two years of mostly being at home avoiding covid.
One of the highlights was the birthday gift I gave myself to honor turning 60. I had planned to go on an artist retreat to Iona before Covid hit. It got postponed several times but thankfully came to reality in May. This trip hohosted by Wild at Art Scotland changed my life and restored my soul. I’d taken my family and students on pilgrimage to this amazing thinplace, but I’d never been to Iona just for me! Through beauty of the place and art experience, I reconnected to myself and to Jesus. While praying at the Abbey early one morning, I saw the ferns growing from the stone walls! God was beginning to grow something new from the hardness of my heart! Through finding an old business card in my husband’s suitcase, Jesus reminded me that “Thinplace: A Pilgrimage of Discovery and Creativity” was the theme of my ministry almost 20 years ago! It was right on the front of the card! Thanks to life, cancer, work, etc the concept of helping others to find their own thinplace had gotten side tracked. Jesus invited me start again! So this year, in 2023, I am hosting Finding Your Thinplace Retreats and a pilgrimage back to Scotland and Iona. The first retreat is in California wine country February. 7-10, 2023 at The Bishops Ranch and the Pilgrimage will be Aug 28-Sept 4th starting in Oban and includes five days on Iona staying at the St. Columba Hotel. I want to continue to refill my cup and help others who need rest and refreshment to do the same in places of great beauty because I truly believe that rest is holy and beauty heals. Won’t you join me? Learn more at https://www.findingyourthinplace.com/.

Spirituality of Gardening Online Course

The Spirituality of Gardening Online Course is available for 180 days of access for only $39.99. This interactive course includes video sessions with Christine Sine as well as 8 other guest gardeners! Visit our store page for more information.

You may also like

New Beginnings Once Again

Opportunity for New Beginnings

Wassail! Wassail!

You Don’t Need To Do It

FreerangeWorship: Still Epiphany! We can keep Celebrating!

Godspace Light Newsletter

Three More Poems for the New Year

Comfort My People

Godspace Newsletter

Another Year of Grace

Leave a Comment

Close