End of the Third Week of Lent.

This coming Sunday is the 4th Sunday of Lent.  We are now more than half way through this season and it seems like a good time to pause and reflect on what we have learned to this point.  I have particularly enjoyed hosting this series because it has encouraged me to spend time each morning reflecting on Lent and the meaning of this season.  All the reflections have been so deep and meaningful that I probably should not mention favourites.  However, for me personally the reflections that contrast light and darkness have been particularly profound as I struggle to understand the contrast between our longing for good and our daily confrontation with suffering.

Walking in Darkness by Kimberlee Conway Ireton

Wisdom From Henri Nouwen – More Thoughts For Lent

Lent – A Season of Solidarity – Wisdom From St Benedict

Don’t Curse the Darkness – Let the Son Sine Through

My most popular posts over these weeks are the prayers that were posted at the beginning of Lent:

Morning and Evening Prayers for Lent

Ash Wednesday Prayer

The most popular reflections have been:

Where is Jesus in Your Neighbourhood?

A Lenten Prayer from Dietrich Bonhoffer

A Meditation for Lent – Prayer as Justice

However, as I already mentioned all the posts have been so rich that I would recommend a look at all of them.  Here is the entire list.

Are We Ready For Easter?

What You Really Need When Life Is Loud – Ann Voskamp

Lent – Honouring the Cracks – Kathy Escobar

Growing During Lent – Don’t Look Too Closely – Thule Kinnison

Lent a Season Of Solidarity – Wisdom from St Benedict – Walter Forcatto

Walking in Darkness – Kimberlee Conway Ireton

Where is Jesus in Your Neighbourhood?

Wisdom From Henri Nouwen – More Thoughts For Lent

The Prayer of St Ignatius Loyola – A Lenten Reflection

Don’t Curse the Darkness - Let The Son Shine Through

Who/What Is God

Lent – Educating Us Into Freedom

Acceptance, Acclimatisation, Activity

A Lenten Prayer from Dietrich Bonhoeffer

A Prayer for the Second Sunday of Lent – What is Joy?

A Franciscan Benediction by Joshua Spiers

What do We Thirst For?

Two excellent videos from the 24/7 prayer network

A Meditation for Lent – Prayer as Justice

Community as Prayer – Another meditation for Lent

You might also enjoy these earlier posts

A Little Humour for Lent

Am I worshipping God for Only Me?

Getting Ready for Lent – What Could You Give Up For Haiti?

And for those that are still wondering what Lent is all about

Lent is Not a Ritual

Lent 2010 Resource List Updated

Also check out the Steps of Justice website which is posting daily justice focused reflections for Lent

Tell Glenn Beck Justice Is Central to the Gospel

Below is a letter I just  received from Jim McDonald, Managing Director of Bread for the World. I so appreciate the work of Bread for the World and obviously share their outrage at Glenn Beck’s comments. So I wanted to post this because it is very much in keeping with the emphasis of my reflection during Lent.  Please join me in signing this petition.

———————————————————————-

Fox News Host Glenn Beck is famous for making outrageous statements. And normally, we don’t feel compelled to respond. But now he’s gone too far. Recently, he urged his audience to leave their congregations if the church mentioned “social” or “economic” justice. Read the story and watch the clip here:

Glenn Beck Urges Listeners to Leave Churches That Preach Social Justice

Well, we say Jesus called us to care for “the least of these.” Social justice is central to the gospel. No matter where you fall on the political spectrum, it is impossible for biblically-literate people to deny the thousands of verses in the Bible about hunger and poverty.

Please join us and sign a petition reminding Mr. Beck that economic and social justice are central to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

If we get to 35,000 names we’ll hand deliver the signatures to Glenn Beck with a copy of the Poverty and Justice Bible.

Please sign today.

Grace and peace,

Jim McDonald
Managing Director
Bread for the World

Are We Ready For Easter?

Supper At Emmaus by He Qi

It is almost the end of the third week of Lent and I notice that for many pastors and church leaders the focus has already shifted to Easter.   I should say it has shifted to preparation for Good Friday and especially to thinking about new ways to represent the stations of the Cross.  Part of what I struggle with however is that the Cross has become the centre of our Easter observances rather than the season of Easter itself.  This season extends for 50 days until Pentecost, and was meant to celebrate the new kingdom of wholeness and completeness that Jesus’ death and resurrection brought into being.

Last year I wrote several reflections on this because of my deep concern.  I began with a reflection before Easter that contrasted Jesus Palm Sunday procession with the procession of Pontius Pilate that was occurring on the other side of Jerusalem.  You can read the entire article here

I also wrote several articles following Easter.

What Have We Done With Jesus?

Christ is Risen – Lets Celebrate

And produced an Easter celebration guide which you can download here

Here is an adaptation of the first week’s study.

The season of Lent is not preparing us for Good Friday, it is preparing us for Easter Sunday and our entry into the freedoms and responsibilities of living into God’s eternal world in which all of creation will be restored and all of God’s people will be healed and abundantly provided for.  So think about how you can use these next couple of weeks to prepare for the Easter season.

Central to God’s resurrection world is what James calls “the royal law” – love of God and love of neighbor. The culture of God’s new world is one of mutual care and concern and the language is the language of love. Unfortunately most of us are unaware of the depths of God’s love for us or of our own capacity to express that love out into the world. Jean Vanier expresses it well in Befriending the Stranger:

“We know that we have a certain intelligence and are aware of our emotions, desires and compulsions, but we are often unaware of the deep well, the sanctuary of love, within us and our capacity to love with the very love of God.”

And NT Wright in Surprised By Joy fills this out in words that continue to resonate in my mind.

“Love is not a duty it is our destiny. It is the language that Jesus spoke and we are called to speak it so that we can converse with him. It is the food that they eat in God’s new world, and we must acquire a taste for it here and now. It is the music God has written for all his creatures to sing and we are called to learn it and practice it now.”

The celebration of the joy of the Easter season does begin with the celebration of Easter Sunday and our entering into the love of God. For some, the festivities begin with a Saturday night vigil and a midnight feast. For others a sunrise service, a reminder of the women who came to the tomb at dawn, and a breakfast celebration herald this important day. Traditionally, Easter Sunday is also a time for the baptism of new believers who symbolically take on the story of Christ as they die to their sins and are raised to new life.

At Tom Balke’s Mennonite Brethren church in British Columbia, Easter Sunday and Good Friday services are an integrated whole. On Good Friday, each member is given a nail to hold throughout the service. At the appropriate moment they come forward and nail it into a life-sized cross. On Easter Sunday chicken wire covers the cross over the nails and people come forward to insert flowers into the cross. Tom told us “It is important that our nails are still there- the cross has not been sanitized.”

My most vivid memories of Easter date back to my first year on board the mercy ship M/V Anastasis. The fragrant aroma of lamb impregnated with rosemary and garlic wafted towards me as I walked along the dusty street in Elevesis, Greece. Everywhere I looked men squatted over BBQ pits erected in backyards and along the footpaths, laughing and joking together. They patiently turned the homemade spits, basting the lamb trussed firmly in place over the fire. They were preparing for the most important feast of the year, the celebration of Easter and the resurrection of Christ. The crowded little blue and white houses bulged at the seams as family members gathered from all over the country to join the festivities. Inside the women bustled around preparing mountains of Greek salad with fresh feta cheese, sun-ripened tomatoes, and black kalamata olives. Delicious herb covered potatoes roasted in the ovens and sweet Greek pastries dripping with honey adorned enormous platters.

Ella, ella! (Come, come) people called as we stopped to savor the smells, and beckoned us in to join them with wide welcoming smiles. This was a time of open hospitality, a reminder that Christ welcomes all of us into God’s family. Soon we too were sitting around the magnificent feast enthusiastically participating in the joyous celebration. Shouts of Christo anasti (Christ is risen) brought from us the response Allythos anasti (He is risen indeed) as we all rejoiced together in the memory of our risen Saviour. For the first time in my life, I felt as though I wasn’t just reading the Easter story, I was living it as well.

Whatever your tradition, Easter should be a time to rejoice in the wonder of the risen Christ and the outpouring of God’s love into the world. In some traditions the Easter table is left laden with food from Easter breakfast throughout the holiday season to welcome any guests who come. This is a time to share the love of God by extending the hospitality of the banquet table to everyone. One of my dreams for the future is to have a huge Easter BBQ when we roast a whole lamb, Greek style, over an open spit in the backyard and invite a crowd of people over for a huge celebration.

.

What You Really Need When Life is Loud

I wanted to share this beautiful reflection with you from Ann Voskamp at Holy Experience.  She has just been on silent retreat.  Not only are her reflections well worth meditating on but her photos are superb too.  It seemed a very appropriate addition to my reflections on Walking to the Cross: How do we follow Jesus?  I think that silence is a lost art for most us and the ability to sit in silence or to go on retreat in silence is something that we desperately need to recover.

I spend the weekend in silent retreat with a gracious community of women at a Benedictine Monastery. We are silent. From Thursday to Sunday, we endeavour not to talk. Our mouths only open to pray Scripture with the monks.  read the entire article here

Lent: Honouring the Cracks by Kathy Escobar

This morning’s post comes from Kathy Escobar, one of my favourite bloggers.  She also has one of the most creative names for her blog – the Carnival in My Head Kathy describes herself as a mommy. wife. friend. pot-stirrer. shepherd. follower of Jesus. peace maker. rule-breaker. dreamer.  She pastors at The Refuge in Broomfield Colorado.

lent: honoring the cracks

this is the first year that the refuge, the faith community that i am a part of, has intentionally honored the season of lent. i was not raised in church & none of the churches i have ever been a part of have ever practiced it.  in the past several years i have tried in small ways to turn my attention toward the season, but i found it was a little lonely; having a larger group of friends walking in the same direction, considering some of the same thoughts, at the same time, has been very encouraging, inspiring, and challenging in all kinds of ways.

one spiritual discipline that we incorporated into this season was the walking of a labryinth. a potentially powerful spiritual exercise that creates a space to connect with God & intentionally reflect on our spiritual journey.  i’ve only done it a few times, but this last one had some very significant meaning to me related to lent, to my journey.

this particular labryinth was painted on the ground inside a church.  it was a beautiful room, such sacred space, and as i entered in i felt God’s presence.  one thing that i noticed right away, though, were obvious cracks that ran across the beautiful path.  big cracks, little cracks, not all over the place but just enough that it was noticeable–and kind of irritating.  i wanted the labryinth to be clean, smooth, sanitized like the last one i had gone to.  i didn’t want to notice the cracks, the brokenness, the just-not-quite-right-ness they created.

but it wasn’t far into the labryinth journey that i had an overwhelming sense of needing to honor these cracks in the painted cement.  these cracks   these represent my own brokenness, the brokenness of my friends on the journey, the brokenness of the world.  they are part of my experience, no matter how desperately i sometimes want them to be filled in, painted & glossed over.

in this experience, i felt led to step on every single crack on the path.  to stop and honor them.

to thank God for the brokenness in my life.

to remember that it is through brokenness that i can then experience healing.

that Jesus was broken for me, for us, so i could be made more whole.

that the Christ story is not smooth & clean & sanitized.

that the brokenness of my journey is what draws me to God, to other broken followers along the way.

that God doesn’t leave us in brokenness but brings beauty from the ashes, hope from despair, joy from the mourning.

to me, lent is much more than just a stripping away, an examining of what’s hindering our freedom, our walk with God.  it is is also a time to remember what’s right, what’s good, what’s at the essence of our soul, and what we really believe about Jesus.

for me, it was powerful to honor the cracks, to remember that the brokenness is good because it is real.  and as much as i sometimes try to run away from it, i am a human being,–not God-and i live in a land of other broken and beautiful human beings.   Jesus wants to enter into my real life, our real lives, not our sanitized ones.  brokenness is the place where my humanity, our humanity & Jesus’ humanity & divinity all intersect.  it is the place where a bigger story is being told. where i’m reminded i’m more than my brokenness.  that resurrection always comes, new life seeping up from every crack i honored.

thank you, Jesus, for your brokenness, my brokenness, our brokenness.

may we honor the cracks on our journey

and as we travel this road toward easter may we begin to notice new life, signs of resurrection, creeping out of the cracks, light emerging from the darkness.

Growing During Lent – Don’t Look Too Closely

For me Lent and gardening are always intimately intermingled and I know that this is true for many of us who live in the Northern Hemisphere.  The garden is always a great reminder of how God works in our lives.

Here are some great insights from Thule Kinnison that also reflect this connection

so, this morning during meditation, i stared at the ’greenly’s’ that are growing into flowers that me and k’la planted for Lent, and here’s what came up. if i evaluate the growth of the plant every day, then i don’t notice how much it is growing. but if i evaluate once a week, by looking at the pictures i take, i notice how much it has grown in the week. it grows because i put it into the light during the day, bring it into the dark at night, and water it. so basiclly, im taking ‘care’ of it. i related that to my Spiritual growth and my thoughts about feeling ‘blocked’ from prayer or knowing ‘how to’ pray. I’ve realized that if i try to take a ‘daily’ inventory on how my Spiritual life is, or how my prayer that day was, it does not seem to be a positive inventory. So i wonder… if i could review my Spiritual and Prayer growth weekly, maybe review my jouranal and see what has happened during the week, rather than on a daily basis. I believe my growth and depth in God happens over time, not by the day. And it’s my daily works, good and not so good, that make me who i am. I believe i am covered, surrounded, and full of God today and im grateful when this ’stuff’ makes sense, somewhat. at least to me it does! and im surely putting my self in the light and letting the dark be revealed, and i cry, so thats the water that is rooting me deeply to God. I planted the seeds that are growing into flowers in the compost soil that created itself last year, and today i feel like im planted in the compost soil of my life, and Gods promise for me. (stinks sometimes, but sure is beautiful!)

A Very Busy Week

Tom & I are currently in Denton Texas speaking at 1st United Methodist church.  We are having a great time and I am about to reconnect to some of my Mercy Ships friends who are not far from here.  However I wanted to make sure that I did not miss out on letting you all know about what is happening in my life and in MSA.

First the March MSA Seed Sampler is out.  It has some great articles on Food Justice and Sustainability including the lead article by Julie Clawson Reconnecting to Our Food

Also I wanted to remind you that this is your last opportunity to sign up for the Justice at the Table workshop this Saturday (March 13th)

Or you may like to get a head start and sign up for the Spirituality of Gardening seminar coming up April 24th in Seattle and May 22nd in Lynden Washington.  We are still hoping to conduct one of these seminars in Portland and Hood River so if you are interested let me know.

Lent – A Season of Solidarity – Wisdom from St Benedict

This morning’s post comes from Walter Forcatto who serves with Word Made Flesh as South America Regional Co-Coordinator, ministering among vulnerable and excluded children and youth.  He lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina together with his beautiful wife Adriana and two beautiful daughters Cora and Amani.

Lent – A Season of Solidarity

This year the community I am a part of will take time to reflect upon the themes of Lent, which are the 40 days prior to Easter, and incorporate them as part of our community rhythm.  Together, we live and serve among vulnerable and excluded youth in the metropolitan city of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

In light of Christine Sine’s question and challenge “How Do We Follow Jesus?” I’d like to look at 5 Lenten practices proposed by St. Benedict in his Rule.¹ These practices are aimed at helping discover renewed and fresh meaning and experiences in Lent.  Or as Christine Sine has said, “Lent is a time for “confrontation of the false self (Thomas Keating) when we reflect on the responses and behaviors we exhibit that are least Christ like and seek God’s help in rededicating ourselves to God and God’s purposes.”²

But how do we discover renewed meaning during Lent and rededicate ourselves to God and God’s purposes and still avoid falling into an individualistic practice of faith? How do we follow Jesus during Lent without isolating and insolating ourselves and the communities we’re a part of which are found in contexts of exclusion, vulnerability, extreme poverty, invisibility, loneliness and violence?

One of the most crucial theological questions posed by theologians in solidarity with the poor in South America is How can we speak of God’s love to those who suffer? And in this case, how can confrontation with the false-self during Lent also lead us to see and confront falsity and evil outside of ourselves in social and cultural constructions that directly or indirectly cause suffering?  How can the application of a hermeneutic of suspicion to these Lenten beliefs and their corresponding practices further lead us live truthfully as followers of Jesus of Nazareth?

These 5 Lenten practices and principles in St. Benedicts Rule can therefore be seen not only from the perspective of our personal faith and spirituality but also through lenses that allow us to contemplate how the practice of these principles can also lead us to reflect upon a following of Jesus that leads us to a life of solidarity on behalf of and with poor friends and neighbors in the name of Jesus of Nazareth.

1. Refraining from sin – “Lent should be a time for us to do battle, a time to fight not only the great temptations but, perhaps more importantly, our subtle faults, the seemingly small habitual sins we consent to every day…[Lent is a propitious time to take inventory and a close look at our bare selves,] to see the obstacles on our journey to God, things which should be eliminated from our lives.”  The challenge presented is to look at sin as not only having a personal dimension but as systemic and structural evil as well.  What is it that we consent to every day that implicates us, directly or indirectly, in actions and attitudes that destroy community, solidarity, compassion and resurrection hope?  As we examine our bare selves may we pray to refrain from those things that veer us off the path of following the One who was deeply concerned for and drew near to the vulnerable, the excluded, and the forgotten.

2. Prayer with tears – “Our Lenten prayer, like the publican’s, ought to be a humble and tearful prayer of compunction, a prayer of simplicity and trust, not in ourselves, but in the loving-kindness and tenderness of God.”  Our tearful prayers should also flow from our oftentimes lack of compassion and solidarity with our vulnerable and suffering sisters and brothers of humanity.  I believe our weeping would demonstrate God’s tenderness and draw us closer the heartbreak of God over the slow death of poverty many experience every day.

3. Holy reading – “for through the Scriptures the Holy Spirit never ceases to speak and educate us…Lent is this wonderful, particularly well-suited time for reading and listening to the voice of God in His word.”  Holy reading during Lent can take on a certain newness as we attempt to apply God’s Word to today’s challenges and opportunities.  Let’s pray that the Spirit of God challenges us to read Scripture with fresh eyes and hearts in light of the massive suffering and plight of our brothers and sisters around the world.  May our holy reading lead us to contemplate and discover in Scripture God’s special and deep love for and solidarity with the widow, the orphan and the immigrant.

4.  Repentance – “Repentance, the work of the Holy Spirit in the innermost part of our hearts…It is true that conversion and repentance are lifelong tasks, but Lent provides us with an exclusive period to work in it intensely.  Lent is indeed a “school of repentance”.  During Lent let us allow the Spirit of God to lead us to repent not only of our personal sins but also for the ways in which our collective history may have been complicit in the suffering of others.  In repentance, let us seek to believe in the Gospel that is good news to the poor, sight to the blind, freedom for the oppressed and actively seek justice, hope and joy in the Spirit which is what the Kingdom of God is all about.

5. Abstinence from food- “Christ used fasting and encouraged his followers to practice fasting…when carried out under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, it becomes life-giving and a source of powerful grace in our individual lives.” Abstinence from food during Lent becomes life giving to us as we reflect and realize that God is our source of life and all that is good in our lives.  Yet abstinence from food during Lent can also bring us in closer in solidarity with so many of God’s children that abstain from food, not voluntarily, but who are forced to by extreme poverty and vulnerability. This fasting can become an opportunity to practice compassion and solidarity with the suffering and vulnerable. It can become a catalyst in creatively exploring how to live simply so that others can simply live.

Looking at these 5 Lenten practices not only through a lens of personal faith and spirituality but also with a posture of solidarity, identification and compassion towards the suffering and vulnerable, we can continue to discover our real selves on our faith journey or, as it is said in Spanish, en el camino. And in this journey Lent provides a focused season to follow and align our life-choices and options in relation to a God who is concerned for and acts on behalf of God’s vulnerable and excluded sons and daughters.

Walking In Darkness – by Kimberlee Conway Ireton

This morning’s post was contributed by Kimberlee Conway. Kimberlee Conway Ireton is the author of The Circle of Seasons: Meeting God in the Church Year (InterVarsity, 2008).

Walking in Darkness

by Kimberlee Conway Ireton

As Lent approached this year, I found myself in a dark place. This darkness was triggered when I learned I was expectedly pregnant with our third child. It deepened as my pregnancy made me sick. And it became black as night when a dear friend’s seemingly healthy daughter was suddenly diagnosed with leukemia.

I do not like living in darkness. I do not like feeling alone and afraid. I do not like wondering where God is. And I especially do not like the agnosticism that creeps into the darkness with me, whispering its words of skepticism and doubt along my skin and in my heart.

But I have learned that I cannot run from the darkness. I can only walk through it. Walking in the way of Jesus, this Lent, for me, is walking by faith rather than sight, by hope rather than conviction.

I want to believe the good news of the incarnation, the crucifixion, the resurrection, and on my best days, I do believe it. But I confess there are days, and lately there have been many of them, when I don’t believe this, when I live in fear that it is not true, when I live in fear that God either is not real or else cannot be trusted.

Such fear undermines my very identity, the bedrock of who I usually believe myself to be: a beloved daughter of the God who gives good and perfect gifts. The darkness grows deeper.

But then, words. Words as often as anything else pull me back to the light of faith when I am wandering in the darkness. I was comforted last month to read these words of George MacDonald. He put them in the mouth of one of his characters, an aging pastor who is facing death and wondering if his life has somehow been misspent, if somehow all that he preached and claimed to believe wasn’t really true after all. But then he writes,

Even if there be no hereafter, I would live my time believing in a grand thing that ought to be true, if it is not….Let me hold by the better than the actual and fall into nothingness off the same precipice with Jesus and John and Paul and a thousand more, who were lovely in their lives, and with their deaths make even the nothingness into which they have passed like the garden of the Lord.

When I read those words, I wept. For they reminded me that I can choose to believe even if I don’t feel that belief.

And so on those days when I don’t quite believe, I look away from myself, my feelings, my fears. I look out and around, noticing small things that are good: cherry blossoms, a hug from my daughter, a box of new-to-me maternity clothes from a friend. I give thanks for these small mercies, choosing to see them as gifts from God even when I don’t believe it. I give thanks that the darkness is not so dark that I cannot make that choice.

On those days when I doubt, I cling all the harder to Jesus, whose way is the way of truth, the truth that sets me free to live and to love in the midst of suffering, the truth that frees me to choose that suffering will render me beautiful rather than bitter and compassionate rather than callous.

On those days when I feel afraid, I cling to His promise that He is with me, that He does not shrink from darkness, that He will never forsake or abandon me.

I choose to trust him.

And eventually, the choosing becomes easier, the darkness lifts, and walking in Jesus’ way is not quite such a struggle…for a while. But the darkness will always return, often unexpectedly. That is why I need Lent, because it bears witness to the reality of darkness, of doubt, of fear, of pain. And it carries me through those real places, real experiences into one that is more fully and truly Real: the Reality of Resurrection, of Light, of Life.

For now, it’s still Lent. I still walk in darkness. But I am beginning to see glimmers of that Light. I am beginning to walk by sight again, with conviction. I give thanks to God for this mercy, too.

Don’t Give Up Chocolate for Lent – It is Too Good for You

Those of us that are chocoholics know that chocolate is good for us.  But now the Canadians have conclusive evidence to back up our instincts.  So don’t give up chocolate for Lent.

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, a new systematic review from Canadian researchers suggests higher chocolate consumption may be associated with a lower risk for incident stroke and stroke-related mortality.

Results of 2 prospective cohort studies showed, respectively, a 22% reduction in stroke risk for those who had 1 serving of chocolate per week and a 46% reduction in stroke mortality from weekly consumption of flavonoids in 50 g of chocolate vs no consumption. A third study showed no association between chocolate intake and stroke or death.  Read about it here