Downshifting for Lent
I’m trying to take a slower path through Lent, which means I’ve adjusted my prayer resources to prize spaciousness and reflection over verbiage and repetition. I still have my various prayer beads and breath prayers if I want to spend time in a meditative rhythm, but the extended silence, journaling, and wonder have felt just right thus far.
In place of my usual daily office resources, I’m using the book pictured above (Wondrous Encounters: Scipture for Lent by Richard Rohr) for a daily reading that anchors me in a theme and question from the day’s lectionary and the book pictured below ( The Methodist Book of Daily Prayer edited by Matt Miofsky) to provide pillars of morning and evening prayer. I especially like the focus each day of thinking about intercessions and petitions as the day begins, and closing out the day’s work with prayers of gratitude. This pattern encourages me to pick up the necessary, the possible, and perhaps even the impossible each day and see what unfolds in addressing these needs. At the end of the day, I feel a corresponding encouragement to give thanks for what God has done in me, through me, around me, and beyond me!
Alongside these readings, I continue to benefit from the Ignatian audio meditations found at Pray as You Go, and my practice of centering prayer. The great paradox of Lent is that we make room for bearing witness to suffering, rejection, pain, and loss, things we frequently try to avoid or tamp down. It is in and through this space holding that we find the passion and compassion of God making space for life, promise, resurrection, and transformation. Unless we are prepared to hold these opposing energies together and bear witness to what emerges, the season can pass us by without really cracking us open.
I hope that if you’re embracing this penitential season or another like it, that you are finding ways to go more slowly and really be present to what is unfolding.
Practice
- How fast am I going right now?
- What would it look like to go 3% slower?
- What might emerge in that space?
- Where do I notice myself becoming more aware of the moment and setting down my preoccupation with the past and the future?
- What does it feel like to hold two (or more) things at once in my body?
- How can pray alongside paradox and mystery?
Be gentle with yourself, you are worth it.
Peace and Everything Good,
The Rev. JM Longworth, OEF Spiritual Direction and Trauma Care
https://www.sdicompanions.org/sdi-profile/GreenMtFriarOEF/ To book an appointment: https://calendly.com/greenmtfriaroef