Lent2020 on A Geek's Life

34. Flitting

Mon, 30 Mar 2020 10:13:53 +0000

For Lent Week 5, Monday. A response to the CoE’s #LiveLent reflection for the day. Photo by A Perry on Unsplash

\\\* Without a care the birds flit blithely between the trees, their bare branches lit briefly as though by the light of exploding stars, bright colours and persistent chirps in their own ways declaring this is good.

33. Fifth Day

Sun, 29 Mar 2020 18:40:03 +0000

For the start of Week 5 of the CoE’s #LiveLent Devotional for Lent 2020. Photo by Dane Deaner on Unsplash

\\\* In the swoosh of the wings of the bald eagle diving to snatch fish from the sea - its sustenance elegantly eked by dint of labour day by day - and the quiet resplendence of the colourful coral, goodness resides; each in its way declaring, this is good, this birthing on the fifth.

30. What If...

Thu, 26 Mar 2020 08:05:37 +0000

What if disease is the earth groaning, these bodies daily breaking its cry for relief from our feet pressed hard against its throat? What if…

25. Rest

Sat, 21 Mar 2020 13:56:15 +0000

For Week 3, Weekend of the CoE’s #LiveLent Devotional:

\\\* The curse on the slithering snake is to toil ceaselessly, to eke each day’s living from the benighted earth. The promise we hold to is the blessing of the seventh, that after six summers of toil, the seventh brings rest and healing.

23. Impermanence

Thu, 19 Mar 2020 18:02:51 +0000

For Week 3, Thursday:

\\\* The rush of locusts leaves the trees - once lush and green - bare, each fading away in the impermanence, of fields destroyed; the ground mourning the demise of a raw and an exquisite beauty. This is how the earth groans, curled up in pain at the wilfulness of wanton waste, a silent witness to the marks we’ve missed. We bring our clay, our bodies and and our burdens to this place to this aftermath of loss, and hope for redemption, that this place broken in the moment can be whole and holy once again.

22. Salvation

Wed, 18 Mar 2020 18:50:18 +0000

For Week 3, Wednesday:

\\\* Drop by drop flake by flake the seeds of life are coming and going a stairway between heaven and earth, words watering it with life, calling a harvest from dry things. Each seed is becoming a harvest; of redemption and salvation - joy returning where sadness once reigned.

21. River side

Tue, 17 Mar 2020 08:55:46 +0000

For the Week 3, Tuesday reflection in the CoE’s #LiveLent Devotional:

\\\* Trees planted by the river are blessed with the fortitude to resist the howling of the wind the pounding of the waves and the dying the heat and drying bring. Their roots hold together the soil, their leaves stay green even in the season of forgetting. So hold me, tell my heart to trust, to not waver in this season of distress.

20. Earth Song

Mon, 16 Mar 2020 10:42:37 +0000

A response to the Week 3, Monday reflection in the CoE’s #LiveLent series

\\\* Land and plants the Lord God made each one, called forth by the thundering of His voice. First dry land carved from the gathering of the waters then seeds, each taught to yield it’s kind. And everything- the red earth, white beach lush plain and rugged hill sings as one. My God, how great Thou art.

19. Third Day

Sun, 15 Mar 2020 12:58:42 +0000

19-tree

For the start of Week 3 of the CoE’s #LiveLent Reflections.

The wet grass catches the faint light of the rising sun, each blade resplendent in its very present beauty. Here today but gone tomorrow each clump is a promise of provision, a gift of remembering that tomorrow, and the rising sun will come.

18. Living Water

Sat, 14 Mar 2020 09:30:34 +0000

For the Week 2, Weekend reflection in the CoE’s #LiveLent series for 2020.

\\\* I come at noon the burden of shame around my neck like a shawl hiding me. I come to find water, to sate my thirst to soak my face in its cooling and wash the dust away. But here I find you offering living water. I drink for cleansing for my scarlet to be white and to never thirst again.

17. A Prayer for A Season of Overwhelm

Fri, 13 Mar 2020 22:38:18 +0000

For the Week 2, Friday’s #LiveLent Devotional, particularly apt given the state of play of the coronavirus pandemic.

\\\* Worn and weary from the tears of fitful crying I find myself stretched straining like a string to hold together; one hand sinking into a slushy earth and the other tottering like a tree listing in a storm. As these waters reach my neck as breath begins to slip and my body begins to yield to these dark depths Abba be a rock be a shelter from the storm be my anchor.

15. Baptism

Wed, 11 Mar 2020 16:38:00 +0000

Today’s CoE #LiveLent Devotional invites us to reflect on baptism, and how it is a symbol of our death and resurrection with Christ. Here goes:

\\\* I come to this water, let me go beneath its flood and die, and then arise reborn, raised to freedom and new desires. Let me sense your welcome, your voice speaking once but echoing across the hills and the valleys telling me, welcome lost son, my prodigal returned.

13. Water, Again

Mon, 09 Mar 2020 19:42:08 +0000

For Day 11 of the CoE’s Lent 2020 Devotional.

\\\* I come thirsty for your water, for its wetting and its washing for how it revivifies my dead and dying places making their hard, worn edges into soft and pliant spaes. I come thirsty, head bowed in quiet supplication, to live again.

12. Water

Sun, 08 Mar 2020 19:07:46 +0000

For Day 10 of the CoE #Livelent Devotional, the focus being the second day of creation with water being brought forth…

\\\* First comes light, making lost things found, dark places bright and clear and beautiful again, and then comes water to wash and clean and bring life to all the dead and dying things. May the dark places of our hearts be lit and whole again and our hands clean.

11. Light and Darkness

Sat, 07 Mar 2020 22:30:09 +0000

For Week 1, Weekend of the CoE’s #LiveLent Devotional

\\\* Into the dark night light shines, bit by bit driving fear away

10. Light...

Fri, 06 Mar 2020 19:43:23 +0000

For Day Nine, the invitation is to reflect on light and heat and the benefits access to electricity brings to people around the world. That immediately brought to mind the Parable of the Lost Coin, and how for all the sweeping and cleaning, the lost coin is found because of the illumination light brings. Here goes then:

\\\* You realise that light is good when the thing you lost is found, wedged between the corner of your bed and the cold wall, that tiny space worn beige by the tyranny of time. When in the shiver of a winter night you wrap your hands around a cup of warm tea, its chipped edge and faded art a reminder of all its seasons of use, you realise that light is good, and the darkness all around fades.

9. Song of The Light

Thu, 05 Mar 2020 20:40:46 +0000

For Day 8 of the Church of England’s LiveLent devotional for Lent. \\\* Tell the darkness there is no room here, that though small and weak and flickering in the wind, your light will be a bulwark, a hedge against the pressure closing in. You’re a city on a hill a light raised high for all to see. Shine.

8. Swords, Spears, Ploughshares

Wed, 04 Mar 2020 23:40:26 +0000

Image Source

\\\* Yield your swords, pound them into ploughshares, and your spears into pruning hooks

from instruments of harm, life begins to spring up when we walk in Light

7. Springing

Tue, 03 Mar 2020 20:00:23 +0000

\\\* It lingers in the air- this faint scent of things stirring, fair and comely things in all their colour beginning to rear their head in the light of the lengthening days. here, earth heeds the call to birth again from death and dying life begins to spring again.

6. Light

Mon, 02 Mar 2020 19:30:03 +0000

For Day 1 of Week 1 of the #LiveLent devotional for Lent.

\\\* Bless our broken and our breaking, these bodies creaking beneath the pressure of a living daily eked out. Bless our riven hearts in all their parts, strewn as it were along the paths we once trod in hope. Let light, by your speaking bring peace Let our shattered things be whole again let hope with light spring, again.

5. First Day

Sun, 01 Mar 2020 10:21:07 +0000

For Week 1, Sunday of the CoE’s #LiveLent Devotional \\\* Over the cold dark swirling mists, the Spirit breathes then speaks: Light, come forth.

4. Reconciliation

Sat, 29 Feb 2020 22:13:19 +0000

For Day 4 of the CoE #LiveLent Devotional. \\\* All things - the frail and the sturdy, the weak and the strong- hold together, and consist in You Who leaves the saved ninety-nine to find the one; lost sheep who slips into the dark and unclear paths where fear thrives. You offer redemption and finding and saving from the miry clay. Save me.

3. That Laughter May Return

Fri, 28 Feb 2020 20:45:51 +0000

\\\* May laughter linger here, ring loud in this place where the weight of the burden of living once reigned.

May the promise of good news, of sight and freedom come true, bringing life to this thirsty earth.

2. Dance

Thu, 27 Feb 2020 18:05:51 +0000

\\\* I come to lose myself in the brightness of the King, to join the crashing waves the whistling winds and glistening leaves in joyful adoration, to raise a song, like a string quivering at the strumming of the maestro, a tune pregnant with desire its purpose revealed in the reveling of those who hear, many voices, all together resounding as one.

1. A Poem For Remembering We Are Dust

Wed, 26 Feb 2020 17:05:35 +0000

For Lent this year, I’m choosing to reflect via the medium of poetry, inspired in part by Pádraig Ó Tuama’s Poetry Unbound podcast and an inability to pray, in any formal sense of the word. What started as a season of uncertainty has evolved into something bigger, hence this, an attempt to use poetry as prayer. These will be a response to the daily reflection from the Church of England’s LiveLent app which this year encourages us to reflect on creation and how we can be better stewards of it. Here goes! NB for a version in which I attempt to read, visit the anchor.fm page. \\\* The bright gleam of sunlight reflecting in the glass and the steel of the hills we have built lull me into forgetting, that this - these monuments to our power and resolve which wrap themselves like a shroud around the horizon, a scar from a wound revived in the present, tethering us to the certainty of the things we think we know- is but a moment, fleeting in its existence.