This year, instead of giving something up, how about giving yourself to another in prayer as your daily Lenten spiritual practice? Will you join us and participate in what the poet, Marilyn Nelson, calls Communal Pondering? How beautiful to ponder, contemplate, participate in God’s presence as a community! Howie is doing so by asking the adults of DGFUMC of all ages to consider committing the Lenten 2017 season to pray specifically for one student involved in the church community. To this end, I developed a prayer guide meant to assist that process by directing the one praying in centering prayer and then focusing prayerful attention on one of the teenagers.
This Lenten prayer guide will also be modified so that it can be used across multiple social media and can be engaged piecemeal or in its entirety.
If Lent is not a feature of your faith tradition or current practice, I still welcome you to participate in the mindfulness spiritual practices of inward centering prayer and outward graced attention toward another.
You may wish to follow this guide to help center yourself during Lent. Perhaps, there is a justice concern or family member or particular group of people that occupies your heart. Here you might direct these prayers outward over any of these.
If you would like to participate, you can “like” the Lenten Season, 2017 page of our just Church virtual community to receive daily notifications of each day’s prayer. If you prefer to receive them through another medium, the daily prayer guide will also be posted via my Instagram (@interiorcastle), Twitter (@interiorcastle), and LinkedIn accounts. If you would like to download the entire document to have on hand, to write in, etc., please Facebook message me with your email address and I will send the document in pdf form by Ash Wednesday.
I look forward to paying attention and being present together during this Lenten Season!