During Lent, we are posting a series of reflections from members of our church community. Today’s post comes from Thandiwe Gobledale.
Since the beginning of Lent, Monday evenings have been a special time for me: a time of slowing down, of prayer and reflection, a time of community. On Monday evenings, I have gathered with others in the Friendship classroom to explore a new spiritual discipline, something that we may take into our week with us, a different way of spending time with God. The idea was to set aside this time to spend it with God, to open ourselves to God’s presence and to practice listening. We’ve practiced listening in all sorts of different ways: listening to scripture, listening in silence, listening to God speaking through the events of our lives, listening through color, and listening through our eyes, taking in art and the beauty of the world around us, and we’ve listened to each other. For me, I often think that this last part can be both the easiest and the hardest. Somehow for me, it is the most powerful, the most tangible way in which God speaks to me – through others. But let me share a little bit more about some of the spiritual disciplines we explored together, some of the practices we tried out to help us listen to God in different ways.
We began with Lectio Divina, a practice of reading scripture (or poetry or prose) slowly and deliberately, reading the same passage three times. Instead of analyzing the text, we practiced simply listening to the ways in which the scripture spoke to us. We opened ourselves up to the words and what they spoke into our lives, into the life of our church, into the life of our world. This slow, deliberate way of reading helped us to notice things that we would not normally notice. Instead of rushing through the text and getting to the end, we sat with the words, letting them sink into us, allowing some to really take hold and speak. We listened. The next week, we listened in silence, exploring a meditative practice known as Centering Prayer. Have you ever been in a room with almost twenty people in it, all completely silent for fifteen minutes? The silence seemed to grow around us, to hold us in a space of peace, bringing us nearer to God’s presence, holding us together in a space of peace. Each person chose a word to use to as a touchstone of sorts, a simple word or phrase like “God’s peace” to return to as their minds wandered, a reminder that this was time for us to spend with God.
Journaling offered us a way to write our thoughts and prayers down, to reflect on things happening in our lives and to turn those things over to God as well as to share our joys and thanksgivings. Several people shared their own practice of keeping a gratitude list: each evening before they go to bed, they write down 3-5 things for which they are grateful. Some days it’s easy to come up with a list of things for which we are grateful, while other days it’s more difficult, but the practice of doing this daily can help us pay attention differently, noticing things for which to be grateful throughout our day. Reading this gratitude list first thing the next morning can help us to remember to begin and end our day with thankfulness. Another kind of prayer that helped us listen to God by reflecting on our day is the St. Ignatian Examen. This sort of reflection and listening can help us to see the places in our life where we need to let God in. It can also show us the ways in which God is already moving and speaking in and through our lives.
These last two weeks, we have explored listening through art: first by spending time doodling with pencils, crayons and markers. Starting our drawing with a name for God, we allowed ourselves to be moved and to simply spend time with God in prayer. We were reminded that we do not need to be so serious with God, and that sometimes we need to simply let ourselves be, to let ourselves play. Our last week, we let art speak to us. We listened with our eyes and our ears for God speaking through images, objects and music. Sometimes we found ourselves a little bit disturbed – caught off-guard by the reminder of how time has passed. Sometimes we found hope in the layers of expression and meaning held in any given piece of artwork. Some of us simply found God’s presence, something we could not put into words but that we felt, strongly through the movement of music, through color and shape.
This Lenten season has been a time of listening for me. It has also been a time of transition, of a return to myself and a preparation for where my journey will take me next. I have been blessed by an hour each Monday, an hour to call holy, an hour devoted to this sort of listening, to seeking God’s presence, to sharing sacred time and space with others. It has been a gift and a joy, a blessing and a touchstone for me these last few weeks. As Easter Sunday approaches, I have been thinking about how I might continue this journey that I have traveled on Monday nights in Lent – a journey of seeking God’s presence in my life, a journey of listening, of opening up, of being intentional about spending time with the Holy One, a time of reflection and prayer.
Indeed, Easter is not the end of the journey, but really, its beginning. As Lent comes to a close, what will you carry with you? How will you continue to make time for God? How will you hold the cross ever before you – illuminating your life, indeed transforming it?
