I think I've just made it! Cooking Catherine- click on the picture and it will take you to Floss' blog where all the Lenten Ladies are listed on the left. Cannot recommend a better hour's reading! 
I'm back this week to my annual Lent reader- Delia's A Feast for Lent. I usually start well and tail off miserably towards the end, but I'm determined this year that, having started miserably, I might make it to the end!
Her theme for Week 3 is Listening: not hardening your heart, but letting the deep call to deep. I was muchly delighted to read this yesterday. I feel that most of my prayer revolves around the present crisis, at home or outside the strawberry bed. Last year my Lent journal recorded a frankly amazing voyage from my original key words of anger and anxiety to the promise of joy and peace.
I knew this year that I had nothing but thanks to offer in the desert. (And one major prayer that will be shared when the time is soon right!) I had thought that I would love to hear God speak, just to hear Him speak. Not with any agenda of my own. And the title for today's reading: God speaks! Ha ha!
Today's final meditation: My soul is waiting for the Lord/ I count on his word...
I am sorry that I have not been much around your lovely blog this week. PC has had a Frantic Fortnight with Very Important Canadians, and hatches have been battened on the home front! I especially apologise for not pausing for Lent last weekend, which I very much missed. Plans are laid for a Restful Weekend...
Jenny's Alphabe-Thursday post for today, W, links to one of the alphabetting bloggistes who is in Japan.
Facetiously this week I'm grateful to blogging for a chance to procrastinate on the challenge of leading the weekly prayer meeting tomorrow morning. But really I'm extremely grateful to have lived most of my life on the shores of Belfast Lough, in a Northern clime that knows no extreme of temperature, nor of tempest. Where the hills surround and shelter.
For most of this week I've been haunted by the image of the baptism that preceded Jesus' baptism- when at the moment of that baptism the very skies were torn asunder and yet the manifestation of all that creator power was a dove. God dealing gently and patiently with us. But I'm thinking the manifestation of created power this weekend continues to terrify in these times of the in-between.
We had a show of great might in church this weekend- hundreds of people coming through the doors of our new and finally ready extension. Such gratitude to the Wonderful Warren who conjured bouncy castles, archery, magicians indeed, food, climbing wall, all manner of community event. The centre of it all is the Heartspace, with tables and chairs and sofas and love. PC played an acoustic set, an evening concert and the Sunday morning dedication service. Such talent in small places to big effect.
This week I also finished my latest Barbara Pym, who was slightly more upbeat ultimately. "The small things of life were often so much bigger than the great things, she decided, wondering how many writers and philosophers had said this before her, the trivial pleasures like cooking, one's home, little poems especially sad ones, solitary walks, funny things seen and overheard."
Mind you. I couldn't live without those great things either.
According to the Sage Fred, Celtic Christianity knows thin places. It feels to me like fissure lines where the closeness of Heaven touches, actually touches, the stones and the ground and the skies breathing into the places where souls have chanted glory for long. My favourites are Jerpoint Abbey, Co. Kilkenny and especially Devenish Island, Co. Fermanagh. Today I'm thinking of Lent as one of my favourite thin times.
In the Library just now we're starting to go through the annual Appraisal Process. Jokingly late one night we flicked through a Professional Develoment book from the Business School trolley. When I paraphrase this quote I still start to cry so hilarious was it at the time- you'll have to remember that it was late! The advice therein was that in work you should let your light shine because by doing so you subconsciously give others the right to let theirs shine too. (Mags stops typing to wipe her eyes...)
But today our special preacher finished his thoughts with much the same idea. That we should walk our faith every step. Live our faith every step. Because only then would we give others the right to step out into theirs too. So I'm going into this Lenten week with the thought that as I walk with Christ towards Passion, I might walk openly and hopefully encouragingly. In the thin place, at a thin time!Hello! Sending you all lots of love from Northern Ireland, where nothing much changes just as everything changes, as usual. Time has stood ...
