Learning to live in the unforced rhythms of grace
As we enter the fourth week of Lent, we will spend time looking at the Bethany family: Mary, Martha and Lazarus. We will encounter their vulnerability, their love, their hospitality. We will think about our fragile, vulnerable world, and how we can go simply in our lifestyles, combining active care and contemplative devotion, careful stewardship and extravagant celebration, future hopes and present realities…
Click here to go to this week’s meditations
Tomorrow begins the third week in Lent. During this week we will journey with Mary Magdalene: Mary, the one afflicted by seven demons; Mary, the one set free; Mary, the one whose name Jesus spoke – tenderly, lovingly.
We are invited to simply be ourselves,
not needing an exciting lifestyle, busy schedules,
comfort foods, or approving relationships
in order to know and live out
our belovedness,
our true identity, our worth, our life tasks.
Click here to go to this week’s meditations
Judas, the Betrayer. Not your usual subject for a series of reflections. But perhaps Judas wasn’t so dissimilar to the rest of us. Was he just an enthusiastic radical, looking for something new, longing for justice and liberation?
Tomorrow starts the second week in Lent. As we spend this week journeying with Judas,
Let’s commit ourselves to inner and outer simplicity,
letting go our ‘right’ to self-fulfillment
while our façade covers up our poverty of spirit;
setting aside our ‘right’ to affluence
while there are still those who live in abject poverty.
Click here to go to this week’s meditations
Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent.
In the first week of our Lent meditations, we journey with the Apostle Thomas.
Doubting Thomas.
Honest Thomas.
The apostle who wasn’t afraid to express his doubts, his uncertainties, the dilemmas of belief.
Over this week we will explore some of our own doubts and questions, and live with these frustrations.
And we will ask Jesus for the grace of peace.
Click here to go to this week’s Lent meditations.
A series of Lenten reflections to attend to our doing and being, the active and contemplative
Traditionally, there are 40 days of Lent, from Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday (not counting the Sundays of Lent), which means February 18 to April 4 in 2015. Starting from Ash Wednesday, 18th February, we will be posting a series of reflections for the seven weeks of Lent. Each week explores a different aspect of simplicity, and focuses on someone, or some people who featured in Jesus’ life.
These reflections take the form of a simple liturgy for the week, with five readings to help you be still in God’s presence: to pause; to listen; to be.
The seven weeks
Week One: Go simply in your belief – Thomas’ Journey
Week Two: Go simply with your possessions – Judas’ Journey
Week Three: Go simply with yourself – Mary Magdalene’s Journey
Week Four: Go simply in your lifestyle – With the Bethany Family, Mary, Martha and Lazarus
Week Five: Go simply within your culture – Nicodemus’ Journey
Week Six: Go simply in your vocation – With Mary, Jesus’ Mother
Week Seven: Go simply in your spirit – With Joanna and the women who accompanied Jesus
We are living in the gap
between the way things are
and the way they will be.
We are living in the gap
between starving children
and MTV,
living in the gap
between military budgets
and illiteracy.
We are living in the gap
between the world that’s coming,
and this world we see
“No more crying then,
No more dying then
No more sighing then”.
But in this mean time,
our arms are stretched
to breaking point
trying to hold onto
something, anything
in this gap between
hope and pain
this gap between
you and me,
this gap in our lives
where you had been.
Kristin Jack, June 2012
Welcome to my new, updated website: Vacare Deo – learning to live in the unforced rhythms of grace.
The past three years have been an incredible journey for me – a journey of upheaval, discovery, challenges and joys. I have struggled, and continue to struggle, with grief at the loss of my wonderful wife, Helen; with questions and yearnings in the face of all the violence, injustice, abuse and hatred in this world; with the clutter and busyness of 21st century life. At the same time, I have felt myself to be enormously blessed – through my amazing children; my fulfilling and inspiring work; the many loving friends who have carried me through these years; and the unexpected joy I have found with my new wife Lois.
Perhaps in all of this we are all the same: we all have our own griefs, our struggles, our joys and blessings.
So I have revamped these pages to be a resource and sounding board for those who, like me, long to live life fully, in the unforced rhythms of grace. If I can share some of the reflections and resources I have found helpful, if they can be even a small blessing to others, and if, in turn, others feel able to add their own thoughts and ideas through comments and posts, then maybe this will achieve something worthwhile.
I will try to add the occasional blog when I feel I have something worth sharing. In the meantime, I invite you to explore the different pages, and to let me know what you think.
May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face;
the rains fall soft upon your fields and until we meet again,
may God hold you in the palm of His hand.
Is the Creator here, too, in our garden,
walking quietly in the cool of the morning,
putting finishing touches to this magnum opus?
Surely it is an opus Dei.
Profusion of colours brought forth
by the intensity of the radiant sun
which yet is behind me, hidden and distant.
Deep copper plum bursting forth against
the sleek, smooth sky;
Blue undefiled by man-made stain;
Bright green of next door’s lime picked out
by the light,
demanding my attention in the contrast;
and the steadfast poplar,
bright bundles of leaves striving
to fill every space between
each solid, upright trunk.
An ongoing work of creation.
Fountains of white pour forth into the cooler shades;
Starbursts of ivory and gold;
Tiny dabs of blue, pink, red.
Opus operantis.
I am touched by this morning sacrament,
this work of grace.
The cool, hushed air floods in
through my open doors,
touching my face,
causing me to pull my warming blanket
more tightly round;
Bringing with it a symphony of song.
Constantly changing.
Not yesterday’s chorus.
This is today.
A new day.
Beginning.
Can I, too, walk with the Creator
in my morning garden
and help to make this
resurrection day?
