Icons, Gaze, See and Seen

St Stephen's Church, Pinelands. Lenten Themes, Approaches to Prayer

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Icons encourage us to pray with eyes and hearts wide open. To grasp love not just with our hands, or intellects, but more generously through our gaze. A soft, uncritical way of paying attention where you not only see, but you are truly seen in return. This can be hard because it calls us to do nothing except be present.

A Place of Prayer

The Garden Chapel at St Stephen's Church, Pinelands

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A place becomes a place of prayer

when you pray in it - Origen c. 185 -254

Childlikeness and Prayer

In the teachings of Jesus, childlikeness is central and not incidental to deepening the Journey and entering into what really is Real. May you be blessed by a child-like, wide-eyed awe; blessed by a sense of gratitude for many things - especially the littlest of things we too often overlook or through habit too easily dismiss. Happy Monday before Shrove Tuesday!

Sunday before Lent

Help me
to hear your
voice, Lord,
hard as it
sometimes is

Help me
to go
even into what
I don’t completely know

Let me not be
Too busy to hear
your presence ever near

Mountain top, or rock bottom
You are with me beyond what I can fathom

Help me to know
that even at the other end
You are there as friend
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Wednesdays during Lent

For five Wednesdays in Lent, St Stephen's Parish in Pinelands will be exploring different approaches to prayer. There are as many ways to pray as there are personalities. The 13th century Persian mystic and poet Jelaluddin Rumi said, 'There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground'...

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From our Christian tradition, a classical definition of prayer is a life and heart that's open to respond to God. This definition is very helpful as it resists presenting God with a shopping list of wants, desires or needs. It implies that God is forever the initiator; God is the one who calls... The first and crucial step from our side is really to listen and then to respond. One of the Desert Fathers said, if you want to go on a spiritual journey, close your mouth. Listening is as much a part of prayer as talking is. Listen and then respond. Ego reacts whereas the soul responds.