Welcome to our Lent Course

Praying with Art and Images Land Art For the beauty of the earth, for the beauty of the skies, for the love which from our birth over and around us lies: Lord of all, to thee we raise this our sacrifice of praise. There is so much beauty in our world and so much that...

Thursday Coventry Cathedral – A Modern Classic Architecture, and not only Church Architecture, can be a starting point for prayer. Today we take one example – a cathedral rebuilt after WW2 with large, vivid expressions of our faith, often in new mediums.    ...

Wednesday – The Art in our churches – the Architecture of our Churches All the churches in our Team have stained, coloured glass – some more than others. Have you stopped to look at what they depict? Most recently St Andrew’s commissioned a window depicting the...

Tuesday – Modern Art and Sculpture Many of us will know this painting – by Salvador Dali. Jesus hangs on the cross and the world is below, particularly what looks like the Sea of Galilee and the fishing boats that Jesus and his disciples would have known, but he is...

Monday - Classic Art There are so many pictures we could consider but here are two that speak to me. This is by Zurburan (date about 1640) – called ‘Agnus Dei’ or Lamb of God. It is very realistic, and the legs of the lamb are bound forming the shape of a cross. The...

Praying with Images We all have favourite pictures, and most of us have favourite buildings. We see pattern, and light, colour and contrast. Over the centuries so many artists have been drawn to paint or sculpt or make images using the Christian tradition and story as...

Friday – Review time Look back over the week. If we reflect on our prayer, we can begin to make real and grounded connections between our prayer and our lived experience – between God’s story in Scripture and the story and mystery of God in our own lives. After a...

Thursday - Lectio Divina “The Lord gave me the scroll to eat and said, ‘Feed on this scroll which I am giving you and eat your fill.’ I ate it, and it tasted sweet as honey.” Ezekiel 3:2-3 Reading - Meditating – Praying – Living In this method of ‘sacred reading’ we...

Wednesday – imaginative Contemplation “Come and see,” said Jesus... ... and the disciples saw. John 1:39 John 20:30 In this method of prayer, we enter into a scripture passage by way of our imagination. By letting our imagination run free, we are able to re-live the...

Tuesday – Awareness Walk Taste and see that the Lord is good.” Psalm 34:8 According to one of the Apocryphal Gospels, Jesus is reputed to have said: "Lift the stone and you will find me. Cleave the wood and I am there." Walk for exercise first if you need it. Take...

Monday - “Be still and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10 Place & Posture Find the place which is right for you. A place where you feel comfortable, with little or no distraction. The best posture is that which helps you to be both attentive and relaxed at the same...

PRAYING IN SILENCE LENT 2021 TURTON MOORLAND TEAM MINISTRY Contents 1. Sunday – Introduction 2. Monday -Be still. 3. Tuesday -Awareness walk. 4. Wednesday - Imaginative Contemplation 5. Thursday - Lectio Divina 6. Friday – Review time 7. Acknowledgements Introduction...

Lead us not into temptation / the time of trial, but deliver us from evil These two lines in the Lord’s Prayer are ones we maybe should reflect on rather more, but they take a bit more understanding. Temptation here does not mean, “Don’t leave the chocolate too close”...

Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us This is so difficult – yet it is at the heart of the prayer Jesus taught us. Some have been hurt so badly and so deliberately and maybe for so long. We seek forgiveness too from those we have hurt or let down,...

Your Kingdome come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven How do we pray for those things in the world where we are not sure what is the right answer, and / or we don’t think things will change? We may wish the dictators out of power, the injustices righted,...

Struggling in prayer and struggling on in prayer In all the gospels we read that Jesus, in Gethsemane struggled in prayer, even sweating blood and tears (and the disciples fell asleep). One of the most haunting of questions is Jesus returning to his disciples when he...

Praying with Jesus This week we will look at how Jesus prayed, what he did, and what we can learn. One thing that we don’t always realise is that Jesus was emotional – he wept at the death of Lazarus and over the destruction he could foresee for Jerusalem. He was...

Song-writers (good song-writers) are thoughtful people. Music moves the spirit. So we should not be surprised if we find spiritual insights in contemporary and secular songs. We just need to be a bit careful in our reflection. There are a number of songs that are...

If I’m honest this was a real challenge. I did study music back in my school days but this was restricted to the Russian composers and Vivaldi, and these don’t have many lyrics and I’m not sure how prayerful Tchaikovsky’s 1812 overture and Mussorgsky’s Night on a bare...

Growing up one of my favourite Choruses was Wide. Wide as the Ocean. Not because of any deep religious meaning about God’s love for us. In doing the actions it gave a chance to legitimately hit the person on either side. I was going to use this but then Karen reminded...

One of my favourite comedies is Scrubs. Often the episodes contain less well-known songs. I picked up this from one episode. https://youtu.be/YSjZID9Xh6U "All The Words" How do I speak of the indescribable to You I will try to explain these feelings that are true So...

Think about your favourite hymns – Almost all are prayers of some kind – prayers of praise, or reflection or request. For today I invite you to consider the hymn ‘I cannot tell’ – you can find a version here https://youtu.be/zItma-BlmM8 I cannot tell why He Whom...

Last week Chris was helping us pray using the Psalms and I think this leads us nicely on to this week’s topic music. You see I can remember as a child being in services where psalms were sung and we on occasion still do that in our services. During lockdown I have...

In a sense, all Psalms are public psalms in that they are available to all but some are more suitable for corporate worship and corporate prayer as they look at issues of general interest and are not focused so much on the individual. Psalm 104 the great song to the...

We will concentrate on two psalms today Psalm 145 and Psalm 8 Psalm 145 tells of the memory of God passed from one generation to another, verse 4 ‘One generation shall laud your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts...’ Think of all the people who have...

George Santayana, the American thinker and poet is famous for his statement “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”  Essentially, we need to learn from what has gone before. This needn’t be a negative thing concerning learning from our...

At the age of 8, I joined the parish church choir in my home town which met for 1½ hours each Tuesday and Thursday and then sang at the 11.15 am and 6.30 pm services on Sundays. We even deputised occasionally for the Guildford Cathedral choir during August when the...

There may be times when we have become so overcome with anguish that we feel utterly overwhelmed with sorrow and completely and soul-despairingly alone. In times like these, it helps to remember that God is there, and He is ready and able to bear our burdens and to...

Augustine of Hippo said, “If the psalm prays, you pray. If the psalm laments, you lament. If the psalm exalts, you rejoice. If it hopes, you hope. If it fears, you fear. Everything written here is a mirror for us.”  Here I believe he is saying ‘make the psalms your...

Faith that does not make a difference to others is a self-indulgence. The first Commandment is to love God and the second is of similar importance, to love our neighbour. Our lives are spent working out what this means and how. Facing Outwards is the third movement in...

Traditionally heaven is “up there”; God is “up there”. While this is not true geographically, there is psychological and spiritual truth in this. When we ‘look up’ we raise our spirits; when we are cast down, we are ‘down’. When our heads droop it is often from...

Ash Wednesday    Looking within For these first three days, we are going to reflect on how our Team Logo can help us pray. The logo describes three movements for us in our life of faith, facing up – connecting with God (and it is so easy in a busy or anxious life to...

'Let us Pray' -  Lent 2021 - Turton Moorland Team Five weeks praying in different ways – learning new ways to pray – putting our roots down. Join us on a shared adventure as individuals, as families as the church family A daily task or project in prayer and five...

This Lent will be different from previous Lents. We cannot do all the things we would like to do. A balanced spirituality includes Worship Prayer Scripture Communion Care and concern for others Supporting the church Most of these we are used to doing together or with...