Digital Meditation Resource
Liturgy
Let us begin our liturgy in prayer as a community. Our response will be highlighted in yellow.
When our vision is clouded by worries When our view is blacked out by fears When we see, feel, touch, and taste
The suffering and confusion all around us
We turn to you, our Wild Mother, In this season of darkness
Have mercy on us Oh Lord,
We who suffer, we who grieve
Let your holy goodness bring light
To all of the dark places
Let your cool water find all the cracks. Tend to our broken hearts,
And bring hope to the hopeless
We turn to you, our Wild Father, In this season of darkness
Use even the darkness
To bring us back to you
Show us the grace to love more boldly Remembering that you created us
Not just for the next life,
But for this one as well
In the name of God, our Wild Parent Jesus, the suffering child
And the often invisible Spirit,
Amen
(Vox Prayer Team)
Scripture Reading
We invite you to hear from the book of 2 Corinthians 6:1-10
1 As we work together with him, we entreat you also not to accept the grace of God in vain. 2 For he says, “At an acceptable time I have listened to you, and on a day of salvation I have helped you.” Look, now is the acceptable time; look, now is the day of salvation! 3 We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, 4 but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: in great endurance, afflictions, hardships, calamities, 5 beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; 6 in purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, 7 truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; 8 in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors and yet are true, 9 as unknown and yet are well known, as dying and look—we are alive, as punished and yet not killed, 10 as sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making many rich, as having nothing and yet possessing everything.
The Word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God!
The grass withers and the flower fades,
but the Word of the Lord endures forever. Amen.
Ash Wednesday Liturgy
Reflection
We are God’s co-workers, not the Most High’s minions nor the Almighty’s underlings. We participate in God’s salvific liberation with a posture of “power with” rather than “power over.” How might you, as a Divine co-laborer, reflect this participatory power this lent?
What might this Divine co-laborer relationship be asking of us? What might it cost us in this season?
We are invited here to participate in work in all states of being alongside our divine partner. This work can be joyful and strenuous. What might that consistent labor look like for you in this season? What emotions does this bring up in you?
Where are the glimpses of hope that we are noticing that are emerging alongside the seasons of loss and grief? How are we invited to hold both of those simultaneously in tension with each other?
Benediction
Oh Lord, relinquish our lingering claim to bitterness And instead submit our hearts To the work of sorrow,
So that in your hands
These hollowed spaces of
Love and pain and memory Would become hallowed spaces
Holy spaces over which
Your Spirit hovers and broods Crafting in us a greater compassion And singing new hopes to life
Remain in me Oh Maker Remain in me Oh Christ Remain in me Oh Spirit
Amen
(adapted from Every Moment Holy)
[Photo by Denise Bossarte]