O beautiful and wounded Creation, we confess we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed…
O God of love and unity, we lament the many ways we find ourselves separated from others, from ourselves, and from you. We’ve allowed our beliefs, our politics, our biases, and our fears to rip into our relationships, into our nation, into our families, and into all of Creation…
We are many and we are one. We are Earth Community, the Web of Life. But we have forgotten that, or denied it, or never really knew it. And we feel so alone in the dark, while Earth is teeming with life and the call to connection. And so, we consume, plunder and destroy. We set ourselves apart from and over and above the rest of God’s children, sometimes without even realizing it…
Lent can be a real buzz-kill! It’s full of grief, lament, confession, and guilt. Well, that’s appropriate. We have a lot to lament and to confess, and we’re all guilty of something! But there’s more to Lent than lamentation and despair. We are a people of life and of hope and of trying again. And we are held in the arms of a loving Creator, and are part of the entire web of life that we call Earth Community. We are not alone.
And because we are not alone, because we have that community called Church, because we are held in the arms of Love, we can have the courage to sit with the pain – our own pain, and the world’s pain. We can have the courage to be outraged even as we’re peacemakers. We can have the courage to love, to demand and work for justice, to call out the status quo, to seek transformation of ourselves, our communities, our world.
How can we as individuals, and even as a church, make any difference?
Begin by remembering that you are held in the arms of Love always.
And then you become the arms of love for another, who becomes the arms of love for
yet another, and another.
And on it goes.
In your work, your prayers, your tears and your laughter, on it goes.
In your everyday lives, on it goes.
As you open your heart to Creation’s devastation and work to restore our world, you
become the arms of love for earth, air, sky, water, plant, animal, mineral.
And on it goes.
These resources (some of which are excerpted in this blog) work to find the balance that is Lent, the balance between despair and hope, confession, lament, grief, and celebration, affirmation, joy. There are prayers of various sorts to choose from, some readings for reflections, songs, and other materials. The first section deals with the first Sunday in Lent, and sets the tone for some of the resources in the section called “Resources to Use Throughout Lent.”
The full document is found in PDF format.
Thank you for addressing the universal concerns of every conscious human being. Great hope and healing might arise from practicing these principles of Lent.