Genesis 3: The Tree in the Middle of the Garden

Dear Friends,

Lenten greetings.

When choosing which passages to work with in these meditations, I tend to lean towards the most positive, hopeful and encouraging bits of the Bible that I can find.

In the midst of all that we struggle with, I feel that we primarily need hope and love and peace spoken over us. I also have a wild faith in the power of Love to transform us, and in Christ’s beautiful invitation to intimacy and union. Bringing you into this invitation is my primary desire in making these meditations.

Lent, however, is a good time to gaze at what is broken and difficult. Jesus did that himself, and, in my experience, offers a presence and a friendship to stand beside us, and gaze with us, at the sticky, painful bits of our inner and outer worlds. 

With that in mind, we will be looking at brokenness – all that is difficult and wearying – in our meditations over the next few weeks, noticing how it is handled throughout Biblical texts. 

May these stories continue to help you make sense of your own story, and may this practice of ‘beholding the pain’ in a safe context bear gifts of life for you. Do take care of yourself, don’t address more than you are ready to, and turn to safe people for support when you need it.

Blessings, always, as you pray.

Lissy

Contemplative at Home offers guided meditative prayer – space to slow down and listen to the truth that is being born out of God’s love for you today – drawing on Ignatian spirituality and at times, Lectio Divina.

Sign up for Lissy’s monthly newsletter “The Contemplative Window” or join our Facebook group here

Support the show by sharing it with a friend, rating it on your preferred podcast platform, or by becoming a member for just a few $ or £ per month. Thank you so much!

All music by Pete Hatch.

Psalm 117: meditation

A gentle practice to rest in God’s love, using a combination of lectio divina and centering prayer. 

Blessings as you pray.

Lissy

Contemplative at Home offers guided meditative prayer – space to slow down and listen to the truth that is being born out of God’s love for you today – drawing on Ignatian spirituality and at times, Lectio Divina.

Sign up for Lissy’s monthly newsletter “The Contemplative Window” or join our Facebook group here

Support the show by sharing it with a friend, rating it on your preferred podcast platform, or by becoming a member for just a few $ or £ per month. Thank you so much!

All music by Pete Hatch.

Beloved: Lectio Divina 1 John 4:12-21

It is no wonder the the community founded by John, “the one whom Jesus loved” (John 13:23), would go on teach at length about the profound love of God.

John is often referred to as the beloved disciple.

I can’t help but wonder how much of this belovedness, this identity as the beloved, is a function of John’s capacity and willingness to recieve the Love that was offered to him.

How might you be invited to increase your capacity to recieve love?

The writer of 1 John suggests that God is Love, that to love another is to know God and that when we love, God dwells within us. (v 7, v16)

What do you love? Who do you love? How do you love? Can you sense the presence of God humming within that love?

Blessings as you pray.

I John 4 verses 12, 18-21

12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. 18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.21 And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.

Contemplative at Home offers guided meditative prayer – space to slow down and listen to the truth that is being born out of God’s love for you today – drawing on Ignatian spirituality and at times, Lectio Divina.

Sign up for Lissy’s monthly newsletter “The Contemplative Window” or join our Facebook group here

Support the show by sharing it with a friend, rating it on your preferred podcast platform, or by becoming a member for just a few $ or £ per month. Thank you so much!

All music by Pete Hatch.

Life to the Full – Lectio Divina John 10

A meditation with John 10

I have come that you might have life to the full.

Blessings as you pray 🙏🏽💙☺️

Lissy

Contemplative at Home offers guided meditative prayer – space to slow down and listen to the truth that is being born out of God’s love for you today – drawing on Ignatian spirituality and at times, Lectio Divina.

Sign up for Lissy’s weekly newsletter “The Contemplative Window” or join our Facebook group here

Support the show by sharing it with a friend, rating it on your preferred podcast platform, or by becoming a member for just a few $ or £ per month. Thank you so much!

All music by Pete Hatch.

Follow Me – A Guided Meditation

In the spirit of the imaginative contemplation, I invite you into this guided meditation based on Matthew 4:18-20.

May you see Jesus in a slightly new way here.

Blessings as you pray.

Lissy

Contemplative at Home offers guided meditative prayer – space to slow down and listen to the truth that is being born out of God’s love for you today – drawing on Ignatian spirituality and at times, Lectio Divina.

Sign up for Lissy’s weekly newsletter “The Contemplative Window” or join our Facebook group here

Support the show by sharing it with a friend, rating it on your preferred podcast platform, or by becoming a member for just a few $ or £ per month. Thank you so much!

All music by Pete Hatch.

Lent Retreat in Daily Life : The Spiritual Exercises

21 February to 18 April 2023

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Hey Friends –

You may be familiar with the Retreat in Daily Life concept. If not, the idea is that rather than going away for a length of time on retreat, you carve out time in the ordinary patterns of your daily life, making a little extra space for prayer over a certain number of weeks. You also generally meet once per week with a spiritual companion/spiritual director during the retreat, to discuss what is coming up in your prayer life and how it is shaping you.

You may or may not know that Contemplative at Home meditations were actually conceived of while I was leading a group of friends through a retreat in daily life with the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola, back in 2015. I wanted to help my friends imagine how slowly they might savour the text in their prayer spaces, so I started recording the readings into my phone at meditation pace. An idea was sparked, and a few months later, the very first Contemplative at Home meditations were online.

The Spiritual Exercises are a series of prayers and meditations written by Ignatius of Loyola in the 16th century, as he was founding the Jesuit order. Traditionally the retreat is made over 30 days of silence, but it can also be engaged with in ordinary time. The retreat invites you to grapple with who you are and who God is, what God’s work in the world is like and how you are invited to participate in that work. To pray through the Exercises is a deepening prayer experience.

I undertook the Spiritual Exercises a few years ago with my own spiritual director, with a wonderful translation of them written by an American Jesuit, Kevin O’Brien. Kevin O’Brien’s translation has also been condensed into a shorter 8-week retreat which sits beautifully in Lent and the week after Easter. This is the course I ran with my friends back in 2015.

This year I am inviting you to consider engaging in this course, this Retreat in Daily Life with me. The material is all freely available from the folks over at Loyola Press, and you are welcome to use it in your own time, in any way you wish.

If you’d like the camaraderie and accountability of a few fellow pilgrims, and the idea of praying with the Exercises through Lent appeals to you, you might consider joining me and a few others on this retreat. We will meet each Tuesday on Zoom to share the graces and challenges with one another, in small group spiritual direction.

If you’d like to join us, you’ll need to be prepared to set aside 30-40 minutes each day for prayer between 21 February and 18 April, and be ready to share and listen respectfully and with an open heart on our weekly Zoom calls.

If you do decide to join us, I can say with certainty that Lent 2023 will be one you always remember.

Do pray about whether this might be the right thing for you this year, and if you’d like to join in along with us, you can find more information over here about how to sign up and the fee I am asking for the group spiritual direction sessions.

If you have any questions please feel free to get in touch!

Looking forward to sharing this journey with you.

Warmly

Lissy

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Meditation: The Gifts of Winter

Dear Friends,

Today a meditation with the gifts of winter. In this guided meditation, you will imagine yourself in a winter scene, listening to the wintry landscape as it teaches you about how to live in the cold and fallow seasons.

Job knew that the natural world understood the fundamental truth of things, understood who God is and how God works

Job: 12:7 But ask the animals, and they will teach you,
    or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you;
or speak to the earth, and it will teach you,
    or let the fish in the sea inform you.
Which of all these does not know
    that the hand of the Lord has done this?

And John Scotus Eriugena, the medieval theologian and celitc Christian saw all of creation as sacred text.

So today we ask, together with contemplatives down the ages, what might the winter of January have to teach me?

As always, if you don’t feel safe in a meditation, do bring your attention out of that space and return to the breath, or something else that feels calm and loving.

Blessings, dear ones.

L

Contemplative at Home offers guided meditative prayer – space to slow down and listen to the truth that is being born out of God’s love for you today – drawing on Ignatian spirituality and at times, Lectio Divina.

Sign up for Lissy’s weekly newsletter “The Contemplative Window” or join our Facebook group here

Love these meditations? Please support the show by sharing it with a friend, rating it on your preferred podcast platform, or by becoming a member for just a few $ or £ per month. Thank you so much!

All music by Pete Hatch.

Baptism: A Meditation for Beginning

In this 18 minute meditation, you are invited to remember the baptism of Jesus, and to explore where you are at just now, how you stand on the brink of something new and possible, and how you might like to open yourself to the Spirit of God at this juncture. You may want to use this meditation to pray about the next few months, or the next year.

No matter who we are, or where we are headed, we all need to hear the words “you are my precious one. You are beloved.” 

If you aren’t familiar with Jan Richardson’s poem Beloved is Where we Begin, I commend it to you.

The text in this meditation is from Matthew 3:13-17, NIV.

Blessings, always, as you pray. 

Contemplative at Home offers guided meditative prayer – space to slow down and listen to the truth that is being born out of God’s love for you today – drawing on Ignatian spirituality and at times, Lectio Divina.

Sign up for Lissy’s newsletter “The Contemplative Window” or join our Facebook group here

You can support the show by sharing it with a friend, rating it on your preferred podcast platform, making a one-off donation or becoming a member. Thank you so much!

All music by Pete Hatch

PS There are a few minutes of silence at the end of this, please forgive! Episode is 17 mins.

Epiphany: Guiding Star Meditation

This is a 20-minute meditation with the magi, who studied the stars, and followed a star whose rising signified the birth of the King of the Jews. 

This mindful meditation gives you space to prayerfully reflect on Matthew 2:1-3 & 7-12, the visit of the magi, and to consider what insights the account may have for you. I find this a particularly helpful new year meditation, though it is by no means specific to a particular time of year.

We don’t know that the bearers of gold, frankinsense and myrrh were kings, or how many of them there there were. What we do know is that they brought three gifts, that they were astrologers, likely Zoroastrian, and that they came from the east.

I am reminded in my annual reading of Elizabeth Goudge’s children’s book I Saw Three Ships, that gold, frankincense and myrrh may represent wealth, worship and death, three profound gifts we may offer to the Giver of all.

Blessings on you.

Contemplative at Home offers guided meditative prayer – space to slow down and listen to the truth that is being born out of God’s love for you today – drawing on Ignatian spirituality and at times, Lectio Divina.

Sign up for Lissy’s newsletter “The Contemplative Window” or join our Facebook group here

You can support the show by sharing it with a friend, rating it on your preferred podcast platform, making a one-off donation or becoming a member. Thank you so much!

All music by Pete Hatch

Advent Four: The Wolf and the Lamb (Peace)

A meditation for the fourth week of Advent, with the prophecies of Isaiah 11.

Blessings as you pray.

Contemplative at Home offers guided meditative prayer – space to slow down and listen to the truth that is being born out of God’s love for you today – drawing on Ignatian spirituality and at times, Lectio Divina.

Sign up for Lissy’s newsletter “The Contemplative Window” or join our Facebook group here

You can support the show by sharing it with a friend, rating it on your preferred podcast platform, making a one-off donation or becoming a member. Thank you so much!

All music by Pete Hatch