Lenten Reflection Day 5 (Feb 26): MERCIFUL (from Joel 2:12-17).
SONG: Mercy by Shawn Mendes: https://youtu.be/KkGVmN68ByU
QUOTE: Maya Angelou: Without courage we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.
POEM: Jose Antonio Rodriguez: Mercy (excerpt) … if you find me here
Erecting the same elements With these meager tools, Wanting even now to give them life, That they may look upon me with mercy. I’ve been a prophet. I’ve been a fool.
Lenten Reflection Day 4 (Feb 25): REND (from Joel 2:12-17).
SONG: Rend Your Heart by MNaria Gilpin: https://youtu.be/srhuEphj9Y0
POEM: HD (Hilda Doolittle): Garden (excerpt). II. O wind, rend open the heat, cut apart the heat, rend it to tatters. Fruit cannot drop through this thick air— fruit cannot fall into heat that presses up and blunts the points of pears and rounds the grapes. Cut the heat— plough through it, turning it on either side of your path.
QUOTE: Charlotte Bronte: “… be still; don’t struggle so like a wild, frantic bird, that is rending its own plumage in its desperation.” “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being, with an independent will; which I now exert to leave you.”
Lenten Reflection Day 3 (Feb 24): FASTING (from Joel 2:12-17).
SONG: Fasting Song by James Ironshell: https://youtu.be/TLcqpegeI5o
POEM: Jorie Graham: Fast (excerpt). Fast or starve. Too much. Or not enough. Or. Nothing else?
QUOTE: Terry Pratchett: Over the centuries, mankind has tried many ways of combating the forces of evil … prayer, fasting, good works and so on.
Lenten Countdown and Calendars with Praying & Fasting Options
Lenten Prayer Calendars
- Praying in Color downloadable calendar pages: https://prayingincolor.com/resources/lent-holy-week
- Downloadable Prayer Files (collection): https://www.zephyrhillblog.com/2014/03/printable-calendars-for-lent/
Environmental/Carbon Fasts:
- Ecofaith Recovery (about Carob Fasts): https://www.ecofaithrecovery.org/carbonfast/
- Climate Stewards USA Carbon Fast guide: https://climatestewardsusa.org/carbon-fast-for-lent/
Lent Devotion Day 1 (Feb 22): ASH (from Isaiah 58: 1-12).
SONG: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CX11yw6YL1w&feature=youtu.be
QUOTE: Cormac McCarthy: All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one’s heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.
POEM: Tahar Ben Jelloun. The Rising of the Ashes [Before] – excerpt: I pace the abyss. I descend. I am suspended. The ashes still smolder. They rise, surround me, then fall again, grey dust that makes my body a sand-filled hourglass.