Lenten Reflection Day 7 (Feb 28): FORGIVEN (from Psalm 32).
SONG: Pray for Forgiveness by Alicia Keyes: https://youtu.be/IvdYcpGw9Oo
POEM: Jane Hirshfield: The Weighing (excerpt): The heart’s reasons seen clearly, even the hardest will carry its whip-marks and sadness and must be forgiven.
QUOTE: Veronica Roth: Can I be forgiven for all I’ve done to get here? I want to be. I can. I believe it.
Lenten Reflection Day 6 (Feb 27): TRANSGRESSION (from Psalm 32).
SONG: Transgression by Kodak Black: https://youtu.be/iMy1o0XUWg8
POEM: William Shakespeare: Sonnet 120 (excerpt) … And for that sorrow which I then did feel Needs must I under my transgression bow …
QUOTE: Leo Buscaglia: I exist, I am, I am here, I am becoming, I make my own life and no one else makes it for me. I must face my own shortcomings, mistakes, transgressions. No one can suffer my non-being as I do, but tomorrow is another day, and I must decide to leave my bed and live again. And if I fail, I don’t have the comfort of blaming you or life or God.
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.