Nine Days of Prayer 2012
Inspiration for the Nine Days of Prayer 2012
When I was first approached by the Canterbury Diocese to consider illustrating their Pocket Prayers, what attracted me most was the one little word which they have chosen for their theme for this year – hospitality. The aim of the pocket prayers is to encourage Christians throughout the diocese in praying, between Ascension and Pentecost, for renewal in our ministries of hospitality.
I completed my training as a spiritual director with the Oxford Diocese some years ago and continue to thank God for the valuable gift of this ministry. One of my favourite books on spiritual direction is Holy Listening by Margaret Guenther. What she wrote about spiritual direction as hospitality has always stayed with me and continued to have a significant impact on my ministry especially in spiritual direction, but also on my career as a social work manager as well as an artist.
We are all travellers and we all get weary and homesick from time to time, and we need the care of a host who can offer a temporary home as a place of rest and refreshment. A host, in the truest and deepest sense, should reflect the abundant hospitality shown by the host at the heavenly banquet. To allow others into our space, physical and spiritual, is a costly ministry. We will begin to see the real needs of those whom Christ described as hungry, thirsty and imprisoned (Matthew 25:31-46), and we will see Christ in them. Over the years of working as a spiritual director, I’m continuing to learn to relinquish my role to the true Host, and the space I prepare for others then becomes holy ground.
Illustrating for the nine prayers, with a core theme of hospitality, somehow feels to be a continuing journey for me. As I reflected on the Bible passages and painted the images, what speaks to me is the continually evolving and inter-changeable roles between us and Christ, as host and guest, as the one who gives and the one who receives, and as the one who blesses and the one who is blessed. As we share in the ministry of hospitality, we welcome and we are welcomed, we care and we are cared for, we seek and we become found, we feed and we are fed, we transform and we become transformed… As we enter into the images, ours are the hands that give as well as the hands that receive. And blessed with the generosity of the Divine giver, we are able to give to others.
When I was first approached by the Canterbury Diocese to consider illustrating their Pocket Prayers, what attracted me most was the one little word which they have chosen for their theme for this year – hospitality. The aim of the pocket prayers is to encourage Christians throughout the diocese in praying, between Ascension and Pentecost, for renewal in our ministries of hospitality.
I completed my training as a spiritual director with the Oxford Diocese some years ago and continue to thank God for the valuable gift of this ministry. One of my favourite books on spiritual direction is Holy Listening by Margaret Guenther. What she wrote about spiritual direction as hospitality has always stayed with me and continued to have a significant impact on my ministry especially in spiritual direction, but also on my career as a social work manager as well as an artist.
We are all travellers and we all get weary and homesick from time to time, and we need the care of a host who can offer a temporary home as a place of rest and refreshment. A host, in the truest and deepest sense, should reflect the abundant hospitality shown by the host at the heavenly banquet. To allow others into our space, physical and spiritual, is a costly ministry. We will begin to see the real needs of those whom Christ described as hungry, thirsty and imprisoned (Matthew 25:31-46), and we will see Christ in them. Over the years of working as a spiritual director, I’m continuing to learn to relinquish my role to the true Host, and the space I prepare for others then becomes holy ground.
Illustrating for the nine prayers, with a core theme of hospitality, somehow feels to be a continuing journey for me. As I reflected on the Bible passages and painted the images, what speaks to me is the continually evolving and inter-changeable roles between us and Christ, as host and guest, as the one who gives and the one who receives, and as the one who blesses and the one who is blessed. As we share in the ministry of hospitality, we welcome and we are welcomed, we care and we are cared for, we seek and we become found, we feed and we are fed, we transform and we become transformed… As we enter into the images, ours are the hands that give as well as the hands that receive. And blessed with the generosity of the Divine giver, we are able to give to others.