This week (27th Jan) brings a new odyssey of spiritual adventure for our little group of crusaders. We tested some ancient paths with our liturgical Taize singing and then we founded some new ones using a piece of material and stones to represent our prayers rather than verbalising them. The experience was at times sacred, at times inspiring and at times also quite challenging and difficult. It’s a strange realisation how the experience of what is  spiritually meaningful is unique for each individual. 

Here is a summay of the mornings journeyings:

Taize singing. We divided into our various voice groups and learnt two songs that are sung at the ecumenical community of Taize in France. Each song has four parts – so the melodies take a while to learn but the words are very easy. The song is repeated over and over. We found that once we had learnt our parts, it was easy to get lost in the beauty of the sounds and nuances of the meaning of the words as we repeated them. It was our first time so we decided that this kind of singing was something we needed to carry through in order to fully enter into it.

“Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom” was the one song.

Nic picked up on this song in a scriptural reading where those words are found. The thief on the cross says it to Jesus before they both die.

Then we spoke about remembrance and forgetting…

We wrote down on a paper the things we remember that we should forget..the things that stand in the way between us and our relationship with God. We symbolically burnt these papers and had a time of open “confession” if you like. It was a meaningful experience. A quote stood out for me:

 ”Oh God consecrate these ashes; let them be for us, not the remnants of destruction but the refinement of our desire to know you…We welcome your refiner’s fire, remove our wood, hay and stubble and bless our efforts to seek after you. In Christ’s name we pray.”

Most of us have done a couple of sessions of Nia and so we played with the idea of movement in worship. Although there is still much to be discovered in this area – we made a dent I think in expressing symbolically through movement the thoughts and intentions that were coming through in the ealier stages of the meeting.   

Finally we prayed for one of our group and instead of using words – we prayed using objects to represent our prayers. This really highlighted for all of us how reliant we are on words to convey intention. The picture of our prayer tied up in material and stones on the floor became quite a poweful picture of the whole group’s prayer for this one member.

For me this session seemed to highlight the importance of symbolism in our expression of prayer, confession and worship.