Day 5 = The 1st Sunday in Lent

Once again, I had two times of prayer - one by attending a beautiful, reflective, meditative wedding blessing for my friends at Corrymeela Retreat Centre, which once had links with my church, I found out recently! And time to read a book, and reflect on what the author is saying about her relationship with God, and what I can learn about hers in mine.

I won't go into detail of the wedding blessing; do let me know if you'd like to know more about either Corrymeela or the symbolism used in my friend's blessing, of which there was a lot! But the book I always find is an interesting choice, as I don't always use the Bible as a focus of my prayer time - my childhood self would have been shocked at that!! Instead, I find that we can learn something from the experiences of others who have had similar experiences to the ones we find ourselves in, which complements 'traditional' Bible study very well.

I don't advocate reading fiction as a form of prayer, as it doesn't always work that way, but it can be a useful jumping off point for thinking about our lives and bringing our concerns and joys to God having first been reminded of them by reading about others. In the words of my favourite fictional character from childhood (Psalty the Singing Songbook), we can sings songs till we're blue in the face, but if it's not praise, then it's nothing!

I guess fiction for me can work a bit like the traditional examen prayer (more on that later). It also helps when prayer feels stagnant to help us take a fresh look at things.