Daily devotions through Lent from Place of Springs ministry house in Spain. Read by Miranda Heathcote.

Lent 2024: welcome!

An introduction to the ways poetry helps us to slow down and to see in new ways. Written by Malcolm Guite and read by Miranda Heathcote.

Lent 2024: 12 February

Lent reading for Shrove Tuesday, with a poem by Seamus Heaney, Station Island XI, and reflections by Malcolm Guite.

Lent 2024: 13 February

A poem for Ash Wednesday by Malcolm Guite, read by Miranda Heathcote.

Lent 2024: 14 February

Today’s reading by Miranda includes a poem and reflection by Malcolm Guite. Listen to the end for a process question.

Lent 2024: 15 February

All the Kingdoms of the World is a poem by Malcolm Guite, read by Miranda along with reflections. Our process question for today: Where in my life do I notice this drawing to success on the world’s terms, and what might Jesus be inviting me to instead?

Lent 2024: 16 February

Today’s poem is On the Pinnacle by Malcolm Guite. His poem and reflections prompted this process question: Where in my life am I tempted to want to be seen by others? Where in my life am I aware of a sense of pride in my own spiritual or religious ‘achievement?’ What might God be saying to me about this?

Lent 2024: 17 February

For the first Sunday of lent we read The Bright Field by R.S. Thomas, with reflections by Malcolm Guite. Miranda adds this reflection question: What is it that catches your attention today, that offers you a glimpse of heaven, a sense of hope or fresh vision of our shared future?

Lent 2024: Sunday 18 February

Today’s reading includes a segment from John Donne’s Satire III. You might reflect on the following questions: How do you feel about doubt? What role has doubt - what Donne calls serious enquiry - played in leading you to deeper truths? To what extent do you resist your own wrestlings and questions? To what extent are you able to make space for them as a grace that moves you deeper into truth?

Lent 2024: 20 February

Today’s poem is thought to have been written by Sir Walter Raleigh on the eve of his execution. Miranda reads this and Malcolm Guite’s reflection, and offers this question for you to consider: How would it be for you today to come to Jesus as the One who ‘pleads your cause’ where you have experienced being misunderstood or misrepresented in your life? How might Jesus come alongside you in that experience?

Lent 2024: 21 February

Today’s poem is a contemporary one by American poet Holly Ordway. Miranda adds this process question: If it is true that God can only meet us where we are - not where we have been or where we’d like to be - where is that for you, today? How might you articulate and ‘own’ that reality, in order to be met by God exactly where you are today?

Lent 2024: 22 February

Today’s poem is by Seamus Heaney, ‘Postscript.’ The process question from Miranda is: What have you been ‘conducting?’ In what way have you been aware of yourself as a conductor of that which is good, and of that which is not so good? As you reflect on that, what sort of invitation from God comes to you? And how might you want to respond?

Lent 2024: Sunday 25 February

Today’s poem is ‘Prayer’ by George Herbert. Miranda offers this as a process question: Which one of these descriptions of prayer catches your attention today? How would you describe your experience of prayer in this season? How has this changed over time?

Lent 2024: 26 February

Today’s is a contemporary poem by Kelly Belmonte called ‘How I Talk to God.’ Miranda offers this as a process question: As you go through your day, how might you open yourself to the experience of being with God in ‘the interruptions and mental preoccupations’ in a way that feels like prayer for you?

Lent 2024: 29 February

Today S.T. Coleridge describes The Pains of Sleep in his poem by that name. We acknowledge together the reality of broken nights during hard times, and explore this process question: What has been your experience of prayer at times of anguish, suffering or grief? How has prayer changed for you at such times? And in what ways might you open to God’s love and experience your belovedness at times of loss or inner wrestling?

Lent 2024: 1 March

John Donne’s poem, Batter my Heart uses lots of strong language in relating to God. You might like to process how you find yourself responding to the strong verbs and metaphors of Donne’s poem? In what ways do you relate to or resist the strong agency of God in your own life, and what has been your experience of that?

Lent 2024: 2 March

Today brings us a segment of Dante’s Divine Comedy, titled Meeting Virgil. After reading Malcolm Guite’s reflections, Miranda asks two process questions: 1. Which authors have been your teachers and close companions, and why?
2. Where in your life have you experienced ‘the way down as the way up?’ In what way did that descent bring you to a deeper experience of homecoming, to God and your true self?

Lent 2024: Monday 4 March

Today Malcolm Guite offers one of his own poems, Through the Gate. Miranda invites you to consider the places in your own life that have seemed hopeless or dark; how is it for you to open to the light of Christ in those places today? Perhaps you might take a walk today and simply notice the light and the shadows … how does the Holy Spirit draw your attention to external and internal light and shadow?

Lent 2024: Tuesday 5 March

Today’s reading is an extract from Dante’s Divine Comedy titled ‘Towards a Shining World.’ Following Malcolm Guite’s reflections, Miranda offers this process question: Through what experiences in life have you discovered the dynamic that ‘the way down is the way up?’ What was accomplished in you through this experience or season? And what piece of writing or poetry do you return to because you find it cleanses and renews your vision?

Lent 2024: Wednesday 6 March

A poem by Malcolm Guite today: De Magistro. Miranda encourages us to consider what this poem stir in you as a learner, or as a teacher. How would you gather up the thoughts provoked by this poem and turn them into a prayer?

Lent 2024: Thursday 7 March

With John Davies poem, ‘Why is my parents send me to the schools?’ Miranda offers reflection questions: To what extent does it resonate with you that ‘what we need is the kind of self-knowledge that will lead us to understand that we are not self-made, that will put ourselves and our world into better perspective?’ Where in your life do you notice an experience that created opportunities for that kind of self-knowledge? How have you responded to those opportunities? Where have you been resistant to the ‘fright’ of knowing yourself and where have you opened to the opportunity to grow through the help of Holy Spirit?

Lent 2024: Monday 11 March

Along with John Davies’ poem, The light which makes the light which makes the day, Miranda invites you to place yourself in a spot of sunshine today and consider Jesus, the bright morning star’ and ‘rising sun.’ In what way in his light striking you to illuminate your season, your true self, and the ways in which God is at work in you to form you in the image of Jesus?

Lent 2024: Wednesday 13 March

Our final extract from John Davies this week is titled ‘Death as birth.’ Miranda offers these prompts for processing: How does this poem, with its meditation on death as birth, land with you, given your own experience of or fears of losing loved ones to death? Consider your feelings towards your own mortality, the mortality of those you love and perhaps ponder the ‘what next’ into which death births us.

Lent 2024: Thursday 14 March

This extract from Alfred Tennyson, titled ‘Faith in honest doubt’ makes space for us to be real about our doubts and questions. Miranda invites the listener to reflect on those times in your life when you have experienced doubt or darkness, times that threw the goodness of God into question. Consider the ways in which, having passed through those times, you have perhaps come to a greater stability in your faith in God’s goodness. How have you found God, not only in the light but also in the dark, and in what ways has this strengthened your faith?

Lent 2024: Friday 15 March

Today’s poem is The Agony by George Herbert. Next time you have the opportunity to take communion, perhaps it could be an occasion to enter contemplatively into the depths of what this poem invites us to. Whether you participate in communion with your church community next Sunday, or feel the freedom to share in the sacrament more informally before then, you might do so with the final lines of the poem in mind: ‘Love is that liquor sweet and most divine / Which my God feels as blood, but I as wine.’

Lent 2024: Tuesday 19 March

Today’s reading is of G.M. Hopkins’ well-known poem, God’s Grandeur. You might like to process what has been your personal experience of feeling crushed? How might you be invited to perceive that as a place of brightness in some way; a place where the brightness, presence and redeeming beauty of God is revealed? Equally you might like to take a photo of a place in creation where you notice today the ‘shining from shook foil’ or an expression of the ‘charge of God’s grandeur.’

Lent 2024: Friday 22 March

You might sit a while with the expressions of love described in this poem, Love’s as warm as tears by C.S. Lewis. Ponder the ways you have experienced love, both human and divine. How has God made God’s love known to you, including through people? Where do you resonate with these descriptions of love and where not?

Lent 2024: Saturday 23 March

In his sonnet ‘Palm Sunday’ Malcolm Guite lets the outer story of Palm Sunday pose some questions for your inner life. Perhaps you have some space today, in your ‘inner Bethany,’ to sit with those questions that most speak to you.

Lent 2024: Palm Sunday, 24 March

Following Malcolm Guite’s sonnet called Jesus Weeps, and his reflection, could you sit with those things that cause both compassion and ‘compassion fatigue’ in you? Allow yourself to be seen by Jesus in those places where you feel numb, impotent, overwhelmed. How might Jesus be with you in your experience of being in the world today?

Lent 2024: Monday 25 March

Malcolm Guite’s poem ‘Cleansing the temple’ is followed by his own reflection. Then Miranda asks, how do you most need Jesus to come to you today? As you listen to the reflection, what strikes you as being most pertinent for you? Is that you need a renewal of innocence and that which is child-like? Is it that you need the boldness to ask the questions with which you are wrestling? Is it that you need courage to face down that which is unjust? Where in you do you feel a longing for the removal of the veil between you and God to be experienced, so that you commune ‘face to face?’

Lent 2024: Tuesday 26 March

After listening to Malcolm Guite’s poem, ‘Anointing at Bethany,’ you might reflect on what has been your experience of love and loss (grief, suffering) as a meeting place, the centre of all things? What emerges for you as you enter into the story of John 12, 1-8 through imaginative meditation, with all of your senses?

Lent 2024: Wednesday 27 March

Malcolm Guite offers us his poem for this day, Maundy Thursday. It prompts us to ask how you find yourself today, in the tension between sharing in the divine nature of Jesus, and often experiencing the confusion and ambiguity of daily life? What might the incarnation of Jesus mean for you, or offer to you in this place?

Lent 2024: Maundy Thursday 28 March

Our reading for Good Friday is Malcolm Guite’s XII in a series of XIV sonnets marking the stations of the cross. This one is titled Jesus dies on the cross. Today’s suggestion for reflection is more of a practice than a question - an invitation to use breath prayer  as a way of meditating on Christ’s death on the cross. On the inbreath, consider that all of life is received as gift from God; on the outbreath, releasing all that is burdensome and in need of redemption. How is this prayer experience for you?

Lent 2024: Good Friday 29 March

Today we read sonnets XIII and XIV from Malcolm Guite’s Stations of the Cross series: Jesus’ body is taken down from the cross, and Jesus is laid in the tomb. Perhaps you might take a moment today to be with the silence of this in-between day. To what extent do you experience the silence as empty? And to what extent as expectant? How might you encounter Jesus in this silent place between his dying and his resurrection?

Lent 2024: Holy Saturday 30 March

Today’s poem is Easter, by George Herbert. As you look back on the pilgrimage of your life - and on this pilgrimage through Lent and Easter - where do you see hints of the glory of this resurrection day? Perhaps you also recognise places in your life’s path where you still long for resurrection life, or redemption. How might you gather up that longing as prayer today?

Lent 2024: Resurrection Sunday

Creating spaces for people to meet with God, so that their valleys might become a place of springs.

Place of Springs

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