Martin Tarr
During Lent the RSCM will be holding Night Prayer services every Wednesday at 8.00pm and they would love you to join them! Every service will be broadcast live on their Facebook page and YouTube channel, and will also be available to listen at your leisure. The 24 February traditional Compline service, with music by Thomas Tallis, is already available.
The liturgy will come from either the RSCM’s Night Prayer or Compline (Traditional language) Common Worship publications and will be on the screen as they go through the service. For those who want to sing along, the choral music used, including the hymn/anthem and the Nunc dimittis for each service is still available to buy as a download or printed, though the rehearsal tracks, performed by St Martin’s Voices, directed by Gabriella Noble, that enabled singers to learn the music in advance of the service have now been removed. [updated 8 Apr 2021]
An idea for a Lenten discipline
Last year one of the resources I used was from Embrace the Middle East, and part of it was that you put 5p in a tub each time you had a drink, remembering those who don’t have clean water.
I’m thinking that, given the focus this year on washing our hands, a way to remember those who don’t have proper washing facilities even in the midst of Covid, could be putting 5p or 10p into a Lent Box each time we wash our hands.
It would be a way to both appreciate how fortunate we are, but also collect some money to give to a charity at the end of Lent.
If you’re not using money much just now – many payments are ‘hands free’ with your card or ‘online’ – then you could have a sheet where you keep a tally, then count up and make the payment to your charity at the end of Lent.
Jan Benvie
As Liz Crumlish says in her introduction to the booklet that we quote from in Take time to reflect: “A colleague posted on social media last year that Lent felt like the Lentiest Lent we’d ever Lented! Somehow, that is even truer this year, a full year and more into a global pandemic.” So you’ll find that we are not alone in suggesting that, instead of planning to give something up as a Lenten spiritual discipline, you should plan to take something up instead. There are lots of good things on offer –
Locally-based studies, at all of which you’ll be made most welcome. Click the links for further details:
- On Mondays at 7:00pm, the Rosyth Ecumenical Lent Study Group
- On Tuesdays at 7:00pm, Jan Benvie leads St Margaret’s/Holy Trinity studies with an environmental bias
- On Thursdays, mostly at 10:30am, Eddie Sykes leads Five Bible Studies for Lent based around a familiar hymn
Other ideas for reading and listening include:
- Living through Lent, a booklet of daily reflections for Lent 2021 by Liz Crumlish that you can download at this link
- The Church of England’s #LiveLent daily reflection emails, for which you can sign up at this link
- Ecumenical daily readings and weekly talks for Lent on John’s Gospel at this link
- CTBI’s “Lent study for these unorthodox and strange times” at this link
- The Journey meditations offered by Taketime
And an action project – if you consider yourself part of the Church of the Future, the Diocese offer a challenge for you to share your ideas for a carbon-neutral church – details and an entry form at this link.
Please email other ideas for Lenten study to webmaster@stmargaretsrosyth.org.uk.
