St Andrew’s was doubly enriched during Lent this year. Andrea led us on Thursday mornings after the said Eucharist in a Lenten study based on “Let Me Go There: the Spirit of Lent”, by Paula Gooder, who is also the author of “The meaning is in the Waiting: the Spirit of Advent”, which we used for our Advent course. In parallel, Robin (Paisley) organised Thursday evening meetings to discuss our experiences in following the Glasgow Ignatian Spirituality Centre (ISC) Lent Retreat, an on-line meditative course in prayer.
The ISC aims to encourage prayer and discernment amongst Christians in Scotland based on the teachings of St Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits. There may be some in the congregation who remember a weekend retreat in Millport many years ago, organised by Kenneth Roach and led by two Franciscan Monks from Alnmouth Monastery. This was about different ways of praying, including the Ignation method. Liz also uses a similar approach in some of her sermons, in which we are asked to meditate on a bible passage, putting ourselves in the scene, participating in it with all of our senses. What do we see, hear, smell, feel? What would we say to Jesus and what would he say to us? This is one way of praying and spending significant time with God other than going through a shopping list of requests. The ISC Lent Retreat was provided with many resources, including suggested bible passages, images and poems to stimulate prayer and meditation. These are all still available on-line.
In summary, the retreat was spiritually intense but also very rewarding and our warm appreciation goes to Robin and Helen who facilitated it throughout. If anyone is interested, the ISC provides many other events, of different types, which are shown on their website at http://www.iscglasgow.co.uk/index.html