A Week of Accompanied Prayer
June 25th – July 1st
2006
hosted by
All Saints Church, Maidstone
During Lent we have been meeting at St Philip's to wonder 'Where is God in our life: when we make decisions; when we seek happiness; in suffering, exploring within the stuff of our own daily lives, how we make the journey into the transforming love of God for us and for all people. It has been really helpful to do this together.
How can we hear God speaking to us?
The inspired hymn, "I the Lord of sea and sky" points the way: "I have heard you calling in the night..... I will go Lord, if you lead me......" 'Calling in the night' is a metaphor for the quiet stillness we need if we are to be sensitive to hearing God. It isn't easy to hear when our eyes, ears and minds are bombarded by our frenetic busy lives.
We don't find it easy to hear God's voice: we need help. We are pilgrims, drawn by love and desire for God. Pilgrims don't travel alone - as Chaucer's 'The Canterbury Pilgrims' reminds us: we are a mixed company, at different stages of our spiritual journey.
All this - wondering, listening, companionship, loving desire for God, is enabled by the Weeks of Accompanied Prayer.
You are warmly invited to our WEEK OF ACCOMPANIED PRAYER - an individually guided retreat taken in the midst of every day life. This is for YOU wherever you are on your spiritual journey. No previous experience necessary!
We begin on Sunday 25th of June at 6.30pm in All Saints' Church where you will meet your prayer companion.
During the week we will pray at home in a special way with a passage of scripture, for a thirty minute period each day. In addition, because it is a Week of Accompanied Prayer, you will come once a day to All Saints to talk in confidence to your prayer companion about your experience. Your prayer companion will not pressure you, counsel or instruct you, but will be alongside you and listen to you, to help you discern the action of our loving God within, where he is leading, and to affirm you as the person whom God loves. It is very rare for us to share our prayer experience with someone else and you only share what you are comfortable with. What takes place between you and your companion is absolutely confidential. There is no pressure; Jesus meets us where we are.
The purpose of this week is to deepen our relationship with God, and is for YOU. We can arrange for the housebound to take part: please ask me.
A Tea Room give us a chance to meet each other too, before or after our session in All Saints..
Hospitality
The team of prayer companions will be in the parish for the week, and I shall be very grateful for offers of help with hospitality: provision of a daily meal together for them at 5.00pm, and possibly some accommodation. We will have more details of this nearer the time.
Do ask those who took part in 2002, if they enjoyed the
WEEK OF ACCOMPANIED PRAYER; and join in this one.
Application forms and information will be available in the church, or from me shortly.
