Tag: Lent

Proost Through Lent 18

One more poem from the first Proost Poetry collection, ‘Learning to Love’. This one is by Paul Grant, whom I have never met, but love his writing. This one does that wonderful thing of making the ordinary transcendent. Forgive me that it look backwards into the winter, but it is worth the regression.

Prodigal, by Paul Grant

And morning comes in an undertakers coat
A blackbird's bright notes
Tap December's blindness.

The harlequin tablecloth is a map of unrest:
A fagged ashtray piles north
And south's ruby sediment stains a glass,
West is a drained bottle of port,
East keeps vigil over black leather texts.

I am pressed flowers
Between a skim of days
Sick with the pottage of tried and tired happiness.

Outside
A silver bloom
Of glitter frost
Is sharp and hard as holiness.

I climb the back road
To find you in the dark.

Gravestones. Stillness.
Snow underfoot.
The depth of presence 
Revealed
And sovereign silence stirs
In a heart
Hushed by beauty
Born, to bring us home.

Proost Through Lent 17

Today is the first day of Spring. It feels wide open with possibilities, despite all that we know or fear. Above is a picture of our kitchen table, full of sketches and designs for illustrations to to a book that Michaela is working on. I love the mess of it all – in the background is a ceramic bird sculpture she made that had such character that it needed a story…

I looked for a poem that somehow captured what this scene brings to me. This looking is in itself a pleasure—digging deep into the old Proost poetry collections, finding poems like encounters with old friends. It feels like such a mess of possibility and beauty, much like the table above.

In that context, I chose this one, from Talitha.

Lift up a stone, by Talitha Fraser

Lift up a stone and
You will find me there
I am in the hole of
Your doughnut
The spaces between 
The stars
I am down behind the sofa
Cushions with the lint and
Loose change
I can be seen in the raindrops
Sliding down the window pane
Smelled in Johnson's baby shampoo
Heard in the drawer opening
To put away your clothes
In the soft folds of the wrinkles
In the corner of your eye
I am there.

Proost Through Lent 16

And in the dark earth, a flower found itself again, and pushed out into the daylight at the mans feet.

He lay down and looked at this wonder. It held him in the spell of its delicate beauty.

He dreamed again of this new beginning. This new springtime.

Is it now father? Is now our time?

One of the most commonly downloaded resources offered by Proost in the past was Si Smith’s wonderful ’40’, which was made up of 40 deceptively simple and powerful images of Jesus in the desert. Later, I wrote a ‘script’ for using alongside these images, which then became a Proost book.

We had hoped to make this resource available again this lent, but it will now have to wait for next year. This post is a sneak preview.

It was this kind of connection and exchange that I valued most about Proost, and most wanted to revive as we began to think about a new version of Proost. Friendships formed around shared projects and the sense of finding people who are on similar paths.

’40’ will always be special to me. At the time, I was exploring an idea of wilderness spirituality in the Apophatic tradition – all those desert saints who sought emptyness to seek an encounter with the unknowable God. In this way, Jesus in ’40’ is a pilgrim too, wandering in search of connection, feeling this draw out into desert not through certainty but through an almost desperate longing for deeper, for more whole. Jesus in divine via humanity, not inspite of it.

Here is the last image in the series, along with the poetry that accompanied it in the book.

So, the journey continued—back into a world of men—

To all the homes and houses
And the broken-down old shacks
To the Priests and the soldiers
To the slaves and the fat cats

To the athlete and the cripple
To the beggar and the king
To the broken and the dying
And those who have no song to sing

To the place where children squabble
And the old folk gossip in the square
And the singing from the synagogue
Calls the town for prayer

To all this living and this loving
This fecundity of life…

Now is your time, my friends
And mine

Proost Through Lent 15

The Proost revival project is taking place in a very different context to the Proost that was – you don’t need me to tell you this. We have explored some of these differences via our podcast, for example, this one with Dr Katie Cross. Proost #1 was an organisation at the edges of Church, gathering material from activists and people who had the gift of not fitting in. This edge is now much harder to map, particularly as we see a diaspora of people who have left Church- although as Katie points out, the spiritual quest is very much continuing.

There are many voices inside and outside calling for a new evolution of the structures, doctrines and theological contructs of faith. Here at Proost, we want to engage with this process through art. One such voice is John Philip Newell, whose latest book starts like this:

"Search and you will find." - Matthew 7:7

We are living through a time of immense transition as old systems of authority and belief are questioned. A new vision of reality is trying to be born. Earth and humanity need healing. The way we have lived on this planet is unsustainable. And the way our societies are plagued by racism, injustice and violence is wrong. We need change. Religion as we have known it has failed to adequately address the most urgent challenges of humanity, including the threatened plight of Earth. These challenges are not just ecological, and political, and economic. They are also spiritual. That is why there is a quest of soul today for new depths of wisdom to guide us into well-being, both individually and together.
Something new is emerging. We need to listen to the stirrings of the Spirit within us and within the body of Earth, and change. The good news is that our spiritual traditions have changed in the past and can change again. In Christianity, for instance, there was the Great Schism of the eleventh century that reflected the distinctness of East and West in the unfolding life of the church. Or there was the Great Reformation of sixteenth-century Europe that spawned massive protest for change and questioned old hierarchies of domination. Similarly, there was the Great Awakening of eighteenth-century America that gave birth to more personal expressions of faith. Today we are in another era of change, perhaps the most important we have ever faced in the history of our religious inheritance. It can be called the Great Search. We are seeking healing as an Earth community, and we are longing for a new sense of home spiritually. Vast numbers of us have left the four walls of institutional religion. Others are choosing to stay.

We are living in a time of immense transition as old systems of authority and belief are questioned. A new vision of reality is trying to be born. Earth and humanity need healing. The way we have lived on this planet is unsustainable. And the way our societies are plagued by racisim, injustice and violence is wrong. We need change. Religion as we have known it has failed to address the most urgent challenges of humanity, including the threatened plight of earth. These issues are not just ecological, and political, and economic. They are also spiritual.
John Philip Newell

Proost Through Lent 14

Back in the 1980’s, as a young boy, I was told that AIDs was God’s way of punishing Gay people for their gayness. Even though I didn’t believe this to be true even then, Gay people were ‘other’ to me. They belonged to a different world that was ‘dirty’ somehow – or at very least alien and impossible for me to understand.

This was the truth given to me by good religious people. Whilst homophobia is still very much a part of our religious institutions (and elsewhere) things have changed. How did this happen? Wht shifts apparently fixed narrow views? How are people set free?

This might offer us some clues.

I offer this today as our lent meditation as the Proost we are building seeks to engage with our context through spirituality and art, and there is much to learn here about embodyment, about community and about how change which seems impossible takes generational intent.

Let’s keep dancing.

Proost Through Lent 13

Today, we feature another poem from the second Proost poetry collection published in 2018, called ‘Learning to Love’. This one is by Stephen Holmes, and I think goes deep into the heart of what Proost is about, that is, it is a Justice poem. Lent calls us to repentance from our participation in injustice. Let the words wash over you and transform you from within.

Envy, by Stephen Holmes

Don't envy me my faith. It is not
The comfort you concieve. Nor
An opiate, dulling pain. No,
It is a blister caused
By rubbing against
Injustice, Inflamed anew
Each day, raw and wet,
And always, 
Always,
Weeping.

Proost Through Lent 12

“Also in this he shewed me a little thing, the quantity of an hazelnut, in the palm of my hand; and it was as round as a ball. I looked at it with the eye of my understanding, and thought: ‘What is this?’ And it was answered generally thus: ‘It is all that is made.’ I wondered how it might last, for I thought it might suddenly have fallen apart in dust as it was so small. And I was answered in my understanding: ‘It lasts, and ever shall last because God loves it.’ And so everything owes its existence to the love of God.”
Julian of Norwich’s Hazelnut

Julian of Norwich once wrote of a vision in which she saw the whole of creation contained in something as small as a hazelnut. It was fragile, seemingly insignificant, yet it endured—held together entirely by the love of God. This idea, that love sustains all things, is both comforting and challenging. Love is not merely a gentle, pleasant force; it is something deeper, something that transforms and endures.

For today’s Lenten reflection, I invite you to listen to a poem read aloud by Steve Page, Love is Not Nice. His words, delivered with clarity and depth, invite us to consider love in a different light—perhaps as something that moves beyond sentimentality into something truer, more difficult, and more profound.

Proost Through Lent 11

Lent is a season of looking forward, but also of looking back—retracing our steps, remembering where we have been, and the dust from which we come.

On Day 11 of our journey, we pause to time-shift a little, returning towards Ash Wednesday through the words of Sarah Agnew—poet, storyteller, and minister from Australia. Her prayer-poem invites us into the tension of Lent: the fragility of dust, the weight of reflection, and the grace that lingers even in the ashes.

Ash Wednesday reminds us that we are dust, but not just dust. We are held, shaped, and breathed into by a God who calls us deeper. What does it mean to carry that truth through the weeks of Lent? To walk with both sorrow and hope in our hands?

As we continue this Lenten journey, may Sarah’s words offer you space to reflect, to return, and to rest in the sacred mystery of it all.

Proost Through Lent 10

Today, I am sharing a poem by Helen Dean, who describes her poetry as unapologetically evangelical. I would love to speak with her someday about what this means to her—how it shapes her writing, her voice, and her perspective. But in the meantime, I love this poem—its fierce honesty and beauty create a space within me to wonder once again about wilderness—the places of emptiness and encounter, of silence and revelation.

“Trying to Write A Wilderness Triptych (This Is That)”, by Helen Dean

Three waxed leaves hinged together, on topic.
When everything holds together, is held together,
Themed. By Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
A rejoinder to the boy who boasted too much,
Who tried to offer things not his to give.
You’ve lived away longer than you needed?

“They lived in the wilderness for a long time” and
“You did not do it with your own sword and bow”:
“I delivered you”, “I gave you”, I went before you.
All heaven-showered, a total gift of God.
“It is by grace that you have been saved,
Not by works so that no one can boast.”

Treading, threading, testing, tempting,
Thirsting after a touchstone, torch, true
Testimony, some tenderness, to be taken care of.
Those with ears to hear will find treasure trove.
Why not visit the Hard Rock Café on your way out?
There’s precious spring water there for free.

Helen Dean, February 2024

Proost Through Lent 9

Today we announce the first of a new Proost Poetry Podcast stream.

We have been talking about doing this for a while—learning from the format we used for the two advent podcasts. The idea was simple—create a space for poets to have a conversation, allowing the poems to take us deeper. Along the way, we want to make community, to find connection and support each other—to make art that seeks the prophetic edge where justice cries out towards peace.

This podcast stream will be hosted by Chris, Talitha, Ali and Mark, but the first one is by Talitha. Here it is:

We are so grateful for Beth’s words! Do check out her work. Here are a few places to start:

“Wilderness”, by Beth Waldron Anstice

“The Bishop and the President”, by Beth Waldron Anstice

“Women Leaders”, by Beth Waldron Anstice

Finally, the link to the poem that Talitha read is here.