Quiet Days, Retreats & PilgrimagesWhatever pace at which we live our lives, we need, both individually and collectively, to reflect and re-focus on how we are living them. These times and activities are crucial opportunities to be shaped for God’s service.
Every month we publish our Calendar of prayer, with each day offering an opportunity to pray with a particular part of our local and global community. Each benefice is invited to contribute their prayer requests, stories and photos to the Calendar, helping us to build up our diocesan community of prayer through connection with one another and God.
The Changing Lives Prayer Network publishes seasonal prayers four times a year, featuring beautiful artwork by Primrose Northrup. You are invited to pray these seasonal prayers, in unity with one another, across our diocese.
A ‘novena’ is a nine-day period of prayer that traditionally falls between Ascension (when Jesus physically departed earth for heaven) and Pentecost (when the first disciples were gifted with the presence of the Holy Spirit. Every year, we mark this time by using a booklet of scripture, prayers and artwork for each day of the Novena. Over the years, this booklet has become a key resource for the worldwide Church as we use this time to pray for our friends and family to come to know Jesus – a global wave of prayer known as Thy Kingdom Come.
Prayer for others has been a central part of what Christians do since the very beginning – it is an integral part of the call to love our neighbour. As Rowan Williams says, prayer ‘injects’ into a broken and chaotic world something that will heal it and pull it together. Prayer transforms us as individuals, but it is also a powerful agent for healing and change in our communities and world as it engages us with God’s creative and compassionate work.
What helps people to pray? What might help you to be more confident in how you pray? This section of our website offers information and resources to explore prayer and spirituality from a variety of traditions.
The Pathways to Prayer Pack is a resource to introduce, support and encourage different ways of praying. The resource is friendly and flexible and offers a selection of ways of praying that people have found helpful in deepening their conversations and relationship with God.
Many of our church schools are discovering the positive impact of prayer stations – where children and young people perform an action that helps them to focus on aspects of their own spirituality and the mystery of God. It could be as simple as a jar with water and glitter: watching the stirred glitter settle is a wonderful quietening tool, or an outside labyrinth: following the path to the centre allows the participant to consider their journey along the way.
A pilgrimage is a wonderful way to pray and journey with God - both physically and spiritually.
