Thinkabout for St Johns Pevensey Road, the 1st Sunday in Lent, February 18th 2024

The Lantern Group meeting on February 5th 2024

The Lantern Group met for the first time on Monday February 5th.

We have laid down a pattern for our meetings, not to follow slavishly but to create a familiar rhythm.

We began with a hot drink and welcome.

Then we went round the group asking each one the simple question, "How are you?" This isn't a vague or general enquiry, but part of our reflection on holding our light steady in turbulent times. How is that going for us?

After that we sang together — singing both draws a group of people together and builds up the spiritual core of each individual. 

So you could feel part of our meeting here online, our family recorded last weekend some of the songs we sang at this first meeting of The Lantern Group. We sang Here is Love; Living Under the Shadow of His Wing; Jesus, Be the Centre; and When Peace Like a River. I've given you links for the ones that are in the public domain. I do have recordings for the others, but I'm not sure the copyright regulations allow me to share them here. If you want to enjoy listening to other people singing them, they are easy to find on YouTube.

Next came our input, which went something along these lines:

After that, we discussed these thoughts and shared how they resonated in our own lives.

Here's a memory-jogger summary sheet to help focus on the main ideas.

When it was time to finish, we paused for a prayer, and then sang a vesper together. At the end we each had a mantra to take away, to use as a bookmark or keep by our bedside, to help focus our thoughts.

The mantras were printed off as small cards, but here's a bigger version. 

The words of our mantra are from the astrologer Pam Gregory.

I hope that even without having the chance to be physically present at our group meeting, this will have given you the assurance of being part of our Lantern Group.

Blessed be.

Introducing The Lantern Group

We're living in turbulent times — you'll have noticed!

For encouragement in holding our light steady day by day, I've put in place a new group meeting at our home.

It's called The Lantern Group, and I introduced it at our church on the last day of 2023. I had a sign-up sheet at the back of church, and afterwards someone who'd signed up asked if I could share what I'd said for people who weren't in church that day — our Mass is always uploaded to YouTube, but something broke on that particular day, so it couldn't be posted in the usual way.

So I made a video of what I'd said, and uploaded it to my own channel, and emailed it to those who were interested but needed to info.

A couple of people who don't live near me at all, but who follow my YouTube channel, spotted the video, and got in touch to say they wanted to be part of The Lantern Group too! 

This led me to conclude it would be helpful to make an electronic component of our meetings. Nothing kills a discussion like recording it (!) so we won't do that, but every time we meet — on the first Monday of each month — if I am leading, there will be a discussion topic with some input to centre our conversation, and a memory-jogger summary sheet. I will be leading every other month, alternating with my daughter Grace (whom you may know as Buzzfloyd from her comments on this blog). 

We (Grace and I) firmly believe that group singing is one of the most soul-strengthening things you can do, so each time we meet we will also include a back of songs.

So, for those of you who would like to be part of the group but live far away, when it's my turn to lead I will post (here on Kindred of the Quiet Way) a video of a Thinkabout from me of whatever was our discussion focus that evening, a memory-jogger summary sheet for you to print off, and one of the songs we had (a link to a YouTube video of that song, but probably not us singing it unless we happen to have one recorded).

Our first meeting is on this coming Monday (it seemed appropriate to begin around Candlemas), so I'll post accordingly on Tuesday. But for now, here's the introductory video explaining all about The Lantern Group and what it's intending to achieve.

Blessed be.