This Lenten journey invites us into forty days of listening, reflecting, and reimagining the earth we inhabit—a season to look again, to breathe again, to attend to the fragile beauty and wounded places of our common life. It is a journey of penance that does not bow our heads in shame but gently turns us towards truth; a pilgrimage of peace that steadies our breath; and a path of reconciliation where, like those shifting colours on the water, what is broken begins—almost imperceptibly—to heal.
Entering Lent can feel a little like stepping into the quiet, oval rooms of the Orangerie in Paris, home to many of Monet’s landscape paintings of Water Lilies. After the First World War, the artist donated these monumental canvases to the French state as a gift of peace—an immersive refuge where a wounded nation might find healing and stillness. In the paintings there are no horizons, no sky, no obvious perspective. And yet the longer we stand looking at them, the more the world opens. We see, understand, and appreciate what the artist is trying to express about the world. What first seems dark in the paintings, with deeper looking begins to reveal shafts of colour; a tiny fleck becomes a spark of hope. The lilies surrender their prominence, reminding us that nothing truly stands alone. Around the pond at Giverny, the weeping willows lean towards the water—earth touching heaven—their gentle ripples showing how even our smallest act can change the world bringing peace and reconciliation.
Lent asks us to adopt that same posture: patient looking, deep listening to people and theologians across the globe, honest attending, a willingness to see what is really there. These days of penance, peace, and reconciliation invite us to notice where light still breaks in, where healing is possible, where creation itself waits for our renewed care.
May these reflections help us enter the stillness, listen deeply, and discover again the God who holds all things with quiet, persistent love.
Sian Yates, Brother Sam, Brother Micael, Pat Mossap, Andrew Yates
