Lent
Cultivating and Letting Go
A Lenten theme that has stayed with me for many years comes from 2019: Cultivating and Letting Go. I was drawn to it because it felt different from the usual Lenten emphasis on either giving something up or taking something on.
Cultivate (verb): to prepare and use for the raising of crops; to foster growth; to improve by labor, care, or study; to refine; to further; to encourage.
Rather than adopting a brand-new discipline, this theme invites us to cultivate something already present in our lives and give it more intentional attention. We might foster compassion as we engage the people we encounter each day. We could lean into grace when things do not go our way or when frustration rises. We might even encourage the repair of a broken relationship.
Letting go does not really require a dictionary definition. What are the things that hold us too tightly and need to be released? Our assumptions about people who are different from us? Our relationship to our resources? Where we place our security?
That year, we offered a prayer practice using origami cranes and balls. I still love the imagery. The crane represents what we are letting go, something released and allowed to fly away. The ball represents what we are cultivating, like a seed formed and ready to be planted.
Below you will find the words for the prayer station we offered, along with instructions for folding an origami crane and an origami ball.
Take some time to pray through these words, noticing what you might be called to cultivate and what you might be invited to let go. You might choose to spend the first three weeks of Lent focusing on cultivating, and the final three weeks focusing on letting go. There is no right or wrong way to engage this prayer practice.
Cultivating and Letting Go
‘Cultivating’ causes us think about the ways we are intricately tied to creation and how just as the land needs tending to, so do our hearts, minds, and spirits. Cultivating and letting go points to the messiness of self-reflection, the need for difficult work in our lives to bring about peace and restoration. The inner and outer work of cultivation leads us to letting go. It leads us to a place where we can loosen our grip on the things that keep us separated from God and one another, and welcome the resurrected life we were meant to live.
Think of the work of the gardener. Cultivating requires effort, energy, intention, care. At the same time, the gardener teaches us that cultivating also necessitates patience, waiting, relinquishing control, letting go. As we have journeyed through Lent, ponder what God is cultivating in and through you, and also what you are letting go of to allow space for something new to grow.
On the origami paper, write a word or two about what you might let go and fold it into a crane.
On the origami paper, write a word or two about what you might cultivate in your life and fold it into a ball.
As always, go make peace, my friends.
Pastor Leanne
Community Presbyterian Church
32202 Del Obispo
San Juan Capistrano. CA 92675
949-493-1502
info@sjcpres.org