Mercy and Compassion from Pre- Lent to Pascha

The theme for us this season is Mercy and compassion. Our aim is to cultivate an practice of using the Jesus prayer and cultivating "Prayer of the Heart" in ourselves in our children. we hope to undergo a re-reading of the term mercy and learn to experience it in an eastern way, where the term mercy, comes from the same root word in Greek as oil. Oil has traditionally been used for all sorts of healing and healthful outcomes and it is in this way that we hope to learn to understand mercy, as something offering us healing and health.

This ancient prayer is "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, Have mercy on me."

Each week we will practice saying the prayer on the beads we make as our centering work.

10am: get together and have a play

10:30: Morning Tea

11: 00: Gather around our prayer mat with incense, and candle. And start with opening rhyme:

"Hear in the earth, here is the sky,

here are my friends and her and I.

God is all around, Christ is the way,

together we sing, together we pray."

We will follow this with 30 of the the Jesus prayer

And then some blessing/ thanksgiving prayers

We will then have our story, do our activity

12:00: Lunch

The outline for the seasons is:

2nd Feb:

Story: The Good Samaritan

Activity: Making a massage oil and having a massage circle or train with the blends we make.

9th March:

Liturgical Season: Lent

Story: St Benedict

Activity: Make a Lenten Spiral Garden in a dish of earth, with a stone to mark the count into Holy Week. Perhaps use different coloured stones or objects to mark days within Lent. Culminate it in a cross in the centre.

16th March:

Season: Autumn Equinox, Lent, Earth Element

Story: The Harvest story

Activity: Harvest Related or Iranian New Year?

23rd March:

Liturgical Time: The Annunciation to Mary, Lent

Story: The Annunciation

Activity: Make clay thrones like Mary's womb and our hearts to receive Jesus upon.

30th March:

Liturgical Time: St John Climacus, Lent

Story: St John of the Ladder

Activity: Play Snakes and Ladders?

6th April:

Liturgical Time: Lent

Story: Mary Magdalene and Emperor Tiberius

Activity: Dye Pascha Eggs using onion skins, flowers and leaves

13th April:

Lent

Story: Three Trees story?

Activity: Set up an Easter Garden

20th April:

Holy Week, Holy Unction Service

Story: Jesus Heals Peter's mother in law

Activity: Decorate bottles for the Holy Oil

24th April:

Pascha!! Easter Sunday