The importance of Easter to the Northumbria Community
The weeks and months leading up to Easter point each year are an ongoing discernment process for the Overseers of the Northumbria Community and their support network. There is a continuous ‘reading of the Wind’, listening to God – both themselves and through other people, events and prophetic words. Hearts and ears are ever open to how God might be leading – both within Community and the world.
And at Easter point itself, there is a hope, and an expectation, that whatever is planned will enable safe spaces for transformational learning everywhere: the flow of the Spirit outwards – through, and beyond, the Community network – wherever God wills.
As Companions of Community renew vows each year, our prayer has to be that our re-commitment to Availability and Vulnerability will put us into this flow and renew and energise us for the work that is ours to do.
Our past three Easter workshops have challenged us:
- to be Waymarks in the world (in 2019, through our Oswald Liturgy), as Christ was and ask for the old paths;
- to give, receive and be blessings to, and within, our communities (in 2020, following the footsteps of Ninian);
- and, in 2021, through Eata, to embrace change through ‘a willingness to love and serve’ in every place where we are, alongside a prophetic word to concentrate on a metaphorical ‘square mile’: to look for Christ at work in our own neighbourhoods and ‘spheres of influence’ and to join in with that.
The Eata Liturgy continues to resonate with us in 2022 too, so our journey will continue a little further in Eata’s footsteps and a call to relinquish control in times of change.