Using Richard Carter’s new book The City is my Monastery: A contemporary rule of life, this year’s Lent Course focuses on how we might deepen our lives of contemplation and action at the heart of the city. Charles de Foucault once famously remarked that if we need to go to the desert to find God, then everyone trying hard to survive in a bustling city would need to have a little strip of desert with them. We need he said ‘to create the desert in the heart of the city… contemplation in the streets that is our task.’ How can we become more attentive to the continuous presence of God and create the space to bring our lives before God? Over the seven weeks of Lent we will be exploring our own spiritual paths: the places of encounter, forgiveness, nurture, compassion, generosity and growing depth, and the challenging discovery of the Word made flesh in one another.

Each week will focus on a different chapter of Richard’s book:
26 February Ash Wednesday – With Silence
4 March – With Service
11 March – With Sacrament
18 March – With Scripture
25 March – With Sabbath
1 April – With Sharing
8 April – Staying With

‘This book is about being caught up in the infectious holiness of God and inspired by these narratives and these poems, prayers and promises to believe that you too can be suffused with the Spirit, not alone but in community and the city can become your monastery too.’ Sam Wells
‘This wonderful book is both recognizable and startlingly new. What we are given here is a workbook for living in and with meaning, Christian meaning, Jesus shaped meaning.’ Rowan Williams

Copies of The City is my Monastery (for those who do not have them) and Study Guides  for the Lent course for everyone will be available from Sunday 16 February from the vergers vestry or collected after the Ash Wednesday Bread for the World at 6.30pm which this year will be the first week of our Lent Course.

The book is also available to purchase from St Martin’s Shop and the Online Shop.