TSPC Newsletter Lent 2026
The St. Paul Center for Theology and Prayer exists to form disciples of Jesus in every congregation. It seeks to do this by equipping and resourcing local congregations for the tasks and joys of faith formation, teaching and learning, catechesis, and the life of prayer.
We hope you’re weathering these Winter storms and challenging times, and finding peace, calm and space for reflection within, as we begin our Lenten journeys. Our theme for our newsletters throughout 2026 is Joy in an age of despair. We’ll be considering what this means, what JOY is, and how we might find it. Read on for news of TSPC courses, gatherings, and resources which might assist you in your own quest for joy.
Don’t forget, you can find our previous newsletters online. If you’re reading this because someone shared it with you, and you’re not yet on our newsletter mailing list, please do sign up here, so you’ll be sure to receive all future news from TSPC!
A THOUGHT FROM TSPC
In late December of 2007, I travelled with Bishop Tom Shaw and a group of college students to the West Bank and Israel. While there, we were invited to a New Year's Eve party in Bethlehem in a large banquet room. Here we were, with people experiencing oppression, people around whom walls were being built, people confined to their crowded spaces and forced to wait at checkpoints for hours before visiting relatives or getting medical help in nearby towns. And what were they doing? They were dancing on the tables. Christian and Muslim, young and old, grandfathers and toddlers. They were filled with joy that New Year's eve, overflowing with gratitude for the moment, for life, for one another.
When I think about my spiritual mentors in joy, they are often people who have experienced tremendous hardship. The Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, both of whom lived through extraordinary suffering, set down long conversations about joy in their Book of Joy, which ends with a beautiful section on “joy practices.” Julian of Norwich, a survivor of near-death experience who may have lost her husband and child to the bubonic plague, is credited with creating the English word “enjoy” from the French enjoier, to emphasize finding joy and divine love even during times of plague and suffering.
Right now, we find ourselves enveloped in deep civic and psychic challenge. Many people I know are unsure how to find joy. They are fearful, exhausted, and feel like the tent poles of the key institutions around them are being pulled out of the ground. So this year, TSPC has decided our theme will be “Finding joy in a time of despair.”
Joy, of course, is a fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22). But is it something that just happens upon us? Or is it something we cultivate? How can we open ourselves to the gift of joy? Rowan Williams writes in his small book Being Disciples, “Joy is not happiness, not a transient feeling of euphoria, or feeling it's basically all right in a kind of shoulder-shrugging way. Joy is the sense that we are connected with something so real that it will break every boundary or container we try to confine it in - a sense of something overflowing pushing outward.”
When was the last time you experienced this kind of joy? Do you believe that God's yearning for you is that your joy be complete (John 15:11)? Might you, through the power of the Spirit, be an instrument of joy for someone else?
In this holy season of Lent, as we repent - turning towards God and one another - let us open ourselves to curiosity about joy. Even in a penitential season we might wonder about whether being more honest with God, more vulnerable about how we have failed to live our faith, might be connected to joy. If we truly believe in God's grace and the promise that all those who repent will find absolution, should we not anticipate joy in repentance? When we repent, God’s mercy will break the boundary that separates us from our true selves, our neighbor, and Godself.
We invite you to journey with us this year as we explore joy in a time of despair. And may the god of Hope fill us with all joy and believing through the power of the Holy Spirit (Rom 15:13).
The Very Rev. Amy McCreath
WHAT’S ON AT TSPC - and beyond!
This Spring
Our online Lenten course: ‘Transformative Prayer: Ancient Practices from the Monastic Tradition: Centering Prayer, Lectio Divina and the Gospel of Thomas’ - with the Rev. Steven Bonsey
By the time you read this newsletter, the first session of Rev. Bonsey’s five week course will have occurred. The places for this online gathering were snapped up very quickly - it’s clear many of us are feeling the need for contemplation, prayer, and transformation at this time. We hope that all participating will be inspired and strengthened by this exploration of Centering Prayer.
If you were not able to secure a spot on the course, you may like to watch Rev. Bonsey’s video, which provides an introduction to Centering Prayer and can be found here. The video can be watched in chapters:
Start: Why Centering Prayer
From 6’33: What is Centering Prayer?
From 17’36: How to do Centering Prayer
From 27’13: A Centering Prayer guided practice
We hope you’ll enjoy, and share with anyone who may find it a helpful tool this Lent and beyond.
Five Ponds Creative Writing Festival - March 28th, 8am-6pm
TSPC’s own the Rev. Dr. Jarred Mercer will be a guest at this festival for writers and readers, where he’ll speak on ‘Embracing Uselessness: Poetry and Prayer as Cultural Critique’. The event is held at Gordon College in Wenham. You can find out all about the festival, and sign up to attend, here.
Poetry reading and conversation with poet Pádraig Ó Tuama - April 29th, 7pm at Christ Church Cambridge
TSPC is excited to partner with the Diocese of Massachusetts, the Harvard Episcopal Chaplaincy, and Christ Church to host a conversation between Bishop Julia Whitworth and Irish poet and theologian Pádraig Ó Tuama. SAVE THE DATE! More details to follow very soon.
Irish poet and theologian Pádraig Ó Tuama
THIS SUMMER
BIG QUESTION DAY - ‘What is the Cross?’ Saturday August 29, 10am - 2.30pm, in our Northern, Central and Southern Regions
Save the Date! Each Summer The St. Paul Center for Theology and Prayer hosts an in-person day to tackle a ‘Big Question’. This year we’re asking ‘What is the Cross?’
Please join TSPC to explore this important question together, in honest and open conversation. All are welcome - clergy and lay, Episcopalians, seekers, and ecumenical friends! Our day will include teaching, conversation, reflection and prayer. All participants will leave with materials to bring back to their congregation, to continue the conversation and exploration.
Stay tuned for more details, and for a link to sign up to attend. We hope to see you there!
LOOKING AHEAD TO FALL
Ministry Discernment Day - September 26th
Another date for your diary! TSPC is delighted to partner again with the Commission on Ministry to host Discernment Day at the Cathedral. More information to come!
There is a helpful list of Discernment resources available here.
LOOKING FOR LENT RESOURCES? Explore what TSPC has to offer!
RECENT EVENTS
‘Forgiveness: An Alternative Account’ - with Guest Speaker The Rev. Matthew Ichihashi Potts. January 21st
On a chilly January evening during the week of Christian Unity, we were delighted to welcome a good crowd to the Cathedral, to hear the Rev. Dr. Matthew Ichihashi Potts speak on the subject of ‘Forgiveness: An Alternative Account’. Dean Amy McCreath welcomed us to the Cathedral, the Rev. Dr. Kelly Fassett told us more about Unite Boston and events happening during Christian Unity week, and then Rev. Rita Powell introduced our guest speaker. Refreshments (including a hot chocolate bar!) were served, fellowship enjoyed, and lively conversation flowed after Rev. Dr. Potts had completed his presentation. He was generous to allow plenty of time for the Q&A session, which was led by Rev. Powell.
Feedback from the evening included remarks such as:
I loved contemplating the often impossible task of the Christian to love neighbor, love enemy, and love self. The repentance required when failing to love all three. And the grace and freedom we can experience through forgiveness when we fail to love in difficult circumstances.
candor, penetrating insight, humble comportment, encouraging pastoral observations
[I enjoyed] sitting close in the round
AND
hot chocolate bar was AWESOME 😄
For those who were unable to join us - or those who want to hear his words again! - the video of Rev. Dr. Potts’ talk can be found here. You may also like to read his book of the same title - available at all good bookstores, and as an audiobook here.
Rev. Dr. Matthew Ichihashi Potts
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CLOSING WITH … LENTEN THOUGHTS
Kei Miller is a Jamaican poet whose haunting poems have a way of transforming us as readers through language that has the rhythms of both sermon and protest, both hymn and dirge. In this poem “VI” (below) in a series called “The Broken II” in his book There is an anger that moves, we move down through brokenness to something like the essence of who we are, something like new life—even joy. It seems a perfectly appropriate reflection for Lent as well as the despair that can seem to overwhelm the world around us and inside us.
The Rev. Dr. Jarred Mercer
Kei Miller’s poem IV from the series “The Broken II” in his book There is an anger that moves
Please share your thoughts - or your questions! - with us. Our email inbox is always open! tspc@diomass.org
