Advent Invitations into Wholeness with Lydia & Catherine

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Lydia and Catherine warmly invite you to join them online for four nourishing sessions that explore brokenness and newness, joy and sorrow on the same page, sounding out the heart, and trees, stones and seas.

Based on the beautiful video series created for CMHI by Dr Jessica Brown, writer and poet, each session sees Lydia or Catherine explore a creative piece, a meditative piece, and a scriptural reflection that draws on the inspirations and challenges of Jessica’s videos, setting these in the context of Advent waiting.

Click here to book! 

 

Reading by Candlelight – Advent Book Club

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Join CMHI this Advent for a three-part reading group offering reflection and companionship in the wintertime.

As darkness moves towards light, you are warmly invited to join the Church’s Ministry of Healing: Ireland for a reflective Advent reading group.

Click here to book

Week 1 (3rd December): The Kitchen Madonna, by Rumer Godden (1967) – a truly beautiful story, originally published as a children’s book (100 pages) about a refugee from Polish Ukraine, now living in London, and the lonely, talented, boy who struggles to create a gift that will help her to feel at home.

Week 2 (10th December): The End of the Young Family Feud, by L.M. Montgomery – a short story by the author of Anne of Green Gables, about an unexpected Christmas dinner (and the importance of dusters!)

Week 3 (17th December): The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding, by Agatha Christie – a 50-page short story about Hercule Poirot’s Christmas … and crime…

Each session offers discussion, space for reflection, and the gift of listening — a pause in the busyness of winter to rest, read, and renew the spirit. Gather with us for three evenings as we explore and discuss short stories and reflections that open the heart to the season’s mystery and hope. Together we’ll read works that explore the complexity of Christmas from a child’s point of view, the sometimes painful family dynamics of celebration, comic misunderstandings, good food, the importance of gifts given from the heart, and the moments of beauty that remain etched in memory.

Each reading group meeting will start with an introduction to the authors, their lives, their work, and their artistic views. We will then open up discussion, comments, likes and dislikes, and any thoughts or ideas you want to share. If you prefer to listen rather than speak, or to have your camera off, please do!

CMHI Advent Day Retreat: Resting in the Shadow – Finding Peace in Advent Darkness

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Resting in the Shadows: Finding Peace in Advent Darkness.

Join Lydia and Catherine for a gentle pause to prepare us for Advent and Christmas. Step away from the noise and rest.

Explore the layered meanings of rest, shadows, waiting, peace and new life emerging from darkness through contemplative prayer, scripture, poetry and story.

On arrival there will be hot drinks and scones, and lunch will be provided in the CITI canteen (dietary requirements can be catered for).

We have limited places available, due to room size, so don’t wait too long to book! There is a sliding scale for pricing, based on your own circumstances. Please note, that if you can’t afford to pay, you can contact us and we will book you in, no questions asked. contact: lydia.cmhi@gmail.com.

Click here to book

‘Keep me as the apple of your eye; Hide me in the shadow of your wings.’

Join us for 3 days of the Evening Examen online

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Reflect, review & release with this gentle prayer practice for the end of the day.

The Evening Examen is a prayer practice that has been used since the 16th century.

We will practice it 3 nights in a row to allow you to explore what works for you and to being to form a habit of night time prayer and reflection.

Lydia, our Ministry Leader, will settle you in with contemplative prayer and scripture.

Click here to book.

Together, we allow thoughts and experiences from our day to arise.

We ground in gratitude, noticing where we were aware of God with us during the day (either in the moment or retrospectively)

We grow through noticing the times when we lost sight of God and became reactive or disconnected. And instead of judging ourselves, we simply practice the joy of return, or turning towards God now. (This ‘turn’ is the literal translation for reprentance in scripture.)

We let go of anything we are holding on to that is not within our control, releasing it into God’s care.

Then we let go of our own analysis entirely and notice God’s whisper amidst the noise or the silence.

And we listen, resting in this wider awareness that God did not leave us all day, and will continue to watch over this night.

We give ourself to the One we ultimately belong to, and we prepare for sleep.

Download our prayers to say with the body and the mind

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If you find it hard to focus when you pray – if your mind drifts off into lists of things to do, or the worries that follow you throughout the day and the night – then it may help to pray with your body as well as your mind. CMHI has developed a series of prayers for which you use your hands in various ways; this reminds us to give thanks for our bodies, and to see ourselves holistically, as beings of both flesh and spirit. The prayers are suitable for children and young people who are developing their prayer life and find it helpful to use physical actions as they pray. The prayers are:

  • the labyrinth prayer
  • the prayer of letting go
  • square breathing prayer
  • prayer for 5 people on 5 fingers in 5 minutes
  • the shoreline breath prayer
  • the footsteps prayer

Click here to download the A4 prayer sheets. 

 

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Invitations into Wholeness – video series

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Join our 4-part video series, Invitations into Wholeness, led by Dr Jessica Brown!

The Church’s Ministry of Healing: Ireland is delighted to welcome you to Jessica’s video series, “Invitations to Wholeness”, which Jessica wrote and offered online for CMHI in Lent of 2025.

Invitations to Wholeness is a donation-based series – click here to book via Eventbrite, or contact Catherine by clicking here to donate and book via bank transfer or PayPal.

These are gentle, reflective and nourishing sessions, exploring the concept of wholeness in new ways. The sessions are brimming with visual beauty and gentle challenges to our perceptions of wholeness. There is time in every video to settle, to rest and to pray, there is time for learning and wondering, and time for journaling or doodling. The course is specifically welcoming of people living with illness.

Session 1: Brokenness and Newness

Session 2: Trees, Stone, Seas (notions of wholeness in nature)

Session 3: Sounding out the Heart and Trusting our Voice

Session 4: Joy & Sorrow on the Same Page

Facilitator: Having studied literature and spiritual formation, Dr Jessica Brown is an ordinand in the Church of Ireland. She also works in the creative writing field as a poet, novelist, singer-songwriter, teacher, mentor, and narrative practitioner. She has led writing workshops at schools, prisons, festivals, and community events. Beyond academic publications and shorter works, Jessica has published two collections of poetry and two novels for children.

 

Join Lydia for a 6-part video series, Cultivating Gratitude!

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The Church’s Ministry of Healing: Ireland is delighted to welcome you to our 6-part video series, “Cultivating Gratitude”, which uses prayerful reflection to help us to find space to notice the good in our lives, even amidst our struggles. In each video, Lydia Monds, CMH:I Ministry Leader, shares a reflection and leads a meditative practice which invites you to slow down and notice God’s goodness. Lydia says:

“There’s a lovely sense of warmth and hope when we tend to the good in our lives, let our gratitude linger, and offer it to God, the source of all good things.”

Join Lydia as she reflects on different aspects of gratitude and the benefits of living life with a grateful heart. Gratitude doesn’t pretend that things are great when they’re not, but it scans for the good, even in the midst of suffering. As a way of life, it improves our wellbeing, boosting our mood and outlook, and supports us turning towards God from whom all good things flow. The sessions are: Week 1: A Wider Lens; Week 2: Savouring the Good; Week 3: The Widening Circles of Connection; Week 4: Making Room for Ritual; Week 5: Our Deepest Longings; Week 6: Gratitude for Nature.

Cultivating Gratitude is a donation-based series – you can sign up HERE via Eventbrite, or, if you prefer, email us at hello @ministryofhealing.ie to donate via bank transfer or PayPal.

Watch a clip of one session here:

Each video session is about 20 minutes long. Now that you have signed up, you have permanent access to all the sessions, so you can practice as often as you like. Watch them whenever you have some time in your week – no need to be free on a set day at a set hour! And you are welcome to return to watch them and practice gratitude again, whenever and as often you would like. You also have access to a worksheet for each session: each worksheet contains more detail about the scientific research into gratitude, as well as poems, and extracts from books on Christian spirituality. These texts explore topics such as play, rest, and hope in relation to thankfulness. The worksheets also offer questions, tailored to Lydia’s sessions, to awaken your curiosity about your responses to the videos, and help you to explore gratitude in your
own life. Finally, each worksheet ends with Biblical passages on the session’s theme, and a prayer to say to end the session. The worksheets can easily be read on a phone or tablet – or printed, if you prefer that. Each worksheet consists of two A4 pages.

CMHI prayer and Bible verse booklet – now available

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We are delighted to launch a new CMHI prayer/Bible verse booklet in response to requests from people who have found our beautiful prayer cards useful, and asked us for something longer. This is a 12-page booklet, in black-and-white for easy printing, that contains beautiful prayers, some familiar friends from the Book of Common Prayer, and others new companions written by CMHI. There are Bible verses on the themes of love, peace, and light in the darkness. Finally, the booklet contains a page for your own journaling or notes. This is an ideal booklet for anyone who needs comfort or spiritual guidance, and perfect for those in hospital who want to pray and read some verses from Scripture. Contact hello@ministryofhealing.ie to ask about copies – we do ask for a small donation, if possible, to support our work and help us to offer our ministry as widely as possible.

 

Prayer of Examen – CMHI resource

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The Examen is a spiritual practice that has been used since the 16th century. CMHI provides you with a gentle, Anglican, version. In this prayer, we notice God’s presence, and name it, at both the joyful and the sorrowful times.

Like other forms of contemplative prayer, using the Examen practice regularly may aid you in discerning God’s voice in your life. When we direct our attention to God, he shows us the ways in which we will be helped by focusing our time and energy on him, and guides us away from the things that do not help us.

This is a short, mindful, kindly spiritual practice that helps us to find God in the everyday as we pause at evening-time to look back over the joys and laments of the day, and to focus on where God spoke to us, even if we may not have heard his voice at the time.

Click here to download

 

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Healing Prayer Group booklet

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We are delighted to make a new version of our guidelines and help for Healing Prayer Groups available, so if your parish is planning to set up such a group, or revive one that’s dormant, or is looking for help and ideas for your existing group, then our booklet is just what you need.

It’s available for download and printing by clicking here.

As all our work is funded by donations, if you find this booklet useful, please donate to support us. Details of how to donate are available here.