Lavinia Byrne answers five questions about her new Lent book, A Place of Belonging: Finding Your Space in the Bible during Lent and Beyond …
In our busy modern lives, how can we make time and space for Lenten reflection?
Like everything, else, it’s about making choices. Some of your day is taken up with work; some with play. Only you know how you spend the incidental time that can’t be categorised as either. That is where you will find the space to nurture your inner life. Lent reading is like a springboard to take you to that place.
What was the inspiration for writing A Place of Belonging?
I co-wrote a book about people in the Bible, trying to retrieve their stories for a modern readership. That’s where I got the idea for this book, looking at different places or locations in the Bible.
Which places do you explore in the book?
On one level the only place that really interests me is the space inside the reader. The Bible places I have selected try to offer a map for every reader to find their own place of belonging.
So, for instance I choose to reflect on obvious biblical locations: gardens, mountains, wells, seas – all places where the story of God’s intervention is played out. But I also wanted to think of trickier spaces: the whale’s belly, the fiery furnace, even the defensive walls around an ancient city. God works with people when their lives are unravelling too.
How should readers use or approach your book during Lent?
I would recommend a good habit: namely finding a named time and place and reading as much or as little as you like. Don’t rush.
Where do you feel most at home?
I am one of those lucky people whose life has come full circle. I live in a medieval city in Wells in Somerset. Like many English towns, it is very ancient and totally ill-adapted to 21st-century living. Modern homes have been stuffed into every available space in the city centre; you can’t find anywhere to park; there is running water everywhere from the ancient wells that give the city its name; the surrounding countryside is amazing – with both the Somerset Levels and the Mendip Hills a stone’s throw away.
I was brought up two miles away, in a village called Coxley. And now I am glad to be back home in the place and space where I most feel I belong.
Lavinia Byrne is the author of some 25 books on Christian spirituality including, previously, A Place For Us: A Lent Course based on West Side Story for DLT (2022). She taught in the Institute of Spirituality at Heythrop College and was a tutor at Westcott House, Cambridge. She lives in Wells, Somerset.
A Place of Belonging: Finding Your Space in the Bible during Lent and Beyond is available now in paperback, priced £12.99.
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