Lent 2024

Health and well-being – without one, the other simply isn’t possible. Likewise, the well-being of humans isn’t possible without a healthy planet; something we are discovering every day as we face a growing and global climate crisis.

This theme is at the centre of PWRDF’s 2024 Lent Resource. Every day of the Lenten season, you will receive a daily email with a reflection from Dr. Sylvia Keesmaat, on what health, well-being and good living require of us in our lives and our relationships with one another, with creation and with God. As you will read, things begin to break down when human beings separate themselves from creation, exploiting it as a commodity, or separate from and exploit one another. In so doing, we separate ourselves from the Creator.

And so, on this journey through Lent, PWRDF invites you to join Dr. Keesmaat as she walks with us, meditating on our current climate crisis and the well-being of ALL of creation, human and non-human, and offering us lessons in repair and restoration that are both profoundly ancient and current.

About Dr. Sylvia Keesmaat

Renowned biblical scholar, Dr. Sylvia Keesmaat is the past co-chair of the Bishop’s Committee on Creation Care for the Diocese of Toronto. She offers on-line courses at Bible Remixed, and speaks widely on issues connected to climate justice and the Bible. Sylvia is the co-author, with Brian Walsh, of Romans Disarmed: Resisting Empire, Demanding Justice, and is currently writing a book on ecological grief and hope in the biblical story. She lives on Russet House Farm, an off-grid permaculture farm in the Kawartha Lakes of Southern Ontario, on the traditional territory of the Michi Saagiig Anishnaabeg, with her husband, Brian Walsh, and a fluctuating number of people and animals.