Experience Holy Week Differently: Seeing Scripture Come Alive Through the Power of Imaginative Prayer

Experience Holy Week in a deeper, more imaginative way. 🌿

What if you didn’t just read Scripture—but entered into it?

In this Holy Week episode of Holy Shenanigans, we explore the transformative practice of imaginative prayer, rooted in Ignatian spirituality, and how it can help you encounter Jesus in a more personal, sensory, and meaningful way.

Through a guided reflection on Palm Sunday (Matthew 21:1–11), you’re invited to see, hear, and feel the story unfold—placing yourself within the scene as the crowds cry “Hosanna!” and Jesus enters Jerusalem.

Together, we’ll explore:

• How Lectio Divina and Visio Divina can deepen your experience of Scripture
• Why imagination is a powerful tool for spiritual growth and renewal
• What it means to “see with the eyes of your heart” during Lent
• How creative practices—like poetry and reflection—can become forms of prayer

This episode also includes an original poetic prayer inspired by Palm Sunday and a gentle invitation to carry imagination, hope, and openness with you throughout Holy Week.

Whether you’re new to contemplative practices or looking to refresh your faith journey, this episode offers a meaningful way to experience Scripture anew.

✨ Perfect for: Lent reflections, Holy Week preparation, contemplative prayer, Christian meditation, and spiritual formation.

Join Tara for Worship on Sunday morning at 10 am. Warren First Presbyterian Church at 300 Market Street in Warren Pennsylvania. A live stream is provided via FaceBook for people out of the region... During Lent Tara is facilitating a book club based on Madeline L'Engle's book A Circle of Quiet. Tuesday mornings at 10;30 am at the church.

Transcript

Experience Holy Week Differently: Seeing Scripture Come Alive Through The Power of Imaginative Prayer

Pastor Tara Lamont Eastman [00:00:00] Welcome to Holy Shenanigans Podcast. I'm your muse, Tara Lamont, Eastman pastor and podcaster, and I'm always on the lookout for holy shenanigans of the sacred showing up in everyday life for me. Through the 2026 Lenten season, some sacred holy shenanigans has shown up in how I'm interacting with the lectionary readings for Lent with the help of my imagination.

Pastor Tara Lamont Eastman I'm seeing, hearing and experiencing these accounts of scripture in new ways. Just like that worship chorus sings Open the eyes of our heart. God open the eyes of our heart. i've accepted this imaginative invitation for [00:01:00] my eyes to be opened and engage with scripture with the help of my imagination contemplative, imaginative prayer practices.

Pastor Tara Lamont Eastman Aren't new. They hail from Ignatian. Spiritual practices. Author David L. Fleming says this about Ignatian spirituality. Ignatius chooses scenes of Jesus acting rather than Jesus teaching or telling parables. He wants us to see Jesus interacting with others. Jesus making decisions. Jesus moving about Jesus.

Pastor Tara Lamont Eastman Ministering. He doesn't want us to think about Jesus. He wants us to experience him. He wants Jesus to fill our senses. Ignatius wants us to meet Jesus personally. I found a deep well of wisdom through these Ignatian spiritual practices, especially Lectio [00:02:00] and Visio. Divina. These practices have helped me to draw closer to Christ.

Pastor Tara Lamont Eastman With my intellect as well as with my imagination and whole heart Ignatius rights, the products of the imagination As vehicles transport us to an understanding and experience of higher realities in ways that linear discourse cannot carry us. Ignatius believed that with the help of imaginative, contemplative, spiritual practices.

Pastor Tara Lamont Eastman Our engagement with God and scripture can be refreshed, renewed, and deepened. And I agree with Ignatius as I record this episode. I'm in the midst of worship preparations for Palm Sunday and Holy Week. So I've been thinking a lot about the interaction between the count of Palm Sunday before Holy Week as Jesus enters.

Pastor Tara Lamont Eastman Jerusalem, I invite you to join me in taking [00:03:00] part in an imaginative prayer practice and contemplation with this text. So here are a few tips to help you imaginatively engage with this scripture. As you listen to the reading, pay attention to what you see, hear, and feel. You may want to close your eyes to help you find your place in the story.

Pastor Tara Lamont Eastman Who are you in the story? One of the main characters, a bystander, perhaps even the colt. Open the eyes of your heart and enter this account of Palm Sunday with a fresh perspective. Matthew 21 versus one through 11 from The Message paraphrase when they near Jerusalem, having arrived at Bethpage on the Mount of Olives.

Pastor Tara Lamont Eastman Jesus sent two disciples with these instructions. Go over to the village [00:04:00] across from you. You'll find a donkey tethered there. Her colt with her. Untie her and bring them to me. If anyone asks what you're doing, say the master needs them, he will send them with you. This is the full story of what was sketched earlier by the prophet.

Pastor Tara Lamont Eastman Tell Zion's daughter, look, your king's on his way poised and ready mounted on a donkey, on a colt full of a pack animal. The disciples went and did exactly what Jesus told them to do. They led the donkey and cold out, laid some of their clothes on them, and Jesus mounted nearly all the people in the crowd, threw their garments down on the road, giving him a royal welcome.

Pastor Tara Lamont Eastman Others cut branches from trees and threw them down as a welcome mat. Crowds went ahead and crowds followed all of [00:05:00] them calling out Hosanna to David's son. Blessed is he who comes in God's name, Hosanna in highest heaven. As he made his entrance into Jerusalem, the whole city was shaken, unnerved. People were asking, what's going on here?

Pastor Tara Lamont Eastman Who is this? The parade crowd answered. This is the prophet Jesus, the one from Nazareth in Galilee. Open the eyes of our heart. God open the eyes of our heart. I invite you to stay in that story for a few moments longer. What did you notice as you listened to the reading? Who and what did you see? What color was the donkey and her colt?

Pastor Tara Lamont Eastman What did you hear the sound of the crowds shouting. Hosanna [00:06:00] was the scene joyous, hopeful, chaotic. What colors were the cloaks that had been laid on the ground? How many palm branches were stacked about? What color green were they? Have you ever listened or read scripture in this way? Imagining it like a film with all the sights and sounds with the faces of the people helping to literally flesh out the scene?

Pastor Tara Lamont Eastman I'd gather that the eyes of your heart noticed something new and that perhaps you saw this account of Palm Sunday or Jesus in a new or different way. Ignatius wrote the products of the imagination as vehicles transport us to an understanding and experience of higher realities in ways that linear [00:07:00] discourse cannot carry us.

Pastor Tara Lamont Eastman This reflection on Palm Sunday takes me on a non-linear journey to imagine the green color of those palms and how when they were held in the hands of the people. That perhaps they looked like tools of prayer, definitely celebration like trumpets proclaiming. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

Pastor Tara Lamont Eastman The waving of these palm branches stirring up this palm powered breeze, calling in the hope of God's kingdom. Finally, finally has it come to earth and their country and their city and their village. In their neighborhood, God in Christ has, like in the birth in Bethlehem, come near in Jerusalem, on the back of a donkey, celebrated by the throngs [00:08:00] of people cloaks, creating a colorful carpet for Jesus to travel on with those green palms swirling, waving and calling in something new.

Pastor Tara Lamont Eastman Joy. Renewal and hope. With the help of my imagination, I can see and feel this account of Palm Sunday in a way that sticks with me longer. Yes, I know that Palm Sunday leads to passion and holy week, but somehow this proclamation of hope in Palm Sunday is something that can help me carry on through a holy week.

Pastor Tara Lamont Eastman Of grief and pain that will end in the crucifixion of Christ, but this Palm Sunday text helps me to not forget the hosannas of the crowds, that they were longing for something new that [00:09:00] perhaps I am longing for something new. Perhaps you are longing for something new and the image of that verdant green palm waving in celebration and hope.

Pastor Tara Lamont Eastman Something that helps me and you to see the world with new eyes and with an open heart. A medium that I use often for my own creative practice, and prayer is poetry for me. It serves as a space to respond to scripture by writing a prayer or poem. So with the help of this Palm Sunday imaginative reflection.

Pastor Tara Lamont Eastman Okay, and ignatius's encouragement to lean into the products of imagination. Here is a poem I call prayer Plant plea. Please tell me how you learn to grow into grace in all your window sill sitting, [00:10:00] you lack the legs to lean into what's beyond the sink floor and kitchen door. Still welcoming what you can't see.

Pastor Tara Lamont Eastman Yet your Psalms practice pause and persist in practical petitions of peace. Lovely green variegated, leaves unspool and unspoken liturgy and reveal how holding things lightly makes us beautifully free. Plea still sitting. Can't for you. See beautifully window petitions. Makes peace of us. Prayer plant plea was inspired by the Palm Sunday text and my wondering as to what kind of prayer a plant might pray.

Pastor Tara Lamont Eastman In January, I purchased a prayer plant on my way home from teaching an art and prayer [00:11:00] workshop. And after teaching about the many ways to pray, I bought that plant and placed it on my window sill. Fascinated by the way its leaves would gradually open up in a posture that looked more like prayer than I could have imagined.

Pastor Tara Lamont Eastman My new prayer plant has wild green leaves of many shades with jagged patterns that grow from the stems in a deliberate uncurling first looking like green paper curled up to be a pretend cigarette. To gradually unfurl itself to openness. The plan's process of uncurling looks to me like holding things lightly in prayer, and it has been a surprising means of prayer for me as I stand at that sink and at that window and wash dishes and [00:12:00] wonder and worry about the state of the world.

Pastor Tara Lamont Eastman The ongoing chaos of war after war and what looks like and feels like the unraveling of democracy. But this plant keeps opening and opening and opening up to prayer. New leaf scrolls appear every day and courageously face the fear, chaos, and beauty of the world, and pray. Throughout all the hours and encourage me to do so as well.

Pastor Tara Lamont Eastman This plea of this prayer plant sill sitting can't for you. See beautifully window petitions makes peace of us this week as you take part in Palm Sunday and Holy Week services. I invite you to continue to immerse yourself [00:13:00] with the help of your imagination. And seeing, hearing, and experiencing the story of scripture.

Pastor Tara Lamont Eastman With the help of Lectio and Visio Divina, an imaginative prayer, or perhaps another creative medium this Easter season, I invite you to try out the gifts of your prayerful imagination to see, hear, and experience Holy Week in a new and deeper way. I am your holy shenanigans muse, Tara Lamont Eastman. Thank you for joining me this week for Palm Sunday.

Pastor Tara Lamont Eastman Holy shenanigans, that surprise, encourage, redirect, and turn life upside down, all in the name of love. This is an unpredictable spiritual adventure that is always sacred, but never stuffy. This week, our top five listening locations are [00:14:00] Jamestown, New York, Warren, Pennsylvania, lake Forest, Illinois, Buffalo, New York.

Pastor Tara Lamont Eastman And Frankfurt, Germany. Thank you to all of our listeners all over the world, and to Ian Eastman For sound editing. To support Holy Shenanigans podcast, you can give at www buy me a coffee.com back slash tara l Eastman, or at the Holy Shenanigans Buzz Sprout homepage. You can find it@holyshenanigans.buzz sprout.com on our way to Holy Week.

Pastor Tara Lamont Eastman May our hearts, minds, and eyes be opened to live faith with courage, love, and imagination god's blessings to you this Palm Sunday in Holy Week. We'll see you again soon.