(((I wrote this blog late January, but never posted it)))

I last wrote to you in mid December. Since then I’ve felt silent, very quiet. Although invitations come to be engaged in many activities, and although our social circles in our new BC Village Life are expanding, I’ve found myself stilled deep within. I feel as though I’m wrapped in a cocoon. I’ve entered it as a caterpillar and I’ve no idea what my new form will be when I emerge.

I also don’t know when I will emerge. Will it be this winter, the coming summer, next year, five years, ten years? I simply don’t know. I do know… I’m not in charge. I can’t make the internal change happen. I’m the recipient of the transforming work. Gee I hope I like myself when I flap my wings on the other side! ……I know I will.

I’ve come to value and enjoy myself so much over these last ten or twenty years. I’m so grateful to the contemplative tradition, the Contemplative Fire community, and the individuals who have nurtured my soul over these years. I’ve experienced so much inner healing. In the last thirty years I’ve moved from holding a deep pain within me, to feeling the brightness and warmth of internal sunshine.

Much of my healing journey has related to my contemplative practices. I learnt how to pray with scriptural meditations, then spent hours journaling in the scriptures learning to open my soul to God to hear what the Spirit wanted me to know. I had days and weeks on retreat  where I was cared for by my spiritual directors. My first one back in the 1990’s was very special for me. He was so open, honest and challenging with me. He saw the depths of my hurt and didn’t draw back but stayed present with me and called me out to play with him. In contemplative community life I learned so many ways to pray, each one slightly different, each allowing me to face my shadows and not fear them any longer, each one speaking more of loving acceptance to me. Then within the security of the contemplative world I could engage with emotional therapy and integrate the two worlds of therapy and prayer. I’m so grateful to the many, many people who have walked with me over the last thirty years of my healing journey.

Now I’m in a new place, and I’m sensing a cocoon all around me. I’m to be still and quiet during this season. I’m grateful for the healing I’ve experienced. I can trust now that being still and being transformed into a new life will be okay. I don’t know what my new life will be like, but I do know the one who has wrapped me in this cocoon and is with me within it. I trust. I TRUST. I TRUST LOVE.

love and prayers

Anne

Mystic in Motion (or not!)