Christianity

Light in the Mists of Time

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As I read over last week’s blog I’m drawn to sit with a sentence: Slowly I began to listen to his voice and not the clamour of the crowd.

Discernment is a topic I’ve heard several times this week; discerning a calling, a suitability to a task, a direction to take, a decision to make, or finding meaning in life.

I’ve had a lifelong journey in discernment. Long before I knew that word or that there was such a pathway in life, I sought to find meaning and purpose. I didn’t want to live aimlessly. As a young person I desperately sought to find out why I, why all of us, were alive. Life was tough so there had to be some reason for it. Otherwise, I’d take a quick exit. Without knowing it, I was on the path of discernment.

‘Slowly I began to listen to his voice’. It has been a slow process for me. I think my first encounter with ‘the voice’ was when I was thirteen. After a tearful sleep I woke into a changed world. As I returned to school, I knew I was changed on the inside. God had heard my sobbing and done something to me deep down inside so that I had the courage to return to school. I had courage, but I also had ease and peace. I knew I was different and that it was a work of Someone beyond me. The fruit of The Work was peace, contentment, ease, freedom, and security. I knew I was different, and I wasn’t alone.

I wonder if the reason many people struggle with discernment is because they either don’t have a grounding experience, or perhaps have had one, but haven’t had it named and honored as such. It’s been allowed to disappear in the mists of time. What was your first awareness of the Presence of God – whatever name you have for Creator, Sustainer of All. From that first awareness, what is your heart knowing? That initial heart knowing for me has been widened and deepened over my years of following Jesus, so Spirit voice becomes clearer for me. It is still my choice whether I will follow it or not, but the first step is to begin to recognize the voice and then listen to it. Often the pace of listening is slow and requires slowness in its execution.

I’ll pick this up again. For now, let’s return and rest in our first awareness of God’s Presence in our lives. Such a good place to pause.

Love and prayers for the journey

Anne

Mystic in Motion

Companion on the Way with Contemplative Fire

Companion on the Rivendell Way

Society Member with Shalem Institute for Contemplative Living

Having a Rhythm of Life

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Last week I had the odd experience of being a fly on the wall. I attended my community’s monthly ‘Time of Togetherness’, but was on my phone, non-identified and unable to unmute! Instead of participating verbally, I was given the opportunity to relax, be open and listen to what others were saying. I could and did, participate audibly. I valued hearing a variety of perspectives on our rhythm. It is good to hear the how deep the cord is that gently, yet strongly draws us together. Our rhythm was one of the key elements that drew me into Contemplative Fire in 2008. I was silent on Sunday, so now I’ll use some words to describe my experience of having a rhythm of life.

When I first encountered Contemplative Fire in 2008, via a DVD where the founder Revd Philip Roderick described the sacramental community, the trefoil and the rhythm of life that bound them together, I was in search for others who would keep me accountable in my spiritual life. I was an active priest, inclined to working too hard, and in a non-contemplative community. I needed help both to sustain me and contain me. I had explored traditional monastic communities and not found a match. With Contemplative Fire I found like-souled people, on a path like my own, and I was given a rhythm of life to both instruct and guide me. Fifteen years later, both the community and the rhythm continue to shape my life.  

Our rhythm is titled: Travelling Light – Dwelling Deep. It invites us to not be so wound up by the things of life, the activities of life and to draw instead from the awareness of big picture of life and harvest the inner resources of Spirit. The image of our rhythm is a trefoil, an ancient Celtic symbol that is both trinitarian and beyond. There are three leaves reflecting three guiding values with our community, prayer/study/action and all three leaves are grounded in the centre, named ‘The Wordless Space’, the Mystery at the heart of the universe, the Divine. Over the years Philip offered us different words for the three leaves: Stillwaters/The Learning Centre/Across the Threshold or A Contemplative Practice/A Creative Practice/A Compassionate Practice, each of them reflecting the core practices of prayer/study/action. With the adoption of this rhythm, our lives were to have a prayerful component that we could shape any way we liked; our lives were to have a learning/creating/teaching/mentoring component, again shaped as we were called and equipped; our lives were to be moving into deeper compassionate engagement with the world, seeking to be a change agent, an explorer, one willing to be different, always inclusive and loving. And each of these leaves, each prayerful movement, each creative venture, each compassionate engagement was to be grounded in, nourished and propelled by the Spirit of God, for each was coming from the Wordless Space, the Deep Mystery and Power of the Divine. The final added delight for me was that this rhythm is idiorhythmic, that means that each Companion’s rhythm will be distinctive to themselves and will change as they change. Here I was given structure that contained but didn’t control me. I heard this and said a resounding ‘Yes!’.

Enough words for this week! Next week I’ll put words to how my life has been shaped these last fifteen years through the rhythm embodied in the trefoil.

Do you have a guiding rhythm for your life?

Love and prayers

Anne

Mystic in Motion

Companion on the Way with Contemplative Fire

Companion on the Rivendell Way

Society Member of Shalem Institute for Contemplative Living

Living Differently

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This week I’ve been reading ‘This Naked Mind’ by Annie Grace. It’s always intriguing how one thing leads to another. Her book is about alcohol, it’s toxic nature and the relationship both we and our culture have to this accepted addiction. I’m reading about alcohol, yet repeatedly I hear the spiritual undertones in her message. She teaches that our attraction to something like alcohol, but it could be other substances or lifestyle choices, comes from our unconscious beliefs and views. Our relationship with an addictive behaviour doesn’t change through our conscious effort such as abstinence but through a fundamental change in our unconscious guiding beliefs. Slowly, page by page, story by story, research fact by research fact she builds her case and seeks to alter our unconscious stance towards alcohol. It has been an engaging read.

But most curious for me is the way it relates to my spiritual life. She describes her father as experiencing ‘spontaneous sobriety’. Well, me too! She takes me back fifty plus years to the time when my relationship to drugs, alcohol and nicotine got fundamentally changed. I had a using relationship with all three, and experienced three separate times of knowing they weren’t part of my life anymore, and they weren’t. There was, no vow of abstinence, no withdrawal only a deep clarity that they weren’t getting me to the life I wanted, and they were gone. No more. No pain, no suffering. I had no interest in them. Twenty years ago, I had the same experience with meat. I lost the taste for it. Now I’m clear I don’t want to harm another being to nourish my body, but in the beginning, it was simply that I lost my physical taste for it. No vow, no abstinence, simply meat was part of my life any longer.

As Grace describes the work of our unconscious, I understand more deeply the work of the Spirit within us human beings. When Spirit works, she touches a very deep part of me, that part that is often hidden, but so strong. When I experienced the ‘spontaneous sobriety’ fifty years ago, it was the Spirit working in my unconscious soul home and changing how I saw myself and the world around me. As I lived into my new life without these addictive substances and with a growing realization of Spirit’s Presence all around me, I hit a lot of bumps and judgements from my friends and family. The Different Anne wasn’t comfortable to them. They said I was judgemental. I didn’t know that I was, but I both knew what I knew, knew what I liked in this new life ….. and immediately accepted their perspective that I was judgmental. Now, so many years later I wonder if just maybe I was bumping into their discomfort. Maybe they knew in their deep core the same truth I was discovering, and they weren’t interested in listening, about addictions or about Spirit. With a deep breath I say, ‘That’s okay, for we all have our own path to walk’. But, and this is a BIG BUT, let me walk my own path. I will, to the best of my ability let you walk yours but let me walk mine. I know how I want to live. I need help to live it humbly and truly. Please help me. I will do my best to help you be you.

May we all grow in living wisely, humbly and gently from our deepest truth. Here’s a link to her site if you’re interested in more. www.thisnakedmind.com

Love and prayers for the journey

Anne

Mystic in Motion

Companion on the Way with Contemplative Fire

Companion on the Rivendell Way

Society Member of Shalem Institute for Contemplative Living

A Question from Thomas Merton

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Last Sunday I returned ‘The Intimate Merton’ to the library. I’d renewed it four times and reached their limit! Didn’t they understand that I couldn’t read it quickly. I would read no more than a page or two a day. At times I find Merton so deep, quite cerebral and I can’t grasp him, yet I’m deeply attracted to him. Other times his words are like solid stones that sink into the depths of my being and I can’t move. They call me to a deep stillness and a hunger for  more spiritual growth. I’m a fan.

‘The Intimate Merton’ is a collection of his journal entries covering his monastic life. I followed him through his entry time joys, into the struggles with community life and writing, his desire for solitude, being given the Hermitage, struggling with that life too, of course his love affair and finishing with his astounding, awakening Asian trip. The last entry is a day or two before his unexpected death. There was so much that intrigued me and slowed down my reading, but I’ll begin with just one that caught my attention. He’s always changing, growing, asking questions and figuring things out. He questions his vocation as a monk, his life in the Hermitage and most surprising for me, he questions his mission in life. In 1967, twenty five years a monk, twenty years a best selling author, he writes, ‘What is my task? What is my mission in life?’. Gosh if Thomas Merton doesn’t know his task…..! He wrote and wrote and wrote, leaving so much for us to continue to learn from long after his death. He regretted writing so many books and thought about only ten were really helpful, most weren’t any good at all.

I found his question around task, gave me an opening to explore my own sense of mission. What am I doing here? I don’t want to get to the end of my life, look back and see the bus that I’ve missed! I want to live the fullest life as Anne that I can. Yet I’ve come to know that doesn’t necessarily mean the most public life, doing what the world would recognize as good or mission worthy. I don’t think the Divine Perspective is necessarily the same as the human one. Merton’s question is important and gets lost in the shuffle and the demands of daily living for it’s not easy to be human. If he asks it, so might I, so might everyone. Why am I here? What is my mission, my task?

Love and prayers on the journey

Anne

Mystic in Motion

Companion on the Way with Contemplative Fire

Companion on the Rivendell Way

Society Member with Shalem Institute for Contemplative Living

A Little Bit of Merton

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‘I will not break faith with my awakened heart’.

This little nugget comes from somewhere in the writings of Thomas Merton. I heard it in a podcast as I was walking my regular route in Paris yesterday. I stopped walking, letting the intent of his words drop deeply into my being. As I often get tossed around by the circumstances of life, I resonated with his desire to remain true to what he knows, not intellectually but experientially, despite the challenges. So today I begin my reflection.

First, what does my awakened heart know? What ‘knowing’ do I hold, not what I’ve read or heard, but what is true in my heart? Last night I could feel this question tumbling around. I’ll see what I can catch this morning. This heart of mine has seen a spiritual image both at my bedside and as light in a theatre, has heard a voice with unexpected words and has known truth impressed within. This awakened heart knows that LOVE is at the source of all, that this LOVE dwells within all people and gives all matter life, and that in the end LOVE will be here for it is the universe’s trump card. This awakened heart knows that opening to God is the purpose of life, all of the struggles and joys down here are the classroom for learning soul lessons, so we’re open to God. This heart of mine recognizes that most people walking the planet don’t see the world this way…..yet. Most people around me are caught in the whirlwind of surviving or thriving in the turmoil of what ‘life’ has thrown at them. My awakened heart knows life as a classroom and in it, I’m a life-long learner.

I know there is more my heart knows, but I want to pause to consider the first part of his walk-stopping thought. ‘I will not break faith’. He’s crying out a desire to live from his True Self, his deepest purest part, to be his best self, yet he knows the struggle too. His will is needed. He needs to make a choice, not once, not a confession moment in church or a moment of emotional surrender, but a moment-by-moment choice over breakfast, on the subway, around the family table, in the grocery store, at the computer screen, working at a meeting, watching TV, hanging out with friends……moment by moment in the classroom, of the School of Life. Merton lived with an awareness of the life-shaping component of each moment of our lives. And he knows the struggle to remain true to what he knew.

I know that struggle too. I think that’s why his vulnerable acknowledgement and desire for truth resonated with me. I… will…not…break faith…with my awakened heart. I will remain true to who I am today wherever I’m taken in the classroom of life. I will be myself, my Mystic in Motion self, wherever Life takes me. That doesn’t mean that I speak of what my heart knows, but that I live from the heart qualities so kindness, tenderness and compassion flow through me to those I meet. My awakened heart is a divine gift, but remaining open, and nurturing it is my choice, my ‘yes’ to growing spiritual energy.

Sometimes it feels like people around me want to put a gag on me, push back and don’t want me to be myself. Recalling, ‘I will not break faith with my awakened heart’, encourages me to be rock solid with them, often not in words, but in personal energy. Sometimes words might be said, but most often it’s a shift within where I let the restraint or rejection wash around me. Rock Solid in the tumultuous river. They don’t know what they are doing to me. They don’t know how their words are affecting me. Perhaps later there will be time to connect with them more deeply, but in the moment, I’m not to break faith with my awakened heart. I am to stay within the flow of compassion.

Still mulling over this one….. et vous?

Love and prayers

Anne

Mystic in Motion

Companion on the Way with Contemplative Fire

Companion on the Rivendell Way

Society Member of Shalem Institute for Contemplative Living

“Sinners” No More

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Last week I shared an experience I had with knowing God’s love even when I had been hurtful to someone. It was a life-shaping encounter that I continue to grow into, but more about that next week. This week I’m sharing with you a blog a reader sent me in response to last week. Nadia Bolz-Weber writes eloquently of the depth and breadth of God’s love for us as shared by Jesus in the story we often call the ‘The Prodigal Son’. A real misnomer — ‘The Inexhaustible Love of God for Us’ would be closer to what he wanted us to hear. Hope this link leads you to her blog, and you take the time to read – maybe five minutes.

https://thecorners.substack.com/p/slightly-off-brand-children?r=17mo2c&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

Love and prayers on the journey

Anne

Mystic in Motion

Companion on the Way with Contemplative Fire, Founder Contemplative Fire Canada

Companion on the Rivendell Way

Society Member with Shalem Institute for Contemplative Living

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God – Really?

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I’ve been reflecting on my experiences of God and want to share one with you. I’ve often been puzzled by the talk of sin and God’s wrath. I used to read sermons such as those by Jonathan Edwards and try to fit my belief into the box of an angry God who needed to have his wrath appeased, but I couldn’t ever fit. Here’s a story from my early life that shows why I struggled.

I closed the back door of our home, shutting Hugh out of my life, relieved that I would never see him again. I had been very cold and closed towards him that evening, yet as I closed the door, I heard a voice and felt an impression in my heart. ‘You haven’t loved your brother in Christ.’ That was all. That was it. I heard the words and knew their truth in my heart. I felt no condemnation, but knew the reality was that I hadn’t loved him. No matter what else happened in our lives, Hugh was my brother in Christ and I had been rude to him. I knew that wasn’t the way I was supposed to be living. I wasn’t walking the path Jesus was guiding me along but was veering off on my own direction. I had asked for a life companion, a husband and Hugh had been given to me yet I had rejected the gift. What would happen now? What happens when God gives you a gift and you toss it aside?

My experience of God in that moment was of understanding, tenderness, righteousness and love. God heard the negative churning in my mind, saw the decision I made and didn’t run away from me. My coldness and rudeness were seen, understood and mirrored back to me. God spoke tenderly into my mind and my heart, describing what I had done and what I hadn’t done. I was shown a glimpse of my cruelty yet also showed a different path that I was invited to walk. I’m to love. God didn’t start with me loving the whole world, but loving one person, who was my brother in Christ, one person who has faith and is wanting to walk the path of life with me. God showed me the path of loving, the path of kindness, the path that Jesus walked. It’s a beautiful path, might not always be easy but it is the path of loving.

I didn’t hear any condemnation that day. I experienced understanding, tenderness, righteousness and love. Love for me. Love for Hugh. Understanding for what might have been. Understanding for was going to be because of my choices.

I had listened to the voices of criticism that came from a place of fear, from that place deep inside me where I was taught to fear loving, that place that carts out boulders and builds walls. God saw me in that place, had compassion on me, didn’t run from me or abandon me or shut the door on me, but spoke tenderly, firmly, and wisely into my life. God is good, faithful, kind, compassionate. God knows me, knows each of us and cares.

I’ve never encountered wrath or anger, only God’s tenderness, compassion and invitation.

Perhaps this week you would enjoy journalling one of your experiences of God.

Love and prayers

Anne

Mystic in Motion

Companion on the Way with Contemplative Fire

Companion on the Rivendell Way

Society Member of Shalem Institute for Contemplative Living

A Glimpse of God on Raspail

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Today I stood in one of those ‘v’ shaped intersections in Paris, France where several streets converge, some small, some busier, with the movement of cars and people everywhere. Which direction will I look to cross the street? The sidewalks are not congested but they were full of Parisiennes heading home after school and work. The sun was beginning to dip as darkness comes early near the end of the year. I’m on my daily walk from the hospital to a shop to find some thread to mend a scarf, on my way to pick up my grandson after school. I’m listening to a podcast reflecting on Julian of Norwich. My day is unfolding like many others on this family visit to Paris.

Julian and I have a bit of history. She’s my favorite Christian mystic. Over the years, several times she’s opened my heart. She was the first to show me the celestial city within me. Through her I could feel eternity, sparkling in my soul. I knew there was more to my life than the clothes I wore, job I performed, relationships around me. Oh, there was so much more. Through her writings I felt a connection to Divine and Eternity. Another time Julian showed me that God smells. Wow! What kind of God is this? So much bigger, so much more familiar than I’d ever imagined. God smells! And of course, she taught of LOVE. It’s all about LOVE. And the Hazelnut story where I’m taught the significance of everything, absolutely everyone and everything for all has its being in the love of God. After many years I’m re-reading her and listening to a wonderful podcast by a fellow mystic. Julian has been a rich teacher for me.

So perhaps today wasn’t a surprise, but when God shows up it’s always a surprise, yet not a surprise, for God is always present! Just sometimes when I catch a glimpse of what really is, rather than what seems to be, it feels like a surprise. Today I had such a glimpse. Walking along Raspail, with Parisiennes going about their daily lives, I felt myself within God. All of us, the cars, the people, the activity of Paris, all of that was within God. Not so much embraced or enveloped in God’s love as within God herself. We were God. It was a feeling of presence. The fragility of this world was gone. The unimportance/importance struggles of this world were gone. The glimpse was short, but oh, it was sweet. Like a bite of deep dark chocolate, something to be savoured.

Savoured, so I share it with you Gentle Reader. What ‘glimpses of the Divine’ have you had?  

Love and prayers

Anne

Mystic in Motion

Companion on the Way with Contemplative Fire

Companion on the Rivendell Way

Society Member of Shalem

Ordinariness

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It began or did it… with a friend sharing the invitation she heard, to fall in love with God. Everyday, all day she was to live deeply in love with God. One of my teachers says that we are to love God in our daily lives; each breath is to be a turning towards God. And then there is me knowing a quiet life this year, a year of not working or doing but of having my focus on loving those closest to me. When did it begin?

I have a deck of Zen cards with beautiful images on them, and thoughtful commentaries. One day after my conversation with my friend, I asked Jesus, ‘What do I need to consider today?’ and the card I drew was ORDINARINESS. It felt alive. Yes, this is my life. I am to live each day alive in God, falling in love with God and letting that love flow into the ordinary tasks/ways of life, loving the one closest to me, loving my family circle, tending the garden, sweeping the deck, walking the village streets, greeting people, enjoying my friends, praying for the world. Each day, every day in the ordinary flow of life I am to seek and know God, living a God-soaked life. Not saving the world, not doing famous things, not writing a book that gets attention, but loving those around me, anchored in love/peace/joy so that God’s being flows through me.

That’s my call

It sounds so good. When I met my friend again and described to her my ordinary life, she cried, giving me a heartfelt, ‘Yes’. Yet…it’s so hard sometimes. Sometimes I don’t want to love my family circle. I simply don’t. It feels like hard work to value them, do things for them, and keep my heart open towards them. I want to shut myself away, I want to hide. I want to be a hermit. Other times I feel the ego that wants to be noticed, to change the world.

Over this year I hear the call from Jesus to walk in the way he walked. At this time in my life I understand that to be listening to Father/Mother, loving those around me, forgiving them, enjoying them, being present to God’s breath every day, being open to God every moment. I’m so far from that… yet I’m moving toward it. At least I hope I am.

ORDINARINESS – the picture on the card is of someone, maybe a woman, walking through a field with a basket of flowers, trees in blossom all around her. Yes, the open air, the beauty of nature, my place on the planet. Finding beauty in the simple bits of life – in feeding our new granddaughter, sharing meals with family, tending a garden, cooking, planning a trip – letting all of life be sacred. Let me live easily, one step at a time, one day at a time. An ordinary life. A sacred life.

When did this call to an ordinary, sacred life begin? I think it’s always been there and finally I’m beginning to pay attention.

Dear Reader…your life too is sacred.

Love and prayers

Anne

Mystic in Motion

Companion on the Way with Contemplative Fire

Companion on the Rivendell Way

Society Member with Shalem

Coming Home to Where I’ve Always Been

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In March of 2017 I was beginning my Sabbath leave and a three-month ‘Retreat in Daily Life’, with Jesus’s birth narratives as my starting point in prayer. Using imaginary prayer, I was sitting around the campfire with shepherds, and as the sky filled with angels I leapt to my feet. A hand lifted me through the angels and brought me off stage. I could see the whole world, and the Jesus story as a play on the world stage. I was no longer a part of it but was in the wings watching the drama unfold. Turning, I saw a door marked ‘Director’s Office’ and I was invited to enter. Inside, I knew a presence telling me to rest, for I wasn’t needed on stage.

That was five years ago. The image and message are still alive for me. My new life in BC began as an ‘off stage’, quiet life. Sometimes it got busy but then I would quieten it again. Today something different happened. I realized how being in the Director’s Office is a sacred and holy place, yet I haven’t been focused on the Director. My ears, eyes, body are always turning to what’s happening on stage. I’m here, in this fabulous, wonderful, holy place, called by Spirit to be with our Director and I’m not focused there for I’m still turning to the distractions of the world.

I’m stunned at the awareness. I need to capture that treasure and not loose it.

I feel so graced to become aware of the gift of being in the Directors Office, and the gift of realizing that I haven’t been valuing the gift, for I have continued to be distracted by the noise on stage. I know I’m repeating myself, but I need to hear the truth. Too often I let truths blow away in the wind. I want to stay present to the Director in my everyday life. My night dreams are still full of the noise on the stage reflecting how much I’m still entangled in it.

Today I turn to Jesus and speak with him…..I’m so grateful to you.  Do I try your patience? It’s been years that I’ve been in the Director’s Office and years I haven’t always respected your call. I am so sorry. I have been as a child, naughty and distracted. I want to learn to be HERE with you. The trees have told me to be still ever since I arrived. I’ve paid some attention, but not enough. Help me keep my focus on The Director. That’s my calling, to use my will, my reason, my wisdom in focusing on You, Loving One. And I know that even as my eyes wandered back into the rush of life, you never took your eyes off me, for I am your child. I have returned home to where I’ve always been, living in your Loving…..

And you Gentle Reader. Are you wandering and now ready to return home? What might be your distractions that keep your focus off your Creator?  What keeps you rushing instead of resting and trusting?

Love and prayers

Anne

Mystic in Motion

Companion on the Way with Contemplative Fire

Companion with the Rivendell Way

Society member of Shalem