Today ‘surrender’ is my word. It’s my second day at Rivendell leading the group meditation. This time it was Richard Wagamese writing about surrendering the outcome of an event to the Creator. The word opened within me a gentle release. Ah yes, I don’t need to concern myself with outcome, or expectations, or productivity or success. I’m invited to be open to My Creator, to invite her to move within and through me, to unfold her ways in my life. The Way of Love.
“When my energy is low, meaning I don’t feel at my best in terms of creativity, inspiration, attunement or rest, I let Creator have my flow and ask only to be a channel. My deepest audience connection has always happened when I do this. So, on my way to a podium nowadays, I say to myself, “Okay, Creator, you and me, one more time.” When I surrender the delivery, along with the outcome, the anxiety and expectation, everything becomes miraculous. It’s a recipe for life, really.” Embers pg67
‘Surrender’ used to be a scary word to me. I have come to recognize that what I felt in those days was my controlling ego not wanting to let go of what it knew, what was its protection and projection. Today when I hear the word my heart warms. Oh yes. Remind me again and again to surrender to God. It is You and me together Precious One. You lead. I 
follow. I trust wherever You want to take me and whatever You want to give to me and to others through me. This life is Your show, Your pathway. We walk it together, but I want it to be about You, You and me, not about ME. My life is more embedded in you than it used to be, more entangled with the delight of You.
Thank you Richard for reminding me one more time to surrender, to live as Creator and me dancing together. I need to be reminded. Often. Do you?
Love and prayers
Anne
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Mystic in Motion
Companion on the Way with Contemplative Fire
Contemplative Fire Canada (Founder)
A talk with myself about that nagging conversation was in order! Just what benefit was I receiving from re-working the conversation? I couldn’t find any benefit, yet it kept re-playing. So, time to bring something positive in to replace it, find some devotional reading, something short and punchy to twist my insides back into line. That’s a practice that usually works for me, but this week it was so hard to focus my thoughts. I sank back into re-playing. I wondered if an apology would alleviate the boring re-play. I could do that! I can usually say ‘I’m sorry’ and try to move things in a different direction. Yet I wasn’t going to jump right into that response. I could…but was that the wisest response? Maybe my feelings weren’t mine at all. Maybe I was picking up someone else’s anxiety. I’ve known that emphatic response in the past. I feel awful but it’s not my ‘awful’ but someone else’s unfinished business. I know that is a call to prayer, to encircle the one I’m re-playing with kindness and gentleness. That was possible!
Yesterday the cleaners came through our home. It was wonderful. I put away most of the Christmas decorations and did the light dusting. They did the heavier work of washing floors, vacuuming and cleaning the kitchen. When all was done our home sparkled! It felt wonderful. A fresh beginning.
Today as I look out my cabin window, I can see the Douglas fir that are close to our home, but just beyond them are puffs of clouds. I know if I was driving down the road, I’d see our part of the mountain embraced by cloud.
enormous Douglas Fir and red cedar trees. So tall my neck strained to look at their tips. So wide I was tiny within their embrace. We watched the waves of the Pacific Ocean crash upon the rocks or smoothly glide onto the long, wide beaches, both hypnotic. Beauty. Natural Beauty. I’m surrounded by it.
can trust her to give me an opinion on whether to write for my family or another audience. I felt such warmth. Since we were leaving town the next day, I sent her the draft that evening. I did it quickly while the warm feeling was still there. Before any inner critic could pull me back with doubts and hesitations. Her offer to read my unfinished work was such a gift to me. Beauty. Natural Beauty. I’m surrounded by it.
shifting: when I slowed down commitments to learn to pray; when I joined Community Bible Study as a Teaching Director; when I left after ten years; when I returned to school; when I sought ordination; when I encountered Contemplative Fire; when I stepped back after ten years; and when I moved to British Columbia. Each time I had a ‘Big Yes’. I knew deep within me it was time to walk that pathway. I wasn’t besieged by doubts or fears. I knew what I wanted. Sometimes there were obstacles in my way. Sometimes it was slower that I thought it would be, but I still kept knowing a ‘Big Yes’.
guides and sends angels to protect and affirm us. The Spirit sends people too. We are to help each other, speak into each other’s lives with affirmation and encouragement.
This week I heard it one more time and something inside me said ‘STOP’! “Silence makes me depressed”. “Silence and solitude….” and then she shuddered. I’ve heard it so many times. People pull away from contemplative practices. Why? Why do they sign up for yoga retreats but not for Contemplative Fire or for contemplative retreats within a Christian tradition? Why will they learn a new language of Sanskrit, chant in words they don’t know but not join a reflective service? Why?
deep love of God that holds and sustains my life. Has it all been easy? No, much of it has been hard work, but it’s been wonderful. It is now my life passion to help other people find their own healing path. I offer the contemplative path and I grieve when it is dismissed as depressive. The door is slammed shut. ‘No thanks. Don’t want any.’ Slam.
How come people can blame the contemplative practices for their feelings and get away with it? The practices of silence or solitude or meditation or imaginary prayer or (insert any contemplative practice)… are not the problem. The inability to accept responsibility for our own feelings and reactions is the problem. Too much of our church life is directed by people who aren’t willing to own their own feelings and do their work, do The Work of maturing spiritually, of following Jesus. Too much of our world is also led by people who won’t do their work.
now, I hold it in the presence of our Loving, Omnipresent God. I want to be able to put my foot in the door and not let them slam it shut.
Perhaps this will feel like an upside-down image for you, but please stay with me and see if it works!
if my life was a colander, a large bowl made to receive, but filled with holes. The holes in my life were things like fear, doubt, anxiety, envy, judgement and insecurity. Or words such as ‘not good enough’, ‘you can’t’, ‘that’s not true’, ‘how could you?’. Each time Love was poured into my life, it would escape through one of the holes and I’d not experience it. Instead of a large full round colander, it was as if I held up a tiny thimble to God. I could only receive the tiniest bit of Love.
Once the holes in our colander begin to be healed, we can receive and relish the delights of Love. Then our colanders, our lives can fill, fill to overflowing and God’s Healing Love can reach others through us. But we need to do our own work first. I’m persuaded that I won’t love you, anymore than I honestly love myself, and I don’t begin to deeply love myself till I acknowledge my holes and enter into the healing work. Then I will be of service to others. That’s the human journey.
The night was magical. There was a clear sky overhead. Slowly the sun sank, and an evening blue sky began to cover us. We were tucked beside wild and extravagant flower boxes on various levels of our host’s patio. Thirty or so of the village had gathered to re-live a ‘El Camino Experience’. One of our members, an author, was to read an award-winning article she had written about her pilgrimage. First, she gave us an overview of the history and current happenings on the pilgrimage trail, and then took us into her story as she 
described what became her addiction to walking. As part of her journey she had experienced a remarkable service in a chapel where one pilgrim had played ‘Ave Maria’ on her flute. So, we had two other village members who were both flutists play for us ‘Ave Maria’ and many more tunes as well. Our evening was completed with a feast of tapas and lingering conversations. One more time I left a village gathering amazed and delighted. And this is the place I’m able to call home!
my courses were driven by essays. I actually enjoyed banging them out on a typewriter and learning how to footnote! Twenty-five years later when I returned to university and found I could still write, a bit of my heart jumped with joy. My years in ministry were rich with sermon writing, reflections for Contemplative Fire and then blogging.
and wrong. Then as a young Christian I was in a very strong doctrinal community where absolute truths were taught so I developed a clear sense of correct beliefs. If I heard a ‘new’ idea, I quickly, both intuitively and intellectually, ran it through my grid of acceptable beliefs. If it didn’t fit, and many didn’t, out it went. I couldn’t tolerate anything internally that would unsettle me.
years growing a contemplative pattern into my life. As I did that, I encountered the Love (with a capital ‘l’) of God. I became aware of how present God is around me and within me. My sense of myself, not only at peace with God, but as Jesus describes in John’s Gospel, one with God, became deeply real to me. As that happened, the roots of my heart space went deep into the Love of Christ. I became more secure within God’s Love and then more secure hearing many different ideas.
not even able to entertain that thought. It was outside my comfort zone. It’s beyond what I’d been taught as ‘true’ or ‘good’ or ‘healthy’ or ‘honest.” But now my response is more “That’s interesting. Does it bring peace, joy, kindness, compassion, forgiveness into me, into the world?”
prayed for our hurting and suffering world. Instead of a sermon, there was a gentle reflection. No one told me what to believe about his death. The speaker simply led me closer to the experience of it. I appreciated not being ‘taught’ about one of the biggest mysteries of my faith.
So often I’ve said to grieving families when it’s a small cluster of us gathered around the graveside, ‘Take care of yourself. You’re heading out into a busy world. They’re not grieving but you are. You know a deep loss, a hole, a wound. You need to take care of yourself. You are living in a different space than they are.’ Today I feel the need of those words for myself. The world around me is whirling, but I’m not. I’m grieving. I’ve looked at death this morning. I grieve what was done to Jesus. I also grieve the lack of spiritual awareness in the world around me. No one seems to care that he died.