Sabbath

Rule of Love

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I hope, I hope, I hope that the upheaval within our world will take us one step forward as a human race. We’ve been shut down with a virus and now a justified viral outrage has spread. Will we move forward?

I received a note this week that the Pope has called us to prayer – one minute of silent prayer for peace for the world, at 1.00pm Sunday June 7th – possible today as you read this. Whatever your tradition, whatever your way, take a minute wherever you are around the world, in your time zone and let’s send a wave of peace around the globe and into the spiritual world. Calling for help. We need help. We can’t do this on our own. Would you join the wave of prayer? 1.00pm, wherever you are, Sunday June 8th…. And I’m a believer in cosmic time zones, so whenever your read this, send your prayer aloft!

Humanity lived for centuries under ‘Rule of Might’ where the strongest tribe won. Many of us have also lived under the ‘Rule of Law’ where, although safer, the privileged often were the winners. Now it’s time for the ‘Rule of Love’ to reign. Imagine with me, a world where compassion, forgiveness and kindness were strong. Imagine with me a world where we saw the goodness within one another, where we treated each other gently. I’m a Christian, a follower of Jesus, so imagine with me a world where he, with his healing energy was welcomed. Imagine.

Love and prayers

Anne

Mystic in Motion

Companion on the Way with Contemplative Fire

Contemplative Fire Canada, Founder

Still More Fallow Time (4)

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more and more definitions spoke to me….

3. plowed and harrowed but left unsown for a period in order to restore its fertility as part of a crop rotation or to avoid surplus production.

Crop rotation! Yes, we don’t need to be doing the same thing year after year, season after season. We can change. May I be open to whatever changes My Farmer has in mind.

Surplus production! Yes, sometimes I think we just do and do and do. In churchland it seems more is always better, numbers are always a determining factor, but deep inside me I don’t believe that. I don’t want to be part of More, always More. I want to be part of significance, Spirit led significance in each of our lives. That might be more, it might be less. May I be open to the Whatever the Spirit wills, rather than the bigger and better our world, including the church, clamours for.

4. the tilling of land without sowing it for a season

in the midst of my ease. God’s Spirit is ‘doing’ something. I don’t know what it is, but I trust My Farmer with the care of my field. May God till the soil of my soul. May I rest and receive God’s care of my soil. Till away Dear One.

Are you experiencing the invitation to a crop rotation and the drive of surplus production? What would it be like to change what you are doing or to rest awhile?

If this is interesting to you, please show support by sharing it with a friend. Let’s broaden the contemplative pathway.

Love and prayers

Anne+

Mystic in Motion

Contemplative Fire, Community Leader Canada

 

More Fallow Time (3)

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I’m continuing to be in fallow time….

Here’s another definition:

  1. to plow, harrow, and break up (land) without seeding to destroy weeds and conserve soil moisture

During this fallow time, I’ve experienced some of that deep down breaking up. Some long held experiences that have bound me have been disclosed, named, embraced and released. Some weeds have been pulled up. I hope that work will make my soul’s soil more moist, tender and even fertile.

I’ve felt My Farmer plow deeply into me. It’s hard work. The image of a field is profound – it can’t run away from the farmer. I’ve felt held, lovingly, but firmly held as the plow turned up the soil of my memories. I recalled images, emotions, lies I’d known and truths I’d heard.

I know it’s done lovingly to destroy the weeds that had crept in. One morning I woke and as I rested in bed recalled some lies that had crept into my perspective. It was time to pull them out.

I’m grateful that God’s Spirit cares enough to plough my field and doesn’t leave me sitting there with weeds exposed, but comes to walk in the field with me, weeding as we walk and talk together.

It is hard work, but oh, it’s good work.

If you feel some invitation from God, I encourage you to linger with it. Engage with the Spirit.

More thoughts on ‘fallow’ to come next week!

If this is interesting to you, please show support by sharing it with a friend. Let’s broaden the contemplative pathway.

Love and prayers

Anne+

Mystic in Motion

Contemplative Fire, Community Leader Canada

Fallow Time (2)

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I enjoy words and often poke through a dictionary. When I was reflecting on my time of rest, I dipped into the online dictionaries and found several ‘fallow’ definitions that spoke to me.

‘Fallow’ as either adjective or verb:

  1. usually cultivated land that is allowed to lie idle during the growing season

I know I’m cultivated(!) and trained to be helpful or useful to the world, yet right now the gifts I’ve been given to use in the world are on the back shelf. They are not to be used. I’m to be idle. I’m not to lead or teach or organize. I still pray, but even my prayers are different.

All around me I see people busy at work. I return to my church or community and encounter busy people, planting, tending and hoping for growth. I know that is a normal part life. We are meant to be working and growth is to be happening, but I know that I’m not to be a part of that work. I’m at ease in that.

A different kind of growth is happening within me. There is a life energy to being fallow that is very different. I believe it’s very needed in our world.  We seem to be absorbed in work and activity and have forgotten how to rest, how to value times of ease. We resist allowing ourselves to be idle.

What if we allowed ourselves, at least a day a week, time to lie idle?

More thoughts on ‘fallow’ to come next week!

If this is interesting to you, please show support by sharing it with a friend. Let’s broaden the contemplative pathway.

Love and prayers

Anne+

Mystic in Motion

Contemplative Fire, Community Leader Canada

 

A Fallow Time

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‘Anne, you’re in a fallow time.’  In the last while, a few people have told me that. One person, who is very action oriented, and believes the main purpose of life is to be actively helping others, said that to me. I felt she truly believed it and for the first time I sensed within her an acceptance of rest – at least for me!

I know I am in a fallow time. I entered it March 5 when I began my Sabbath Leave and despite doing some work, especially during the summer, I haven’t left it. I am in fallow time, a time of rest, renewal, regeneration.

Occasionally since March I’ve hit times of chaos such as when I travel or when I returned to my community after my leave, but generally my life has been gentle and very restorative since March. I haven’t sensed the farmer who tends my field, returning to use it again.

I really enjoy these open-ended days. I wake up in the morning when I’m ready to be awake. There is space in my day. It’s not already filled with appointments or responsibilities. I’ve enjoyed reading. I’ve dipped into expansive reading around nature, human rights activism, First Nations issues and their spirituality and ecological concerns. I’ve re-read some of my favourite spiritual teachers such as Rohr, Keating and Bourgeault. I’ve read them slowly, thoughtfully, meditatively allowing them to nourish my soul. I’ve spent time in scripture reflection, poking my way through favourite stories with fresh eyes and a non-teaching focus – just to enjoy. I’ve read novels, especially mysteries, played games and lingered over food. I’m regularly on my yoga mat, at the gym to swim and take long, go-nowhere walks. I’m sorting through my home, releasing things I haven’t used in years, discovering and enjoying other items that still speak to me. And despite that list, I don’t feel any need to justify my days!

I’ve found some definitions of ‘fallow’ that really speak to me which I’ll share in the next blogs, but right now I’m simply enjoying my quiet life.  I hope you’re enjoying your life too.

How are you? A new year begins…. What sort of resolutions do you make or not make? How does activity draw you? Which is more comfortable for you, activity or rest? Do times of rest generate guilt? There are times to work and times to rest….

If this is interesting to you, please show support by sharing it with a friend. Let’s broaden the contemplative pathway.

Love and prayers

Anne+

Mystic in Motion

Contemplative Fire, Community Leader Canada

The Quiet Centre at the Heart of Me

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Last week I was ruminating on my Pinball Brain, but this week my focus is on my Quiet Centre. I’m actually writing these two blogs on the same day, just minutes apart. You’ll get them a week apart, but they are deeply connected.

At the same time as I’m living with my Pinball Brain, I also am in touch with a quietness that pervades my inner world. I’m very still inside myself these days. One day I sat at my abandoned art table and got out one of my creative books to see if it would stimulate me. As I read, the author described pictures emerging from within her. I realized that one of the reasons my art table is abandoned, is that there are no pictures emerging within me. When I started about ten years ago to intentionally learn to draw and paint, there were pictures that were emerging within me, but now there are no pictures. It’s not time to create at my table. It’s time to be quiet.

Not only are there no pictures within me, there are no lessons to teach, illustrations to share, sermons to preach, or ideas for groups. That’s a huge change for me. Since my call to ministry in 1990 I’ve regularly had a flow from within for teaching. I’m very quiet in my central core right now. I continue to hold that sense that God has lifted my gifting from me and I’m to be still. It’s unfamiliar, uncomfortable and beautiful at the same time.

No pictures, no lessons and there’s also no leadership initiative within me. I read leadership books and can feel the old stirring, but then it subsides again. I return to the quiet place.

The quiet place at my centre reaches out and touches so many parts of my life. I have no desire to be in groups, workshops, retreats or services. I’m still resting in the depth of what I experienced during my Sabbath Leave.

At my core is quietness and yet I live with a Pinball Brain.

That’s me for now. How are you?

If this is interesting to you, please show support by sharing it with a friend. Let’s broaden the contemplative pathway.

Love and prayers

Anne+

Mystic in Motion

Contemplative Fire, Community Leader Canada

Relax, Trust in the Slow Work of God

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What do you do with souvenirs that you bring home from your trips? The crazy Hawaiian shirt that looked so good …., the shells and rocks, the coffee mugs and plates, the masks and carvings, the maps and guides and of course the photos! What do you do with your trip memories, the ways you’ve been shaped from your adventure that took you out of your ordinary routines?

Sometimes I lie in bed and pull my Sabbath Leave memories over me, so they are wrapping me like a blanket to keep my soul warm, tender and willing to show up. I would love to share my memories with others, but I usually find that most aren’t too interested. We seldom want to sit for long and look at photos of a trip someone took to some place with some people other than ourselves!

But I’ll share one keepsake with you. The title of this blog probably sums up the work of my leave: Relax, Anne. Trust in the slow work of God. I can’t say it often enough. I do say it frequently as I re-enter community life. It aligns really well with our Rhythm of Life: Travelling Lightly and Dwelling Deeply. Again and again I return to it – relax, be at ease, move lightly through life, for God is at work, in the depths God is there, with the Presence of Love guiding the movements. I can be so impatient, so eager to make things happen. My sabbath leave was full of what I’ll call ‘Moments of Encounter’, times when I know so clearly there IS a God, a Divine Presence within all there is. I am to relax, trust in the slow work of God. God’s speed is often very slow – at least by Anne’s schedule! And that’s okay. That’s what I’m learning and what I bring home from my Sabbath Leave. Thanks for listening.

Love and prayers on our journey

Anne

Community Leader Contemplative Fire Canada

The World is My Cloister

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I found the phrase, ‘the world is my cloister’ in Richard Rohr’s devotions yesterday where he is writing of the Franciscan approach to life. It expresses so beautifully what I have been aware of during this transition month. I don’t see The Holy as something I experience when in seclusion, something out there, but as God’s presence vibrating everywhere, all the time. I’m to know myself within The Holy wherever I am, to live as Jesus lived, listening deeply to God wherever he was, wedding party or hilltop, dinner table or village well, temple or garden, always, always listening and responding.

I’ve spent hours in prayer and reflection during my Sabbath Leave, yet contemplative life is not about interior work for its own sake. It is about service, but Spirit led service. For years I’ve offered as Contemplative Fire’s elevator speech, “We help people slow down, listen to God and then live out of what they hear.” That’s another way of saying prayer/study/action or being/knowing/doing – our Rhythm of Life.

This fourth month has been about transitioning back into a life of action.  The expression, ‘the world is our cloister’ makes sense to me. I don’t think I’m called out of the world, but called to get the world out of me so I can be alive, and listening to God while in the world.

I’m finding The Holy in the midst of everyday life. I’m at home in God’s Love wherever I am, be it a train station with police carrying machine guns, or a church, or a believing community, or in the beauty of nature, or in a landscaped garden, or walking the busy city streets, or watching the news. God is always present and I’m at home and hold internal peace. So now the time comes to move more clearly into busy ministry life, but still holding God’s peace within. Be Still …and Still Moving – that’s Rohr’s phrase for the week and couldn’t be better for me! Let our lives be still, and let our service come from that stillness, not compulsion, but from listening to the deep stillness.

The basic addiction of our culture is to activity. We must be busy. We’ve lost the ability to be quiet, to be still, to listen deeply. I don’t want to lose my slowness, my ability to listen and respond when I return next week. Pray for me! May I be a mystic whose motion is grounded in stillness.

Love and prayers

Anne

Mystic in Motion

 

 

Be Still, Be Very, Very Still

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I’ve just returned from an eight-day Centering Prayer retreat. Of course we spent hours being still, very, very still! One of the beauties of it for me was our location. We were on Long Beach in New Jersey. As we sit being still, very, very still, the Atlantic Ocean is relentlessly pounding away on the shoreline. I love the picture of God’s relentless love washing onto the shores of our souls, never, ever stopping, and at the same time God’s presence as stillness and silence from the ocean depth. A surging ocean containing a still point. Constant noise and deep silence. All within one.

It was one more wonderful week. Held within our hours of communal prayer, I spent much time walking the beach and pondering my way forward. I’m coming to the end this week of three months of Retreat in Daily Life. I feel like I’ve been gifted with three months on the mountain top. I am aware I will be coming down. Or sort of aware…..

I’ve called myself “Mystic in Motion”, but I feel now there is less motion in me. The different pace of life, the Retreat in Daily Life discipline, the three retreat weeks, and the month on Cortes have slowed me down considerably. I’ve been in search of a sustainable life and I’ve certainly experienced it in these three months. I’ve lived into the core life of Contemplative Fire –prayer/study/action or slow down, listen to God and then live from what you hear. I’ve deepened my practice of slowing down and listening, yet I know there is still much more for me to learn there. And I’ve heard more guidance on living from what I hear. I know there is much more to experience there. I hear the call to have the ‘motion’ be moment to moment led by the surging stillness of God.

How still can you be?  Physically we can try to sit very still, yet perhaps feel the urge to twitch, scratch or shift positions. How about your emotions? Can you be aware of them and see what their energy level is like in this moment? Are they jumpy or deeply flowing? And then of course there is our mind and that torrent of thoughts! For most of us, those thoughts love to rush around, pushing each other out, repeating themselves, a relentless driving noise like the city’s churning. How still can you be? Take a moment and try it!

Love and prayers

Anne

Mystic in Motion

Returning

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During one of our cottage summers we had two dogs with us, Timmy, a five year old Golden Retriever and Major, an eight month old Labrador Retriever. The dogs had the best summer ever! Running in the forest, digging at the beach, swimming endlessly, catching frogs, and playing with the children – it simply doesn’t get any better for a retriever! The first week home, they lay in the middle of the kitchen and looked at me with mopey, sad eyes. What – back here again? Returning.

Last week I returned to Toronto from my month on Cortes. I felt a bit like Timmy and Major. Really? Back again to concrete and asphalt, to close tiny lots, to the relentless strum of the city, to the human energy of city density? Really? There were a few people I thought I’d be in touch with on my return and I simply wasn’t able to do it. I needed some time being a retriever ‘lying on my kitchen floor with mopey eyes’.

It is so easy for me to move from the roar of Toronto to Cortes. It’s virtually instantaneous. I feel it happening on ferry #2 as we cross from Quadra to Cortes and the slowing down continues with each day I’m there. It’s much tougher for me to return to bustle. Something in me resists re-entering the relentless roar.

Whenever we have a wonderful experience, one we want to treasure, how do we re-enter our ‘normal’ life while retaining the goodness we’ve experienced? It could be returning from a holiday, a retreat, a concert, an engaging conversation or an engrossing book –  any number of soul touching experiences. How do we do it well?

Two Returning Principles: First, for me I recognize I’m doing it slowly, respecting my interior life while also respecting the world I’m in. I value living in the present moment so that entails not dwelling on the past, or worrying of the future, but being open to now. I’m open to the concrete and roar with a soul that has been formed by spaciousness and beauty for the past month. Second, I continue to live with the awareness that my life is more than my own. I’m responsible for it AND I have said ‘yes’ to Jesus directing my life. Once again John 21.6 and the fishing command has spoken into my life. I don’t want to live from my own driven needs (got to go fishing), but under the direction of God’s Spirit. So, I cope with returning slowly and gently, continuing to honor some core values from it.

How are your returning times? Bumpy? Irritable? Sacrificial? In what way do you lose the goodness you experienced? What helps you retain the goodness?

I leave on Sunday for the last of my silent retreat weeks. I’ve chosen to do something a bit different on this one. Although still silent, it will be in a community with a particular focus. I hope to deepen the flow of God’s loving and compassionate presence through me. Again, you remain in my prayers and I appreciate yours as I travel and immerse myself in a week of prayer. Both weeks in March and April were strong, deep and a lot of work. I wonder what this one will bring.

Love and prayers on the journey

Anne

Mystic in Motion