Stillness

Attuned to Jesus

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The other day I heard a bell ringing repeatedly. I mentioned it to another person near me and they didn’t hear it at all. It was ringing on a frequency that wasn’t in their range. Any of us who care for dogs will experience that too. Last night on our evening walk, our dogs were so excited, and yet I couldn’t see anything! Often dogs can hear things that we can’t. The sounds are still there, but I don’t have the frequency required to hear them.

This week I’ve been thinking a lot about Jesus and how I’ve known him over the years. I feel close to him and consider him my friend, my very best spiritual teacher, the one who has made me whole, who connects me to God. I shy away from church language of ‘Savour’ or ‘Son of God’ for I find many of those words to be encased in theology and lacking the intimacy of the one who appeared in bedroom when I was eight or who spoke to me in an art gallery in Venice, or who washed me Joy one night when I was so very dirty. In this season of my life, I prefer to set aside theology and live within my known experience.

That gets me back to frequencies. I want to be attuned to Jesus, to be able to hear his whispers and sense his movements. I want my spirit to be sensitive to Jesus and to all his friends, the ones both alive and who have left us, all who draw us closer to the source of all life, to what we call God.

I know sometimes I don’t hear his sound. Sometimes I’m distracted by the stuff of life or my own internal workings and I can’t hear when his bell rings or when he comes down the driveway at night. But I want to. I want to be attuned to the whisper of Jesus. I think I’ll ask him to help me. He’s really good at helping his friends.

What gets your attention? What or who do you listen to? Who is your friend who will help you?

Love and prayers

Anne

Mystic in Motion

Companion on the Way with Contemplative Fire

Contemplative Fire Canada, Founder

The Sun and I

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Do you ever have a ‘special encounter’ that just makes your day? Yesterday I had one of those with Our Sun.

Most mornings I walk the watershed road behind our home. It twists through the forest for about a kilometre, past a couple of houses, the warning sign about Bears, the trail head that goes deep into the forest, and our local reservoir. The road doesn’t stop, but there is a formidable fence that marks the area that is declared ‘no-go’ for we get our village water supply from the mountain stream that is in the protected area.

I stop my morning walk just before the gate near some beautiful boulders and of course, handsome trees. I admit a particular fondness for one fir, but I’m an equal lover of trees. From my vantage point I can see Mt Harvey behind the trees and one of The Lions straight ahead. There are two mountains the Brit’s named ‘The Lions’ that give our village its name. The indigenous people named them ‘The Sisters’ and tell the story of two sisters who were peacemakers giving their lives so tribes could be united. The tall, commanding mountains are ‘The Sisters’ to remind us of peacemaking and brotherhood. I’m grateful for that story and naming, but the world around calls them ‘The Lions’.

Yesterday morning as I stood before one of ‘The Sisters’, I watched the sun rise over her shoulder. I was there for those few moments when our earth tipped, and our sun appeared to shine upon us. Her light was breath-taking, warm and full.

I spent the day in gentle daily activities that included trail making and seawall walking, reading, chatting with Hugh and cooking. Hugh chose to set our dinner table on the front deck. We are fortunate to live where we have lots of nature around us. I think I’ve written frequently on how much it means to me to live surrounded by forest, with creek flowing below and Howe Sound spread before me. Our front deck gives an open view of Howe Sound, some islands and the mountains of the mainland. Hugh and I settled in to enjoy our meal in the most beautiful ‘dining room’ possible.

As we finished eating and lingered chatting, the sun was streaming across the Sound. It was brilliant, so bright I couldn’t look at it. The sun’s radiance filled the sky and shone off the water, filling the air above it. I realized that the sun was about to disappear. We watched as the earth continued her tipping and said good-bye to the sun with her radiance. In the pause after her descent, we both began to sing the song of our youth, ‘Day is done, gone the sun, from the lakes, from the hills, from the sky. All is well. Safely rest. God is nigh.’

In one day, I had said ‘Good Morning’ and ‘Good Night’ to our sun. My simple day had been bracketed by Light, Radiant Light. As I transition into a different season of life, a season of stillness and reflection, a season of a small circle, I found my life being held by the sun and its sustaining power, by the universal warmth of the sun. I felt the eternal ‘yes’ on my simple life. It’s not for me to determine my life, yet it is for me to live my life well, fully expressing my heart longings within it.

We  walk on our earth, as it spins its way through the galaxy and turns on its axis around the sun. Tiny upon the earth. Humbly significant within the cosmos. Each day simple. Each day unrepeatable. Each day precious.

May you live today well, honest and grounded in your very best life.

Love and prayers

Anne

Mystic in Motion

Companion on the Way with Contemplative Fire

Contemplative Fire Canada, Founder

Four Words

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As I walk the mountain I’m humming four words. Each word slows me down so I pay attention to my footsteps. I’m more attentive to my walk, the woods around me, and to being alive, today.

My words grew out some mindfulness meditations from Thich Nhat Hanh. I’ve been doing an online course from him and realized I needed to do it a second time.  (It’s one that Sounds True offers: Body and Mind are One). This time I’ve laid aside my knitting so I can take notes.  My mind wanders less when my hand holds a pen and puts marks on paper!

Each section of the course begins with a guided meditation, a series of repeated phrases that the student is to take into a walking meditation and daily practice. Over the last few months as I’ve listened to them, I found I was creating my own phrases, a tiny bit different and reflective of my life. The phrases fall on the in breath and out breath:

Breathing in: The mountain is solid

Breathing out: I’m solid

Mountain/solid (stay with these words till ready to change)

Breathing in: The creek is flowing

Breathing out: I’m flowing

Creek/flowing

Breathing in: The trees are still

Breathing out: I’m still

Trees/still

Breathing in: The birds are singing

Breathing out: I’m singing

Birds/singing

Breathing in: Solid

Breathing out: Flowing

Breathing in: Still

Breathing out: Singing

Solid/Flowing/Still/Singing  (repeating these four words until it’s time to move on)

During the day I’m carrying those four words around with me. Sometimes I pause, take a breath and lay my words on my breath. Then I know I’m here and present with whomever I am with, wherever I am.

Do you have four words that are yours to ground you? What might they be?

Love and prayers

Anne

Mystic in Motion

Companion on the Way with Contemplative Fire

Contemplative Fire Canada, Founder

 

 

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

Hidden Beauty

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I think I told you that we’re working on a trail from our home to the creek below us. I’ve found that my job, has been to tidy the forest around the trail. Doesn’t that sound odd?  Why would you tidy a forest? For years, the forest and those in the home have tossed branches down the hillside. I did it myself last year when a windstorm blew branches all around the decks. I just tossed them over edge into the forest below us. That’s just fine, till someone gets the idea to make a trail down the hillside to the creek! Suddenly all those branches become visible and many need to be moved to clear space for the trail.

As I began to clear the branches, I realized that not only the narrow trail needed to be cleared, but I wanted the space around the trail to be open too. That’s when I began to tidy the forest. Others are working away sawing trees, digging out rocks, grading a path and building steps. I’m climbing over rocks tossing branches over the cliff-side. I started at the top area just below the house and have been making my way towards the creek.

The first few areas near the house were amazing. Simply removing the loose branches revealed a delightful forest garden right by our home. As I made my way down the hillside I found more treasures; a huge stump with ivy tumbling over it, a massive rock partly covered in moss, two more huge rocks with tree stumps tucked between them and a moss covered hillside that was flecked with starburst flowers. As the mess of odd branches was removed the beauty of the forest began to shine through. Next trail making day I’ll get out my clippers and tidy up the ferns. Underneath all that clutter there was and is a beautiful forest garden.

Isn’t that an image of life? What’s underneath the clutter of our activities, underneath the knot of old tapes in our minds, underneath the weight of ambitions and pressures? I know there is a beautiful forest garden within each of us. Too often our beauty is covered by a lot of clutter that we’ve accumulated or let others dump on us. But we are beautiful. Each person around you is beautiful. Can you see your own beauty? Can you see the beauty in the one beside you? What is the clutter that can be removed so you can behold the beauty within yourself and the one nearest you? God is always present, ready to help de-clutter.

May you use these days well.

Love and prayers

Anne

Mystic in Motion

Companion on the Way with Contemplative Fire

Contemplative Fire Canada, Founder

 

 

Listening Distance – Again

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A reader sent me a link to a compelling video that speaks again to living within listening distance of God.  If you just want the clip – skip to the end! or linger with me for a bit of set up….

This week a friend was describing how, one day, she heard ‘the tapping on her heart’.  She wasn’t alone but with two other people who heard the same ‘heart tapping’. BUT they made a decision together not based on their common shared experience but on an external policy structure they’d been given by their organization. Later, as events unfolded, they regretted they hadn’t listened to their ‘heart tapping’.

I felt sad as she told her story, yet it was so familiar too. Having a sense of something yet not living into it…..isn’t that familiar to so many of us?

I remembered a community I was part of years ago that taught me so much about listening together to the Spirit of God. It was wonderful to sit with a team, listening for ‘heart tapping’, that inner sense that we all shared and then making our decisions, within a community structure but with the freedom to follow our ‘heart tapping’. We had wonderful years together, sometimes stumbling over each other, but generally growing together because we respected each other and respected the ‘heart tapping’ that we were learning to listen to.

In my early Christian years, one verse that jumped out for me was John 3.8 ‘The wind blows where it pleases. You hear the sound of it but don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with anyone born of the Spirit.’ I sat at a beach this week and watched kites fly in the wind, lifting, dipping and soaring again, responding to each breath of the wind. Oh I long to live so sensitive to the Spirit. To be lifted, dipped, flipped around all trusting the Spirit as I listen to the ‘heart tapping’.

Here’s the link I tempted you with. It’s the true story of a pastor who learns to slow down and listen to God.

https://www.livegodspeed.org/watchgodspeed

How might we live Godspeed? How might we live listening to the ‘tapping of on our heart’? How might we live blown by breath of God?

Love and prayers

Anne

Mystic in Motion

Companion on the Way with Contemplative Fire

Contemplative Fire Canada, Founder

Listening Distance 2

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In response to my blog last week, one of our readers sent me this quote:

“In his book The Heart of the Hunter, Laurens van der Post tells his story of living in the Kalahari Desert with the bushmen of South Africa. It became obvious to van der Post that these primitive peoples knew intimately the presence of wisdom in every blade of grass and in every heartbeat. The bushmen had a mysterious kind of inner knowing. They knew when the enemy was approaching and danger was near, they knew when to move their camps, and when and where the rains would come. They knew where to go for the hunting that would sustain their lives. When questioned about this mysterious inner knowledge, they spoke of what they called the ‘tapping of the heart.’

From an early age they had been commanded to heed this tapping. When they felt it coming, they were to become very quiet inside and to listen vigilantly to the tapping. It was like a sixth sense, an unexplainable knowing. Reflecting on the uncomplicated lives of these ancient peoples I have come to believe that this mysterious knowing in them was nothing less than the wisdom of God.”

Oh…to mature within a community, a family group, that commands one to listen to such inner wisdom! How different from much of my training!

In the next few weeks most of us will begin to emerge from different levels of social isolation. One of my desires is to listen to the ‘tapping of my heart’ as I emerge. What is life-giving? How is Spirit directing me? Will I have the courage to listen? Will I have the courage to act on what I hear?

It’s so easy for me to call the bushmen ‘primitive’, but my sophistication can be an obstacle to spiritual intimacy. May it not be so. May I, may all of us, wait on God. Sit quietly. Even within our activities to be quiet and to keep listening to the tapping, to the whisper, to the words of loving guidance.  To wait and to trust.

Be safe, be well, and emerge wisely

Anne

Mystic in Motion

Companion on the Way with Contemplative Fire

Contemplative Fire Canada, Founder

Listening Distance

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We’re all living with social distance and physical distance these days. Have you ever heard of ‘listening distance’? What will allow me to listen to someone, to something, to listen well and absorb what I hear.

This week a friend reminded me of a poem by R. S. Thomas that describes our listening distance in relation to God. The distance isn’t a physical one, but rather a soul quality. How still can I be? How much can I retire from my cocktail party mind, into the quiet room within me where I can hear God breathe?

But the silence in the mind

is when we live best, within

listening distance of the silence we call God…

It is a presence, then,

whose margins are our margins; that calls us out over our

own fathoms.

I know social distancing practices of two meters of separation and hand washing, but what are my listening distance practices?

For me, some of the best ways into interior silence are through slowing down activities and meditation. I know I’m able to be still within while I’m busy working or engaging with people. That’s an essential bit of life to learn. Yet I know too when I slow my exterior activity, such as in this stay-at-home time, my mind begins to relax, and I can more easily access a listening distance. The best for me is when I do retreat, pull back from all commitments and responsibilities and relationships and be still in solitude. Those are wonderful listening times for me. I feel so embraced by Love. I know I want to live in that warm embrace of interior stillness within the fullness of normal daily life. I always want to be in listening distance with God.

My daily meditation practice has taught me to observe my mind, watch it running around, asking questions, looking for answers, passing judgments. It’s relentlessly busy. I know there is so much more to me than my mind. My real self, True Self, is in the quietness within me, the part that lives in listening distance with God, the part that can hear Divine whispers. It is gentle, compassionate and seeks peace. It is also strong and resourceful for there, I’m in touch with the fullness of Christ within.

I can always add in some time in nature for that helps too! But even there, I must be attentive to my surroundings, not engaged in a podcast or organizing the world or people around me.

What does it mean for you to live within listening distance of God? What disrupts you from hearing God’s whispers? What helps you?

May we all be gentle with ourselves and those around us this week.

Love and prayers

Anne

Mystic in Motion

Companion on the Way with Contemplative Fire

Contemplative Fire Canada, Founder

What day is it? Who am I?

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Are you beginning to wonder what day it is? Without the usual activities that give structure to my week, I find I have to stop and think about what day it is.  I know I’m not the only one!

Then the other day someone said, “I’m a baker!” I realized how often I hear people describe themselves as a skier, a reader, or a hiker. You know the list, it goes on and on. We describe our self by a hobby or a job or a role. I could be a hiker, wife, counsellor or priest.  Then COVID19 happens and we are at home, stripped of our usual activities and roles. The ones we keep are often re-defined with different expectations and responsibilities. What day is it? Who am I?

How about a completely different perspective? Who I am, is a Child of God. My life is not defined by activities, responsibilities, or roles. I am not the body, nor am I the role that it fills in the world. My life is eternal. I am a Child of God, born of God, an inheritor of God’s kingdom, the peaceable kingdom. Yes, I am alive on earth in this body and known as Anne by those around me, but who I am is within my soul. I am a Child of God, a spiritual being having a human experience.

So in the midst of my human experience of social distancing, of only essential outings, of elimination of roles and responsibilities, I find myself more clearly as simply my soul life. I am a Child of God, known by God, loved by God. I am not my body, not my role, not my hobbies. Yes, I have all those pieces of my life, I ordered groceries to be delivered today and planned our meals, but what is real, what I will take with me when I leave this life, is my eternal nature. Born of God, connected with God, seeking to experience more of God.

Who are you? Are you defining yourself by what you enjoy or do here within this life span? Is that all you are? What would it be like to have a bigger picture of your life, of your Self? What would it be like to know yourself as a Child of God?

During this unique period in history,  may the veil be pulled back and we awaken to a bigger picture of who we are, of our eternal purpose. May this time of slowing down, open us to a deeper life. Travel Light. Dwell Deep.

Be blessed this day my friends, for you are known and loved. There is much more to life than what has been cancelled and that you can’t do today.

Love and Prayers

Anne

Mystic in Motion

Companion on the Way with Contemplative Fire

Contemplative Fire Canada, Founder

 

Don’t Bother to Open This – Just be Still

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Are you inundated with email messages right now? From poems, prayers and meditative pieces, to concerts, exercise options and both hilarious and heart-warming videos, there is an unending stream of options flooding into our lives right now. Alone? I’m sure there are many who do feel alone but others say they’re feeling almost overwhelmed by zoom meetings, social media conversations, internet options and news updates.

I don’t want to write anything this week.

The days that we are currently in are holy days. Nothing like this has ever happened to the world before. We are being set apart. What will we learn?

What gives your life purpose?

What do you need to feel well, whole and happy?

Our Loving Creator is speaking. Let’s use this time to listen – to her, to one another, to our self. And remember, God’s voice is always a Voice of Love. Don’t listen to anyone else.

Love and prayers

Anne

Mystic in Motion

Companion on the Way with Contemplative Fire

Contemplative Fire Canada (Founder)