Jesus

My Easter Story (5): On the Mountain Top

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So now I am in the community in Switzerland. I drove all the way, by myself (but I know now I really wasn’t by myself!) from the south of Turkey, through Greece, and Italy to find Aigle and a Christian community nearby. When I asked at the gendarme station in my broken French for a religious community, they told me there were two, both on the same road. At the top was one led by Timothy Leary and further down the mountain was one led by Francis Schaeffer. I’d already done the drug route and didn’t want any more (that’s another Easter story) so I followed the directions to Schaeffer to give him a try.

After ten days in his community, I was totally confused. They fed my body with yummy food, and my soul with respect for they too were Truth Seekers. At last, I had found people who were questing for life’s meaning as I was.  There was ample room to ask questions and I was encouraged to write out my beliefs. I heard their faith stories and perspective on life. Nothing made sense to me. After ten days I was told I’d asked enough questions and it was suggested that I go for a walk in the mountains. I didn’t like been told that but instinctively I agreed. I needed to be on my own away from the community, with space to think and feel. We were high in the mountains, and I set out on a trail to somewhere. I couldn’t walk very far. I couldn’t think. I felt like a piece of flotsam being tossed over Niagara Falls. I could barely hold a thought in my mind. I sat on a rock, staring over the valley when suddenly it was as if I was given a new set of glasses. I saw everything differently. Everything. I knew that God was real, not some figment of my imagination, not a philosophical concept to argue about around a campfire, not a benign presence in outer space, but a warm, loving presence right here. I knew Jesus was real, not a storybook character, but a Spirit-saturated-being, God’s son, who was with me. I knew sin was real, that the Bible described the world truly and that there was an evil presence in the world. Whoosh in one moment I saw all that. I knew I belonged to God. And then to wrap it up, the earth, the whole creation lying before me, suddenly shimmered. It was alive with the Creator’s goodness.

It’s been over fifty years since that deeply transformative event. It was a moment of knowing, a moment where I was changed. Easter Sunday with trumpets blaring. 

Sometimes I wonder why I’ve had such experiences. One friend lovingly called me a ‘2×4’ Christian. I had to be hit over the head with a ‘2×4’. The ‘why’ I don’t know, but I do know that I want to live worthy of the spiritual clobbering I’ve been given. The story of God’s love for me, for each of us continues. I don’t know any story that is more important but I think that’s all I share right now.

Maybe it’s time to recall your defining moments. They won’t be like mine. We are all different, so the moment will be yours. God is real. Jesus shows us, teaches us about God’s heartbeat. How have you experienced that heartbeat of LOVE?

I’ll be returning to my computer shortly. Thank you for listening to my snippets. It helps me to share them with you.

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

My Easter Story (4): The Light Shines Again

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I spent the next year rambling around Europe, looking in art galleries, walking ancient footpaths, meeting people from around the world, trying different drugs. It was an open-ended kind of life, with me hoping to finally go to India, but not in any rush to get there. My travels might look purposeless to some but in hindsight, I know I was being guided. I encountered God’s presence in people who shared my journey especially one girl who became an instant friend, in words whispered into my heart in a contemporary art gallery in Venice, with a burst of light in a youth hostel in Athens, and in a visitation of snakes in a village in Turkey. I could open any of those stories for you for they all contain Easter power, but I’ll leap ahead to one of the most defining moments. My own literal mountain-top experience.

I’d found my way to a Christian community in Switzerland. Honestly, I was led there. I could not, not go there before I went home. I guess I will tell you what happened first. That burst of light I mentioned in the youth hostel…..I was travelling with that special girlfriend and we’d picked up a guy in a Turkish village. The three of us ended up in the youth hostel in Athens. He came to join us for breakfast and told us about some kids he’d met the night before while he’d been wandering the streets. They had told him about a place in Switzerland where you could stay free of charge for ten days and rap about religion. The people in this community believed the Bible was true. He said that he thought he’d go there and take one last look at the west before going east. He too was part of the Indian pilgrimage. It was 1970! When he said that, I saw a bright light flash across the room and I knew that I had to go to that place as well. I knew it so clearly. I could not, not go there. I didn’t know the name. I only knew it was Christian and near the town of Aigle. That’s all. But I knew I had to go there. Something was happening that was bigger than me. I didn’t understand it, but I did know something was happening.

Did you know the Spirit of God hangs out in youth hostels? In what unexpected place have you found God? Always with us. Always.

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

My Easter Story (2): My Pathway

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By the time I was in my early twenties I’d realized my life plan of politics or the diplomatic core or the investment industry was not going to work. I’d switched out of an honours degree at university to complete a basic degree and try to put my life in order. I felt lost.

One evening sitting at my dressing table, staring into the mirror I had a moment of clarity. I knew I wanted Truth, that’s right, ‘truth’ with a capital ‘T’! I wanted to find out what was really true in this world. Life seemed so difficult to me. I puzzled that most people seemed to be able to go to school, get a job, get married, and raise a family. None of that seemed valid or real to me. Why do it?  I wanted something else out of life. I wanted Truth. What is this world really about? Why does it exist? Why do I exist? Why does anyone exist? What is the reason for it all?

There was no thunderbolt answer, but in hindsight I recognize I was given my life plan that night. I was given guidance towards a journey that I’ve been on ever since. I’m a Truth-seeker. That means I’m home-bound, back to the origins of who I am, who you are, and what this world is all about. Currently I’m delighting in Thomas Merton’s writings. One of his thoughts that I’m playing with is that ‘my highest ambition is to be what I already am’. Merton sought Truth and opened the contemplative door for many of us, releasing the ancient wisdom, to find out who we are and why the world exists. I seek Truth wherever it is found. I’ve learnt that Truth smells of love, kindness, compassion and forgiveness. Ah but I’m getting ahead of my story. Right now I’m in my early twenties, looking at myself in a mirror and realizing that more than anything else, more than a husband, more than a career, I want to find Truth.

What drives you in life? Let there be no judgement, but an awareness of what is most important to you. When your last days come, and you look back on your life, what have you been moving towards?

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

My Easter Story (1): The Glowing Figure

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(My memoir is currently titled ‘From Darkness to Daisies”. I finished the first draft, summer of 2020 and now it’s sitting in my desk drawer. I took seven Easter moments,  seven of the ‘trumpet-sounding’ experiences in my life, described them and a reflection on what I’ve learned about God from them. I’m sharing snippets of those experiences with you over the Easter season for the next five weeks. Here goes with the warning that they are written, as is my blog, from a ‘telling’ perspective, not a narrative one. That’s one reason my memoir is still in my drawer! ,,,, and as you read these, I’ll be away from my computer. I’ll check your responses when I return late May.)

Despite a privileged upbringing, my childhood was embedded with fear, sadness and loneliness. By the time I reached university I knew a deep darkness that felt like a cancer eating away at me. As a child I was graced with several spiritual experiences which gave me another perspective, giving me hope and the awareness that God doesn’t run from our darkness.  

One night when I was about eight, I woke to see a figure at the end of my bed. I saw a man, kneeling in prayer. The image was small, just a few feet high and it was glowing. Scared, I hid under the covers. I peeked out a few moments later for I wanted to see more, but he was gone. What was left was my memory of someone, from somewhere praying for me. I was raised in our local Anglican church and so I thought it must be Jesus. I continued to feel scared and alone in my daily life, but I began to learn there was more to life. Somewhere, someone was praying for me.

When I was thirteen, I cried myself to sleep one night, devasted as only a thirteen year old can be, by school life drama. I wanted to disappear and not face life any longer. On waking the next morning, I felt completely different. I was at peace with a deep internal contentment. I walked into the school yard comfortable and quietly confident. I said, ‘Hi’ to the other children, and they greeted me. All was well. I knew that my prayer of the night before had been heard and that ‘someone, somewhere’ had changed me on the inside. I understood that God had heard my angst. In response to my plea, I had been changed and so had the world around me. I knew something had happened and that God was involved.

I had a similar event when I was fifteen and on a trip with some friends to Montreal. Devastation, tears at night, followed by sleep and upon waking, a deep peace, seeing myself and world around me with fresh eyes. That time I shared with my friends what had happened. We laughingly called it my ‘revelation’, but I knew there was nothing superficial about it. Once again I had a glimpse of the power behind the scenes. There was someone watching over me. Someone who cared about me.

As a child I began to learn from my own experience that God is present with us all the time. Sometimes the Beloved moves in this world in healing ways, but always we are loved and prayed for. What is your sense of God’s presence today? Can you imagine for a moment, someone praying for you?

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

Ongoing Easter

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For some people Easter celebrations are full of sensual feasting with the smell of lilies, sound of trumpets and Hallelujah’s ringing out loud and clear. The sterility of Lent is banished, and the light pours in. In some liturgical churches, the church is stripped of its finery on Maundy Thursday leaving it empty and deserted for the Good Friday service, with people often leaving that time in silence. Then the quiet of the tomb on Saturday followed by the splash of Easter as you return Sunday morning. Add in some Easter finery, family feasting and the senses explode with life. Another path is if your community slips in an Easter Vigil late Saturday night that starts outside with a single flame and moves through a liturgy into the triumph of resurrection. Any of those paths provide lots of sensory celebrations.

For others, Easter is creeping into a sunrise service on Sunday morning. I used to enjoy hosting a tiny gathering in the cemetery attached to our parish church, an empty shroud on a bench, a head cloth neatly wrapped. Where is he? What have you done with him?

Over the centuries Easter has been celebrated in many different ways. Right now, I value the Everyday Easter celebrations. Where did you catch a glimpse of God today? Where did the new life of Easter show up for you today?

Most of our life isn’t Easter Sunday with trumpets sounding and emotions exploding in “YES!”. Most of our life is quiet spiritually, where we need to be attentive to Presence, seeking to catch a glimpse of God. I’ve had lots of times in my life when I was gifted with a mystical awareness of God’s presence, but the journey of my life is to live in the valley every day, with eyes open, heart open ready to catch a glimpse of God who is always with me, but seldom sounding trumpets.

As we move through the Easter season, I was wondering about sharing with you some of my Easter moments, those trumpet-sounding times, but I hesitate. Maybe I will share some of the Everyday Easters instead.  The Easter moments have shaped my life. They remind me of who I am. The Everyday Easters are the regular meals that feed my soul day in and day out. They nourish me. However, as I sat down to write, it was the Easter moments that flowed from my pen. I guess I will share those in the coming weeks and maybe after that, more of the Everyday Easter moments. Whatever happens seems like it’s an ongoing Easter here with me!

I’d be delighted during these next few weeks to hear some of your Easter moments too. One Easter with Contemplative Fire we gathered to share our discovery of Jesus. It was so encouraging!

Love and prayers

Anne

Mystic in Motion

Companion on the Way with Contemplative Fire

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

Broken and Open

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He was there every day. How many days had they passed him by? But this day was different. Was he different? Were they different?

‘He’ was a man who had been lame from birth, living his adult life as a beggar asking for help of people as they entered the main worship place in the city. Surely those people would be kind to him. ‘They’ were two of Jesus’ closest disciples, Peter, that impetuous one and John, the one who sat close to Jesus. That day, they ‘saw’ the lame man reaching out to them and from their open, broken hearts the healing power of God moved through them to heal the lame man.

That was the Gospel in church this week. I listened as the homilist created the context for the story, drawing us into the lives of Peter, John and the Lame Man. She asked us to consider the changes in Peter from a simple fisherman to preacher/healer and how that had happened as he received the Holy Spirit and partnered with God.

She continued to develop that point, but I didn’t want to join her there. I wanted to look more deeply at Peter. I wanted to be on the beach with him when he encountered Jesus after …. after… after….he had been exposed as the superficial one, the one who betrays not for money, but for personal safety, for other’s good opinions…after the humiliating crush of his denial.

There are several resurrection stories that mention Peter. In none of them do we hear a word or reprimand or condemnation from Jesus to Peter. In the beach scene, they walk together, a bit apart from the others. Jesus reaches to him in love, restoring him, entrusting him with ministry.

I yearned this morning… Please take us to the beach, walk us through his denial, his grief, his confrontation and reconciliation with Jesus. Walk us into his humility. I wanted to touch his humility, to sit with him in it and experience it myself.

I believe that’s where our power connection lies. Peter and John could be vehicles of

Christ’s healing power because they had been healed themselves. They knew their own lameness and had reached out their own hands receiving healing. They had been humbled, stripped of their own layers of competency till they were open channels for the flow of Divine Love.

This morning I could feel my own layers of competency, of training, of knowledge, of understanding, of pride, and yearn that the dam be broken, that I not be bound by them. Let me crumble before Jesus as Peter did. Let me know my own weakness so that all that is left is a humble heap, a lame woman, with a hand reaching out.

Humility.

Openness to God’s Spirit.

I catch glimpses of how much quiet, internal resistance there is within me to humility. Glimpses of how I can flee from weakness and whip up a shield of competency.

May my heart be open, may my heart be broken so the divine healing power can flow through me to those in need.

Imagine with me … what if more and more of us were open, were broken, were channels of the healing power of Divine Love.

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

 

What’s on Your Mind?

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captureSo it happened again. Suddenly a phrase that I have read dozen’s, probably hundreds of times took on new life and meaning. I’ve been an intentional follower of Jesus since 1972 so I’ve read and studied the Bible a lot, spent ten years teaching it and another fifteen preaching from it, yet it can still amaze me when suddenly I ‘hear’ a word from scripture as if for the first time.

Philippians 2.5 ‘Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus’. Put on the mind of Jesus. So, I’m to have a mind transplant! Not my perspective, longings, interior jumble but that of Jesus. How might the world look through the mind, heart, experience of Jesus? What would be the contents of his mind?

One of my anchoring practices is meditation and when I sit each day I’m very aware of the mind of Anne. It’s not the mind of Jesus. I’m also aware that sometimes I put on the mind of other people. I let them speak into my mind in a way that isn’t helpful. I can hear the voice of….my family, friends, colleagues, advertisers, songs, shows – doesn’t the list go on and on! That feeling of failure that I wake up with in the middle of the night, that’s not the mind of Christ; that feeling of discontent when I’m overlooked, that’s not the mind of Christ.

This week I read that Einstein would get to a silent, non-questioning place and then he could hear what he needed to hear. He wrote, “I think 99 times and find nothing. I stop thinking, swim in silence and the truth comes to me.” Ramanujan, the mathematician from ‘The Man from Infinity’ said something similar. In his prayers, the solutions would be evident. Both of those experiences sound like the mind of Christ to me. They are listening beyond themselves into the heart of the universe. In the stillness, when the mind of Anne is quiet, then I can hear the voice of God. What is it like for you to listen like that?

In that moment of awareness when I was reading scripture, it was a fresh wind blowing through my life. A tiny moment of silence; from that place once again, I say ‘yes’. I want to see the world, others, and myself with the eyes and heart of God. And in that moment, I feel the surrender of the mind of Anne into the mind of the Divine and it is good. I know the mind of Christ and I long to know it more deeply.

It’s a complex, mixed up world we live in. We need to be grounded, deeply rooted in who we are and whose we are. Putting on the mind of Christ is one more filter for me as I find my mystical way through a chaotic world.

“Let the mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus”

Peace to our world

Anne

Contemplative Fire Community Leader Canada

 

 

What is ‘teal’?

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As some Companions in Contemplative Fire gathered to explore Laloux’s ideas, we called our times together, ‘Teal Talks’.

‘Teal’ describes an evolutionary stage of human consciousness in relation to social organizations. Just as humans mature through emotional stages of development, Laloux describes the evolutionary development of our social organizations from small bands, to tribes, chiefdoms, nation states, and corporations. Within the later stages he describes corporations or organizations that are hierarchical, achievement oriented, and pluralistic. Each stage is allocated a colour – magenta (bands), red (impulsive chiefdoms), amber (conformist tribes/states, organizations), orange  (achievement nation states/corporations), and green  (pluralistic groups/organizations). Finally, he sees evidence of the most current level of our human consciousness in some organizations which are ‘teal’. These communities or companies have let go of much of their hierarchy along with the supporting structures and practices. They embody the three hallmarks of teal or evolutionary growth: purpose driven, self-managed and value a wholistic approach to life and business.

How do you respond to this simple description of Teal? If curious for more, search www.reinventingorganizations.com

We met and we talked. We talked ‘teal’ and that led us to speak of our experiences in life. Our times became rich and meaningful. It felt like to me, the way life was meant to be lived.  We discovered more of who we are individually and as a community. We spoke of becoming more of who we are, both individually and as a community. More. Not more in a BIG sense but more in completeness.

Can you, with me, imagine your company, community, church functioning this way? I think it smells like Jesus. Can you imagine with me our world moving in this direction?

Love and prayers

Anne

Community Leader Canada