Gently Rocked to Sleep

At last - a day of warmth, gentle breezes, and the opportunity to put the hammock up. The fatigue that permeates my body, mind and heart is gently lulled into sleep, restorative rest and the wind rocks me back and forth as my body is cradled in this woven bed hung between the trees out in the garden.

The gentle outward rocking by the wind corresponded to the tender cradling of my spirit by the Almighty in the warmth of Light that is perfect peace.

Waiting In The Hard Places

With many changes in life in the past year, good changes, changes that challenge, there has not been as much space to sit in silence. Silence – that Holy Presence that invites one to sit, to wait, to listen, to be, and to know God. Silence which holds the space where the Spirit waits with her tenderness and wisdom, without condemnation or judgement, offering room for that gentle voice that brings Truth.

When the opportunity came for a week long Silent Retreat I was eager to sign up. My expectation was of a week in silence and maybe some gathering with the group for a short time in the morning and perhaps some time in the evening after dinner. Arriving slightly late on Bowen Island, due to the ferry running behind schedule, it meant rushing into the first gathering and the first session of Centering Prayer. The only seat available was a hard wooden chair – only 3 people had hard chairs while 13 had soft comfortable seats.

Between the schedule for the week, which involved 4 centering prayer sessions each day, and this hard chair, it felt like I had come to the wrong place! Where was my time to be totally alone for most of the day and to sit curled up in a soft enveloping chair to wait in Silence for the Spirit to come and bring her words of wisdom? Why did it have to be in a hard chair that I learned more of Centering Prayer? This dining room style chair of beautiful honey wood, with arm rests and a curved back, spindles that dug into my spine if I slouched, that gave no room for change. The first few days the prayer time was a place where I felt as if I was suffocating, and panic swirled within me and there was nothing soft to retreat into where I sat. This was not the calm inviting space I had yearned for it to be –it was a hard place to be for even the first 20 minutes of Centering Prayer, let alone another three 20 minute times consecutively!

Over the week I came to realize that this hard chair was indeed where the Spirit would sit with me, encouraging me to stop, and to simply listen to the sounds of the moment, where my soul could be opened to Holy Presence by waiting through the panic. Soul care was the theme of this time and the questions I had held out before going were being answered. Walking alone the raw tears flowed as the reasons for my own inner anxiety were shown to me and I gave the Spirit permission to show me more. This chair would not allow me to sink into the comfort of habit, but instead invited me to embrace waiting in the hard places and staying present to hear the beautiful sounds that have a language without words – birds, the wind, the sound of breathing, people passing quietly. I began to find the softness of sacred space, of Holy Presence sitting in that hard place.

With only one day left in this beautiful week I looked out on the glorious sunny day. A gentle knock at my bedroom door brought the message that my husband had been taken to hospital. Breaking my silence I phoned and got the details and ran to catch the ferry that I could see coming into dock.

Over the next 2 weeks sitting and waiting was all I could do as my beloved, David, was rushed to our local hospital and then a few days later he was airlifted out to a huge hospital in Vancouver where experienced vascular surgeons and radiologists could deal with the large blood clots in his legs, abdomen and lungs. Waiting room chairs where my attention wandered and my thoughts had to constantly be pulled back from the worst case scenarios as |I waited with David’s daughter and son-in-law. How often I came back to that safe place with the word, my sacred word, from Centering Prayer that reminded me to stay present, to stay in that moment with Them in Holy Presence.

David is home now and moving slowly but unable to go up the stairs to our bedroom. Last night I lay on the floor on a makeshift bed of chair cushions, listening to him sleep on the sofa. Waiting in the hard places is not over, but today I have a soft chair to relax into and the hard places that come again will call me back to that hard chair, and the Word, the whisper to the Almighty when it is essential to stay very present. My soft chair makes me think of how now I can exhale, and breathe easier as I consider how to live and move in this one moment, this hour, this day, with the hard places and the soft places, and the sounds of Holy Presence that are ever constant.

Waiting in hard places is an invitation, an embrace, and without a doubt a place where Love and the Beloved provide the softness for the heart to wait.

Journeying Quotation

To journey without being changed is to be a nomad.

To change without journeying is to be a chameleon.

To journey and be transformed by the journey is to be a pilgrim.


Mark Nepo
pg 76, Living The Questions

Chapters with Titles But Never Labels

She wandered out of the library, swaying from side to side, swinging her legs out in a rocking motion that allows her to navigate in spite of the stiffness and fragility of her body. The smile on her face gave evidence to her delight at finding a new book to read. “Don’t you feel excited to have a library, a real library here where you can get books any time you like?” she said. Her laboured breathing gave evidence to how hard it can be to walk as she moved into the great room to settle into the oversized couch with her new find.

Chapters to be Read – titles but no labels - this is who we are. How long each book of life will be is not determined by us, nor can we fully know (or want to know) what future chapters our biography will hold. What we can know, embrace, and hold in the Light are the chapters that have already been written. Recently in a Passover Seder Supper, we were reminded that when we dipped the parsley in the salt water, it is the tears and bitter parts of our journey that have moved us across rivers, over mountains and brought us to the degree of freedom our soul can live in today. All are chapters in our book.

Yet perhaps too often we label a person and soon it becomes like a neon sign flashing before us. We walk by, negating the truth that labels are not how Jesus really sees any of us. Love, God’s love, invites us to see each book of life, each named book that is the life of another or ourselves, as a rich treasure to be held, read slowly and with honor. Each chapter that is shared holds pieces of our lives but it is not the whole. Titles may be given to each section or season lived but they are not labels that define who we are.

Our friend sitting reading her book came from a community in Vancouver that has been “labeled” as one of the poorest in our country, with one of the highest rates of HIV/AIDS per capita. Other friends live in areas with some of the highest property values in our country and perhaps some will label them as well. At Linwood House Ministries we believe that labels do not fit us as human beings at all. Each of us are an amazing book continually being written into by the Almighty, by our own soul journey, and by all those who pass through our day. There are so many wonderful chapters, all titled but none wear labels – not now, not ever.

Warmed By The Fire

It is very spring like now but the mornings are still quite cool and the morning air in the house feels cold. The wood stove is the sole source of heat in our little house where it nestles embraced by trees and quietness. As the wood caught flame and heat began to radiate out from the little stove I appreciated being able to warm myself by the fire. As the heat spread through the room and I began to be warmed again after leaving the comfort of a fluffy duvet and my husbands’ warm body next to mine, there was such a sense of joy at this simple and elemental wonder of roaring fire.

For years those words “warming himself by the fire” have been repeated, referring to a feisty tempered man who is remembered for trying to deny his friendship, in the toughest moment, with Jesus. Sitting by the fire to be warmed held a negative connotation. Fireside time is often very much a part of friendship.

A warm fire is a kind of hospitality in its own way - an invitation to come closer, to linger, to find nurture and healing there. Sometimes the fire draws us to sit together and animated conversation results or perhaps it is to enjoy the gentle sounds of its own music while we read a book. Often in the winter the fire has been the only sound and only light as I waited for the new day to be born and bring its light to the sky and into the house.

The fire is like the hospitality - it is for stranger and friend to find warmth, nurture and comfort. The heat that is radiated goes more than skin deep. It works towards the core of our being. Perhaps the warm fire and the invitation to dine open up the bigger story of our lives and work at revealing the threads that both stranger and friends weave into our story. Like the dining room table it invites us simply to be, to breathe, to be present and take in what the moment has offered us.

As I write it is late afternoon and I sit working by the fire letting it warm me on the cool cloudy spring day. Sigh…it is so soothing to be warmed this way and I am so enjoying simply sitting by the fire. There are surely deeper meanings to this thought of being warmed by the fire but for now I shall simply enjoy it for what it gives. That is joy for this moment.

Gentle Invitations

There is nothing like a surprise invitation to dine or spend time with a person who is gentle and wise and the conversation brings hope, laughter and life. Surprises like this open the windows of the soul with a most tender drawing back of our reserve and timidity, letting us experience the Light of Holy Presence.

When we walk into Sacred Space with purpose and intent, at least for me, I come with expectancy, with a desire to wait and see what will be shown and experienced. There is an intangible aroma that, like the air being filled with the scent of cooking onions, hints that there is much more to come and your appetite is awakened.

Using the illustrations of food comes easiest for me as that is my medium of art. I have been thinking much about how sacred space invites us to more than the banquet table of feasting and sharing – it invites us to make choices, to choosing what is good, what is healthy, what honors and gives respect. We are also, it seems, invited into the mystery of God. Perhaps that is why the scent of food is an illustration that gives the idea – the mystery of something being prepared but not all the ingredients are in the scent that fills the air! We wonder, we seek, we yearn, and we want to know more, while at the same time we simply wish to sink into this moment of sacredness, of experiencing the Almighty with our senses.

When our friends from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES) come to visit us the effect of this space of beauty and sacredness we call Linwood House (Linwood House Ministries) is startling. When a meal of tasty combinations of meat, potatoes/and or rice, vegetables, and salads that are an abundant mixture of fresh greens and textures are laid, there is a choice made (probably unconsciously) for more of the healthy ingredients. Is it just the contrast between the colourless, flavourless, starchy, processed food that is served in the downtown community (and I have stayed down there for a week and eaten this food), or is it that Sacred Space (and the presence of the Almighty), tenderly extends the invitation to choose the healthy ingredients?

Living in a community that exists on survival mode leaves one constantly watchful, self protecting, in the “fight or flight” mode – an energy sapping life-style indeed. After several visits to Linwood House, our friends from the DTES begin to offer gentleness to each other, to let their guard down and their suspiciousness changes to an openness that is magnificently endearing.

So what else does Sacred Space invite us to? Does it go beyond our relationships with each other to respect for creation, our environment, and our neighbour who we are asked to love as well as we love ourselves? Does not Sacred Space invite us with constant whispers to learn to love who we are and our own story?

What are the surprise invitations that you have experienced in Sacred Space? Who have you met when you responded to these gentle openings of your heart? Every invitation I have responded to (and sometimes I have ignored the invitation) has revealed something of beauty and also created a deeper space for Holy Wisdom and the Mystery to live in my soul.

The following words, pieces of Psalm 90 in the translation Praying the Psalms by Nan Merrill, seem to beautifully hold out an invitation to Sacred Space and to what it offers those who accept.

“You gather those who love You as friends returning from a long journey, giving rest to their souls.
You anoint them with the balm of understanding, healing wounds of the past.
For our days on Earth are a mystery, a searching for You, a yearning for the great Mystery to make itself known.
The years pass and soon the Harvest is at hand, a time to reap the fruit of one’s life.
Who has lived with integrity?
Who will reflect the Light?
Who can bear the radiant beams of Love?

…Teach us, O Beloved, to honor each day that we may have a heart of wisdom.”

Thoughts on Open Heart, Alive Senses, Peace

Recently my husband D and I were at the Thomas Merton Society "Conference for Peace - non-violence". John Dear, SJ was the main speaker for this event.

While it was focused on non-violence, peace, and how as Christians we are called to be peace-makers, my thoughts continued to focus on the fact that we cannot be peacemakers, work at non-violence effectively unless we begin to look at the internal war, the internal violence we inflict upon ourselves so regularly!

Jesus said "Blessed are the peace makers" or as it is translated in The Message (Matthew 5:8)

"You're blessed when you get your inside world - your mind and heart -
put right. Then you can see God in the outside world."

This translation by Eugene Peterson seems to point toward the fact that peacemakers have an internal peace, an internal home, an internal place of freedom and comfort for the Spirit with much room, and then they can not only see God in the outside world, but they begin to be God in the world around them.

So this then has triggered for me the connection to internal peace and living with our senses alive - to taste, see, hear, smell, touch life around us and within us!

This morning I read from Seeds, Thomas Merton passages and find the connection to my thoughts expanding.

"One of the most important - and most neglected - elements in the beginnings of the interior life is the ability to respond to reality, to see the value and the beauty in ordinary things, to come alive to the splendor that is all around us in the creatures of God. We do not see these things because we have withdrawn from them. In a way we have to. In modern life our senses are so constantly bombarded with stimulation from every side that unless we developed a kind of protective insensibility we would go crazy trying to respond to all the advertisements at the same time!

The first step in the interior life, nowadays, is not, as some might imagine, learning NOT to see and taste and hear and feel things. On the contrary, what we must do is begin by unlearning our wrong ways of seeing, tasting, feeling, and so forth, and acquire a few of the right ones.

For asceticism is not merely a matter of renouncing television, cigarettes and gin. Before we can begin to be ascetics, we first have to learn to see life as if it were something more than a hypnotizing telecast. And we must be able to taste something besides tobacco and alcohol: we must perhaps even be able to taste these luxuries themselves as if they too were good.

How can our conscience tell us whether or not we are renouncing things unless it first tells us that how to use them properly? For renunciation is not an end in itself: it helps us to use things better. It helps us to give them away. If reality revolts us, if we merely turn away from it in digust, to whom shall we sacrifice it? How shall we consecrate it? How shall we make of it a gift to God and to men?"
(NM 33-34)from page 15, Seeds

I cannot help but see how my quest to bring my own senses alive is connected to many other levels of how Jesus has asked me to live. I cannot help but ask today how does a culinary minister be a carrier of life and be a peace maker as I interact with those who come to the sacred table? How do I hold life within my wombless body, how do I not do violence to my own soul in order to allow the peace and powerful presence of the Spirit to bring colour, flavour, scent, texture, taste, hope and wonder to the table where meals are shared?

Tending to the restoration of my own sensuality, embracing that I am so, on my own individually, and letting my heart and soul continue to dance in a vibrant way, a renewed and restored way is one important factor to seek. Perhaps this is a key to this year's pilgrimage theme - no longer going to war with my own self.