...The Great Solitude of Your Vast Soul...

"Know the depths of solitude, enjoy the warmth of community, and take a hand in the companionship of hospitality. By gently and gradually gathering up the strands of your fragmented life into one whole, you will become the one in skin that can distribute yourself to others, and still have something left to take into the great solitude of your vast soul and rest in God."

from Radical Hospitality pg 106.107
Father Daniel Homan, Lonni Collins Pratt

I have never seen such a splendid weaving together of solitude, community and hospitality and I continue to pursue the mystery. The experiences held within this pursuit take me by surprise again and again.

Please To The Table

Please To The Table is the name of a Russian cookbook that has been on my shelf for years. I have used it little but love to see that title! It seems so enchanting to say ‘please to the table’ when all is ready and your guests can come and dine.

As a little girl, not much higher than the dining room table, my Grandmother would give me the task of setting the silver ware in the right places as she prepared a meal for those coming to dinner. Being the oldest of six children with 5 male siblings after me, it was often my role at home to set the table for breakfast and dinner while we were in school. Out of this ritual of preparation came a love of making sure the table looked inviting, along with the aroma of food adding its own welcome invitation. It is no different for me now - the preparation of food and table go hand in hand in creating a welcome for those who will come to eat.

There are many layers to this ritual, many traditions that add facets to it, but no matter what your culture requires of you, this is a sacred part of mealtime. Layers that I am exploring at present, seeking to understand more deeply.

Hence when I read the following explanation from the book Radical Hospitality - Benedict’s Way of Love (Father Daniel Homan and Lonni Collins Pratt), it brought the word ‘yearning’ into this sacred ritual.
“Hospitality becomes a way of life as we become more open. It will not happen without preparation and unless you intend it to happen. When we speak of ‘preparing a table,’ we refer to the intention and the work of making space for another human being.
Preparing a table has sacramental meaning for Benedictines. Every meal, like every encounter with a human being, has the potential to reveal God present in Creation. The table represents the unknown yearning of every human heart for communion with ‘something more’ that infuses all the exists.”

Please, won’t you come to the table?

from C.S.Lewis

"The sweetest thing in my life has been the longing...to find the place where all the beauty came from."
C.S.Lewis
Till We Have Faces

Setting Sail into 2009

In this small West Coast community the residents have a passion for simplicity, for keeping life close yet living with an open heart, protecting this earth we have been given, and creating events that bring all the generations together. The famous Gumboot Café is the venue for gathering to chat, where artists showcase their work, great fresh bread is made and sold, funky creative foods are on the menu, and families gather to tap their feet to local musicians playing. It is also a community that has been creating rituals to bring the everyone together. One of these traditions takes place every New Year’s Day at dusk - sending little homemade boats out to sea, candles burning in them, carrying the wishes of the sender. This is a tradition my husband, a long time resident here, has introduced me to.

On New Years Day when he said he had to build the boat I wondered what he was talking about until he took out a small piece of wood, brought in his saw and began cutting something at the back door! Ah yes, the little wooden boat that needed to be made, candles to be placed in it, and a wax paper wind protector all round it. Around 4:30 in the afternoon when the day was fading we put on our warm clothes, our gum boots and placed our flashlights in our pockets and headed down to the edge of the sea. At the pier grown men were carrying their craft, children carried theirs, and one family brought wood to light a big fire on the beach. Soon, as light faded, the boats were placed in the water to set sail with their little candles flickering. Before long all you could see with a faint silhouette of the home made boat and the little inner light rising and falling to the rhythm of the water.

To some this is a wish for the future that is set free, sent out and they wait for it to return to them. For others it is just a fun event that happens at the beginning of every year. Yet for me, as I stood in the damp cold evening, I thought of the need to let go of things held within that are no longer needed. To make space within for new growth, shift old ways and make way for others, and to open the heart and let the wind of the Spirit stir up a deeper part of my being. The candles in each boat spoke to me of the Light that waits so patiently for me to choose to let go, to set free, and to open more to staying very present.

There at the edge of the sea, at the beginning of 2009, as greetings and conversation flowed with members of the community, came the whisper of the Spirit that this year, this next 12 months is about being present, staying here, letting dreams be held loosely. Every year comes in with its own theme and this one held me in the moment, reminding me to embrace each moment, and let that simple truth carry rich and passionate life for me, from me, within me.