Do you really not know that I AM With You – always – even to the end of time? I AM with you when you feel you are drowning, sinking, perishing. I AM seeing your fears, and your fear of fear itself. I AM hearing your shouts, your screams, your silent, desperate cries which all say you are being overwhelmed, that you are just not ‘enough’ to face all your present circumstances. I AM knowing you think I AM not caring about how it is with you at this moment. So, hear again: I AM the CareTaker. I AM the StormWrestler. I AM the WindCalmer. I AM the WaveSoother. I AM all creation and all creation is Me. I AM asking you to be a StormRider who, at the very centre of the turmoil, still knows I AM Peace, so in your heart you can be still. Cease your restless crowd-joining, searching for a glimpse of a celebrity to affirm you. Cease your tears over that you cannot change, over what you think you need, and cannot have. Cease your warmongering – put down your noisy guns and listen: hear what your perceived enemy has to say and hear their fears echo your fears, only then start speaking, and only from that still place which is where I AM PeaceFull. Prick up your ears and practice alertness for I AM going to the other side, over there, and I AM asking you to come with Me. Indeed, you are My vessel, my means of making this journey, and I AM asking you to take me. Put down your Maps, for I AM Guide and I AM Guidance. I AM Director and I AM Directions. Put down your devices for capturing and connecting and wait. For I AM DeliveryDriver posting My Surprise through your door and it will be exactly what you need for now. Put down the burdens you are carrying, cease the tasks you are rushing to fulfil, for all the people you think you have to serve. Cease your hurrying to the market to buy, acquire, hoard, for I AM Abundance, and there is no possible scarcity in Me. Cease spending your money on what will not last, on what will harm yourself, injure another, poison your planet. Stop all this, and you will be able to see who I AM, to perceive where I AM, to understand what I AM wanting you to become.
Come, I AM RockSolid: sit on me, stare and let your gaze rest where it will.
Come, I AM LifeWater: dive into Me, be refreshed and learn how to float.
Come I AM WorldVoyager: cruise with Me, be safe with Me and discover what’s just over there.
Come, I AM here; here is an opportunity to see Me.
All that is comes from all that I AM. You do not know how My Life begins, or if you can guess at how, you will never know why I AM Life. You will all know who I AM differently. For I AM Creator. I AM Creation. You will all hear who I AM differently. For I AM Storyteller. I AM the story. Whatever you can imagine, from the smallest to the greatest thing, I AM. I AM waiting for you to discover who this I AM is who wants to be with you in every breath, in every act, in every conceivable way. So come and hear who I AM because I AM longing to co-create with you. I AM Seed. I AM Sower. I AM Nursery. I AM Incubator. I AM the Gardener. I AM the Unfurler. I AM the Big-Bold-Bloomer. I AM longing for your flourishing and your flowering. I AM the Ground of All Being. I AM Earth. I AM Compost. I AM Fertiliser. I AM the Grower. I AM the Planter. I AM the Digger. I AM the Origin. I AM Potential. I AM Energy lying dormant until you scatter Me wherever you go. I AM Voice. I AM Echo. I AM Song. I AM Tune. I AM Rhythm. I AM Note. I AM the Amplifier. I AM Radio-Waves, Sound-Waves, Light-Waves. I AM Satellites. I AM Cables. I AM the Transmitter. I AM the Blank Page. I AM the Scribe. I AM the Scribble. I AM the Message. I AM the Messenger. Read who I AM. Hear the real story of who I AM-with-you. Disseminate what you learn of Me in all directions, let the winds and the birds of the Spirit take it to all who need to hear it. I AM the Welcome. I am the Greeting. I AM Inclusion. I AM the Distributor. I AM the Deliverer. I AM the Light-Spreader asking you to sow My Light. I AM taking root in unlikely and unexpected places. I AM broadcasting who I AM like ripples – a single flame, a single seed or bean, a single drop of My Waters of Life, and the ripples will fan out. The consequences of your one small act with Me could be vast! So get curious about who I AM and where I AM and what I AM doing.
Come, take flight with Me, fly into Me.
Come, build your nest in My arms.
Come, let My Sun ripen you; let My Moon strengthen you.
I AM the Ancient of Days who holds a hand over you in the sign of blessing and peace. I AM in every particle of light, in every hue and tone of colour beyond your naming. I AM the glorylight at the beginning and end of each day – whether you behold Me or not. I AM in every beat of your precious heart. I AM holding you. I AM in the poets and the prophets and the preachers and the teachers who talk of Wisdom, of Justice, of Mercy, of Love. I AM an open window beckoning you in to Me, and out to Me, every moment of every day. I AM in the fresh air you need to blow away your cobwebs, to enlighten your dusty, musty corners. I AM the Invitation to throw yourself open to Me. I AM in every tick of Time, adjust Me how you will, play with Me how you might, but your times remain safe in My hands. I AM in the music, in the triumph of trumpets, in the horn blasts of warning, in the reveille for the dead. I AM in the eyes of the wild beasts who accompany you, inside and out: those you love and those in your terror you demonise and reject. I AM in the Earth I ask you to steward, in those rocks you want to break open to build, in the action of muscle and sweat of your labours for the good of all. I AM in the very ground you touch and tread, I AM the Way you walk. I AM in the blessing of the stranger, the foreigner, the faithful from all faiths. I AM in the smile of the wounded child who needs your succour and your protection. I AM Sophia, Wisdom, calling in the streets, the Counsellor of Princes and peoples everywhere. I AM the collector of sacred pollen to feed the earth, I AM the maker of the honey which heals. I AM near you – in, through, around, above, below all this – near you in your next breath and beat of your heart.
Since joining the Holy Disorder of Dancing Monks in 2014, I have been intentionally trying to make my sabbath distinctive from other days of the week. My illness often makes one bed-bound day merge into another, and prevents me attending church (even virtual church), this is harder than one might think. There are practical disciplines I have tried to put in place, like limiting screen time and not engaging with my emails. Yet what has emerged as my main sabbath practice, for the small window of energy I have, is spending time using the contemplative prayer practice at sacredspace.ie as a bouncing-off point for a creative engagement with the Divine.
Many of you will be familiar with the contemplative practice of Lectio Divina: a way of meditatively reading and discerning the Sacred Voice in a text, (which is often, but not exclusively, the Bible). It is a practice of stilling and distilling; of silent opening and beholding; a listening encounter with the Holy. (For those of you who are not familiar with this practice, the resources found here and here will give you a flavour.
When I am meditating on the gospel text of the day as given by Sacred Space, I first read it through in my NRSV (New Revised Standard Version) translation. If there are bits I don’t understand, or words I want to delve further into, I sometimes use biblegateway.com to look up alternative translations, (my favourite amplifications are from The Message and The Living Bible.) By the conclusion of this multi-layered prayer and conversation with Jesus and Sophia, I have often been given a word or short phrase which then feeds into my prayers throughout the following week.
I am a ‘words person’, but I am also a ‘visual person’, so I gradually extended the stages of my sabbath Lectio Divina practice to create a direct visual response to the word/short phrase. (I use an adapted Soul Collage technique.) Sometimes the sifting of images and the collage-making comes together over the course of a Sunday afternoon, but some weeks, it will take days to complete the collage in ten minute bursts of energy…
In 2020 I finally got round to extending the sabbath process into an even more holistic, reflective practice, so that both the word/short phrase, and the collage, were brought into the ‘real life’ of my week. So, after letting these gifts settle for a couple of days, I work with this collage as the basis for a Visio Divina practice, and using an adapted expressive arts/mindful technique, I produce what I call, an ‘I AM reflection’.
So my sabbath practice is a blend of journalling, silent prayer, Bible reading, Ignation reflection, ‘found’ collage (ie using images from magazines etc rather than self-generated ones), and creative writing. I often find these creative reinterpretations of a Biblical text are full of surprising revelations, and they all help make the word/short phrase I have been given to become embodied, and not remain a mere intellectual exercise. I know I need to get things ‘out of my head’! I also know that unless I write or collage, it is all too easy for me to just stick with my first interpretation, and miss where Spirit is trying to direct my attention.
Every stage in the process becomes an expressive response to a series of sacred encounters. So that by the conclusion of the process I have generated a stand-alone ‘lectio collage’, and an accompanying ‘I AM’ reflection. It is these two expressions I will be sharing on the blog this Lent (without any further commentary from me).
All the collages have been made over the last eighteen months, at different points in the liturgical calendar, rather than in the order I will present them here. The I AM reflections were not written sequentially (so I have no idea how they will read in this 7 week unfolding order, but I pray there will be new, helpful, cross-currents generated this Lent). I chose to concentrate on Mark’s gospel because Mark is a great story-teller, so there is a clear narrative progression between the collages, despite not being made to form a series, or to represent a retreat. This 7 week progression encapsulates the Christian ‘gospel’ – hence my name for this series for Lent 2022.
If you wish to make the space for a Lent discipline, I recommend you:
find a quiet place to sit in silence
slowly read the Bible passage in your favourite translation (preferably more than once)
sit looking at the collage for at least five minutes, noticing as much as you can
read the accompanying I AM reflections
journal your responses to all of the above.
If you have time to extend this discipline further, I recommend you:
after finding your own word/phrase, keep it in the front of your mind, (I often repeat it as a mantra during this next part of the process) as rip up images out of magazines that tug at your attention (I suggest you set yourself a time limit to find your images!)
then sift through the images discarding the ones that don’t illuminate your word/phrase (keep the discarded images for next time!);
then find a blank piece of paper and glue the found images onto it in any way you choose (you don’t have to have neat edges for example!).
Alternatively, go through a similar process and pull some photos off your hard drive; print them out; then rip and cut and glue down your own seeings into new juxtapositions and meanings…
Lastly, I want to extend a helping hand: ‘all meanings are meant’ as Sister Maggie Ross observes. The Bible is full of paradoxes and even when meditating on a few verses, plural meanings of words and phrases get multiplied, and images can arise from these pluralities in great numbers, and from all directions. Some may see prayerful consideration of all these plural directions and meanings as a dilution of the original text, or as a postmodern sacrilegious act. Whilst I understand why some may have reservations, I prefer to trust that Spirit will be my guide; that I won’t get emotionally overwhelmed; that what I need to hear God say to me in that moment will emerge clearly – if I am prepared to wait in silence and listen. I trust Spirit to give me the courage to let go of trying to control the outcomes, and allow my mental, emotional and visual faculties the space to evolve together, ever-deepening my relationship with the I AM.
This is one of my favourite liturgical seasons. A mini-season of three days which encapsulate so much of my faith about people and place.
All Hallows. All Holies. Celebrating how we can hallow our daily surroundings. How the world of spirit is perhaps not so distant from the world of matter as we imagine – although there are those rare times when I stumble over what Celtic Christians call ‘thin places’, where I can palpably feel the presence of the Holy in every part of my surroundings. Perhaps most significantlyAll Hallows marks this: that the places where I spend my days were and are created holy; and I need to remember that to give the land, my environment, my earth what it needs to nourish holiness in myself and in others. I have the power to holy place, to make places whole. What a privilege; what a responsibility; what possibilities!
All Souls. All the people I know, encounter, meet during the course of my day, over the span of my lifetime: each person has a soul. This is an important reminder for me: to look for soul in every person in the here and now of my everyday comings and goings, either physically or virtually; or to use a different language, to seek the face of Christ in the other person before me. To treat them with dignity and mercy, without judgement: to celebrate their soul. This also means of course, a conscious intention on my part to let the holy show in me: to not back down about calling out injustice, wherever and whatever the cost.
If All Hallows stretches my understanding of the physics of place, then All Souls stretches my understanding of the workings of time. For this mini-season coalesces a time of remembrance of those holy ones and those souls who are now dead, all those who hallowed their everyday places as they went through life. Those who helped us on the journey towards realising our own holiness. I remember them, name them, thank the Holy One for them, rededicate myself to continuing their hallowing work. I also remember the souls of those who denied the existence of their own soul, and who damaged, destroyed, exploited others. I deny those ancestors the power to keep hurting me, or those I love, or the earth beneath my feet. I turn away from their past, without guilt or shame. I forgive where I need to; I commit to living a life with different values from those they showed me.
And lastly, but by no means leastly, All Saints. This stretches my understanding of community: across time, across place. I am part of a ‘cloud of witnesses’ to the action of the holy in the everyday, or to put it in terms of my instagram hashtag: I am a member of a faith-filled clan who commit daily to seeking to encounter the #epiphanyoftheordinary. All Saints celebrates those who are my Church, known and unknown to me, (and definitely unconfined to a building known as a church); those who walk with me through this world intentionally seeking Presence, wherever She is to be found; all those who are intentionally praying Peace, wherever He may be needed.
All Saints. All Souls. All Hallows. Three days redolent with history and tradition, which are crying out to be applied to the world of modernity around me. A three day personal reminder for me that I want to keep walking (stumbling, crawling) in the way of holiness, towards wholeness.
(And as I write that last sentence, I realise that the next liturgical season I will celebrate on this blog will be Advent, and that this year the theme of my #adventapertures is: whole. More on this to follow shortly.)
I am honoured to have written another guest post for the Abbey of the Arts, which was published yesterday:
all images by Kate Kennington Steer
As a contemplative photographer I thought I knew quite a bit about light and brightness, shadow and darkness. It appears I was wrong. During 2020 and 2021 a series of COVID-19 ‘Lockdowns’ have been offering me a unique opportunity to maintain a watch on the seasonal cycles of light across my bedroom walls. I have wanted to do this ever since, back in 2013-4, our online Abbess Christine [Valters-Paintner] introduced me to the Celtic rituals surrounding the ‘cross-quarter days’ which divide the weeks between the seasonal equinoxes and solstices. And so, from Beltaine 2020 (1 May) to Beltaine 2021, I have watched and marked, photographed and written about how light changes what and how I see; how watching light changes the light in me.
Yet, as we all know, 2020-21 has been a deeply odd year (to put it mildly). I have spent the vast majority of the year shielding with my parents, and as someone who struggles with chronic illness, I have spent most of it living a predominantly bed-based life. So there has been little seasonal variation in my habits and virtually no seasonal variation in the state of my health. The constant tussle I have with clinical depression has continued, as have the seizure symptoms of the Functional Neurological Disorder I live with. I have left the house only a handful of times, with trips to the doctor and hospital predominating. So I’ve not seen much of the outside world.
But then, over the last year, unless we have been a precious key-worker undergoing the relentless pressure of a physically and emotionally demanding workload, haven’t the vast majority of us seen more of the inside walls of our homes than we would normally? Whether we’ve welcomed it or hated it, this period has brought a step-change of pace, with all the attendant anxieties that such changes might pose. There are as many ways as there are reasons by which minute seasonal changes of light might have continued to pass me by in the last year, but by grace I was able to continue the long, slow, frustrating art of learning to detach myself enough from the zeitgeist of communal anxiety creeping under my bedroom door with every news bulletin; to put a brake on the hamster-wheel of my own pain-filled preoccupations; and stop long enough to look, record, remember and dream about how I feel about light in every time and season.
This fresh appreciation for the direction and intensity of light falling across the walls and windows of the room I stay in at my parents’ house is encouraging me to finish the book I have been writing since the winter of 2014/15. That year, with the help of a couple of the Abbey’s online retreats, I discovered a framework that helped me put years of chronic illness into a more present perspective. I have been exploring this ever since, in one way or another, on my blogs shot at ten paces and image into ikon, and my book Walls, Wounds and Wonders will be the result of extended reflection in word and image on a fourth-century monastic encounter in the Egyptian desert:
A brother came to Scetis to visit Abba Moses and asked him “Father, give me a word.” The old man said to him “Go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.”
Over the course of the last seven years I have spent months based in bed in one room, and I realised there was an opportunity here: what did these walls, in this ‘cell’, have to teach me?
The resulting richness has meant I have a very long first draft to edit, but the abundance this extended gratitude practice continues to bring me is beyond comprehension or explanation. I have realised these walls are pure Gift, pure Grace.
For example, these walls have provided a Sanctuary, where I can rest under large windows which have become battened-down prayers against cold winds, or thrown-open rejoicings as I listen to buzzards circle the thermals by day and owls haunt the fields by night. They have provided a Library, a hushed space where I can study, read and write when concentration allows. They have provided a Refectory, where friends can pull up a chair beside my bed and we can share a pot of tea, laugh and weep together. They have provided a Studio on the days I can sit upright and doodle with watercolour paints, pens and pencils, or collage ripped-up bits of paper. And they have provided me with a Light-Laboratory, so that on days where my vision can bear it, I can grab my iPhone and experiment, waiting to receive an image I might make part of my Facebook project acts of daily seeing.
Learning that everything which could possibly be vital for my flourishing is encapsulated within one room is such a humbling lesson. It is one I have to relearn at least once daily, particularly when the urge to accumulate, to hoard, to click and consume books or art materials overcomes me. This year’s focus of attention on the infinite variety that is light, has begun to train me to seek the antidote to such self-centredness in sky-watching, whenever my vision allows and wherever possible; breathing deeply, basking in the glory and the grace freely given for our delight and inspiration; offering up my inadequate songs of thanksgiving in response.
One year on from my decision to trace the course of light through the natural seasons by intentionally marking the solstices, equinoxes and cross-quarter days. What strands can I pull free from all I have written about these pinnacle points of this year’s light so I can embed them into my becoming? Trace the colours:
At Beltaine, fresh lime, pea and peridot greens emerged under pale, finespun gold; strengthened into curling petals of mauve and lavender, a froth of white and cream at the Summer Solstice; fruited as tongues of ruby, vermillion, scarlet, fuschia pinks and reds at Lughnasa; flourished into burnished saffron and golden ochre at the Autumn Equinox; faded into dove grey, taupe and charcoal by Samhain; folded into midwinter’s depths of blueblack and indigo at the Winter Solstice; re-emerging as pewter, sepia and khaki by Imbolc; then as the number of hours of daylight reaches its’ crucial moment, an acid, chrome and orpiment yellow blaze of resurrection promise is released after the Spring Equinox. Height and angle, brightness and dimness, the endless balancing game between blue and yellow, between cold and heat: the hues and tones of every colour are mixed on the palette of light into infinite variety, year-in, year-out. This light continues even through the perpetual challenge of the physical and emotional ‘grey days’, the seeming endless blank of depression, a fog that threatens to overwhelm all memory of how things might be different: and yet it never quite eliminates the hope that this spiral of emerging colours, under the year’s changing arc of light, has imprinted the eternal in me.
And through it all comes the twist of fire to bind or loose, to distil or destroy, to dance with or lament through: the urgent wonder of turning aside to watch the burning bush and notice the whisper of Invitation, as encapsulated by Abba Moses in the desert: ‘why not become fire’? Why not let the fire of God burn through you? Why not let the fire of God reveal your essence? Why not let the fire of God light you up as beacon, as warning, as prophecy, as celebration, as companion, as guide, as protection, as succour, as lover, as … ? Fire’s trail reminds me to love the light in all its guises; it releases me to be passionate about loving colour and light in mind and body, heart and soul.
In the book of Isaiah, the I AM says, countless times: ’Now I Am revealing’… How do I notice the I AM? How do I notice the I AM in my now? Do I even notice the present tense of the I AM? What I AM light am I taking for granted today? Am I not seeing how the early morning snow, under heavy slate skies, became sparkling drips dropping from tree limbs, as mid-morning sun lit only the very extremities, the swelling tips of branches; how light-grey clouds suddenly massed and masked the differences between the clean windowsill and dusty cupboard top; how such heavy flatness became pierced through by midday glowings, fleeting and uncertain, highlighting the furze of greening birch trees on the hill at one moment, collapsing them into umber shadow the next? If I had not looked up – and out – a few times in the past few hours I would have missed all this plenitude.
Such sky-watching is possible at most moments, in most times, as I sit up in bed, unless the very thing I treasure as a contemplative photographer, my sensitivity to the I AM-light, becomes the condition I need to protect myself against (on those days I have to pull down black-out blinds to nurse a migraine or pull curtains to allow a weakened, weary body lie down quietly in the semi-dark and rest).
Such sky-watching has become the antidote to my self-entered preoccupations and the hamster-wheel of my ruminating mind. It immediately allows me to focus on the wonder of our created earth, and the abundance of minute details that Sophia dances before my eyes to demonstrate, time and again, that I am not alone; that the eternal I AM is present in all my details, if I have eyes to see.
Such sky-watching is also the corrective to my craving to see change. I am impatient for my healing from the chronic functional neurological disorder which has affected me for the past thirty years. I am desperate to see a permanent break in my cycles of clinical depression. I am longing to alter the patterns of self-sabotage and lack of self-compassion which dictate how I use (and fail to refuel) my precious, fragile energy source. I am incredibly fortunate to have a gifted counsellor and beloved friends who reflect back how my healing is happening, but If I ever need a cosmic reminder that change is happening I need only look out the window, and then look back into my mundane habitat with renewed vision.
Such sky-watching confirms in me my hunch that healing is about wholeness, not wellness. There may be little variation in the physical symptoms of my condition from one year to the next, but how I deal with those symptoms, how I understand and articulate my feelings about them, how they colour my relationship with my Source, is open to infinite shifts and adjustments, and will in turn, affect how I interact with the people and world around me.
Such sky-watching has become intricately linked with my determination to turn away from living a fear-filled life, to embodying a creativity-filled life, even if – especially if – most days I don’t leave my bed for more than an hour or two.
This too then, is what this year has brought me: a reconnection to the bedrock need for gratitude as a transforming force in my life. Sky-watching fills me with the wonder of a life based on abundance, not on lack. So there is plenty of material into which I can go ‘mining for gold’ as I have written about several times over the course of this last year. Sky-watching encourages my feeble faith to believe that there is always, always, a wonder for me to see, inside and outside of myself, if I will but continue to follow the path of Light, the one the God of Holy Surprises lays down before me, through every twist and turn.
for these gardens for which we have been given the vision
for creating, for nurturing
in the endless cycles of the seasons,
heaven nodding in affirmation.
‘Reflection’
Ana Lisa de Jong
Living Tree Poetry, March 2021
I feel in a funny-old place, very in-between things and unsettled. Uncomfortable in my skin. Exhausted. Depleted. And I am out of step – the world around me is about to open up again – more than one set of Covid-19 restrictions being lifted, coinciding neatly within the orbit of vernal equinox, and new life breaking through and budding from the earth beneath my window. Must I really drag the bottom of my murky pool to find the energy to fuel a ‘spring forth’?
This year, I sense it can’t be done.
Yet aren’t I often, nearly always, out of step with the rhythms of the world around me, living quietly as I do, in a mostly bed-orientated existence, normally (pre-Covid) spending much of my time alone? My daily rhythms and routines are dependent on that day’s allowance of energy, so often I have to let go of whatever I might have hoped to accomplish, or planned to do, whether it was studio time, a medical appointment, or sitting with a friend. And for a recovering perfectionist like me, it is incredibly difficult to ‘keep at’ what will no-doubt be a life-long task: the soul-work of finding a balance between desire and acceptance, the heart-work of being silent and at rest, balanced against creative action without striving.
As I continue this journey of marking each Equinox, Solstice and Cross-Quarter over the course of a single year, (begun in May 2020), watching the growing and waning strength of light change the colours of familiar objects around me, I wonder how this perception of light might help me listen to my empty, desolate, tired places within – the wilderness places, the desert places; to listen, with renewed attention, but without force. Perhaps I need to keep watching Winter’s shadows a little longer? Is it possible for someone who longs to be up and making, to find the patience to lie fallow a little longer?
And I have to laugh at myself as I write that sentence, because what on earth do I mean by ‘fallow’? As I mentioned at Imbolc, during January and February it has been my huge privilege to be part of a community delving into an exploration of ‘A MidWinter God’ (with the Abbey of the Arts). This course brought the key concept of being ‘fallow’ to my attention, and it is a word that keeps returning to me. For example, one evening last week, at the end of what I was bemoaning to myself as a ‘fallow’ day (read ‘unproductive’ which is not the same thing at all!), I brought myself up short, stopped the internal whine and made a list of what I had done during that day between 9 am and 7.15pm. It read as follows (in no particular order):
making an iPad painting of my discerning of ‘grief as a holy path’
writing an extended prayer meditation
typing up and sharing both of these with fellow pilgrims on ‘MidWinter God’ site
30 minutes painting new canvas – including standing and stretching
cleaning brushes and palette on diary covers/ playing cards (as part of other projects/new beginnings)
rest: lying down and watching sky for a while
ink pen doodling letter X for illustrated alphabet project
engaging in an extended WhatsApp text exchange (lying down)
watching 3 minute FaceBook video (lying down)
eating supper with my parents (wheelchair to kitchen and back)
having a 20 minute drink & conversation with Dad before supper
listening to the first two songs of a NineBarrow concert with my parents
rest: reading Barbara Brown Taylor and Paolo Coehlo concentratedly for 40 mins (lying down)
rest: reading Georgette Heyer mindlessly on and off for 2 hours (lying down).
By anyone’s measure, this day cannot be called inactive – or restful – or ‘fallow’; and this kind of evidence list is a very necessary therapy for me from time to time, helping me confront my inner perfectionist and inner ungrateful-wretch head on.
So how do I really learn to clear a space, to simplify, to listen to the sentence I just wrote rather than begin a new one? Since last summer my therapist has been urging me to finish some of the multiple creative projects I have on the go. Together we have noted, with compassion and affection, that my ‘genius’ for overcomplicating is related to my persistent habit of having a hundred creative ideas before breakfast. My sadness, my abiding sin perhaps you might call it, is that I carry this habit over into my spiritual life, always dipping into multiple sources throughout my morning’s ‘quiet’ time, thereby receiving multiple messages, multiple inspirations, multiple everything. Is it any wonder I struggle with brain fog? Is it any wonder I get overwhelmed by details? Is it any wonder there are days I just do not know where to start? Perhaps all this multiplying is part of a desperate subconscious assault on the brain: if I blast my system with enough holy reading surely some of it might get through and stick?
In his book Spiritual Intelligence Brian Draper asks:
… often the most profound awakenings arise from being willing to let go of the ‘Where now?’ or ‘What next?’ questions. In fact, most of us need to let go profoundly before we take anything more on. … We must clear a space in order to hear the still, small voice speak to us. But we must also be prepared, within that act of space-clearing, for yet more clearing to take place – to discern what we first need to surrender before we can more on with a lighter load. The poet, priest and mystic John O’Donohue once wrote that we must ‘clear thickets in the undergrowth of banality in our life’ so that we can overhear our true self. We should first clear space in order to ask, ‘What more should I clear?’ (25)
Over the course of the last thirty years I feel that I have had to let go of so much, due to chronic illness. Some days the grief of those dashed hopes and unfulfilled dreams threatens to overwhelm me, and I wonder if this grief makes me subconsciously cling to my present desires like a safety raft, utterly resistant to the idea that they too might need to be cleared out the way. But I have begun to learn to recognise that I need to let go of these most tenacious desires, and that the only way to do it is in every moment of every day. Father Thomas Keating called these engrained desires our ‘emotional drivers’: the desire for power and control; the desire for safety and security; the desire for affection, affirmation and esteem; the desire to change circumstance, situations, other people and myself. Letting go of these ‘drivers’ is at the heart of Centering Prayer practice and most mornings for the last seven years I have prayed this prayer. Yet five minutes after I have prayed it, I catch myself repeating the desire I just prayed to release! In my case, the work of trying to overhear my True Self that Draper and O’Donohue point to, is a very halting process of trying to recognise where my ‘attachments’ and desires are leading me off into a cul-de-sac, away from the Way of God’s healing and flourishing. And once I have finally noticed I have sabotaged myself again? All I can do is sigh, smile at myself, and begin again, surrendering to the Winter hard work of trying to clear the brambles of myself out of the way, so I might have enough clarity to see the GodLight springing forth.
Yet it has been my experience that clearing the ground, clearing space, surrendering all my so-called ‘good ideas’ and my ‘purple prose’, has often meant I have exposed huge, gaping emotional chasms, uncovered an echoing, empty, arid desert within me, and felt the keen edge of the wind whistle God’s absence from these places within me. Lent is often the time to remember the rich traditions of Desert Spirituality: to reflect on wilderness – where one might uncover thickets with brambles so densely-packed it feels you might never escape – as well as on open, unpopulated or barren places, or perhaps, on dark places or on blinding-light places.
One of the most illuminating books I’ve read in the past year has been Belden C. Lane’s, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality. Lane repeatedly reminded me:
The desert is, preeminently, a place to die. Anyone retreating to an Egyptian or Judean monastery, hoping to escape the tensions of city life, found little comfort among the likes of an [Abba] Anthony or Sabas. The desert offered no private therapeutic place for solace and rejuvenation. One was as likely to be carried out feet first as to be restored unchanged to the life one had left. … Amma Syncletica refused to let anyone deceive herself by imagining that retreat to a desert monastery meant the guarantee of freedom from the world. The hardest world to leave, she knew, is the one within the heart. (165, 168)
As for his own heart, Lane declares, “All I bring to the darkness each night is what the Cloud [of Unknowing] author calls a “naked intent”, a wish to be empty and still in the presence of ‘that for which I have no name’, a practice of trying to find ‘that time of utterly thoughtless silence’. ” (146) I know that longing for thought-less-ness well (although I also know the very different extreme experience of true terror, when it feels like the brain freezes, and words flee in such a way as one is no longer able to communicate freely). Thomas Merton wrote of his own heart’s desire:
to deliver oneself up, to hand oneself over, entrust oneself completely to the silence of a wide landscape of woods and hills, or sea, or desert; to sit still while the sun comes up over that land and fills its silences with light. To pray and work in the morning and to labour and rest in the afternoon, and to sit still again in meditation in the evening when night falls upon that land and when the silence fills itself with darkness and with stars.
Rest. Stillness. Silence. Surrender. Emptiness. Fullness. Openness. Attention. These words are my keystones, words where my spirit encounters the Holy and beholds the I AM. These words pepper my journey with, and through, light. They are found across history, across faith traditions and religions, across the globe. Another exponent of the “naked intent” school of spirituality was the the thirteenth-century German mystic poet Mechthild of Magdeburg. She wrote:
In the desert,
Turn toward emptiness,
Fleeing the self.
Stand alone,
Ask no one’s help,
And your being will quiet,
Free from the bondage of things.
Those who cling to the world,
endeavour to free them;
Those who are free, praise.
Care for the sick,
But live alone,
Happy to Drink from the waters of sorrow,
To kindle Love’s fire
With the twigs of a simple life.
Thus you will live in the desert.
‘The desert has many teachings’
Mechthild of Magdeburg
During this year of global pandemic many of us may have felt aloneness in a keener way, may have needed to care for the sick in a more particular way, may have experienced the extremes of happiness and sorrow. There will be few who have not at some point found humanity’s view of our mortality and our vitality brought into question. And the questions continue on into our uncertain personal and communal futures. So here again, on another turning point along this journey of light across the year, I will light a festive fire, that way of marking the Celtic pillars of the year; and, unsettled, empty, exhausted though I may be, by faith I will mark my surrender to the One who ushers possibility from uncertainty, by rekindling my fire of Love within by this prayer:
May I clear space for You, so that I might see what or where I need to simplify in this day, this season, this year.
May my life become a song of praise and gratitude to the One who greets my emptiness with the blessings of plenitude and abundance.
May I learn to be content to lie fallow, to rest, to be still, to know the I AM in silence and in song.
May I be given the courage to begin again, or to surge on, whenever Your light changes within, whenever you give me Your vision.
May I follow the Light of Love all the days of my life to come.
Then, the Lord heard me in the wilderness of my soul.
Then, the lost place of me became clear.
Then, I recognised distraction for what it is.
Then, I was freed from the desert of diversion.
Then, I was moved to the green oasis within me.
Then, the still voice of the Lord was as the depth of water. Then, I could cease the constant music in my head.
Then, I could move beyond myself and the noise of myself. Then, I could hear the smallness of my own voice.
Then, the still voice of the Lord was as the depth of water. Then, the lost place of me became clear as a cascade.
Then, I could hear the bass of my name.
Then, I heard the Lord in the wilderness of my soul.
Then, stillness and stillness and stillness sang.
‘The Psalm of Then’
Nicholas Samaras, from American Psalm, World Psalm
If Candlemas Day be fair and bright Winter will have another fight. If Candlemas Day brings cloud and rain, Winter won’t come again.
(Traditional)
It has been a very grey January outside my window, and I although I resist turning on a light as soon as I wake up in the morning then leaving it on all day beside my bed, there have been some days where the daylight grey has rendered it impossible to read, even at midday, without the imposition of electricity. I hear my anger rage at the blankness of a filled-in sky driving me to consume earth’s precious resources. I catch sight of my disappointment when it feels like it has rained every day for six weeks and I have not seen the sun. I surprise myself with the resentment I feel when putting on a light, and its reminder of my dis-ease with shadows and penumbra inside and outside of myself; and of my reaching for easy hope, a quick fix, rushing to push past any grief, refusing to look at the hurts, declining the opportunity to ‘sit with’ the uncomfortable.
I note all this resistance in me as I continue to watch the light’s fall across the second half of my year’s exploration of the equinoxes, solstices, and the Celtic practices that surround the celebration of the ‘cross-quarter’ days marking the midpoints in between.
February 1st/2nd/3rd offers up multiple gifts to this season of grey: the Feast Day of St Brigid; Candlemas (the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus Christ, the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the Feast of the Holy Encounter); the Celtic festival of Imbolc; and lastly, the Saints day of Simeon and Anna. All four are intimately connected.
In 2015 I wrote a piece for the Godspace blog on Saint Brigid and her primary work as healer. She is known as the saint of birthing mothers, and her Feast traditionally marked the beginning of Spring. Named after Brig, the Celtic Goddess of Fire, she became the ‘bridge’ between Celtic and Christian communities in Ireland. Fire is also an important element of Candlemas, since as the name suggests, it was the day all the church candles were blessed. It is a Church feast day intimately connected with Mary, the mother of Jesus, as it celebrates her ritual cleansing and re-entry into the public life of the Jewish Temple, as well as the formal service of presentation of her baby to the priests and Temple congregation. There feels like so much richness to explore in this ‘co-incidence’ between the coming of light out of darkness and the celebration of the sacred feminine. As at so many other Celtic ritual occasions, fire marks Imbolc as the festival of Light. Lastly, light is central to the rituals enacted around the Feast Day of Simeon and Anna, the elder and the prophetess who witnessed the child Jesus’s entry into Temple life, who are known for recognising, articulating and proclaiming this Jesus as the bringer of Light in the Darkness, that fulfilment of the Old Testament’s promise of a Messiah (Luke 2.22-40).
Imbolc, meaning ‘in the belly’, brings an invitation to allow my body to be a vital guide for this ‘dark’ half of the Celtic year; it invites me to express both the dark and the light, the winter and the spring, through my body. The quality of light from November to February has a felt impact on my body, my mind and my spirit. My seeing is transfigured because of light’s blankness and flatness on grey days, and its low, acute, blinding angles on days where clear winter bright light appears. Yet discerning what ‘wisdom of the gut’ my body is trying to direct me towards, is something I find much harder to see. What in me needs ritual cleansing perhaps? What in me needs celebrating? What in me needs proclaiming?
All I know is that the very fallowness of winter is an invitation to rest in what I do not know. In this rest there is a paradoxical urgency which I must heed, before I make any habitual mad dash towards spring and all the symbols of hope offered by that season. For there is hope to be found in the stripped back, stark skeletons of winter, where what is spare and sparse is what is revealed to be beautiful, if I have eyes to see. In this season, there may be years where the seed has already been planted deep underground, and is already growing, unseen and unfelt, in the dark. Yet, this season also offers the possibility of jubilee, a year where the earth is not forced to be productive, where the year offers the possibility of restoration and restitution to the land, and all those who might glean from its dark riches.
This too is the eternal truth at the heart of the Feast of the Holy Encounter. Simeon the elder names the Christ-child as a light for revelation. Yet this light does not have the quickly graspable qualities of hope, or the glory of what Barbara Brown Taylor calls ‘solar Christianity’. Simeon prophesies that the Messiah is ‘a sign that will be opposed … so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed’ (Luke 2.34-5 NRSV) or as The Message translates this verse:
This child marks both the failure and
the recovery of many in Israel,
A figure misunderstood and contradicted—
the pain of a sword-thrust through you—
But the rejection will force honesty,
as God reveals who they really are.
I am stunned to realise that God is working with my default behaviour, my defensiveness, my stubborn rejections, my negative reaction to whatever God may be unfolding if it involves undergoing any kind of pain or discomfort. Further, I am staggered that it is not the fact of the Christ’s existence which is to be the revelation; he is the revealer, yes, but it is we who are to be the revelation: our innermost thoughts are, our True Selves are. And this unveiling will happen through misunderstandings, through contradictions, defensive rejections, and hurts: in other words the holy is hiding amidst all my shadow places … amongst all the tones of grey … amongst all the dark middle miles of my intestines, ‘in the belly’ of all the places I do not want to look.
Behold, grey might be a vehicle for revelation as much as any other colour. Grey can be a Christ-carrier in even its most unappealing state: it does not have to be pierced through or burned off or diluted, it is holy as it is, and it can bring ‘recovery’.
So the wisdom my gut offers me this year is that the beginning of February is a smorgasbord feast full of multiple offerings and opportunities for a holy encounter, for an #epiphanyoftheordinary to be released through the tiny flame of the candle before me. What waits to be revealed as holy is already redeemed, that fire is already lit within me, if I will only open my eyes, heart and gut to receive the vision and be wholed.
So let the holy encounter with the very belly of winter begin.
image into ikon 