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- A Message for the New Year
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Somewhere this year INCARNATION has moved from being just a word, INTO A LIVING PRESENCE where God is swooping us all into collective heart. Further in this Visio Divina engagement, I became aware that life can be lived in rectangle or square kinds of segments. Peering intently into the earthy left rectangle I saw many faces, some in a collective gathering, some just individuals, then a Butterfly over several. The segment to the right the SPIRIT breathing over the chaos (Genesis 1) into the segment on the left. The flowing blue separating segments, the glue of the INCARNATION, the blue that exudes serenity, intentionality, a calming balm, much more that a window into God’s heart. With each breath I am in God’s heart – we are all in God’s heart, each a living flame, clusters of living flames are glued together.
I am being deeply touched by the sharing of each of you this week. As I sit back and take a deep breath into the Spirit of the Ever Living God, some nameless awareness holds me on a gentle descend down very long water slide into oneness. So very deeply grateful.
I am noticing that allowing is another name for consenting.
I was/am touched by the arrangement leaves in Lucia’s Trinity drawing the viewer into the life of the Trinity – the flow of the relationship – Movement of the greatest and only greatest Lover into the Beloved and only greatest Beloved into the greatest and only greatest Love, that continues the flow within and into each and every human person. As this week advanced I let this Loving Movement reveal and release resentments into appreciation of the complexities of my life; the movement through opinions (mine) that muddy what is real; the movement through deceptions that imprison my spirit. My vivid dreams connect me to my deep unconscious, dreams that quickly vanish propelling my into praying the Welcome prayer through the feeling I am left with. I know. The movement of the body prayer suggested a few weeks back, this movement: I await, I allow, I accept, I attend… centers me.
The title for WoW “Eternal Whispers of Love” along with the Visio image moved deeply within me this week, a felt sense of connected with the SPIRIT within, one breath at a time. In the immigrant church I grew up in, entering the Church we were met this this chorus of whispers of elderly ladies praying their rosary which for me was like settling in the whispers of the SPIRIT. The image is another example of the gentle presence of the SPIRIT, as morning dew or gentle misty rain that unleashes the surprising burning Presence of the SPIRIT. This explodes into this moment of courage where I come face to face with “this my only unique response” to the challenge of the ‘now moment’ of clarity ( the red in the Visio), ‘one breath at a time’. As I finish writing this I settle into the gentle whisper of the SPIRIT, the glue bonding all of us associated with the WoW. I bow in gratitude.
The body prayer suggestion of last week: await…allow…accept… attend, is being woven into the beginning and end my C.P. and other activities, such as phsio exercises, especially those more challenging, such as, coaxing my muscles to just a little stretch.
“Heart expansion” names so much of my lived experience since Easter Sunday, 2023. Liminal experience is like that; few words, more often a felt sense of a reality so deep, may give simple expression to my experience. I look up and see a watercolor I did some thirty years: mature tree trunks extending down into their roots. Today it honors my participating into Jesus’ ascent by going down, down where truth lives, from my center of humility. Dreams are also a source of liminality; (a practice of some 30 years). These past weeks coming out dreaming I find myself praying the Welcome Prayer, a recognition of the Spirit at work, burning off ruminants of my ego happiness programing buried ever so deep. Words for the work of the Spirit: excavation and evacuation. My awareness “heart expansion”.
Some time after listening for the first time to the excerpt from “The Mirrow of Simple Souls”, in one of those in between times going from one activity after another, I was suddenly overwhelmed with joy: ‘there is nothing I can do to change God in any way ‘. It was one of those profound wordless experiences, like an affirmation, perhaps answer to a quest I have been following for forever. Later, perhaps the next day, a niggling pondering set in, the kind you just do, the not planned kind, ‘why was this so profound’? Lately I have been intentionally focusing a deep desire of genuinely wanting the best for a number of people in my life, you know those who can unexpected push my buttons. I think by Thursday I knew in the marrow of my bones, that early in this week the “burning ” experience was pointing me to the voice of reason of my ego self that can blind me in my desire to truly wish the best for those others in my life.
Practicing love this week, I became aware that the Holy Spirit has-been/is evacuating a lot of negative debris, my self seeking love, my hyper vigilance, my opionatedness, and such like. Forty-four years ago on a research project in England and France I cut someone out of my life but avoiding interaction. Ten days ago she contacted me from Uganda because she is facing some health issues. I was/ am amazingly surprised that I was able to give her my full attention without the former triggers. Indeed, I was able to let go of the plans I had for that morning, and give her my full attention. This interaction will continue as she arrives here June 8 for a planned six week stay which may now be lengthened. Be kind to one another! A phrase we hear often since covid showed up in our lives. Willingness to be kind, consenting to the presence and action of the Indwelling Spirit, lots of Welcome Praying allows the Spirit to clear debris. I end humbly and gratefully and envelop all in loving kindness blessings.
God’s touching deeply into being: “The person I normally take myself to be… is never really remotely the whole of who I am.” is awakening a profound truth that I am embracing, this bigger life that I have always sought is real, has always been there. So each consenting breath is a breath of detachment from “my normal self”.
Two things are coming into focus: 1) Everywhere you look. You see what you are looking for. This just happens spopntaneously for me. Right now I don’t have words to expand on this. But I do know that when my time is over here on this earth this is tied into why I was created; have I fulfilled my mandate/how. 2) The image this week speaks into this: hands that touch the lives of others and are in turn touched. Hands that hold the wounds of others and in turn been touched. For both the word “seared” comes alive. Wounds that are touched and leave an indelible mark on the one holds the wound of the wounded.
Here we are nearing the end of the Octave of Easter 2023. During the second reading of the Vigil, I sensed a deep awareness of being walked with into some deeper level. This lasted perhaps 3 days – oh, what joy, delight, affirmation. Though I do know in the deepest part of me this Presence continues this walking (called Resurrection 2023); indeed as witnessed, the stone from the tomb has been rolled away. It’s the “log in my eyes, the stone in my heart, removed and rolled away” that sent me into that obscure place, called doubt or fear of judgment; perhaps the place of the unaccepted self that stands in the way, perhaps, my Jonah kind of hiding place. It’s a long walk into the Resurrection. In chronos years its been a long long walk for me begun in 1934, two months old. So, from this obscure hiding place, I am willing, consenting, open, surrendering, trusting – this walk of 40 chronos days 2023; so grateful to be on this walk with all of you.
This evening I was drawn into the Easter Vigil into a new liminal dimension. Spending my day in the tomb continued unconsciously until the second reading when the Father said to Abraham: “….because you have not withheld your son , your only son….” I was envelopped by a Presence – the One who went down into the toomb was there beside me in the liminality of the place ‘The Lord will provide’. And so…. Easter 2o23 begins…… with you Kathleen, Cathy, Linda, Susan, Marlene, and each of you the Word of the Week Community.
Jesus is brought to the lowest place, that place where the all-loving God seems infinitely distant. He enters a universe of utter solitude, meaninglessness, and fragmentation. Like the prophet Jonah, he is overwhelmed by chaos.
—Brother John of TaizéThis is “tomb time” day for me, where Jesus and I sit side by side in the tomb.
At our local Oblete Retreat Centre, the C.P group meets Mondays at 7 pm. After our “sit” we have been listening to Father Keating’s: Hope & Redemption part one, very timely for Lent 2023. For the first time consciously, I am sensing the presence of Christ’s descent into the deep dark abyss of human suffering, of the human condition, his cry God, why have you abandoned me! He doesn’t cry out to the Father, the one who called him beloved. In his human condition, he dared to face the total alienation, abandonment from this God. Now I know he broke the barrier of total annilation. My experiences of the dark abyss have been onesof “being saved” of never having to go behind the barrier. But there has been this lingering of “what if”. I am experiencing a wordless sense of being in the Christ of the Resurrection with all at each “sit” surrounded by all in the group or in all the groups world wide. The price of my/our “what ifs” have been paid in full. Living my “give-back” years is taking on a new meaning. Jesus lived into the depths of humility/humiliation to rise is the presence of affirmation. My affirmation statement surrendering is my part, while empting is taken care of by the Indwelling Spirit.
On inhale SURRENDERING – on exhale EMPTYING
