Tag: prayer

Shhh 🤫

I am about to go on a retreat which will be almost entirely silent, just for a few days. I am feeling mostly excited, though I do detect a hint of wariness! But really I am longing for this silence at some fundamental level.

Trefoil with book

It strikes me that choosing to be silent might be one of the most powerful choices we could make in a world with so much multi-channel communication going on constantly? And that this is very different from feeling silenced or indeed from actually being silenced.

There is something in this about offering my attention just to God and to the natural world and also to my own self more deeply than I normally manage to do. And also something about receiving the loving attention of God and fellow creatures in the natural world, too. 🙏

Not equal yet

I realise there are an awful lot of structural problems in the world right now. Horrendous diplomatic failures with the USA currently, climate crisis and all ensuing symptoms, ongoing terror in the West Bank and the devastation of Gaza, to name just a few. Perhaps in the light of all of those things, I find myself deeply disturbed by the removal of end-to-end encryption for UK users of many Apple products. I am only just beginning to grasp the potential far reaching consequences of that sort of thing, looking at the political world stage as outlined above. I will no doubt explore this more in a future post, but for now here’s an article outlining the current situation for the UK: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/02/apple-pulls-data-protection-tool-instead-of-caving-to-uk-demand-for-a-backdoor/

In the meantime, back on planet Church of England, rather than managing to galvanise ourselves to address any of the world challenges above effectively, we remain stymied by systemic injustice among ourselves. Why we think that this is in any way a fitting offering to a world in turmoil from a Church that prays to God who we say we believe is a) deeply compassionate and b) always engaged with reality, I do not know.

One of the massive glaring structural injustices in the Church of England continues to be the inequality between men and women. I can’t communicate the situation any more effectively than Liz Shercliff has in her blog post below, which will take anyone all of 2 minutes to read. So here it is, with a key quote at the top of it for anyone not wanting to follow the link:

“…The Church is not committed to mutual flourishing, other than as a way of silencing women by throwing us a few scraps and expecting us to be grateful. If women in places of governance dare to ask for actual equality, they are dismissed.”

https://www.womenandthechurch.org/blog/c0p9nbaqh8hvfnjvfngz1umf3vypvb

Thresholds

I went on a brilliant retreat last weekend with Anna from https://www.livelightdwelldeep.org/ and the Contemplative Fire community of which I am a Companion (https://contemplativefire.org/). It was called “In Between” and was all about St Brigid and thresholds; in between spaces, moments, seasons. We are currently in between winter and spring. On the brink.

On the retreat I found myself knitting in solitude quite a bit. And appropriately, a very short poem that has been brewing for sometime finally took form and was birthed on the retreat. It resonates with home and the threshold to our home, and also with recently shared experiences of seasons of knitting and not knitting, and with the fact that trains regularly speed past the retreat place where we were, like carriages of the liminal.

Ironically, I find myself on a train, knitting, half a week later, sharing this poem (maybe this is just part of a longer poem? I’m not sure yet):

I am knitting
I’m not knitting because I am waiting;
I am knitting because I have arrived.

Christmas joy

Interrupting before my second post about Mozart just to say I’ve been writing advent notes with a friend this year. In our final post, we included a reference to O Magnum Mysterium by Morten Lauridsen. It’s a beautiful meditative piece, which I offer as a Christmassy blessing here. Click the link below to hear it…

Lyrics:

O magnum mysterium
Et admirabile sacramentum
Ut animalia viderent Dominum natum
Jacentem in praesepio!
Beata Virgo, cujus viscera
Meruerunt portare
Dominum Christum
Alleluia!

Translation:

O great mystery,
and wonderful sacrament,
that animals should see the newborn Lord,
lying in a manger!
Blessed is the virgin whose womb
was worthy to bear
the Lord, Jesus Christ.
Alleluia!

Click here to hear the music: https://youtu.be/nn5ken3RJBo?si=2Ts4nv0i966T1ap2

To read our advent notes in full click here: https://contemplativefire.org/learning-journey/advent-joy-jesus-christ-arriving-embodied/

Silence

I am in a season of exploring a particular kind of silence. It’s a season in a life that appears to be emerging as one longing to be steeped in silence. Perhaps indefinitely.

This short, beautiful film is not silent, but honours the silence that falls at the end of life. The film maker Terence Davies wrote and read this poem, enabling the making of the film (produced by James Dowling and with an award winning score by Florencia Di Concilio), just before he died recently. I think he wrote it in memory of his sister, but it seems a beautiful tribute to him as well.

Passing Time

This is reminding me that, while I follow my odyssey of living silence, true silence will only fall with death. When my friend Jim died suddenly some years ago, I found the reality of his silence – its total finality – one of the hardest things. Jim was a quiet and unassuming man, but also a very gifted bass player. When he died, all the bass lines just disappeared. Our little band never sounded the same again.

Blue and still

In the middle of much busy-ness, I am noticing the loss of deep stillness and silence lately, and an invitation to re-engage with it.

Hence yesterday during a glorious morning, when unsettled sleep had woken me too early, I went out. I lay on my back in the garden and saw this:

What glorious blue!

I felt queasy, due to sleep deprivation and not drinking enough water the previous day. But this was glorious. As I lay there for about half an hour, I saw at least 5 different species of birds fly past twittering their spring songs.

I am hoping to drop into this deeper stillness more in the coming time. Even when there is a lot of hubbub and activity around me and lurking in the back of my mind. Perhaps if I practise it, I will be able to lay it aside again as the silence falls…? This is what my brain needs I think.

The day is just rising…

I was in the queue behind a guy this morning who was on the phone while completing his transaction. “You’re too emotional… women, they’re always too emotional,” he declared into the phone, while demanding she put their child on the phone (I grimaced, imagining the irritation of this woman, who I guessed was probably doing the bulk of the bringing up of the child [also, how is it possible to be “too emotional”? Grrr…]). “Woman; the day is just rising…give thanks and be glad you opened your eyes this morning to greet it!” I exchanged knowing grins with the Muslim guy behind the till and said, “He’s preaching to us all this morning”.

I was just sitting on a low wall writing this when another guy began talking to me. People round here have an instinct for who has got time to listen. We said how much we were enjoying the sun. He said he didn’t like the cold so he was glad for the sun. I pointed to the trees and said how the blossoms were coming. He said, “Yeah this is our world… we gotta look after it isn’t it?” His words were very slurred and in a strong dialect so he had to repeat that three times before I could grasp it. I wasn’t expecting such care for the natural world from someone so vulnerable. But he probably spends way more time outside than I do. I stand corrected.

This is Easter where I live. Three completely different cultural backgrounds, at least two different faiths, shared human needs and flaws and an encouragement to notice that the day is just rising. We give thanks we opened our eyes to see it. And we resolve to look after this beautiful planet with all her creatures. 🙏💕

Moonlit revelations

Last night I went for a magical walk through a wood. It was the last full moon before Christmas. Having had a day of crisp, clear, sunny winter skies, the skies clouded over, and I feared we wouldn’t be able to see the moon at all. But actually we could see it throughout, framed beautifully by thin bare branches and a halo of soft cloud.

At one point the three of us chose a path which took us to a place we had never been to before. (Or maybe we just didn’t recognise it in the dark?) We felt like somehow we had stumbled through a portal into another wood beyond the wood. (Curiously, there was a four way signpost nearby on which most of the text appeared obliterated.) We resisted the temptation to locate ourselves with GPS, and instead relished the moment of mystery, grateful for each other’s company.

I love this quote which I saw today:

“…If a forest is a sacred grove, not timber…” May I always see forests like this. And my “brother sun, sister moon” (as St Francis is said to have put it). I believe we are all creatures of the same Creator. May I always enter the woods with awe, asking of my kin “In the name of your Creator and mine, am I welcome here?” And may I always listen keenly, without assumption, for the trees’ response.

Waiting

Well, so much for posting every day this month!! Scuppered when I’d barely begun. Various practicalities got in the way, as they do. Then I read something about being speechless. It was a comment about social media and a question to ask oneself; “Am I saying something because I think I have to say something or because I have something to say…?” (Paraphrasing Gideon Heugh in his little new book of advent reflections, Darkling.)

Ah. Hmmm…