Rachael's Breastplate! (I arise today...)

I arise today through quietness of morning, peace of forest, riches of sunrise.

I arise today through softness of mist, gentleness of dew, beauty of silver birches.

I arise today through stability of earth, sustenance of air, fluidity of water.

I arise today through presence of strangers, welcome of friends, absence of others.

I arise today through a mighty strength.

I arise today.

(Yes, credit due, of course, to St Patrick's Breastplate or The Deer's Cry, and to my early morning walk that inspired my last post. May you also be aware of the mighty strength by which you arise today, in whom you live and move and have your being.)

Prayer of a Wannabe Gardener

Creator God, Giver of Life,
I beseech you to help me not to kill all my plants.
Please give me eyes to see them on their dusty windowsills,
And help me to remember to water them regularly and consistently.
When I am rushing past and notice their wilting leaves,
Grant me the wisdom to stop and give a minute to their care.
I confess to you my false belief that they will somehow make it on their own,
And the shameful thought that I can just go and buy another one anyway.
Please renew my mind and, if possible, my hands - I'd like green fingers instead of a black thumb please.
Amen.


(Yes, it's that time of year again, and the same hopes and fear arise that inspired my 'Confessions of a Plantkiller' string of posts last year!)

Renovate: Part II

A few weeks ago, there was nowhere in our messy, dirty, chaotic house that I wanted to pray; I wanted somewhere beautiful and ordered to pray pleasant prayers and think nice thoughts. When I realised this, I chose to sit instead in the very centre of the stripped-bare den amidst layers of dust and piles of tools. I wanted to BE in my home, my life and myself as they really were, really are. I wanted to come and present myself to God as I really am, to let my prayers and thoughts and questions and feelings be as messy as my surroundings, and not try to brush my dirt under the carpet or whitewash my crumbling walls. And it was good. Instead of feeling uncomfortable and ill-at-ease as I’d expected, I felt relieved, welcomed, accepted. It was OK. I was OK. God was OK.

The truth is, you see, that I am as much a work in progress as my oh-so-nearly-finished den. Truth is, I get as frustrated (or probably more!) with my own unfinishedness and messiness and imperfection as I do with that of our room under renovation. Truth is, I’d like the work on me to be over and done with – I would like myself, my life and my relationships to be beautiful and ordered, with everything in its place – and I often make out to myself and others that what I hope and long for is already the case... And then I get sorely disappointed and ashamed when I ‘remember’ and see again those parts of myself that are still battered and broken after all this time, stripped bare and not yet renewed, or simply changing and therefore still incomplete. But sitting in the unfinished room that day, I could clearly see that its ‘ugliness’ and ‘imperfection’ were not a product of defect, failure or deficiency, but of transformation. Its chaos was beautiful as a sign of change and potential. The room is messy because it is being renovated, renewed, restored... and so am I. And so are you. We are beautiful works in progress, incredibly loved and with untold potential.

The words below from Teilhard de Chardin are some of my very favourite in the world, to which I return on paper or in my heart time and again, reminding myself to ‘trust in the slow work of God’ in me, my life, and in the world and people that surround me, accepting the in-between-ness and ‘chaos’ that this necessarily entails. I hope you enjoy and are encouraged by these words as much as I am:

Patient Trust

by Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

Above all, trust in the slow work of God

We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.

We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
unknown, something new.

And yet it is the law of progress
that it is made by passing through
some states of instability ---
and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you.

Your ideas mature gradually --- let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.

Don't try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.

Copyright: The Institute of Jesuit Sources

Making space

My reflections springing from the C.S. Lewis quote I first included here continue...

They continued one morning this week as I sprawled on our comfy little sofa (thank you, Heidi!), thinking about my day and all it might bring, all I hoped it would hold, and all the failures and successes, joys and sorrows that come my way largely unbidden. Sometimes life feels like a wild ride that I have absolutely no control over, though I desperately try to control it much of the time, or am unable to enjoy it because I am clinging on, white-knuckled, for dear life. Often I feel lost in a mist of events, tasks, thoughts, desires - those wild animals I wrote about too. And this particular morning I was thinking specifically about how my true values and real goals often get lost in a flood of chores that need to be done, things that 'happen to' me rather than that I choose, and - most sickeningly - things that I purport not to value as highly but which I nonetheless spend an inordinate amount of time and energy on.

As I reflected on this, a longing rose in me to be saved from those things - both inner and outer - that pull me away from the path I most want to walk (or, in other words, which some/most of me wants to walk!); a longing for my life to be full to overflowing with the things I love and crave, admire and aspire to, rather than the lesser things that I either want to escape, or simply want to waste less time on! Something else happened as these thoughts went through my mind: our wonderful little, grey cat Stripes (obviously named by a child!) jumped up onto me looking for attention and affection and, then, for a place to snuggle down and sleep. There was no room on top of me if I wanted to continue reading or writing in my journal, and she struggled to find a comfy spot near my feet because of all the many, glorious throw cushions I have made and scattered around! Afraid she would give up and take herself elsewhere, I pushed a few of the cushions off the sofa to make some space for her, and then it hit me: It is true that much of life comes to me unbidden and uninvited, that I do not have the level of control I wish for, even over myself, and that I cannot force the divine Life to come to me, bringing the freedom and love and balance that I need. But I can make space for this Life to come to me. I can make space, through prayer and through other intentional choices and activities, as to what I will and won't give time and energy and attention to throughout my day. This is what the mystics and monastics have known through the centuries: that we humans need intentional practices to empty ourselves of the things we do not want or need, or free ourselves from too strong an attachment to them (i.e. disciplines of abstinence such as fasting or silence) and to make space for or engage with those things we long for more of (disciplines of engagement such as generosity and service). Just as I cannot make the cat come and grace me with her warm presence, and yet AM able to make the space for her should she choose to settle with me, so I also cannot force Grace to make its home with me, but still I have the choice to create spaces in my life so that there is ROOM for this Grace, this God, that I long to know and love and follow more closely.

So, that day, I made some very simple choices before I began my day - very personal choices, that would not be appropriate for many others, but which were ideal for making space for what I want and limiting the space I give to the things I value less, or which can side-track me:
- Today, no facebook or blog-trawling
- No sugar or caffeine
- Pausing before responding to requests or demands or melt-downs from my dearest daughter
- Giving time to some work I had long procrastinated over
- Not buying anything we did not need in order to try to fill some void in me with stuff
- Choosing to work out how to look after myself if I get tired and grumpy, rather than soldier on and make myself and everyone else miserable!
- No criticizing my family members, not even subtly, but stating my wishes and/or frustrations clearly and being willing to let them go when necessary

I made these choices intentionally and 'in the sight of God', asking as I did that the spaces I thus created would be flooded by the sort of energy, love, compassion and wisdom that I cannot create or muster up, but which might just surprise me if I desire and ask and leave enough room.

“Contemplative practices, then, are means by which we become prepared for grace to surprise us. They are ways of opening our hand so that we can receive the gifts God wants to give us. […] By using them we prepare ourselves to receive “the good coincidences” of life: the priceless, quiet gift of well-being; the gentle habit of living deep and loving well; and sometimes, even, the lightning strike of inspiration or ecstasy that arcs by surprise into our souls from the fullness of God.”
(Brian McLaren, Finding Our Way Again: The Return of the Ancient Practices, p. 95 and p. 97)

The prayers of a child

Amélie joined me today in a weekly prayer time for a friend of ours with ongoing health concerns for which longed-for hope trembles on the horizon like a newly emerged butterfly, beautiful and delicate. Jeremy and I had been going regularly before term ended, but since the holidays began it’s been difficult to get there. Today at the farmers’ market, though, we met another friend who was going to be praying later on, and she asked if Amélie would be coming along. Amélie said she would like to, and I told her she could bring some paper and pens and draw or write her prayers if she wanted, while there was silence. But all she wanted to bring was a bunch of flowers from one of the farms that come to the market – a riot of yellow and blue, green and red, and as fresh and beautiful as any bouquet you are ever likely to lay your eyes upon. These Amélie wanted to buy and give to our friend, her little heart already leaping towards her with love and compassion.

Just before we left to go and pray, Amélie was unsure if she wanted to come after all, and was worried she would be bored; I said it was totally up to her if she came or not, and that it might not be the most exciting thing she’d ever done, but that if she decided to come there was a different sort of exciting about being able to ask God to help a friend, and so in some mysterious way be part of God’s plans. In the end, she did decide to come, and it was a wonderful experience for me to explain to her in childlike language, as we went, what would happen at the prayer time and why we do it that way: that we first talk about the friend and find out what’s going on with her and what the concerns are; that we will then often wait in silence, think about her, ask for God’s help as we pray, and see if there are things or ways that we think God wants us to pray; and that people then break the silence whenever they want to pray out loud, prompted perhaps by an idea, a strong desire, a memory, a mental image. I explained to Amélie that she could also pray or sit in the silence, or pray out loud, but that as this was a time set aside for our friend and for God, that she would have to wait to say anything else that came to mind, and just take herself off to the toilet if she needed to rather than ask me. I was happy she wanted to join us, but wasn’t too sure how successful the idea would turn out to be!

But my explanations and conditions all made perfect sense to her, and once we had settled ourselves on chairs in a corner and Amélie had received an answer to her question as to what exactly was wrong with our friend, she was one of the first to pray – a simple and heartfelt plea for our friend to be well and for a good doctor and that everything be made right. Then she had great fun saying “Mmm” and “Yes” as she’d noticed I sometimes do when someone else is praying. :-) She had mentioned this beforehand and we’d explained to her that some people do this and some don’t, that it’s just a way of saying you hear and agree with the person who’s praying, and that you can also listen and want God to do something without saying anything! After saying her prayer she did some hanging upside-down from her chair, some more mmms and yeses, and some wiggling to make the leather of her chair squeak, then wandered off to the toilet as arranged… some more hanging, more wiggling and squeaking, more mmms …and in among all this she listened intently to our prayers and, two other times, jumped in with further prayers of her own: for our friend’s body to be full of peace and that there be nothing she felt she had to rush around and do; that the friend would soon be able to run and be active again, and that she’d be able to eat proper meals, not just “tiny, weeny bits of food” (I don’t quite know where she got this notion from)!

When Amélie’s wiggling and squeaking became a little more distracting, I flashed a plea to her with my eyes that she try to sit still, and she whispered, with a slightly sheepish grin, “I’m bored now”. We laughed and decided to call it a day. Our prayers had been heard. There was no need for any more words. The straightforward presence of a child had reminded us of this. Her compassion without affectation, her guileless words, and even her inability to be still, brought the irrepressible abundance of Life and Love fluttering into our midst and our minds. We and our friend were, we knew, surrounded by both the unqualified Love of a parent and the unreserved Life of a child.

“A child kicks its legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”;

and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough… It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again,” to the sun;

and every evening, “Do it again,” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike: it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy;

for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”

(G. K. Chesterton)

We left, bouquet clutched in eager young hands, to offer the riot of colour, fragrance and texture, the tangle of leaf, petal and pollen. The sort of flowers a butterfly aches to touch.

Called back by Love

There was a little line in my last post that just struck me as I sat down to write this one: “Sometimes those things call out to me so loudly that I can hardly hear anything else, but the voice that calls me back is, I hope, love.” I was talking specifically about the challenges of parenting, and the fact that the desire for pleasure and ease can draw me away from what it’s really all about – love. Today, though, I’ve had one of those precious moments that happen now and then, and for which I am truly grateful, where I feel called back to the centre by and to Love itself.

These moments often occur for me on the edges of sleep, and this time it was as I woke up from a nap this afternoon (after last night’s predicted lack of sleep, due to sleeping in a tent in the garden!), with a realization of feeling slightly lost, floundering, uncentred, and with the need to spend time with God and return to what really matters. Such moments of being called back are pure grace, because without them I am constantly wandering off onto the peripheries or trying to be the centre of my own world. The experience of ‘uncentering’ definitely creeps up on me more quickly and easily in the summer season, when lack of healthy structure and routine, especially in prayer, can throw me slightly off-course, and when the many gifts of life take up so much of my time and attention that the Giver can get pushed oh-so-subtly to the side. The truth is that there are so many voices calling for my attention – and sometimes they seem louder by far than the One Voice that gives me Life and that I long to turn my ears and heart towards. Try as I might, I am simply not able to get away from the need to make regular time and space to listen for that quieter, stronger voice in prayer. But, thankfully, when I don’t, it catches up with me at some moment when I stop long enough to hear it whisper. And if I will rush to kneel and listen, throwing all I am and have back towards the centre I’ve lost sight of, and admitting again how desperately I need help, I am straight away caught back up into true Life and Love. I love the way one simple psalm can become a tool for this task and grace of returning and recentering. And how, from the rediscovered Centre, I can gratefully dance back out again to all the tasks and people that make up my life, now held and fed and loved.

So, now that Love has called me back to the centre again today, I’m remembering the words of C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity, and taking them as an invitation to me in this summer season:

The real problem of the Christian life comes where people do not usually look for it. It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back, in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from all your natural fussings and frettings; coming in out of the wind.