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The ‘other’ library in my life

Filed under: influential reading material — 1 Comment
June 18, 2015

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In addition to the Carmelite Library in Middle Park, I have been known also to haunt the State Library of Victoria, it’s central, so so pretty, an easy place to occupy oneself before, after and between things and I love their exhibit of the written word from carved stone tablets, hand-drawn illuminated manuscripts and giant atlases to the printed word.  It is a creative space and that is what I go there and “take out”.

“Libraries are reservoirs of strength, grace and wit,
reminders of order, calm and creativity, lakes of mental energy”
– Germaine Greer (one of the big quotes on the wall)

Today I find myself in ‘LT A821 Poetry’ and I take two books off the shelf back to my spot in the carrels, called “Poems from Prison” and to contrast perhaps, “Sometimes Gladness” but, first things first, this fell out as soon as I opened it:

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Who is the Reverse Butcher? <obviously as I was sitting in the library, I did not know, but that’s that magic of time and connectivity, I can insert the link right here and you can have a look!>

Speaking of time – has this poem been tucked inside the book since last year or was it written then and only placed in the book today?

This is an intriguing and colourful way to communicate… it might be a fun exercise to attempt in fact – isolating words on a page to say something quite different that what the original author intended… can you still cal it an original artwork when you have literally carved it out of someone elses work? It is fascinating I think, our capacity to take things others have said or taught or done and make them our own.

How much does it cost to get postcards made up?  what is it for? what does it do? anything? Perhaps it is not its purpose to do anything but ‘be’.  Outside of the normal rules of submitting poetry this is anonymous and there are no criteria to fulfill… I’m a little #antiresidency myself, at least as far as The Establishment is concerned did it feel ironic (or clever?) to tuck it between the pages of a book on “Poems from Prison”?  So many questions!

Now, I actually copied quite a few poems out (how often do you get to hear poems written by people who are in prison after all?), this is their truth and, I think, something of their healing… I’ll limit myself to two.

I LAY DOWN WITH ME TO FORGET YOU – JACK MURRAY

I don’t want to believe
the message on your face
inches away
through the rust wine
finger-clutched smooth
by husky love promises
but my eyes
blind to all
blind to nothing
tell
that it’s true
true

But I remember when
one summer day
we held hands like children
and went into a
brand-new empty house
smelling of paint and plaster
and looking out strange windows
we could see
the wilderness over the back fence

so we made love
on the fresh-sanded floor
and your thighs
tasted of sawdust
happy but sad too
we went outside to our
mickey mouse car
with the baby on the back seat
and left

like love was
left on the stove
to stew and simmer until
all the impurities evaporated
and nothing
remained but enough tasty poison
to murder us both
or me
was I such an enemy?

You
wise but helplessly dumb
touched with a little style
guile-smart with experience but
gifted only with the power
to live your life in more sadness
than
a normal person could
think of

Four foot round the chest
I opened bottles with my teeth
tore Rod McKuen books
in half
with my bare hands
but I wasn’t strong enough
to make you happy
remember?
how could you forget
blame never alters
kind words are hard to find

—————————————————–

I WANT TO WRITE A BOOK ABOUT ANGER – ROBIN THURSTON

I want to write a book about ANGER
about how anger CAUSES things
I want to do this.  I’ll show it SUBTLY and
in various stages.
I’ll do it something like Bronte did love.
I’ll show anger in DEGREES.
I’ll build it past recompense,
demonstrating how a moment’s ANGER
can warp a whole LIFE,
and give a man a fork through his lip
or an empty eye socket,
or maim him all in a minute
to be endured forever.  The book
will be MATURE, and for adults.
It should be a masterpiece of informed
intelligent writing.

…and from “Sometimes Gladness” by Bruce Dawe (because sometimes poets can say things our spirit knows but can’t find words for)

HAPPINESS IS THE ART OF BEING BROKEN (p.37, v.2)

Always the first fragmentation
Stirs us to fear… Beyond that point
We learn where we belong, in what uncaring
Complex depths we roll, lashed by light,
Tumbling in anemone-dazzled fathoms
Seek innocence in surrender,
Senility an ironic act of charity
Easing the agony of disparateness until
That day when, all identity lost, we serve
As curios for children roaming beaches,
Makeshift monocles through which they view
The same green transitory world we also knew.

ADVICE TO AN INTERPLANETARY VISITOR

When you find him,
that last citizen,
hiding wherever there is left to hide,
too timid to surface,
living on nuts or whatever was at hand
when the flash came
– be kind to him, comfort him,
break the news to him gently
that he is the sine qua non, the ultimate reason
for everything.

Let him walk where he will,
let him reassure himself with trees, yes, and the light
walking between them, let him listen to waters
conversing like children, the rain
telling its secular tears, let him
lose himself in what was, roaming
the city streets where wires hang
like ganglia, let him touch things
and remember. Soon enough
logic may cross his brow
like an evil shadow.

When you find him
– give him your alien kindness,
stroke him with feelers of love.

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Day @ the Library: The Mystery of the Zohar with Merav Carmeli

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June 16, 2015

The Mystery of the Zohar (The Book of Radiance)

The Zohar is the most important work of the Kabbalah.  It emerged/appeared in the 13th century in Spain and was associated with Rabbi Moses de-Leon.  According to de-Leon, the Zohar was an ancient book (composed by a famous 2nd century Jewish sage) which was found in a cave in Israel and was brought to Spain and into his house.  De Leon sold portions of the work and claimed he was copying from the ancient book.  Even so, during his life ad after his death some didn’t believe de Leon’s version and believed him to be the real author of the work.  Those who thought de-Leon was the author believed that that book was written by means of a mystical technique, namely employing one of the names of God to enter a trance like state whereby the book was channeled to him and written through “automatic writing”.  Today, most of all scholars think that the book was written in Spain in the late 13th century and that De Leon is connected to it either as a sole author or as one of the authors but it is still an unsolved mystery.

The Zohar is a very long and magnificent book:

  1. It tells a story of a great teacher – Rabi Shimon Bar-Yochai – and his 10 students who are travelling around Israel.
  2. If tells the story of how the Divine Powers – (the Sefirot) – emanated from the infinite God (Ein Sof). Something mysterious happened (a little bit like the big bang) and this event generated the ten divine powers which have different personalities and aspects – some masculine and some feminine in their nature (the infinite God is i a way similar to out soul or to the unconscious and the Sefirot to our body).  The last power is feminine and is known as Malkhut (kingdom) or Shekhinah.  Our world was born from Shekhina and therefore is always feminine is nature –  there are cycles and there are death in it.  Since the Shekhinah is not always connected to the other 9 powers – like her, we sometimes feel full and part of something bigger but often times not.
  3. It is structured as a commentary on the Five books of Moses (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy) – the commentary shows how the bible stories actually hide the stories of the divine powers – their creation and their relationships with one another.
  4. It was written in Aramaic and in a special coded language.  Different words are actually symbols of the divine powers.
  5. The book was written in a way that can affect the readers as a drug.  The images that arouse the senses and feeling expand the reader’s mind and allow them to learn about the true and deep meaning of themselves, of their bodies, of their relationships, their sexuality etc.
  6. There is a similarity and maybe identification between the Divine and the Human.
  7. The kabbalists can affect the divine world in different ways and they can bring the divine female and the divine male together – this is usually described in sexual terms.  When the male and the female come together in a sexual union the beautiful divine flow comes into the world.
  8. The Shekhinah is the first and only gate into the divine realm and she is the main hero of the Zohar.

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I will confess that when I heard the topic of the week was the Zohar/Kabbalah, I came to the conversation with little beyond “wasn’t Madonna into that at some point”?  I have made a point here of including the words that were on Merav’s handout and not my own notes and reflections because to be honest I found some of what I was hearing very strange to my (admittedly) limited understanding despite Merav doing an admirable job of trying to explain it!

What I DID do, by way of response, was immediately pick up a bible and flicked randomly to various sections of the Old Testament, trying to engage it as if I had never heard of Christianity before and recording my first impressions, I found myself in:

Exodus 30:11-16 “When you take the census of the people of Israel, then each shall give a ransom for himself to the Lord when you number them, that there be no plague among them…”

> ransom/kidnapping/buy back language?

> rich people should pay the same amount of tax/tithe as the poor people

> pay up or you’ll get the plague

Judges 19:7-13 ” …saw the people who were there, how they dwelt in security… quiet and unsuspecting, lacking nothing that is in the earth, and possessing wealth… ‘Arise, and let us go up against them… Do not be slow to go, and enter in and possess the land… God has given it to your hands…’ And six hundred men of the tribe of Dan, armed with weapons of war, set forth…”

> invade others countries, it’s a God-given right, especially when you out-number them

> especially where there’s material wealth (ahem, OIL)

> invade them while they’re unarmed and unsuspecting without warning or negotiation

2 Samuel 13:23-29 “But Absolom pressed him until he let Amnon and all the king’s sons go with him.  Then Absolom commanded his servants, “Mark when Amnon’s heart is merry with wine, and when I say to you, ‘Strike Amnon’, then kill him.  Fear not, have I not commanded you?” 

> arranging to kill the guy that rapes your sister is ok

> lie to get near the target, offer them lavish hospitality and then
when they’re blind drunk (unarmed and unsuspecting) take them out

Say what you like about my methodology here, my point is merely that I would certainly struggle to describe my beliefs on the basis of a few readings to anyone who had never heard of it before, or to relate well how I choose to live and act on those beliefs in a way that bears any relation to these passages.

  • it is good to visit familiar places as if we are arriving for the first time and know how that might be experienced for people
  • the mystery of the Zohar might remain mysterious to me, but what I do not understand still has something to teach me
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Communion @ FCOC

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June 14, 2015

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This song was written reflecting on the Love Makes A Way movement which seeks to see children freed from detention. But even as I wrote it I felt a sort of grief – not just that of refugees heartsick for a safe refuge, a place at the table, but imagining God talking about a kingdom where this is not the way things were supposed to be.  It felt like God was saying “There is room here, let Me move…” whatever boundaries or limits or problems you are carrying today… maybe there’s a pattern of behaviour you’d like to see change, of your own or someone else.  A situation of your own or some else where you feel bound or stuck or like you don’t have any choices – whether you’re feeling that personally, for loved friends or family… for strangers on a boat… As we sing together – hear God saying “There is room here, let me move….”

Sing LMAW song:

There is room at the table,
there is room at the table
There is room at the table,
let me in, let me in…

In Luke, Jesus looks at his friends and says “I’m so glad we get to share this last Passover meal together ‘cos I’m not going to get to do this again with you until the kingdom of God comes.

The kingdom of God hasn’t come.

But part of why we do this ritual is to remember… to remember that resurrection is ours, God’s kingdom will come if we participate in building it and love makes a way.  Let’s eat and drink together… and take that promise in.

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AAANZ Thought for the day: Thomas Merton

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June 9, 2015

“We are so obsessed with doing that we have no time and imagination left for being.  As a result, men [people] are valued not for what they are but what they do or what they have – for their usefulness”

Thomas Merton

How is this expressed in the lives of people that you know? …in your own life?

What are common denominators?

If there is a correlation between time and imagination and being – what is gained?

Here are some definitions of imagination to reflect on (my underlining):

1.  the faculty of imagining, or of forming mental images or concepts of what is not actually present to the senses.
2.  the action or process of forming such images or concepts.
3.  the faculty of producing ideal creations consistent with reality, as in literature, as distinct from the power of creating illustrative or decorative imagery.
4.  the product of imagining; a conception or mental creation, often a baseless or fanciful one.
5.  ability to face and resolve difficulties; resourcefulness: a job that requires imagination.
(Dictionary.com)
What are we?
Who are we beyond what we do and have?
How can we relate to others beyond what they do and have?
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It is

Filed under: theopoetics — Leave a comment
June 5, 2015

IMG_5087

It is so beautiful here.

Beauty seen.

If you choose the

time and inclination

to see it.

Talitha Fraser

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Day @ The Library: A bit of this and that

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June 2, 2015

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013

023

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“Ye that have faith to look
with fearless eyes beyond the tragedy of a world at strife,
and know out of the death and strife shall rise the dawn of ampler life…”

———

#centennial

#nonviolence

#our God is undocumented

#what does it mean to live an ampler life? is this it?

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Silent Contemplative Weekend @ Gembrook Retreat: Day 3

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May 31, 2015

5am The Night Watch

I have been “awake” since 4.30am, willing myself in this dark warm cocoon to fall back asleep but my brain is busy cataloging the fragments of dream that have interrupted my rest – odd things like a tree falling over the caravan and who and how I calmly call for help in that, a sink hole Alice-in-Wonderland style that sees me slip through soft soil to a room with a skeleton and paintings and artifacts of Wardens past… silliness!

p.36 My soul yearns for you, O God. I keep vigil with you through the night. Waiting and trusting the sacred darkness. I surrender.

p.37 Keeping vigil with eternal questions, I do not look for answers; it is enough to wait in the darkness of love’s yearning. My soul in my night light; i am not afraid.

p. 38 Take me down deep to the holy darkness of Love’s roots.

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Silent Contemplative Weekend @ Gembrook Retreat: Day 2

Filed under: influential reading material, the art of discipleship, theopoetics — 1 Comment
May 30, 2015

6.30am

p.56 “Set the clock of your heart for dawn’s arrival.  Taste the joy of being awake”

I had set the reminder for the Night Watch but I wasn’t really yet asleep or yet awake or yet warm (I must have six blankets and have slept through in my long woolen cardy, ghoulish, but eventually warm).  There is a little electric fan heater but I know the energy they can go through and I like the idea that I can be active enough or layered enough or in bed enough  do not need it.  Although many of the curtains of the caravan are open or down there is no trace of dawn light yet – only darkness without and the wind.  Within my flickering candle to write by… me… and You.  In the mix of what my life is, this Awakening Hour has been the prayers I would read most often on a normal day – albeit closer to 8.30/9am – I think I like to start my day with this taste of joy and the call to be bigger than I am through somehow revealing love and light in the way that I live.  You do that for me.  Call me into a life worth living, call me into a life worth getting out of bed for. …which in fact, I will not do right now, but lie back and listen to the wind talking in the trees and watching the veil of the sky draw back.

So… Leunig… one of the question he is most often asked and is always baffled by, is what does a particular cartoon mean.  “People will say, ‘I don’t know what it means but I like it.’ And I’ll say, I don’t know either but I like it too.  I’m not trying to say anything but I hope it awakens something in you.”

…I hope it awakens something in you.

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10am The Blessing Hour

p.80

I dwell in possibility
O Spirit of the Circling Hours,
bless me that I may be a blessing,
work through me, that I may be
your love poured out upon the earth.

I dwell in possibility.

p.82 Come into our potential with your wind and flame

Bring to our memory the truth that we are the temple out of which you pour your gifts into the world.  We are the temple from which you sing your songs.  We are the temple out of which you bless. Enable us to listen to the renewal you are trying to bring about in us and through us… May all the good that we long for come to pass.

Leunig is a blessing and, I think, Your faithful servant.  I so admire his not being constrained t o one medium or what he is “supposed” to do or say – letters, poems, paintings, cartoons, interviews, expositions, prayers – I don’t imagine there is much that Leunig holds back between contemplation of hisIMG_5082 big toe (an honest fellow) or his loneliness or his love life or his politics… this is all one and I envy that.  Even as I read/write that I am thinking to myself – whose permission am I waiting for?  to be my whole self?  I like to think I am getting there, learning – or unlearning – as the case may be.

Each day is a new day and I dwell in possibility.  This is one of the big lies of culture I think, that we ‘have’ to do these things – finish school, finish uni, get a job, get a house… do we ‘have’ to?  Once you are on the conveyor belt it can be hard to get off but I dwell in possibility.

Am I a temple?

Perhaps some other building turned to Your purpose, but the wilderness has broken in and the overhanging branches arch  protectively and let gentle dappled light through.  Let’s not renovate or do it up but make the ordinary sacred – the structures yielding to nature in time yet inside a beautiful sanctuary. Let there be gifts and songs and blessings… let it be fit for You to dwell.

12.30pm The Hour of Illumination

p.101 Let us bow to each other and pray for peace.

p.102 We pause to remember who we are: birth givers,
027peace033keepers, joy bringers, life bearers. Take heart.  We are the light of the world. in this hour of illumination let us shine into the broken places.

p.103 Trailing clouds of glory, we have come from the brightness of God.

p.105 In the middle of this day help me to stand before my life with an open heart.

This morning I wandered further along the road from the retreat centre.  I got out my new technicolored skipping rope and went up and down the road. My body memory recalling the hop-step motion of my feet and my wrists to swing forwards and backwards and side-to-side.  I imagine my movements are graceful, I suspect they are no such thing, but they feel so and I have a few moments of childlike abandon.

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A few months ago, I saw ‘As You Like It’ at the Botantical Gardens… it was over the top and beautiful and funny.  I was much taken with the idea of leaving [bad] love letters in the trees that did not rhyme or make sense but were somehow endearing yet for being sincerely felt.  Today I did this for You – what faltering words do I have to try and describe You or worship You that haven’t already been said before? Let’s laugh at me together and find me endearing for a whimsical love sincerely felt…

ACT III  SCENE II The forest.
[Enter ORLANDO, with a paper]
ORLANDO Hang there, my verse, in witness of my love:
And thou, thrice-crowned queen of night, survey
With thy chaste eye, from thy pale sphere above,
Thy huntress’ name that my full life doth sway.
O Rosalind! these trees shall be my books 5
And in their barks my thoughts I’ll character;
That every eye which in this forest looks
Shall see thy virtue witness’d every where.
Run, run, Orlando; carve on every tree
The fair, the chaste and unexpressive she.

 oooooooo

TOUCHSTONE For a taste:
If a hart do lack a hind,
Let him seek out Rosalind.
If the cat will after kind,
So be sure will Rosalind.
Winter garments must be lined,
So must slender Rosalind.
They that reap must sheaf and bind;
Then to cart with Rosalind.
Sweetest nut hath sourest rind,
Such a nut is Rosalind.
He that sweetest rose will find
Must find love’s prick and Rosalind.
This is the very false gallop of verses: why do you
infect yourself with them?
ROSALIND Peace, you dull fool! I found them on a tree. 90
TOUCHSTONE Truly, the tree yields bad fruit.


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Like Leunig, I don’t suppose I am satisfied with communicating.  I want to talk to You in poems and journals, prayers, reading, walks, talks, storytelling, listening and notes left in the trees for You to find.  Bio-degradable paper with native daisy seeds in it! But I couldn’t quite bring myself to leave them up.  Others won’t know what they are made of and it wouldn’t do to antagonise or pollute in the name of God.  How am I to speak of You? How am I to speak to You? Show me the way that You would have me go, step by step and day by day, moving forwards, being found.

3.30pm The Wisdom Hour

p.125 We seek to live a more contemplative life, so that we will not have to wait until we are dying to learn to live… Give us the grace of tender seeing. Help us to recognise and honour the wise one who lives at the core of our being. May we always be open to being taught.

I had a nap in my last “hour”. I wanted to be warm and rest and rest in You. But now, as day deepens, I am out and about again.  I might pass this way but once – through the chestnut orchard, qi gong in a clearing… I tried to move like the wuthering wind and the singing bird, holding myself and the others in this space, opening ourselves to You and the tenderness that comes of that – from the holder to the touched.  I tried to get to the creek but I did not really know where I was going – all was lush and green and somewhat impassable (at least per this afternoons excursion) and I wandered away to find an old swing hanging low amidst the carpet of fallen orange leaves, walking onwards I have found a tree. A good climber. And here I am, rugged up, in my blanket, in a tree…

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174

the day is good to me
feeds and fills
there isn’t really silence
just listening
becoming attuned
to the world around
and surrounding me,
to myself and to You.

Talitha Fraser

We have a little halfway house between our cabins where we can share resources… this quote from Teresa was there – so soon after the symposium!

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6.30pm The Twilight Hour

p.144 My eyes scan the horizon of your goodness… a thousand colours is your face.

p. 145 …beautiful has been my daily bread.

p. 146 It is well with my soul.  All shall be well.
Come, sit at our table.  Be present in the bread we break and share.

205We shared communion, You and I, and I have attempted to set things in order for tomorrow as we will be leaving early – rendered slightly complicated by the power going out but here indeed is living simply after all and, possibly, my cue to go to bed at 8pm at night because it’s dark. I’m in bed and have only a warm glow of a candle to see by – pretty but perhaps not functional… at least for this.  Perhaps it depends what you are trying to do… what then by candlelight?

Candles are often romantic light. Softening edges, smoothing out wrinkles.  Gentle light for tender things like touch and feelings… holding back the dark.  I can be beautiful by this light too.  More helpful.  More comforted.  We take all of who we are wherever we go and while mistrust is a bedfellow so is faith.  While loneliness may pay a visit, faith dwells here and I am never alone.  In our darkness there is no darkness. And the softness and the sensations and sleep and serenity are all my own.

9pm The Great Silence

p.167-8 O Holy One, in whose light and shadows we 216
have journeyed through this day… Remember then…
the powerful and strong searchlight of faith… Let us place ourselves in the protective care of the angels and into the cupped hands of the Divine.

p.168-9 I yearn to be held in the great hands of your heart – oh let them take me now.  Into them I place these fragments, my life and you, God – spend them however you want.  In this hour of deep silence when all things are hushed, I carve out a space in the darkness for you, O beloved, to dwell.

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Silent Contemplative Weekend @ Gembrook Retreat: Day 1

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May 29, 2015

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At Gembrook Retreat Centre for a silent, contemplative retreat using 7 Sacred Pauses [by Macrina Weiderkehr – this text will be used throughout the weekend  as a framework for following a monastic rhythm of prayer] – greedy and grasping I have reached for my new journal “making space” despite the sheets remaining for Teresa… I will come back to you Teresa! …but I wanted all of ‘this’, whatever it is, to be in one place and I wanted this clear window of time to feel like a fresh start.

In our pre-sharing there has been an emphasis on soul over mind and body, and moving away from words… I want to encounter You with my mind and body, AND my soul.. You know I want to encounter You with words! I don’t know that I was ‘good’ at the shared silence this evening.  Is that a discipline to cultivate?  Perhaps I am a kinesthetic listener?  We each of us want to seek after You… be found by You.  I don’t know if that language is necessarily helpful as You are with me always, it is only that other tasks and work and expectations lead me to spend time elsewhere – the coming together, or encounter, is about re-focusing my lens on You.  You know all the things I have in me and with me to do… let me offer them all to use or discard as You see fit.

  • Leunig talk
  • sustainability report
  • the very trees will speak Your name! (As You Like It)
  • photography
  • writing up previous blog posts
  • reflections on the Teresa content

…I wish I had a week, a month, a lifetime to give over to doing as I felt led.  Does anyone really get to do that?

…I am torn between ruefully laughing at how much I clearly didn’t get the living simply component of this weekend and wondering how much it matters to You.  Would eating or not eating draw me nearer to You? Travelling more lightly make it easier to reach You?  I think I find You where I look for You basically – is that too simplistic?  You are everywhere and the Creator of everything so it doesn’t matter if I am lying on a blanket on the grass in the sun, reading the wisdom of the saints, or drawing, or writing, or eating… You provide all things and You are in all things.  I need only be present to contemplate You and Your forms.

We have started off with the  Night prayers:

[p.168] “I yearn to be held in the great hands of your heart – oh let them take me now. Into them I place the fragments, my life, and you, God – spend them however you want.”

Let this be the yearning, the taking the placing, the spending… for each of us seeking You out this weekend.

wondering how much it matters to You.  Would eating or not eating draw me nearer to You? Travelling more lightly make it easier to reach You?  I think I find You where I look for You basically – is that too simplistic?  You are everywhere and the Creator of everything so it doesn’t matter if I am lying on a blanket on the grass in the sun, reading the wisdom of the saints, or drawing, or writing, or eating… You provide all things and You are in all things.  I need only be present to contemplate You and Your forms.

We have started off with the  Night prayers:

[p.168] “I yearn to be held in the great hands of your heart – oh let them take me now. Into them I place the fragments, my life, and you, God – spend them however you want.”

Let this be the yearning, the taking the placing, the spending… for each of us seeking You out this weekend.

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St Teresa of Avila Symposium @ The Library

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May 22, 2015
IMG_5009To know the gaze of God – Sister Miriam

St Teresa is convincing because she is speaking out of her experience.  We don’t have to guess about her interior life.  She is anxious to explain herself truthfully – hard on herself – a light fault is serious if it goes against His Majesty.  She would see herself as like the Samaritan Woman and pray “God, give me that water”.  She was dedicated to hours of prayer – even when praying hour would be over. “more enabled to bear the beams of love” – Blake. Saw prayer as the only way to deeper connection – God did in a moment what she could not have done in years on her own.  Stick with it, Godwards (inward) our centre whether we know it or not.

Prayer consists not in thinking much
but in loving much.

Each person inexhaustible – there are many rooms in our interior castle.  There is a call to growth – face to face encounters with the living Christ.  Steady unwavering gaze of God kindles love.

In the measure you seek Him, you will find Him.

Hone focus and choices > prayer fosters “presence” to unfathomed, unconditional love, Under His gaze, joys and sadness are given perspective.

 St Teresa had a spontaneity and gladness to her interior life > personal gratitude.  You must put on the new self that is clothed in God’s likeness. Mystical experiences ‘more’ real than ‘normal’ life > reformer.  Energy/capacity to write, correspond despite illness… by their fruits shall you know them.  Her way, her truth, her life.

Sips of what we hope for.
Lives with very determined determination.

He who lives in God, lives in love and God lives in him.

St Teresa’s gift of wisdom – Sister Paula

Wisdom illuminated her life and vision.  Learned through fidelity in prayer.  Knowledge and understanding acquired in life brought to thoughts.  Trustful confidence and hope.  Listened to voice of God in her heart > sought counsel.  So enriching, longed to share it… this is possible for everyone.  Practical and idealistic.  Lived simply and appreciated beauty.  Wrote hundreds of letters – family, convents, business, books… 1562 St Jospehs of Avila dedicated to prayer and contemplation, 3 essentials:

  • love for one another
  • detachment
  • humility

Pure love without self interest does not lower itself to seek recognition.
For love you were fashioned.

“This is the love wisely sought IMG_5008by the pure of heart”

God/Trinity always to be found in human heart, a familiar homeliness not a remote establishment. Captivates soul with fresh encounters.

Love is complete in giving itself
and serving.

Appreciated holiness and integrity in others.  Priceless treasures with glimpses of eternity.  Everyday common sens and compassion.  Let down by friends > loneliness > let nothing bother you because God alone suffices.

There was no  conflict between her inner life and actions because all was one.  If noticed foibles in others, looked beyond to how God saw them.  Fostered friendship, encouragement, support between sisters. Contemplative but enmeshed in practical affairs.

“Seek yourself in Me,
seek Me in yourself”

Know sublime truths.  New depths of human capability, certainty from her own experience.Love at the beating heart of the universe enables us to participate in the resurrection. It is not the greatness of the works that are done but the love with which they are completed.  Each person is gifted individually and has something unique to share.  Gifts are multiplied when they are shared.

 

Jesus Christ, St Teresa’s true friend and companion: Her definition of prayer – Sister Angela

Loneliness and longing for God.  Desire for love and wholeness > struggle fraught with conflict.  Minority: Jewish blood/conversas (objects of hatred and suspicion); woman; ecstatic experiences and wrote books > threat/pollutant. Despite obstacles – pursued goals determinedly. Sought advice from highest theologians – proof. Love, affection, legitimacy, acceptance: she was warm and extroverted.  Shadow: crippling dependent relationships at the expense of inner truth and full Surrender to God.

Defines prayer in terms of love: frequently and secretly sharing with Him …grew in intensity and Presence.  Human personality caught up in Christ.

Forsaken moments alone and afflicted – Gethsemane/cross.  Could accept her in brokenness and poverty. Consoling Him.  Consoling each other. This became habitual. “Tried to keep God present within me.”  That was my method of prayer…

I’m not asking you to do anymore than look at Him.
The truth of who He is will be imprinted in us.

Humble ourselves and delight in the Lords presence.

Maintained presence:

  • identifying with people in gospels
  • those who needed redemption – Mary Magdalene, Peter in tears after denying Jesus, John at the foot of the cross, Samaritan woman…
  • moment after receiving eucharist, receive divine gift within her.
  • Not just inner prayer but human limitations and conflicts > see transformative power of Jesus at work.  Battle between being friends with the world and friends with God (stalled growth for 20 years).

St Teresa felt an inner conflict/fragmentation – unable to commit herself fully to God.  Likened it to a voyage on tempestuous seas and sought a remedy.  “Life I was living was not life”. Let go of trusting herself > trust God.  39 years old when she had a conversion experience.  God lived in her – act of surrender, discovered Christ, healing and transforming her.  Desired by God, in her entirety, as she was.  Set free of needing to be ‘approved’, rooted in Jesus Christ. “Jesus As Friend And Liberator” permeates her Christian life.  Satisfied all desires.  All sufferings and trials – related back to his humanness and limitations.

Body needs to be integrated in our search for God.  Life is hard.  Need example and companionship of one who has gone before.  Reality and weakness of human experience… could converse continually.

God understands our miserable make up.  Flesh and blood, life and death, joy and sorrow – embrace this reality with trust and love.  Freed to live more fully.  Obedience to life under God’s conditions. The will of the Beloved became her sole compass.

 

St Teresa’s writings – Sister Teresa

“I am yours born for you, what do you want from me? …move me from here to there… sorrowing or exalting… what do you want form me?”

Living and developing her great gifts.  Asked friends to pray she would do God’s will.  Moved by servile fear – then had her conversion – served by love.  Receive s graces, calls within herself, encounters to follow vocation .

“Those things of God made me happy,
the things of the world made me bound”

Self judgement critiquing her earlier life.  Had darkness and dryness, moments of light. Mental prayer – intimate sharing between friends with Him who we know loves us.  Vocal prayer – liturgy – not thoughtless recitation but mindful.  Come to prayer with self-awareness of our brokenness and need for grace.  Adamant of building solid foundation of prayer – virtues: detachment, humility, charity and obedience. Don’t stand still! Don’t be dwarfs! Space in her teaching – desire that all will reach prayer God is offering.  Criteria for holiness in doing God’s will and charity.  Call addressed to everyone not just religious.

 Grace always costs.

Gave writings to mentors and confessors – anything wrong, cut it out!  Resolve to do the little I can do (as a woman, scope was limited).  Reform of Carmel (hermits 1200s) solitude and space.  Value silence and solitude and live in continual prayer.  Liturgical prayer (church), contemplative prayer (individual). Small in number.  All in house must be friends with each other “all made of the same clay”. United in love of God and prayer for the church. Peace and joy in community and life.  God spare us from sorry saints! Give me Calvary or Tabor.  The castle is the masterpiece of the interior journey.  The soft whistle of the Shepherd can be heard through all the spaces.  My daughters, good work, my God wants good works.

Yours I am…

 

St Teresa’s Conversion: The movement from performer to beloved – Adrian Jones

Live out of a role – profession/family/community… the way we are socialised to behave.

1538-1565 move beyond ‘role’ to her loved self.  Feisty and an adventurer.  Loved by her family and she loved them.  Didn’t want to married (one of ten children herself).  Family of faith > raised in that atmosphere.  Her father didn’t want her to join the Carmelites.  Ran away at 20 to join.  Lived faithfully and with energy > liturgical prayer and community life.  Individual prayer not at the fore (Latin/couldn’t read… not easily accessible). “midlife crisis” had become burdensome – plateau.  Felt torn between the satisfactions of life and the stirrings of God.  Best reminded about what was going on during prayer life… continually checking in… being present to God.  18 years trying to hold the middle road.  Tried to have effective control, everything under her control, God wanted affective control – trusting God and things find their own place.  Know depths of God’s love and her own hearts desire… invitation to come close to God.  Call to religious life not questioned but can I let God be God?

Absorb story through immersion.
A living in Christ.

Loving God drew her to the centre to “be” with God.  “We” might have a good book with us > she and God hanging out together.  The Samaritan Woman and Mary Magdalene (in John) had strong conversion experiences with strong emotions.

Turned by love.

Only wrote after 1565 had established ideas  and experiences.  The reality of God, the presence of God, not doctrine (in Teresa we stand in the presence of God) – trying to describe/explain that.  Time between rising something new and familiar practice.  Not here or there.  In the middle is where we’re supposed to be.

1st mansion – become aware of God in our life. Self-awareness.

2nd mansion – awareness of that.  Must answer, become aware of implications too.

3rd mansion – taken or living for God, “perfect” Christian. Downside, miffed with god (entitlement). God: love yourself or do you love me?

4th mansion – God wants to wound us.  Doing things for God.  Can’t avoid.  Struggle living with it.  Let go of control, let God be in charge > be grateful.

 

St Teresa approach to community living – Richard Hallett

Teresa wrote constitutions for the communities she established.  Teresa, Paul and Alberts constitutions for sustainable community (handout). Doing very poorly at Sundays in our communities > 12 years a minister.  Work in Catholic schools and talk to families who can’t connect to Sunday services.  “ekklesia” means the group who gathers.

If the quality of inter-personal relationships among those who gather are weak, the ekklesia is weak, weak in the quality and scope of its service; weak in its power to transform and save lives.

Whether she was explicitly aware of it or not, Teresa established her communities on the same model employed and developed by Paul of Tarsus:

IMG_5068

 

Teresa did not consider that she was doing anything particularly original. Her aim was to establish and sustain an environment in which her contemporaries would have the opportunity to respond to divine Grace in the greatest liberty of spirit and to live life to the full.  She recognised that her Carmelite history, if honestly implemented, provided just such an opportunity.

p.314 St Teresa ‘The Constitutions’

What stands out in the guidelines for the Teresian life is balance. We find an interweaving of eremitism and cenobitism, or work and contemplation, of liturgical and extra-liturgical prayer.

Eremite: hermit of recluse
Cenobite: member of monastic community sharing common life.

p.324

#18 The Sisters should pay no attention to the affairs of the world, nor should they speak about them.  They may do so if the matter concerns something for which they can offer a remedy or help those with whom they are speaking, assist them in finding the truth, or console them in some trial.  If no effort is being made to make the conversation a fruitful one, they should bring it to a quick conclusion, as was said.  It is very important that those who visit us leave with some benefit, and not after having wasted time, and that we benefit too.

 

A Bernard McGinn retrospective – Philip Harvey

Inner life and connection with God.  First female ‘doctor’ of Catholic church.  “New mysticism” actively going out and doing things.  Democratisation, mysticism for everyone/anyone, vernacular (not just in Latin).

Read widely: Augustine… Jerome…

Creating new: Prayer of Quiet, sleep of the faculties…

Mystical theology – whole of life, hidden presence of God. [Teresa was the last of the old line not early in the new]

Def. That part of religion deepening consciousness of God in our life and lives of others.  Not intellectual, found in other religions, in eucharist, etc.  Thousands of rooms (Teresa only writes about the ones she knows about).

  • Thinking, knowing, acting, deciding out of context with
  • Personal and transpersonal
  • Absence as well as presence of God

Every baptised Christian called to mystical life.  To love God and neighbour.

Cataphic and ataphatic/positive and negative.

Dedicated to outreach of spiritual life.

A mystic doesn’t need to be a ‘drop out’ of society. Confined to cloister not ends but means > to love God and love others.  True active contemplative.

 “do not be sad
for I will give you an inner book”

Liber experienciae.

  1. The Slacker
  2. The Contemplative
  3. The Contemplative in Action

Others wrote their own spiritual expression or related them to confessors but never combined with apostolic action.  Union of inner and outer worlds.  Reactive > social reform.  Teresa: political, fundraising, leaders of reform (training others to continue her work), participation in community.  No rank within monasteries.

Mary & Martha//Raptures?? Grace of spiritual marriage. Need a uniting of Mary and Martha to host the Lord well.  Prayer will be more powerful for its responsibility/relationship > pray for those you know.

Action and contemplation not opposed but mutual.  Two lives are equal and active ways of loving God.  We should not build castles in the air but work with love.

 

For whom did Teresa write?  Reading the Interior Castle today – Father Greg

Like the ocean – shallow enough anyone can walk in, deep enough for anyone to swim in.

Teresa was not writing a DIY manual for mystics.

  • For drunks and prostitutes, drug users, alcoholics anonymous, AIDs clinics, out where my people are.
  • 12 steps not n alcohol or self but higher power of God > sobriety of life.
  • 7 steps – realisation one is loved and worthwhile, self worth given as a gift to be received gratefully. Love and therefore loveable – changed how she understood God. Response of a person loved by God/freedom/love God/love others/love church.

Humility aka authenticity.  Detachment aka spiritual freedom > moved to love others.

That which makes me most me is also that part which I’m to share with everyone else > dignity of the human person.  Sense of the importance of her own experience.  What she understands a mature Christian to be – submitting wholly to God.  Just read the 7th dwelling place… know where you’re going.  Within each dwelling place are sets of relationships:

  • Others
  • God
  • Action
  • Prayer

First 3 dwelling places – co-operation with God’s grace in our lives:

  1. God exists
  2. Following
  3. Well ordered – judgemental

Next three dwelling places – lose control, God works without us planning or co-operating:

  1. Praying not praying
  2. Rest and work
  3. Grace and receiving

Invalid>dynamic/active.  Visions, locutions, shadow of the cross. Changing memories and hope and how and who we love… LONG JOURNEY

Last/7th dwelling place – profound transformation, live in a different way.  God working with us in our lives.  Moat outside filled with vipers, toads and vermin >> do not know that you are loved.  Knock on the door through prayer, reflection on self, scripture, liturgy of the church.  Parents have seen who you will marry – caught sight of your “intended”. SEEING/BETROTHAL/CONSUMMATION commit to each other.

  1. Sharing the passion

Encounter God as Trinity. Christ-centric >Trinitarianism (with others) ekklesia.

 

God is not static. Creation still happening now.  Species just beginning to understand now.  Incarnation happens in us, death in us and ascension >> Marriage and the House of Divine Love.  God doesn’t give Teresa a wedding ring but a nail from the cross.  Pray with eyes open.  Prayer for others… good works, called beyond ourselves to hospitality of others > most mature and developed human/Christian. Hungry, cold, poor, excluded >> wok for the benefit of others is to be alive. “Seek yourself in Me”.

Seeking God would be very costly if
we could not do it until
we were dead to the world.

 

–ooO0Ooo–

 

SUMMARY RESONANCE

God give me that water

For love you were fashioned

Seek yourself in me,

Seek Me in yourself

Set free of needing

to be approved

Tried to keep God

present within me

Grace always costs

God spare us from sorry saints

Yours I am, I am Yours

A living Christ

Do not be sad for I will

give you an inner book

Sense of the importance

of her own experience

Seeking God would be very costly if

we could not do it until we

were dead to the world.

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