Tag Archive: rest
I have walked into the woods, off the muddy, many-feet-trodden path.
It is very windy and the susurrous of the trees carries a muted roar with it. I suppose it could bring branches down yet I am not afraid.
I walked to this place as surely as if I had somehow known to come here.
All that is of the world is left behind. There is only me. And You. And the magic in the woods.
Those I used to play in as a child around Erskine College had this feeling also. As though anything might Happen.
I cried as I walked to the place where I now sit.
The silence speaks to me and I want to hear it. I wish I could always hear it.
Ten stolen minutes
to say
to see
all there is to see
all there is to say
all there is to be
to breathe
take ten minutes
and breathe
Talitha Fraser
We did a mindfulness activity at Sunday group last night led by Bron.
For three minutes, take a segment of mandarin and explore it with all of your senses – touch, taste, sight, smell – as if you have never tried mandarin before. What do you notice?
For ten minutes, focus on your breathing, in and out, sensations in your lungs… chest… nose… Focus on your breath and nothing else. When thoughts, feelings, plans, tasks come… recognise them and let them pass like clouds in the sky above you – a degree removed from them – without judging yourself for wandering.
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.
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.
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 his
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,
peace
keepers, 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.
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. |
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…
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!
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.
We 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 
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.
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.
Head is clamped in a vice.
Immobilising pain, immobilising
tongue and hand
I am unreconciled between who I wish I was
and who I am.
Longing for something (else) sacred
when I can run my hand through soft grass,
listen to the water going places and
be embraced by the over arching branches.
I feel like I have carried troubled violence
into a peacful place – the unrest within
I want to curl up here on the bank
a rest awhile – wake to the world being different
or myself.
What does it mean to be made in the
image of God?
Talitha Fraser
Grab some paper & pens (a long roll and colours might inspire some creative enthusiasm)
draw a horizontal axis through the middle of your sheet – this is for time (your age, the year, whichever you prefer…)
draw a vertical axis on the left hand side of your sheet – this is for showing paid work (above the line) and unpaid work (below the line) and should provide an exercise to map how much you’ve had going on at once…
Reflection Questions:
1. At different stages, what have been the priorities that have directed/influenced your work choices and balance between paid work, unpaid work & rest?
2. When you look at your journey, where have you found fulfillment?
In which role or balance of roles?
3. Does the work you do influence the way you feel about yourself?
itellyouarise 