The Imagination of Trees: 2008-10-05

Thursday, 9 October 2008

A Prayer of Consolation

We are known
You, lover of our souls, know our resting places
Our rest is in the healing heart of God
The God who is our sleeping and waking
Our God of mercy and compassion
Whose nature is never to blame
Heal our broken hearts
it is your promise
And you will not let us go
Our wholeness is your embrace

Penitence and Confession

I am sorry for nt wanting to enter the darkness
For being afraid to stay there
For forgetting that darkness is a shared space
That we must visit it so that no one goes there alone
For not wanting to accept that communal confession is concerned with healing
For not wanting to enter, to share that room full of brokeness
I am sorry, and I do repent with my whole heart
For not wanting to cry before others when the tears of others heal our own wounds
It is part of the running - this remorse
This fear of sharing more and more deeply
The mutual darkness
I confess to you, Loving God, God of Mercy
Compassion and Kindness
I have nt done what I ought to have done
I have not stayed with the darkness for long enough
Without the depth of it
I cannot be dazzled by your healing light
Forgive us; for we know not what we do

Lectio Divina

Quakers have borrowed from St Benedict's ideas about meditating on the Word of God
I took Psalm 139 and studied it out loud and in meditation.

I took one message from it, but it had a much deeper resonance than it would have if it had simply been said. I found it written, three simple words circled

You Know Me

Intercessory Prayer: A prayer for my husband

29 September 2008

My prayers for you are always for your happiness
For your freedom, joy, fulfilment and fullness of life
I pray for you to have courage
For you to live
For you to stay, here, happy and with me

reflections on my thanksgiving

29 Sept 2008

I notice:
The absence and inadequacy of words
Reaching for non-verbal mediums
The extension of prayer into life and movement
The recurrence of healing

Is there a link between healing and gratitude
Is gratitude in itself 'healing?

A Prayer of Thanksgiving

29 September 2008

You astonish me God
This nameless shapeless enormous space
Filled with something like liquid
Gratitude is a luscious, moving expansive form of poetry
Thankfulness is a meaning which emerges
Slowly
Gently
In increments
And then suddenly swallows us whole

Thanksgiving doesn't welcome structure
It delights in surprises
Creates mischief
Leaps up and blocks our throats
Smarts our eyes
Shivers our spines

Feeling grateful is a movement with a life which cannot be accounted for
It will never stand up and be counted
Will not stand still and speak up
It isn't even eloquent

When I am thankful I am suddenly afflicted
I am brought closer to God and myself and those I love
Without warning, speechless, voiceless, amazed
Gratitude is an incarnation of love
It beats in our hearts, takes that beat to its wings, flies and carries us beyond a million thank yous into an unspoken sky

Perhaps laughter is a form of gratitude
It is a volume of celebration
A claim to life and vivacious spirit

and maybe song is also thanksgiving
and music
and other wordless offerings and words which reach beyond speech
giving something back in exchange for a gift

A clasped hand
An embrace
Tears of relief, of joy, of healing
A simple touch, a flat hand on a shoulder
A smile
Even memory
Even dance

My Gratitude Journal

If you are not on the 'friends' list, please don't think I'm not grateful (and you are in no particular order, these were just the people for whom I was grateful at that particular moment)!

Areas of life...Home, Church, Friends, Writing, Health, Work

Home:
Graham
Graham's smile and soul, his laughter, joy and care
I am grateful for his constant un-relenting love and devotion
I am grateful that I married my soul mate

The cats and their comedy and simplicity
The beautiful home I live in
For having money for food, lighting, heating
For luxury and contentment

Church:
For...
Freedom
Healing
Beauty
Spiritual formation
People
Prayer
Candlelit Church
For constantly being humbled by astonishing people

Friends:
Graham !
Pauline
Rob
Mina
Myra
Camilla
Catherine
Steve
Ann
Anna
Crystal
Anne
Christian
Pamela
Rebecca

For shared sorrow and hilarity
For acceptance
For being cared for

Writing:
For release
For healing
For truthfulness
For Pam Lunn and this course
For poetry
For prayer
For creativity, imagination, pen, paper, computer and keyboard
For Blogs
For writers
For Freedom of Speech

Health:
Bliss, Bliss, Bliss
For my recovery from fits and despair
For my happiness
For my body
My teeth
For good dentistry and a fantastic GP and medicine and money

Work:
For my vocation

A prayer inhabited by Joe

Walk with me Joe
You have left me with a memory of a life lived in God's presence

Share my ministry Joe
I would be inhabited by Christ as you were
Would be genuine as you were

I share your intentions, I am continuing your work
You would understand how small that privilege makes me feel
Walk with me until my tiny-ness is God's greatness

Bring me laughter Joe
More of your joy
Something of God's smile

Listen with me Joe
Teach me more of compassion and kindness
Walk with me through this open door
Accompany me on my walk
Shepherd me as I shepherd others

The Rule of St Benedict

Our retreat took shape around the Rule of St Benedict and the shape of life in monastic communities and so around each of these journalling sessions we spent hours in silence, alone and together. We also followed a liturgical form of prayer and so we worked with concepts such as gratitude and thanksgiving, penitence and offering.
As part of our response to the idea of gratitude we were encouraged to keep a daily journal of our gratitude on that day. Then we were asked to follow a process of thinking of someone to whom we have never expressed our gratitude in person. The person 'chose you' from our list of people, who might be dead or alive or just not the kind of person to whom you could write or speak in this way. We were encouraged to write a prayer and reflection around the person who jumped out of our list and demanded attention, however uncomfortable.
I was totally unprepared for the person who chose me. His name was Joe Foster and he was one of the first people in my life who made Church seem like a good idea. He worked for our Anglican Parish Church but I think he worked in a 'Lay'capacity i.e. like me. He worked with young people and established a youth group with my friend's Mum. I don't know how I had forgotten his influence, but he recently died and I was sad not to have been there at his funeral. As you will see he has been a great influence.

Silence and Stillness

The silence and stillness needs to somehow encourage a pace of life where stillness, attentiveness, patient listening guides everything else

A Prayer for what I want and need from this workshop

29 September 2008
This prayer is distilled from this journey of writing. It is authentic for me.
I prayed this prayer twice a day for the entire retreat.

Plunge me deeper than my breath will allow
But float me safely on your own breath
Stretch your arms widely so that I can see your embrace from a distance
Envelope me
Each step floating on your tide
Until I know that the door is on solid ground
and you will keep me still
listening

Reflections on Memories of Prayer

Woodbrooke 29 Sep 2008

As I read it I felt calm, amused, happy and excited
It seems that prayer is linked for me with acts of trust and a feeling beyond control

Falling, sinking, floating, moving, suffused, overwhelmed, enveloped, plunged, embraced, 'last breaths underwater'

and

it is intrinsically linked to my Mum. Which is an extraordinary and wonderful discovery because it means that a part of her is always with me and within me

Perhaps teaching me to pray was the greatest gift she ever gave to me

It is forever connected to her embrace

Memories of Prayer

Woodbrooke 29 Sep

Depth and sinking
Floating deeply, moving and falling
God Bless Mummy, God Bless Daddy, God Bless

Our Father
Who Art in Heaven
Hallowed moments
Hollowed moments
Times of desperate moaning, pleading, begging
Answers and questions
Calm in the chaos
A last breath underwater

The Lord make his face shine upon you
and
Grant you His Peace
The Lord Bless you and keep you

Kept safely in his keeping, alone beneath the stars
Pining for mercy, longing for justice
Calling for comfort

Recieving a gift

My Mum taught me to pray
She taught me to pray in company and alone

I have never been able to stop
Prayer is remembered lots of ways
it is most profoundly an experience of being held

Prayer in the ancient stones of Iona Abbey contained me
Prayer in the eucharist consumes me; for gratitude is all i feel
Prayer is a person held tightly in the form of a hand-picked pebble, wrapped in my thoughts, love, connections and tears
Prayer is remembered as connecting to God, to others

It is wholeness and it is healing, it is being allowed to hold our questions, and to scream our 'why'

My memories of prayer are of moments of utter clarity of being overwhelmed, enveloped, plunged into otherness and enormity with every thing I am being plunged together.

Before my Mum's death I sat before the cross in the hospice in the chapel
I was suffused with peace and wholeness
I felt the hands of the people praying with me
The Holy Spirit embracing me
My Mother slipping away from me
and I knew that everything would be alright
Prayer in my memory and now is what allows me to be human but not to be overcome by it. It is reaching out with my soul to touch another so that we can be human together and held in God's exquisite embrace
It brings me the tears of others
The pain of others
The joy and excitement of others
It makes it impossible not to connect
As it shows us our humanity it also shows us the humanity of others and that we share it
As long as I pray I am connected to God and to those God loves

The Retreat!

I have decided to share step-by-step in date order the journey of my retreat

Woodbrooke Quaker Study Journalling Course
Monday 29 Sep 2008Hopes, Anxieties and Fears

I hope that I will not walk away from the light of the open door
I fear that I might stand still and walk no further towards the door
I pray that I will push the door wider with confidence in the steps that lead me there

I hope that I won't use more words than I need
I fear that I am greedy for words to fill the space which should be still

waiting

I pray that I will have the courage to be

still

listening

I hope the words I use are worth it
I fear that silence is better
I pray for the right words when silence is not enough and something needs to be said

My original introduction

This photo was taken by my husband Graham on Iona. It is important here because it represents the way in which my Mum's death and funeral offered me healing. It marks a point at which I have decided, as she did, to be fully myself and live every moment given to me as fruitfully as I can. As part of this I wanted to start a 'new thing' and start allowing people to see more of my writing and therefore live my life more openly.
This blog is a response to the insights so many shared at Mum's funeral. I discovered there that my Mum was so much more than simply my Mum. She was never a saint, had many flaws, she could be frustrating and difficult like me. But I realise that these things were tiny when balanced next to her capacity for living and for giving. What emerged from her funeral was an image of a woman whose appetite for life and for quality of life was remarkable. She was entirely herself with everyone, whatever the cost. She gave all that she had to the people she loved, she fed us, nurtured us and showed us that every detail of every day was a blessing.
I am giving you my writing as part of the fruits of my life and person in honour of her memory and continued presence in my life. It is a risk I am now willing to take. She has given me the courage to live my life boldly.
When my Mum was dying I went to the Cathedral and imagined her saying goodbye at the side of an expanse of water. In my imagination there was a boat waiting for her to depart. In my mind I urged her to get in her boat, turn her back on us all, never look back and hope for the light on the other side of the water.
The boat story of Jesus telling terrified disciples not to be afraid in the storm and calming the waves has always been comfort to me in the storms of my life. There are so many ways of looking at the symbolic meaning of a boat.
For me this photo speaks to me about a song called 'Lord you have come to the lakeside' and in it there is a line. 'Now my boat's left on the shoreline behind me; by your side, I will seek other seas.' It is a line which kept coming to me as a friend of mine sat at her Aunt's bedside in her final hours. I sang it for her and her partner as they said their goodbyes as a prayer for them, because I knew how much they liked it. I think it began to speak to me too. When I urged my Mum to the other shore it seemed that her boat was only her own and no one could be in it with her. In her death I do feel called to 'seek other seas' as a new beginning with which to honour her departing.

Books I'm reading & books I've just read

The New Black; Mourning and Melancholia by Daniel Leader
The Time Travellers Wife
Retribution by Maureen Duffy
The Summer Book by Tove Janson
Voice Over by Celine Curiol
Perfume by Patrick Siskund
Loads of Alan Bennett's writings
Writing Home by Alan Bennett
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
Salmon Fishing in The Yemen
Engelby, Sebastian Faulks
The Lolipop Shoes; Joanne Harris
The Prospect of Heaven: Musings of an Enquiring Believer, Frederick Levison
The Courage to Connect; Becoming all we Can Be, Rosemary Lain-Priestley

About my Writing

My writing tends towards the poetic, it has also been described as filmic. It is intensely personal and seeped in Christian imagery and thinking. I think it is spiritual writing in that it is rooted in the belief that there is a God and that God is very real to us in this time and place on earth. I write because it is something I am unable to live without. I write because it is healing and therapeutic. I write out of instinct and because I am by nature 'a writer'. I write for myself and for others that I know and love. I write for specific occasions and for purposes as well as for its own sake. Writing is a pleasure for me.
I write sporadicallly and as the mood takes me, it is not a disciplined exercise but something which emerges from my soul when it needs to be created. I have been astonished to find that people around me need my writing. They ask for what I have written and they ask for more. This blog is an attempt to meet that demand, not because I feel pressured to do so, but because God has given me a gift and it is begging to be used. People are asking me to us this gift fruitfully.
I think my writing is healing in its nature, it is soulful and intimate, it reaches places within us which we do not understand and it sometimes moves people to tears. It doesn't seem that writing like this is a productive or lucrative affair. It is not a 'niche market', it is not designed for profit or thought through in any sense. This approach would disable it.

The Imagination of Trees