Tomorrow is St Francis Day, a day that many of us associate with with blessing of the animals. Francis grew up in a wealthy family but abandoned this life and embraced poverty and service. He gave away his worldly possessions, embraced lepers, welcomed women and walked a path that most of us would find impossible. St Francis believed that nature itself was the mirror of God. He called all creatures his “brothers” and “sisters”, and even preached to the birds and supposedly persuaded a wolf to stop attacking some locals if they agreed to feed the wolf. Francis’s goal was to imitate the life, and carry out the work of Christ in all he did. Ironically the prayers he is best known for Make Me An Instrument of Your Peace and Let Nothing Disturb Us, were not actually written by him, though they express some of the sentiments that we associate with his life.
I suspect that it wasn’t just the animals but in fact all of creation that St Francis embraced a fact that I was reminded of as I grieved the cutting down of the famous 300 year old sycamore tree at Sycamore Gap in Northumbria in the UK last week. This senseless act of vandalism reminded me of the wonder of trees and the blessing they are to all our lives. They are worthy of our respect and reverence, an emotion that stirred me to write a poem which I published over the weekend as an instagram reel. I have since posted it on YouTube.
In my Meditation Monday: Think of the Second Life I reflect on how much of nature is given a second life when it is processed, or composted. What about our lives? So much of what has gone before is given a second life by God. It is wonderful to realize this and give thanks.
We have had another very rich and varied week on Godspace. Elaine Breckenridge delighted us all with her Ritual to Welcome Autumn which as someone commented could as easily be used for spring in the Southern hemisphere too. This was followed by Karen Wilk’s beautiful poem Creator Delights In and Lilly’s Freerange Friday: Harvest New Wine in which she talks about how wine producers will cut off good fruit in order to provide the best fruit for wine making. On Saturday Rodney Marsh from Western Australia blessed us with his reflection on Walking and Silence.
Don’t forget too that it is time to sign up for the Season of Gratitude Retreat. I cannot emphasize enough how important I feel gratitude is or how concerned I am at how infrequently we express our gratitude. My gratitude practice has changed my life. It is one of the things that inspires me to write poems and put together the mediation videos that I post on instagram and YouTube, so I thought you might also enjoy the words to my latest meditation.
I am awed by the beauty of trees,
Especially the old ones,
Their trunks gnarled and twisted by time.
I love the way their leaves rustle in the wind,
As a for the sheer joy of life.
How connected they are beneath the ground,
Reaching out with filaments
so fine we cannot see them.
Nourishing each other, protecting, sending out alarms.
Do they gossip like old friends?
Sharing stories of all they have seen.
Do they comfort the lonely?
Show love to the young?
Do they feel the pain,
When all around is cut down,
and their sisters and brothers destroyed?
Do they smile when we sit in the shade,
and refresh ourselves on a hot summers day?
So many stories they could tell.
So much they could teach us.
I thank God for the beauty of trees.
Many blessings
Christine Sine
by Christine Sine
This season of autumn is phenomenal in its scope and the lessons it teaches us. Last week I commented that that this is the season of letting go, of harvest, but also of planting and sending down roots. Then I read an interesting article by Jeff Goins and realized there are other dimensions to autumn that I need to think about too. Jeff Goins commented:
Herbs are dying…. but I think of the second life these plants now extinguished, will know, how I will turn them into a spice blend and sprinkle their remains on the food that will get us through the winter.
So I spent the morning thinking about the many aspects of my garden that I am preparing for a second life. My dried tomatoes that will become olive tapenade and flavour omelettes and pasta dishes. Marinara sauce for warm winter stews and soups. My dried apples that will be added to winter cereal, cider that will warm us over the winter months, frozen apples that will make delicious pies and apple cakes. Even the tomato skins have been dried and will add rich flavour to soups over the winter. Herb blends, rosemary salt, dried basil and pesto frozen for later use, are all ready for a second life that will enrich our enjoyment of the coming season . Even the waste has a second life as the garden scraps go into the compost bin. By next year they will have become that most precious of garden fertilizers – compost.
What about my life I wonder? What has God been preparing for a “second life”? What has God been molding, processing, changing in me so that it will enrich my life and the lives of others in the coming year?
Sometimes I look at my life and can only see those things that still need to be changed. At other times I look at what I used to do and feel deflated because I am less active and maybe less effective than I once was. I read the Bible less. I rarely ask myself: “What has God been preparing for a “second life”?
At first nothing much came to mind. Then, as I looked back over my life, I realized that almost every aspect of my past life has a second life in who I am now. Nothing is wasted and nothing is lost. That is the way that God’s economy works. So continuing with my garden analogy and my processing of the abundance of produce I wonder what that looks like.
What has been processed?
Processing fruit and vegetables takes heat but the finished product is usually more flavourful and delicious. So I look back and wonder “Where did God apply heat in my life to give it second life?” At every major juncture I realize. The heat of study to become a doctor. The heat of moving from Australia to New Zealand as a young doctor and the then even more intense heat of my twelve years on board the Mercy Ship M/V Anastasis. Fiery hot heat was applied when I worked in the refugee camps on the Thai/Cambodian border. Six short weeks transformed my life and turned my theology upside down. It transformed my faith from a “What can God do for me?” perspective to a “What does God want me to do for others?” perspective.
This perspective grew as God applied heat at different times over the coming years. After my marriage to Tom, during my long years of struggle with chronic fatigue syndrome, God applied heat through the steady diet of books, especially those with an Anabaptist and contemplative focus, that continued to reshape my theology and practice. My concern for justice not just for the disadvantaged and disabled but also for God’s good creation, grew. That’s why I call myself a contemplative activist. Contemplation fuels my concerns but it must be paired with action to really have an impact.
God continues to apply heat to my life. A year ago Tom and I started going to the local Mennonite church and I am constantly challenged by their commitment to justice and change. each week at the beginning of the service we light a Just Peace lamp and pray “We long for a just peace, we pray for a just peace, we choose to live for a just peace.” It is a prayer that is being indelibly imprinted on my mind. Last year the church gave away a 2 million dollar property to an organization that works with those at the margins of our society, because their research showed how their acquisition of this property and its increase in value had been made easier because of the injustices done to those who once owned the land. They also introduced me to the Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery and my mind continues to be stretched as I absorb the implications of this understanding.
What Will Become Compost?
As we age, it is easy to look back and think “Why did I have to give that up?” However if we change our perspective and ask instead “What do I need to give up and allow to die so that it can fertilize the next stage of the cycle of life?” then we can look ahead with excitement rather than depression. Ministry becomes mentoring. Letting go of leadership becomes a way to empower the next generation. Slowing down becomes an opportunity for God to speak to us at a deeper and more intimate level. Letting go is probably one of the hardest aspects of life yet it is necessary in order to allow God’s kingdom work to proceed.
I encourage you today to spend time meditating on these two questions:
- “What has God been preparing for a “second life”?
- “What do I need to give up and allow to die so that it can fertilize the next stage of the cycle of life?”
by Rodney Marsh
“… coming into the full light of Reality, of falling away from illusion, a great silence emerges from the centre. We feel ourselves engulfed in the eternal silence of God.” John Main The Present Christ (NY Crossroad 1991 pp74-76)
In August 2023 a friend and I set off to walk part of the Bibbulmun Track (Western Australia) between Dwellingup and Bailingup (12 days, 200km). The winter weather was typical for South Western Australia. Chilly nights (2-5oC) and days when the air was still, silent and cool (about 15-18oC – perfect walking weather). My walking partner and I had agreed that, whilst walking, we would maintain a ‘monastic’ silence using only ‘considered’ or ‘necessary’ speech. This silence was also held by the bush. There were, mostly, no bird sounds, except for the dawn chorus, and no wind to rustle the leaves and disturb the silence. The silence of the Jarrah/Marri forest was a precious gift. To my recollection the only natural sounds we heard were created by the Murray river and the occasional noisy screeching of red-tailed black cockatoos, either adults feeding on Marri nuts or their nestlings noisily demanding food. Fortunately, when the fierce wind and driving rain of winter storm fronts arrived, it was night, and we were ensconced in our warm, dry sleeping bags in the safety of the trekking huts.
Stillness and silence have been, literally, vital to me since I started practising Christian meditation, about fifteen years ago, and, no matter what the season, I have developed the habit of being silent and still surrounded by the generosity of the natural world. I have learned that nature heals and restores my spirit though attention, presence and silence. My walking partner and I didn’t realise it at the time, but during the extended silence of our walk, Peace had nestled in our hearts – for Peace, like Hope, is also ‘a thing with feathers’, and, in our hearts the bird of Peace had ‘sung the tune – without the words’ (apologies to Emily Dickinson). The silence around us had nurtured a stillness and silence within us.
We had spent about five days in ‘silent nature’, separated from the ugliness of the ubiquitous noises of the man-made machines with which we have surrounded ourselves in the modern world. This artificial cacophony to which we daily subject ourselves may have become ‘normalised’, but it is degrading our humanity. As we walked, the silent bush was daily healing our agitated and corroded spirits. Twice, in the course of our walk, the aural infection and corruption of our humanness became apparent to us – machine noises interrupted the silence and wounded our spirits in a profound, visceral way. The first was when we heard the distant, intermittent, howls and screeches of a massive conveyor belt that carried bauxite ore from the mine to the mill. We heard the sounds first in the overnight hut, but it was many kilometres before we sighted, and then had to walk through the legs of, the monstrous machine. The second disturbance arose for us, when, after the days of silence, we approached the Coalfields Highway. The roars and groans of the trucks and cars labouring up or speeding down the hill gradually became louder. And the bird of Peace in our breasts took flight! These machine noises precipitated an inner agitation and anxiety. Surely the groans and moans of a dying world!
Aesthetes have always struggled to define or capture the connection they sense between beauty and truth. On the other hand, when we emerged from the silence there a definite and undeniable link between noise and ugliness. This noise-ugliness link does not prove there is a connection between truth and beauty, but it continues to persuade me that it is necessary to take a less travelled road to stillness and silence to experience the beautiful, good and true. The best explanation for our experience of the peace of silence is that Reality is constantly being created from a living flow of love. Creation is sourced in love fulfils itself in love and returns to love. And we humans, each one of us, are a unique part of this flow of life. We can know this Reality through experience because we were created to be part of it. An inner silence, stillness and peace is necessary to experience Reality as a flow from love, in love and to love, and it takes the experience of inner silence for each of us to recognise and play our own part in this flow of life. In God’s world, then the groans and moans we hear and also know through personal experience, are of a new world being born in us and through us.
So, to restore my spirit, I will continue my twice daily practice of 30 minutes silent, still, openness to Reality. Like walking, and all that we do, silence and stillness is an embodied practice. The Psalmist knew how: still yourself, experience the silence and know (experience in the embodied sense) your own reality (I am) and you will discover that you are “in Christ” and “Christ is in you” (experience your own self in God and God in all things). You can use the words of Psalm 46:10 to practise being present to Presence.
Be still
Be still and know
Be still and know that I am
Be still and know that I am God
Be still and know that I am
Be still and know
Be still
Join Christine Sine on October 14 or watch the recording later. October and November, the season between Canadian Thanksgiving and American Thanksgiving, is gratitude season on Godspacelight. Christine Sine will encourage you to enter into the practice of gratitude in this interactive retreat that will help us enter this season of gratitude with joy and delight in our hearts.
by Lilly Lewin
It’s the end of a month and the beginning of a new one this weekend. In my old neck of the woods, Napa Valley California, it’s harvest season. Living in Napa Valley in the middle of a vineyard for four years taught me a lot about wine and even more about why God refers to vineyards and grapevines so often in scripture. I learned how much care goes into a vineyard and how much work goes into making a vine grow good fruit. I learned that they will cut off ” good fruit” during the growing season in order to get the better fruit to grow. That’s been a great metaphor for me. Sometimes I need to say NO to what is a good thing, good fruit, in order to get to do or enjoy the BEST fruit.
In Matthew 21: 33-46 Jesus gives us a parable about a vineyard and a some workers who reject the care and ownership of the vineyard. READ the Passage in a couple of translations.
Matthew 21:33-46 The Message
33-34 “Here’s another story. Listen closely. There was once a man, a wealthy farmer, who planted a vineyard. He fenced it, dug a winepress, put up a watchtower, then turned it over to the farmhands and went off on a trip. When it was time to harvest the grapes, he sent his servants back to collect his profits.
35-37 “The farmhands grabbed the first servant and beat him up. The next one they murdered. They threw stones at the third but he got away. The owner tried again, sending more servants. They got the same treatment. The owner was at the end of his rope. He decided to send his son. ‘Surely,’ he thought, ‘they will respect my son.’
38-39 “But when the farmhands saw the son arrive, they rubbed their hands in greed. ‘This is the heir! Let’s kill him and have it all for ourselves.’ They grabbed him, threw him out, and killed him.
40 “Now, when the owner of the vineyard arrives home from his trip, what do you think he will do to the farmhands?”
41 “He’ll kill them—a rotten bunch, and good riddance,” they answered. “Then he’ll assign the vineyard to farmhands who will hand over the profits when it’s time.”
42-44 Jesus said, “Right—and you can read it for yourselves in your Bibles:
The stone the masons threw out is now the cornerstone. This is God’s work; we rub our eyes, we can hardly believe it!
“This is the way it is with you. God’s kingdom will be taken back from you and handed over to a people who will live out a kingdom life. Whoever stumbles on this Stone gets shattered; whoever the Stone falls on gets smashed.”
45-46 When the religious leaders heard this story, they knew it was aimed at them. They wanted to arrest Jesus and put him in jail, but, intimidated by public opinion, they held back. Most people held him to be a prophet of God.GRAPE HARVEST1
What is God’s Word for you today?
What is the Holy Spirit speaking to you about today?
What do you notice that you haven’t noticed before?
What questions come up for you from this passage?
Where are you today? Are you feeling like the land owner, the tenants, or the ones sent to the vineyard?
Are you protecting the vineyard, are you planting, harvesting, or do you feel like you’d like to tear things down for good or for ill?
Are you feeling rooted or uprooted today? Do you want harvest? Need deeper roots? Talk to Jesus about where you are.
How has Jesus been your cornerstone lately? How can you allow Jesus to be your cornerstone in the weeks ahead?
“There’s a beautiful Jewish midrash that goes like this: Even when God exiles Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, saying to them as they go, “you are dust, and to dust you shall return,” the three words left ringing in their ears contain a hidden seed of hope, a promise of blessing: “you shall return” (Gen 3:19). Likewise, for all of us, a “change of mind” is always possible; the road back to the vineyard is always open. God’s love and faithfulness are steadfast, as “God with Us” proclaims — and so despite our worries, our quarreling, our testing of God and each other, in the end God will quench our thirst with surprising, living water: refreshment springing up from what looks like nothing but dry rock, resurrection from a tomb in Jerusalem, new life in the valley of the shadow of death.” THE SALT PROJECT
GRAB SOME GRAPES or a GLASS OF WINE TO PRAY WITH TODAY:
Taste and See that the Lord is Good!
Jesus you provide the space, the vineyard to grow good grapes in us. You plant good things FOR each of us, IN each of us!
Jesus you long for relationship! To have us ABIDE in you. You long to help us grow deep roots and produce good fruit.
You put a watch tower and a wall of protection around us so we can grow.
Allow Jesus to dig up the soil and to prune the vine that is you.
To press the fruit and to make NEW WINE.
Remember that GOOD WINE takes time! It’s not rushed, it’s not hurried. It’s nurtured by the wine maker.
Good WINE is ART…it’s flavor, taste, time and place.
TASTE and see that the LORD IS GOOD and you are GOD’S GOOD and PERFECT CREATION!
AMEN
LISTEN
by Karen Wilk
Creator delights in
Long-necked giraffes
…..Huge elephants
Flamingoes turning pink
…..from eating too much shrimp
Intoxicating lily-of-the-valley, lilacs perfume
The sound of honking geese in a V vroom
A hard-shelled turtle, a white long eared rabbit,
A rainbow, a newborn, a thunderstorm
And me?
Creator delights in
Ants marching in a line
Hummingbirds in flight
The neighbour cat exploring
The puppy slipping through the hedge
The chipmunk sitting on the ledge
Bees buzzing, butterflies soaring
Herbs in the garden
Beans in a row
My pink polka dot plant
Our children, laughing, as they go
Unique, gifted, benign beauty,
Earth, sky, rain proffering
Like our neighbours offering…
…..…..Openness, hospitality
…..…..Friendliness and generosity
Creator, YOU DELIGHT IN
Not because of, if or when
Every all are Your delight!
…..Precious, priceless in Your sight
…..…..Cherished, treasured meant for flight!
Join Christine Sine on October 14 or watch the recording later. October and November, the season between Canadian Thanksgiving and American Thanksgiving, is gratitude season on Godspacelight. Christine Sine will encourage you to enter into the practice of gratitude in this interactive retreat that will help us enter this season of gratitude with joy and delight in our hearts.
curated by The Rev. Elaine Breckenridge
Today is September 23, the Autumn Equinox and the first day of Fall. It is a cool and rainy day where I am. As I opened some of my favorite prayers and poetry to mark the occasion, I decided to put together “A Ritual to Welcome Autumn” that some of you might care to pray and use with your communities. May the changing seasons bless you wherever you are.
A Ritual to Welcome Autumn
For this ritual, a six-inch piece of string or twine may be used by participants. Space for sitting and standing is desired. Leadership and readings may be shared among those gathered. Bold print indicates communal response.
Participants may gather, standing in front of an open door or window.
Leader:
Welcome, Autumn, arms full of summer’s blessings,
carrying the seeds of life for next year’s planting.
Come, enter our homes with your golden wisdom;
be our guest and share our tables.
Welcome, Old Wise One,
May we be your students in the school of gratitude.
Guide us in reflecting upon the summer now gone,
that we might give thanks for all its many gifts.
…..–Prayers for a Planetary Pilgrim by Edward Hays
Blessed are you autumn, your harvesting time has come. Blessed are you, autumn season of unpredictability.
You inspire us to be flexible to learn from your shifting moods.
Blessed are you, autumn season of surrender.
You teach us the wisdom of letting go as you draw us into new ways of life.
…..–The Circle of Life, Joyce Rupp & Macrina Wiederkehr
The door or window may be closed and people may be seated.
A Reading from the Gospel of John
Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, ‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’ Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. Jesus answered them, ‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor. [John 12:20-26]
Reader: Hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s People.
People: Thanks be to God.
A Reflection on the Gospel Reading
Autumn is a wondrous metaphor for the transformation that takes place in the human heart each season. It is easy to read the human story in these autumn pages between summer and winter. Autumn calls us in from the summer playground and asks significant questions about our own harvest. What in our lives needs to fall away like autumn leaves so another life waiting in the wings can have its turn to live?
Autumn speaks of connection and yearning, wisdom and aging, transformation and surrender, emerging shadows, and most of all, mystery. This is the season that touches our longing for home, for completion. We are invited to let go, to yield…. yes, to die. We are encouraged to let things move in our lives. Let them flow on into some new life form just as the earth is modeling these changes for us.
…..–The Circle of Life, Joyce Rupp & Macrina Wiederkehr
Reader: Hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s People.
People: Thanks be to God.
A Ritual of Letting Go
The ritual is best done in silence with time provided for quiet reflection.
Ask yourself the following:
1. …..What old habits, patterns, and way of being no longer serve you and your relationships?
2. …..What things from the past adversely affect your family or your community’s well-being and would best be forgiven and forgotten?
3. …..What does our planet need less of to make it healthier?
Take the piece of string and make three knots in it, one for each concern. As you make each knot, visualize each situation clearly, and imagine every aspect of it being firmly bound into the knot. Bury the knotted cord in the ground and let it rot away.
……– Kindling The Celtic Spirit by Mara Freeman
Participants then stand for the prayers that follow.
Prayers to the Four Directions
Leader:
As we give thanks for the summer now past, help us to surrender to the letting go embodied in this season.
May we turn to embrace the mysterious gifts of autumn.
We turn to face East.
Great Spirit of the East,
We stand before the place of the rising sun,
knowing the time to let go has arrived.
The chill of this seasonal change
challenges our hopeful dreams.
A persistent voice in us nudges
our tough hold on inner security.
Bless us with the rays of your love
as we struggle with our desires and needs.
May this season give us hope for the days ahead.
We turn to face South.
Great Spirit of the South,
We turn to you with nostalgic awareness.
Summer’s flowers are gasping goodbye.
Baskets of abundance sigh with farewell.
Now comes the season of diminishment.
The rays of the sun are more distant
and the vibrant greens are turning gray.
Now arrives the time of surrender.
May your love settle quietly in us like the hush of the first fog and frost.
We turn to face West.
Great Spirit of the West
We bow to the place of goodbye,
where the sun slides below the horizon.
We stand in the presence of the ancestors
whose wisdom invites us further.
As they learned from their transitions,
so will we look to the teachings of this time.
As we fall into the embrace of emptiness, help us to trust in emerging new life.
We turn to face North.
Great Spirit of the North,
the land is stripped of what was strong.
The long months of waiting soon begin.
We move toward a vigil of emptiness.
Keep alive the memory of the harvested seeds
while autumn stretches frosty fingers
around the corners of our watchful heart.
Bless us as we enter the lengthy darkness with the strong arms of your love.
…..–The Circle of Life, Joyce Rupp & Macrina Wiederkehr
A New Zealand Lord’s Prayer
Leader: Let us pray together,
All: Eternal Spirit,
Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver,
Source of all that is and that shall be,
Father and Mother of us all,
Loving God, in whom is heaven:
The hallowing of your name echo through the universe!
The way of your justice be followed
by the peoples of the World!
Your heavenly will be done by all created beings!
Your commonwealth of peace and freedom
sustain our hope and come on earth.
With the bread we need for today, feed us.
In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.
In times of temptation and test, strengthen us.
From trials too great to endure, spare us.
From the grip of all that is evil, free us.
For you reign in the glory of the power that is love,
now and forever. Amen.
…..—A New Zealand Prayer Book
The Blessing
Leader: May we be open to God’s blessing as we pray together,
May the arm of God be about us,
the way of Christ guide us,
the strength of the Spirit support us,
this day and always. Amen.
Let us bless the Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver.
Thanks be to God.
Join Christine Sine on October 14 or watch the recording later. October and November, the season between Canadian Thanksgiving and American Thanksgiving, is gratitude season on Godspacelight. Christine Sine will encourage you to enter into the practice of gratitude in this interactive retreat that will help us enter this season of gratitude with joy and delight in our hearts.
It seems as though autumn arrived with a vengeance in Seattle over the weekend. The rains came, the temperature dropped and leaves now look more red and gold than green. I know Saturday was the equinox, that day when the sun hovers briefly over the Equator giving us an equal time of night and day no matter where we are in the world. This transition time is a busy season with much to ponder as we navigate the transitions, here in the north to autumn and in the Southern Hemisphere to spring.
Here in Seattle, we have officially moved into autumn, this season of letting go, of harvest, but also of planting and sending down roots. Did you know that we like to plant shrubs in the autumn because then their roots have time to grow down deep over the winter? Autumn is the season when God scatters seed, abundantly, generously, almost indiscriminately, allowing it to burrow into the ground for a winter’s rest before it germinates and grows in the spring. I love this juxtaposition. Even as we let go of what is dying we plant the seeds that give us hope for the future and send down the roots that will sustain us through coming seasons of dryness and struggle.
I feel my Meditation Monday: Made in the Image, Growing into the Likeness of God is very appropriate for this transition season. Writing it was a little like taking a spiritual audit as I asked myself “What does it mean for me to grow into the likeness of God?” As I focus on the changes that autumn brings I also find myself asking “What do I need to let go of, what do I need to harvest and what do I need to plant in order to continue growing into the likeness of God?” I stand on our back step, take a few deep breaths in and out savor the fragrance of the rain and ponder these questions.
I love reading the daily posts on godspacelight. They often provide an invitation to go deeper into God each day. Karen Wilk’s beautiful poem Fire provides much food for thought and reflection as she weaves together both the comforting, arm aspects of fire and destructive and violent potential. In Freerange Friday: A Gift From The Beginning, guest writer Anya Almgren talks about Godly Play and the creation story. I spent a lot of time reflecting on her quote from Jerome W. Berryman “What is the biggest gift you have ever received? Did you know that there are some presents so big that nobody notices them? They are so huge that they are hard to see. They are so hard to see that the only way to know that they are there is to go clear back to the beginning, or maybe a little before the beginning.” Alex Tang in Eternal Echoes, talks about forgetfulness and the spiritual discipline of spiritual recollection. As he comments: Perhaps this “gift of forgetfulness” is a divine reminder of our utter dependence on God. It’s a humbling realisation, prompting us to lean not on our own understanding but to seek God continually. Last Wednesday, encouraged by my own recounting of the abundance with which God has blessed us in the garden, I wrote a second article for the week Seven Ideas for Coping With Abundance. Surprisingly abundance is often more challenging to cope with than scarcity maybe partly because it calls us beyond individuality to community.
The Godspacelight blog is not the only place where you can interact with the Godspace writing community and find nurture for your soul. In the Godspacelight Community group on Facebook. I often post additional articles of interest I read during the week, June Friesen writes a daily reflection, Alex Tang contributes regularly from his sub stack account, Bob Tribe writes weekly book reviews and Judith Greenfield contributes beautiful contemplative posts from St Martin In The Field. If you are not already a part of this group, I heartily recommend that you join it.
In the upcoming weeks there are lots of important celebrations to make sure you have on your calendars, not the least of these being our celebration of St Francis of Assisi and the Blessing of the Animals that often accompanies this occasion. Halloween and All Saints Day may be a little further away but it is certainly time to consider some responsible and creative ways to approach these. Check out Resources for a Green, Fair Trade and Ethical Halloween and Getting Ready for All Saints Day. And let us know if you have other suggestions for these celebrations.
Another important event coming up in the next few weeks is our Season of Gratitude retreat on October 14th. Gratitude is an incredibly important spiritual practice yet it is one that most of us neglect. What could we transform from unpleasant to enjoyable by a change in attitude? How do we approach the world with gratitude and delight at all times? How do we find joy in the midst of the most challenging situations? These are some of the questions we grapple with as we look ahead to the changing seasons. This promises to be an exciting and fun time of reflection, creativity and discussion. I hope you will join us. https://godspacelight.com/event/a-season-of-gratitude-virtual-retreat/
The seasons are changing,
The dark of winter approaches.
I love the light and its summer brightness,
It illumines my path in a chaotic world.
But I willingly embrace the dark,
For it shows me the stars and the moon.
It grows my roots,
Deep into the soil,
Anchoring my life.
New insights, new awareness,
In the midst of struggle,
Resistance and turmoil give way,
To the spirit of life.
Many blessings
Join Christine Sine on October 14 or watch the recording later. October and November, the season between Canadian Thanksgiving and American Thanksgiving, is gratitude season on Godspacelight. Christine Sine will encourage you to enter into the practice of gratitude in this interactive retreat that will help us enter this season of gratitude with joy and delight in our hearts.
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