Into the Silence

Tags

blessings, centering prayer, freedom, Hallelujah Farm, light, multi-tasking, pray, reflect, retreat, sacred movement, silence, Spirit of God, surrender

Late yesterday after a glorious five-hour drive through the beauty of Upstate New York and then the Green Mountains of Vermont I arrived at Hallelujah Farm, a beautiful, sacred place in Chesterfield, New Hampshire, just over the border from Brattleboro, Vermont. I have come here for a week of retreat. This time with a small group of people is to be totally silent, filled with centering prayer, sacred movement, the conscious work of preparing silent meals and cleaning up after ourselves, other small household tasks that provide us with opportunities to pay attention to what we’re doing when we’re doing it…as well as our own private time to pray and reflect. I have the privilege of rising early to provide coffee for my companions. Knowing how important that is for myself, I am happy to provide it for those who share this experience with me.

Silence is a rare commodity in our world today. Noise comes in many ways – from inside us as well as outside. Multi-tasking keeps our minds busy and our hearts asleep, at least sometimes. It has been suggested to us that this time be a week for us to be totally “unplugged” from all our normal activities so that we are not – for any reason, however admirable – diverted from our silence. To this end, I will suspend this morning activity until next Monday. It’s interesting to me that even writing that calls me to the discomfort of surrender – a tiny awareness lesson to start the day. The flip side of the surrender is the feeling of freedom – not to be bound by any need other than to listen deeply to the stirrings of the Spirit of God within and around me.

Light is coming to the landscape outside where soon I hope to see the presence of the “four-footed” friends who inhabit this land. I will take them and all who are reading this into the silence of the week with me. Blessings to all until next Monday!

 

 

 

 

 

Everyday Gifts

Tags

attentive, Hallelujah Farm, impact, Indian Summer, sunshine, surprise gifts, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, warmth, Wisdom Practice

Again this morning we have summer temperatures, long past when we have come to expect “Indian Summer” sometime in October. It has been delightful for the past week to be outside without donning November outer wear. The “rude awakening” is coming though as the mercury is scheduled to plummet by tomorrow leaving us facing not only the early dark of the late afternoon but also normal temperatures for November.

I’ve been noticing this kind of pleasant happening in other ways than weather. One plain, sort of humdrum, busy day this week I got a call from a woman who belongs to the church community where my office is located. We’ve had some conversations over the years but nothing consistent. She just called to tell me that she and her husband are moving south for the warmer climate – leaving today as it happens. The real purpose for her call, however, was to thank me. “You can’t imagine'” she said, “how much you have helped me in my life.” What a lovely surprise! I had no idea! It was like sunshine and warmth in the midst of November – such a kind thing for her to say and a reminder that we hardly ever know the impact of our presence in the lives of others.

The message today is to stay awake in order to catch those surprise gifts from God. (Sometimes they are not so blatant as what I have described.) I am off this morning to New Hampshire to help lead a “Community of Wisdom Practice” weekend at the beautiful Hallelujah Farm where internet is so spotty. I’m sure there will be many gifts, especially if I am attentive to what is right before my inner eyes. I will leave you to a weekend of practice also and will return to this blogging task on Tuesday. May we all experience wonderful things as we go about our daily rounds!

Now Is the Time!

Tags

conscious work, Corinthians, distractions, Hallelujah Farm, incognito, instant communication, nature, Paul, pay attention, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, wisdom, Wisdom School

I arrived home last night in a torrential rainstorm after four days in Chesterfield, NH, just over the border from Vermont. Hallelujah Farm is one of those hidden jewels of retreat into nature that is the perfect setting for a “wisdom school” – our purpose for the visit. We were blessed with glorious days of sunny, breezy weather and a show of natural splendor on Friday night when the thunder rolled, lightning lit up the sky and rain cleansed the earth for the next day’s gardening. It all sounds idyllic, doesn’t it? And so it was for the 21 of us who had deep discussion, deeper silence and delicious food to sustain us. There was just one issue that jarred our habitual selves. The farm has two buildings, one up the hill from the other. At the lower farm, where we were gathering, there is virtually no phone service and absolutely no internet. A trip to the upper farm (available only in the afternoon “free time” from 1-3PM) was the only way to “get connected” – unless before 7:00am when our prayer began…The stewards of the farm, Sandy and Roger, were gracious in offering their Upper Farm phone for necessary calls home to check-in and to take messages for emergencies, but for the rest, we were incognito except to God and to one another.

I was thinking this morning about how accustomed we have become to the possibility of instant connection and how difficult it has become not to have that access. In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul says, [N]ow is the acceptable time! (6:2) He’s talking about the necessity of paying attention to God no matter the trials or sufferings that endeavor entails. It seems to fit what we were trying to get to in our silence in prayer, at some meals, in our “conscious work” as well as in our times of conversation. To be totally present to the moment we are in allows us to become more conscious of God’s presence to us and the need for us to be present in return. Not distracted by our usual ability to connect with the world, we were more able to focus on what was happening where we were when we were there. We learned once again how difficult that is because we still had our thoughts to contend with in the silence. It was a wonderful exercise, however, of delving into what wisdom lies within ourselves both personally and corporately and an opportunity to grasp the beauty and importance of living in the present moment.