Paths always invite me to follow my imagination...

This garden path is very inviting and takes me back to a dream I had last night. I was in a convent in a wooded, beautiful place and I was going to be making a retreat. I was thrilled to find out that it was a directed retreat with a former superior. I was really looking forward to direction with her when I woke up. So then I decided that the dream had a meaning beyond the one I could see about longing for direction. The problem is that my imagination is still working on that dream and I am less clear about it as the day goes on so will just let it rest until clarity comes.
Yesterday I was swimming in the pool and found that a snake was also swimming with me. I am glad I did not dream about that. I was out of the pool so fast and then was quite relieved when another of my community came forward, fished the snake out with a pole and finally, after much pounding with the steel pole, managed to kill it. It was large and swam fast and I am going to look carefully at the pool before I venture in today. I seem not to have posted yesterday for some reason. I must have been lost in the Interior Castle.

Random Thoughts

The International Online Certificate Program is reading "The Interior Castle" for this Unit and following the footsteps of Teresa of Avila as they move through the interior castle. It is a wonderful image seeing our souls as castles. God is everywhere, but there are some rooms in my castle that overwhelm me with God's Presence. I am just wandering around sometimes and exploring; at other times God leads me into the room He wants to meet me in and, unlike Teresa, I often do not see any progression but just God following my desires. This would scare me except that I know my desires come from God.
Yesterday was my niece's birthday and I ask prayers for her. She is going through a tough time and needs all the prayers possible. I also pray for her husband and her four children who range from just four to thirteen.

Water is such a gift!

I was thinking of how wonderful a gift water is. We cannot live without it. We are made to need it; we have a natural thirst. Without water we die. But God has given us water in abundance in many places in our world. We have the oceans, the seas, the lakes, the lagoons, the rivers, streams, creeks, ponds, and spring fed pools; in Miami we have the bay and all the canals, too. Many homes in Miami also have a swimming pool because of our climate. I get into the pool almost every day and I am so filled with gratitude for this gift of water and the fact that I can immerse myself in it! I used to feel the same when I went out to the lake with my Dad on week ends; sometimes the entire family came, but sometimes it was too much to take my little brothers and so I would leave after an early Mass with my father for the lake. He was moonlighting by selling lake lots to all his friends (this was during World War II) and I would spend the day in the lake!
Now, my prayer is often about the living water that Jesus gives us. But I am also aware that some are suffering today from an abundance of rain that has flooded cities and caused so much damage and loss of life as well as homes. I pray for them today.

Procrastination

Do you procrastinate? I do. I think I always have. I may be getting worse as I grow older. If I do not need to do it today, I will wait until tomorrow. Tomorrow, I say the same thing. I need to set deadlines, write lists, and then play games with myself sometimes to get some things done. I find myself saying that I cannot go swimming until I have cleared my desk. That seems to work, but not when I say "until I iron the clothes" or "take my car for an oil change". I guess I find clearing my desk can be quick and easy compared to other chores. I am happy when I finally do stop my delaying tactics and just tackle the job needing to be done. Why then do I continue to delay? I want to blame it on human nature but think it may be the shadow side of me that really is not disciplined and inclined to be lazy when it comes to things I do not want to do. Now, I shall go and tackle the list on my desk. The sun is out and I do want to swim. Maybe the ironing will get done, but I am not so sure about that!!

Journal Keeping and Dreams

The other night I taught a class to the new students in our formation program for Spiritual Directors. One of the topics I covered was what to say to a spiritual director as they are all required to have direction. I suggested that keeping a journal was helpful and talked about a special place at the back for dreams. I even told them how I am keeping a journal with four parts: daily prayer journal; review of the month; favorite quotations; and creative projects and dreamwork. I seldom remember a dream but this morning woke up with a vivid one. I was back at the Academy of the Sacred Heart in St. Charles where I was a boarder in high school; I seemed to be in uniform but others were in habits and I also seemed to be in charge. I had a room to my own nearer to the study hall and the others were in a dorm farther away from my corridor. To have a room of my own made me feel good. I could see the desks in the study hall and knew that I was to give some talks on Scripture and was not prepared. There was a bit more to the dream that seemed symbolic but I woke up mostly feeling that I need to go back to reading Scripture every day.
Yesterday I was again reading The Wisdom Jesus by Cynthia Bourgeault. Part 3 has five Christian Wisdom Practices: Centering Prayer Meditation; Lectio Divina; Chanting and Psalmody; Welcoming; and Eucharist. I stopped after reading the section on Lectio Divina and maybe that was a call to me that came in the dream. Being in St. Charles where I went to school could be explained by the fact that one of my community left early this morning for a meeting there and I wrote notes to go with her just before going to bed. The truth is that I think there was a lesson for me in that dream. I have told others that it is good to spend at least ten or fifteen minutes reading the Bible every day and some time ago I stopped doing this. I think we need to feed our souls with God's word and will start again to read Scripture daily, not just the day's liturgical readings, but go through a book or a letter. One of ours who loved Scripture told me that I should spend time reading from the Old Testament and from the New every day! Maybe the dream will get me doing this!

Sunrise? Sunset? Behold the glory of God!

When I made my thirty day retreat at Eastern Point retreat house the sunrise was so spectacular that I was awake to watch it around four o'clock each morning. Lately, all my retreats have been made on the Pacific instead of the Atlantic and the sunsets are to be watched. On Wednesdays all the sailboats come out and parade around the bay in the early evening just before the sun sets. Am I a sunrise person or a sunset person? Both speak to me of God.

Miscellaneous

I hope the snow helps you to feel cool if you are living in a climate as hot and humid as Miami. I always think that September is the worst month as you think September will get cooler and it does not! I should be thankful that we have not had any hurricanes near Miami as this is also the worst month usually for hurricanes. The season for our hurricanes lasts until November 30 so we keep praying and watching the Atlantic storms.

I need to be at the University earlier than usual today so will just keep all my readers in prayer and hope you do the same for me. I am using the theme song from my teaching days at Clifton in Cincinnati: "Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place my trust in Thee; Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, I believe in thy love for me; Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, may thy kingdom come!

Inspiration from way back

I am still using the book the Wisdom Jesus by Cynthia Bourgeault. I was looking at a section on the Mystical Body of Christ and came across this poem of Simeon the New Theologian who lived in the eleventh century. I was glad to meet this poem again and want to share it with you.
We awaken in Christ's body
as Christ awakens our bodies,
and my poor hand is Christ. He enters
my foot and is infinitely me.

I move my hand, and wonderfully
my hand becomes Christ, becomes all of Him
(for God is indivisibly
whole, seamless in his Godhood).

I move my foot, and at once
He appears in a flash of lightning.
Do my words seem blasphemous?--Then
open your hear to Him

And let yourself receive the one
who is opening to you so deeply.
For if we genuinely love Him,
We wake up inside Christ's body

Where all our body, all over,
every most hidden part of it,
is realized in joy as Him.
And he makes us utterly real.

And everything that is hurt, everything
that seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful,
maimed, ugly, irreparably
damaged, is in him transformed

and recognized as whole, lovely,
radiant in his light.
We awaken as the Beloved
in every last part of our body."

Worth a reflection! Cynthia has a note that she was first introduced to this poem by Father Curtis Almquist, SSJF and has continued to use the translation but has been unable to substantiate its source.

The Parable of the Shell

No time to write today, but here is a thought from a little book that I sometimes use mostly for the pictures for prayer. It is from Parables by the Sea by Pamela Reeve and someone gave it to me years ago when I was ill and found just looking at the pictures helped me to pray. She says in The Parable of the Shell that Jesus talks to her on the beach: "In this world you had no choice in your pattern (she had been contemplating the different patterns of the shells on the beach). You did not choose the era of birth, your country, family, social status. You did not choose your form, abilities, limitations. These I choose.
But you are choosing your heavenly pattern. You will be rewarded or suffer loss as you invest the gifts and talents I have given you.
Enough to reflect on today.

Devotion to the Sacred Heart

This morning I went to look for something I wanted to put into the blog about Devotion to the Sacred Heart and found that I could not remember where the quote was so I am going with another thought that the Heart of Christ is the symbol of God's love for us and that God loves each of us personally. I am reviewing the history of the Devotion for another project and again came across the exchange of hearts that the mystics so often experienced. Ignatius would agree with the concept of exchange - my heart so full of selfish love for God's Heart, full of true love, His generosity for my lack, etc. Anyway, I came across the idea of transparency yesterday twice in my readings and find that the Holy Spirit is pursuing the idea of being transparent with God, with myself, and with others.

Sabbath time

Today is sunny and so I was in the pool early, but also caught up with e-mail and computer work. Now I am just going to have some fun time and maybe curl up with a good book. It is God's day and what a gift! I love the sense of leisure that comes every Sunday. I think God told us to keep holy the sabbath because human beings need to rest; we all tend to overwork, to rush around, to feel busy amid noise and hurry. What we all really need is some quiet time, some silence, some slowing down. I know some like a Sunday nap, but I prefer to read. Then we have community prayer at six and pick up supper afterwards. At home, we always had a big Sunday breakfast and then a roast dinner around four or five and my grandfather and great aunt and uncle would come for dinner. This, of course, was after my brother was born in 1941 when the war with gas rationing made it impossible to continue to go to my paternal grandmother's. She always had all six of her children present every Sunday evening until World War II. She was a real Irish matriarch!

Week ends are a wonderful invention!

I woke up this morning so glad that it is Saturday and that I have Sunday tomorrow and both days are free. I know that many do not have a week end free and so I am feeling so grateful. Of course there are many things that must be done today including some preparation for Monday nigh when I am teaching about Spiritual Direction, how to find a good spiritual director (not easy) and how to prepare, set up a contract, and profit from this privileged opportunity. The students in the training Program founded by me in 1987 all are required to have a spiritual director so they are usually interested in what I have to say and I give stories from my own experience so I just need to recall some of these and update my PowerPoint. I also need to return library books and do some ironing but I am free to just do these tasks at my convenience today. It is a real gift and I hope you have it, too.