Lent, retreat, purification and truth

Growing up mostly Methodist and tuning out as a young adult, I didn't really get Lent. All of the Catholic kids at school were either complaining or comparing what they were giving up. Usually easy stuff like chewing gum or cotton candy. Nothing very persuasive or impressive. And there was the awful cafeteria fish we were served on Fridays in public school during this season.

And, I hadn't really considered it since except I am slowly building a relationship with a wonderful Episcopal minister (I think that's the right term; Mary doesn't strike me as a priest). She asked me once if I wanted her to "unpack" lent and I, politely, said yes, thinking what new could you possibly tell me. Plenty, I discovered. Wish I'd tuned in a little closer at first and taken notes. What I do recall is that she talked about 40 being such a pivotal number in the Bible: Noah's rainy 40 days and nights and the 40 years the Israelites wandered in the wilderness. Google showed many more examples. Then she spoke of lent in terms of a retreat time. Then, my ears and heart perked up. I always relish the idea of retreat, whether it's away or in my studio. She explained it as a time to be silent, still and listen to what challenges Spirit presents.

And today's Thomas Keating meditation fits right in:

"Biblical Desert: Interior PurificationSit alone in silence ...Lamentations: 3:28
Lent is the season in which the church as a whole enters into an extended retreat. Jesus went into the desert for forty days and forty nights. The practice of Lent  is a participation in Jesus' solitude, silence and privation ... The biblical desert is not so much a geographical location – a place of sand, stones or sagebrush – as a process of interior purification leading to complete liberation from the false-self system with its programs for happiness that cannot possibly work ..."
– March 4 from The Daily Reader for Contemplative Living: Excerpts from the Works of Father Thomas Keating

It's as if he knew my word for the year, the one Mary handed me last week, is purification.

Yesterday's meditation focused on how the Gospel calls us to be responsible for our emotional life, recognizing its weaknesses and how it interferes with us truly listening to others. "The work of Lent," he writes, "is to face the unconscious values that underlie the emotional programs for happiness and to change them ... with a discipline of contemplative prayer and action."

I love that, within the established church – perhaps not mine – there is a season for this work! You know, on the surface, Catholics and Quakers appear very different. Symbolism and ritual have no place in physical Quakerism and yet, when you look to the mystical aspects of both faiths, there is so much similarity. I'd guess that 75 percent of the "convinced"Quakers I know (not born into it) were Catholic. I've even heard people call themselves Quatholic!

I did pay attention to yesterday's message about taking responsibility for our emotions and their programs of happiness. I pulled out the microscope and looked at that coupled with this notion of purification. What I saw was sobering. I have built a life for so long based on pain, injury and woundedness. My lens was colored and I hadn't even noticed. At bedtime, a book I borrowed eons ago, called out to me. "The Prosperity Secrets of the Ages" (Catherine Ponder) was loaned to me by my wise spiritual friend Char. I had attempted it once before, agreeing with the first few pages, but putting it away. Last night, I couldn't put it down. It's the next piece in my purification puzzle. Blessing is God' way, cursing is not. I hadn't thought of my point of view as cursing, but it has been. I have been living with a filter of negativity. Understandable after 15 years of chronic pain, but no longer tolerable.

I began saying all manner of blessings last night and slept the best I have in over a week. Tuesday lap time is often prayer time, so midway through, I began blessing everyone and everything I could think of. With 88 laps, I still had more to bless!

I'm achy today, but it's so much easier to tolerate with this perspective of blessing. It seems like the self-fulfilling prophesy. Could it really be so simple?

I have chuckled over the past weeks as I hammer out a "Pain as Spiritual Teacher" workshop, beginning to see that my nemesis, woundedness and pain, is becoming my gift. Ah, the Wounded Healer!

• What meaning has Lent held for me?
• How has that changed over time?
• How can it become contemplative for me?
• To what challenge is God calling me right now?
• How am I examining that in stillness, prayer and silence?


no time for
my normal
get-away
January retreat

sick and
missed Mary's
new-year session

knowing I
need this so
centrally

and learning
there is a
season for it

the time I
always seek
rebirth and
resurrection

Listen to this post:

Not bursting my bubble

Listen to post:

Yesterday's post would have been about bliss, being fully present and acutely aware of  other dimensions. Today has been overtaken by my absolutely least-favorite topic: insurance.

The idea of buying something you hope you never need has always ruffled me. I had thought it would be a minor detail in renting a studio in the re-purposed school in my neighborhood. Think again.

Or maybe it's trust again. Trust that, like receiving a grant for most of the studio rent, the insurance will work out.

Tuesday evening I was cloaked in trust as I was met with my regular Turtlebox Stories spiritual nurture group. Sure, there' s fair bit of prep involved, but when it comes to actually meeting, it is effortless on my part. And not because I don't do anything, but rather because it is so where I belong: doing what I love. That's using what I have learned in nurturing and exploring my spiritual life to assist others and, generally, I learn a lot from them. It's a blessed time of giving and receiving.

It's precisely more of that I want to do in this studio and I am certain this is my calling ... along with writing and making art. I spent two years in school for spiritual-nurture ministry and another 12 practicing it personally and facilitating numerous small groups of all ages, workshops and retreats.

So, really, is an insurance policy going to keep me from it?

I believe not.

I must confess that I am in the process of making a prosperity wheel, an idea generated from a book based on Biblical wisdom about spinning our negative into abundance by blessing everything. I mean everything. I have been using this technique for several weeks and it has worked in my life. Let me count those blessings:
– I received a grant for my studio and work, which was affirmation as well as financial support;
– My husband did his taxes without an extension and we actually know we have a bit more money;
– His business is picking up;
– He has two photo shows, a longtime dream, scheduled;
– We purchased a new car, retiring the wonderful old Jeep before it crashed, burned and cost a lot of       money;
– I am consistently sleeping well;
– I feel stronger than ever and the pain is less;
– A migrant, unfixed stray cat that took up residence on our porch found a home;
– We just traveled to a baby shower for the first of a new generation of Barneys and will be visiting the East Coast soon for my nephew's high-school graduation.

Now the trick is to bless the insurance and trust it will be resolved in the best way.

• What's gotten in my craw lately?
• What happens if I bless it?
• How does adopting a new, positive attitude affect me?
• What blessings can I name in my life?
• What difficulty can I trust to Spirit?



I want to live
in that space of pure bliss
and blessing


then the world
interrupts,
bursting my golden bubble


only if I let it,
I am discovering