Basking in my own Sophia

Saturday, I gave myself the luxury of spending an entire day on retreat, delving into the lessons of 2014 and looking ahead to 2015. I had planned to do the same last year, but awoke sick and cancelled. Fortunately, the leader walked me through the exercises, which I completed on my own. It took several weeks and I gained a new spiritual director as a result.

I was raring to go this year. At 3 p.m. after a 9 am start, the leader asked what our energy levels were and did we want to knock off early. No way, I said, I was ready to keep moving in this contemplative manner. And so we plodded on.

Trinity collage

The culmination of the retreat is selecting your word for the new year. You choose after you have mapped out the last year, looked at blessings and burdens and decided what will move forward and what will not. My map was a full-on disaster. Not in the things listed, actually many were blessings, but in the amount. No wonder I struggle with fibro, I thought when I looked at the riot of people, places, events, things for which I am grateful, things I would do differently, ideas that have matured, and the ways I have changed. And when I struck out VERY few to leave behind, it was all too clear that most of the mess will not be moving with me.

Last year's word was purification. After my new spiritual director handed it to me and I dashed to the car, the tears formed. I didn't want this word. Yet, on further reflection and meditation (which the retreat encourages), it did fit because, in a sense, it means freedom. My cinquen, a simple poem, for entering 2014 was:
bold, trusting
energetic, content, balanced
becoming, embracing, loving, freeing
empowered

Looking back, what it turned out to be was:
awareness, balance
gratitude, retreat, love
surrender, consent, blessed, gifted
seamless

I want a seamless life, I noted in my journal. Seamless as in whole and no distinction between spirituality and life. I am beginning to recognize the fruits of the Spirit ( love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control, according to Galations 5:22-23) as the result of life in the Spirit.

In continuing to process 2014 via collage, I unconsciously created a trio (trinity) of panels:
1) Releasing the pain, messiness and ugliness of myself to Spirit. Giving it ALL up when we've had enough and understand its not to ours to fix and eventually, surrender into the waiting arms of Jesus.`
2) Recognizing that with broken, jaded eyes all we see is brokenness and division. When the scales have been lifted, we see the Truth and God's reality that there really is no separation, not from birth and death, any thing or any one. All personal experience emanates from the Holy Spirit, God with me.
3) Consenting to God's constant invitation in the midst of both beauty and chaos. This is one step beyond surrender and one of consent to the empty chair God always holds open for us.

From this, I was able to create my "I am" statements:
I am the one healed by consenting to God's invitation .
I am the one who has received new eyes grounded in love, truth, reality and wholeness.
I am the one who consents to live in and with the Mystery of Spirit.
I am one.
I am.
I am seamless.

Sophia collage

We were so nurtured during this time with an abundance of materials, hospitality, beautiful space inside and out, openness, accompaniment and delicious food. Just last month, my pastoral counselor/shaman said I needed more nurturing. That I was burned out. This retreat was wonderful tonic.

After pumpkin-curry soup, a berry-studded salad, flowing drinks and chocolate, then some more reflection time, I was eager to select my new word.

Wisdom. Wow, such a sift.
My first thought was of Sophia and divine wisdom, then my encounter last September with a snake, another symbol of divine wisdom. I chanted my words (wisdom–Sophia-snake) as I walked outside in the warm rain, muddying my boots and traipsing over mole tunnels. Then I came in to journal and the message to relax in, inside, into wisdom, into my inner wisdom emerged. It is God calling me home, much as Dorothy discovers when the ruby slippers she's been wearing will take her home. I have always had the power within.

Sophia
beauty
something ancient
calling me home
golden, wise, revered

home is embedded, imprinted
always been with me
wherever I travel
beyond time

own it

I choose to bask in my own Sophia.

• What am I carrying forward from 2014?
• Where have I witnessed Spirit?
• Where do I hope to encounter God?
• Where am I on the spectrum of surrender and consent?
• What is my poem or word for 2015?

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January journey

Another sub-zero temperature, another school cancellation, another day without routine. I have loved having my teenagers underfoot and the permission to sleep in and recover from the holidays and stress of my mother's heart surgery.

I had already agreed to allow myself some freedom in January to relax and take the wider view of life, settle into the new year and reflect on the lessons of 2013. In fact, I was looking forward to a local retreat Saturday to do just that, but a short-lived and nasty flu-bug prevented me. In bed, I did look over my 2013 posts, categorizing them and what I learned. And the generous retreat leader has offered to walk me through the day and share materials later this week.

I tend to forget some of my acquired wisdom, so pouring over journals and blogs is really an intimate and important task for me. So, here's is what I uncovered:

Shaping my life

• Beginning EVERY day with prayer.

• Creating my own structure, the one that works for me, in doing God’s work and using my gifts.

• Trading the busyness and super structure for dreaming, closeness to God and deep relationship with others.

• Owning my power and creativity.

• Creativity brings prosperity.

• Living my dreams, not my doubts.

• Abandoning my high standards, which are not God's.

• Trusting, but also using my talents.

Naming and claiming my gifts

• Tapping my understanding of the relationship between the physical body, mind,

emotions and soul nerves.

• Claiming my beauty and gifts and sharing them with a needy world.

• Playfulness is a portal for the soul.

• Acknowledging that I have a gift of healing energy.

My life’s work

• When feeling depressed to go even deeper to locate that creative spark because

I hold everything necessary to complete the transformation from darkness to light.

• Fulfillment comes from penetrating the depths of my hidden psyche and mastering

the shadow.

• Giving up my props.

• Recognizing my badges of survival as wisdom.

Understanding the Mystery

• Knowing the seed of God really is within me.

• Doing as God requires: Love and enjoy the freedom of who you are in all of your glory. Break free, I release you.

• Bearing the cross to freedom.

• It is through our brokenness that we may approach Jesus, for the Christ energy

truly understands and has the ability to absorb our brokenness, freeing us to more wholly give ourselves to God. Jesus is, indeed, the wounded healer through whom we may find our way to God.

• Remembering the little ways move us toward Spirit.

• The less formed we are, the more pure we become as we approach the Nothingness of Love. This is our origin, void of emotion and thinking. This Nothingness of Love is pure being.

Surrender:

 To lay down:

     – fear and anger,

     – resistance and reluctance,

     – woundedness and disease,

     – struggle and hardship,

     – control and envy,

     – ego and attachment,

     – disconnection and isolation,

     – doubt and murkiness,

     – shoulds and regret.

Healing:

• Healing requires getting to the root.

• Releasing woundedness by surrendering the idea that our wound can be healed.

Attitude

• Viewing life as a great adventure, not something painful to get through.

• Acknowledging that I am living the full experience of life. 

• Unfettering life from my ego and living authentically.

• Stop holding myself up, so I can be held. 

• Remembering moderation.

Emotions

• Casting off to the dark what is not from God.

• Fear is an illusion.

• Appreciating anger as assertiveness.

• Not REpressing or EXpressing, but CONfessing anger.

In essence, Spirit IS the center of me. I will honor us with regular prayer, tending the still, small voice within and aligning myself, thoughts and actions around our relationship. This surrender will fuel my inner reserves, creativity, gifts and work. I will not be bound by the world's ways, but follow Jesus beyond the cross and lose my brokenness in him. I release my wounds and anything not of God, remembering the little ways as crumbs marking my path.

Remind me, will you, if I forget?

• What lessons am I carrying forward from 2013?

• How have I spent time reflecting on them?

• How have the coldness and clean slate inspired or fed me?

• What am I leaving behind?

• How will I nurture myself and Spirit this year?

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