Listening

I didn't take my camera with me on my latest Wednesday retreat. It was a greyish day, and I wanted to walk unencumbered though I wasn't sure where I would go, at first. None of my usual spots seemed to draw me, and I realised I didn't really want to get in the car to drive anywhere. So I just started from our place in Bruce, and thought I'd walk into the bushland behind the Institute of Sport and the Bruce Stadium. In the end, I went further than I'd planned - or perhaps it's more accurate to say that the distance was shorter than I'd imagined - and I ended up walking right through Bruce/O'Connor Ridge to Dryandra St, in O'Connor.

Without the camera, I was less focused on looking and seeing, and became more aware of what I was hearing. When I first became more fully aware of the soundscape of the bush around me, I realised how little I had been hearing up till then. Thoughts really can be 'clamorous'. And just as with seeing - the more we look, the more we see - so with hearing. The more I listened, the more birds I heard - and they were everywhere this grey morning. Red wattle birds, magpies, grass parrots, choughs - and then, as I became more attuned, there were areas that seemed densely populated by tiny wrens, red-headed finches of some kind, other small birds - maybe silver-eyes or honey-eaters, fantails and willy-wagtails. Twittering and chirping, whole colonies of them feasting on the cassinia bushes and among the trees.

Metaphors of sight are pervasive in contemplative spirituality - and the word 'contemplation' means something like looking at, gazing upon. But it does seem possible to 'look upon' and still maintain your own interior commentary. That seems harder to do with listening. If I'm really listening, it's as if I have to cease my inner monologue. I really do have to become silent, to become hospitable to the voice of the other. It's a space-making practice. So it makes sense that when we meditate, we are instructed to 'listen to the mantra', to 'sound it'. When I'm listening like that, I'm less full of myself. And somehow that always feels renewing, healing, cleansing.

So though this photo was taken on an earlier walk, near Pine Island, let this little bird represent the soundscape of my Bruce Ridge walk and my lesson in listening, on a grey autumn morning!

Shalom, Sarah

Easter Island

After Easter last year, we had a strong sense that the time was now right for Benedictus to celebrate all the Easter services from Maundy Thursday through to Easter Day. Up till this year, in 'real' Easter time, we've observed Holy Saturday as a liturgy of waiting, and then entered the season of Easter from the following week.

I've been very much anticipating the prospect of celebrating all the services as a community, and it's affected how Lent felt - knowing that we were going to complete the journey to Easter Day together. There were also some logistical questions to address - most significantly, the question of where we would do this, since we still only have the use of a building on Saturday evenings.

The place that was 'given' to us was the island at the shore of Lake Ginninderra - off John Knight Park. I say 'given' because it seemed suddenly to show itself as the place where we could gather, and offered three settings which were extraordinarily apt for Maundy Thursday's liturgy in the garden, Good Friday's liturgy at the foot of the cross, and Sunday's holy communion by the lake shore.

On my Wednesday Retreat during Holy Week, I went to the island. It was like a Day of Preparation, a chance to be and pray where we would be gathering over the next four days.

You get onto the island over a small footbridge, which has a large rock in front of it. The bridge with its guardian rock effects the transition from the shore to the island, and speaks of the transition we need to make to enter the 'space' of the Easter liturgies.

On Wednesday, I spent time in the 'garden' - the grove of paperbark trees near the small fort, among which we would stand as evening fell on Maundy Thursday.

I sat among the casuarinas against which the cross rested on Good Friday.

And I looked towards the East across the water, where we'd face to celebrate the resurrection.

Having the services outside, in this setting, felt very powerful. The landscape held and helped create our liturgies. It was a space that enabled the 'work' that each day asked of us, as if the different parts of the island led us into the next part of our paschal journey. In me, there was a deep fullness by Easter Day. I am so grateful for the gift of this space, and the gift of a community to share it with.

It appears that most of my 'flock' are behind me, but there were some people there too!

St Francis, eat your heart out!

And then time to celebrate - a festal procession, and breakfast by the shore.

Happy Easter!!

Beginning Again

'Always we begin again', say the spiritual teachers.

It's taken a while for me to 'begin again' my Wednesday retreats this year. Two weeks ago, I spent part of the morning at The Pinnacle on the edge of Weetangera/Hawker, but found it difficult really to sink into the time. I hadn't quite given myself permission.

This week, the possibility of a Wednesday retreat was looking unlikely for various reasons, but then came the opportunity to 'displace' the feast. So this beautiful Tuesday morning, I began at home with meditation and a quiet sit over a cuppa, and then - because the day was already pretty warm - I was drawn to the cool and damp of the Rainforest Gully in the Botanic Gardens.

Something mysterious happens in the gift of this time. I think it might be to do with the deliberateness of it - the intentional opening up of two, three, four hours where nothing is scheduled except to be, to enjoy, to pay attention to what's given.

What happens? I feel myself relax, let go. The time seems luxuriant. I start to notice and pay attention, and the more I look the more I see. This morning, the words of Mary Oliver came to me strongly: 'To pay attention is our endless and proper work'.

I experience such delight, such wonder and thankfulness. To think that this richness is here, around me, all the time - and now, at last, to let myself enjoy it.

This little fellow caught my eye, as I rested on a bench with my thermos of coffee, the sound of parrots, currawongs and sprinklers in the rainforest all around.

And then the leaves, shining in the sun, different shapes, different greens, moving with the wind.

After a while on my bench, I wandered into the garden beyond the rainforest.

Last weekend, I led a retreat and spoke in my final talk about the real source of our lives being the abundant life of God. The gift of contemplative practice is that it keeps re-sourcing us in our awareness of this reality.

In the garden this morning, it struck me how life is being given all the time, all around us, poured out. We are immersed in a vastness we can never be fully present to, never fully receive. And I wonder if the essential work of the spiritual path is about deepening our receptivity ... daring to be open to this overwhelming gift as it dances and shimmers around us.

Shalom, Sarah

Not everything that counts can be counted

Last September while leading a retreat, I felt a renewed call to prayer and contemplative availability. My work - leading Benedictus Contemplative Church, speaking and writing - is constantly inviting me to be sourced in a deeper listening and attending. I felt called to create greater space for this in my busy life.

I conceived the possibility of committing to a new weekly practice of a half-day retreat on Wednesday mornings. There'd be no agenda except simply to be available and open, to enjoy the world, and let myself dare trust that simply being present was 'work' enough for this time.

Immediately, I was arguing with myself. Who has time to spend a half day doing 'nothing' every week? Just because I 'could' make space for it, didn't mean I should. After all, most people I know don't have this luxury.

And yet ... once the idea had come, it drew me almost irresistibly. And since September, I've begun. Even days when I thought I didn't have 'time', somehow the day wouldn't let me off the hook. And each time, I've been surprised by joy. A deep sense of peace (shalom) comes as I let myself sink into it. I see so much more, when I stop to pay attention. And each time, I'm so grateful that I've let myself have this.

Here's a couple of photos from an early Wednesday.

A jetty I sat on for a while.

And here it is, closer up.

I have a sense that my 'despite myself' commitment to this time matters. Not just for me - but in ways I don't yet really understand - for others. For a culture stuck on treadmills of endemic busy-ness and distraction, for the planet, for creating openings to grace.

At the same time, I'm wary of seeking to 'justify' my Wednesdays in terms of their supposed high purpose. As Einstein famously remarked, 'Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted'.

At the moment, I guess what is true is that I feel called to this practice ... and I'll see where it leads. This blog is an offering from my Wednesday retreats. It's a place where I can reflect on my experience. I hope it may offer something to you as well.

Shalom, Sarah