Tag: spirituality

40 Day Journey’s End: Day 5

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Here I am still presenting my reflections from the first time I made the 40 Day Journey with Julian of Norwich from Lisa Dahill’s book of that name. On day 5 of the journey, on the first part of it, the phrases that stuck with me while I was praying were:

…reverent contemplation … marvelling with great reverence …my spirit rejoices in God…He has looked with favour…

I remember vividly my imaginative contemplation of The Annunciation from when I made  The Spiritual Exercises going into the second week. Mary had the audacity to desire to have God’s child. I spent a lot of time in this prayer with the word reverence and reverent, on what it means to regard something or someone with reverence: wonder and awe. And it dawned on me, in recent sprayers when He has been holding me, this has been His demeanour: reverence. I was gobsmacked (or Godsmacked!) when that sank in. How could He possibly view me with  reverence? Yet there it was: love, tenderness and reverence. I am precious and sacred to Him; He looks at me with wonder and awe. Like Mary, my response was for my spirit to rejoice because He looks at me with such favour. Here, I am just like her marvelling with great reverence at His greatness when faced with my own littleness.

In the “Questions to ponder” section day 5, I made note of some things. The first is that Julian’s vision of Mary is one my faith tradition can embrace. My church likes the idea of her meekness. What is special about her for me though, is her audacity, and that in seeing her in this way, I might come to regard her as my friend. I’m still a little shy on that one though. The second is that our culture understands humility as weakness and treats it with contempt. By looking at Jesus, I understand it as truth, honesty and strength; to know who you are and to be unafraid to live by it.

…with great reverence that He was willing…

To me, this is the phrase that recast the understanding of humility to mean degrading. The other perspective is that humility is a liberating gift from God because it frees us to live as we truly are in Him to be our true self in God, rather than try to fit ourselves into the uncomfortable mould of worldly expectations.

serene woman in colorful headscarf
Photo by Dids on Pexels.com

When praying the second part of this journey with day 5,  these are the phrases that stood out for me in the prayer:

I lift up my soul… teach the lowly your way… teach me Your way…

I saw myself sitting on the ground where I had  just dug up my treasure from the field – my immortal diamond: my soul, my free will. I handed it to Him,  saying the first phrase over and over:

I lift up my soul

The freedom to be who he would have maybe – the deepest desire of my soul. I said my own suscipe prayer to Him and asked Him to teach me His way. Still within and part of the prayer, I then seemed to be distracted then by all the chores I had to do, and about getting my things ready for work the next day, except, I noticed that there was an absence of the usual stress and anxiety around all of that. I understood that it was Him showing me his way: to just do, without thinking about it, to be in the present, preparing, but not worrying about tomorrow. It was a “just do it” sort of feeling. It is for me to just do what has to be done in a relaxed “being the moment” way – no drive or push; no pressure, just as it is. After the prayer, I sorted my clothes for work the next day and I  cleaned the kitchen. I had my well-being plan. It was just to do it, simple things. I had been  watching a Chinese internet star, her films of a simple rural life. It was her demeanour, just to do. He was smiling at me then.

As I reflected on this prayer and on the  journal reflections suggested in the 40 Day Journey book,  I noticed that I experienced myself as little at work. When other people saw me just a classroom teacher” when I have had so much more experience than that and they don’t know it. It was okay though,  because putting myself in that position was all part of the stepping back, ruined for life experience of The Spiritual Exercises and my rejection of being overstretched by my pride.  I struggled with the second reflection, not sure I can accept the premise of being pregnant with God. From praying with the Song of songs,  I can relate to Him as a lover but can’t get my head around him being my child. Maybe it is an image to pray with another day. The third point,  on the prospect of total availability to God,  provoked the same feeling of desire in me and yearning for Him, to  be able to live always and fully in that state of saying yes.  I can pray:

Here I am Lord.

Are you impressed?

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ornamental dome of grand catholic cathedral

I’ve received a text message this week from an organisation that I do some work for. Here is what it said:  

We are really impressed by your past experience and your background. We firmly believe that you are a valuable asset to our college. 

It reminded me of another email I received a few months ago from another organisation I was doing some work for. The email began 

Thanks again for your excellent sample chapter- we were really impressed with how well you understood the brief and the quality of your content. 

I started to think about my previous job, and I tried to remember the last time someone in my previous job told me they were impressed with my work. I’m sorry to say I can’t remember when that happened. Here in my new job, I’ve heard it twice in the last three months. It made me feel quite sad. I’m thinking about the teachers who have just voted to strike in the UK and how undervalued they are. I was part of the union that has voted to strike and would have voted with the 90%. 

I am also currently involved in “The 40-day Journey with Julian of Norwich” with the Friends of Julian of Norwich. In this last month we have been praying with Day 13 to Day 16 of the journey and on Day 15 the reading from Julian says: 

God also showed me that sin is no shame but honour to us… shame is no more in the bliss of heaven – for there the tokens of sin are turned into owners. 

40 day Journey with Julian of Norwich, edited Lisa E. Dahill
close up photo of splashed water
Photo by Ave Calvar Martinez on Pexels.com

As all these thoughts swirled around my brain I found myself thinking of the feeling of not being good enough and of spiritual desolation. I found myself thinking of the critical voices, those voices that tell us that we are worthless, unworthy, it’s all our fault: the “mea culpa” that has us feeling guilty and ashamed. 

What does it feel like when someone tells us that they are impressed by something we have done? Is the temptation to dismiss what has been said? After all, no one likes a show off. It may be false humility. 

In the first week of the Spiritual Exercises by St Ignatius of Loyola the focus of the prayer is sin: our own personal sin, original sin, the sin of the world: and the grace of the first week that we asked for at the beginning of prayer is for sorrow for our sins. Importantly, the First Week of the Exercises comes after the Principle and Foundation, and it is important to enter the first week knowing that we are loved by God. How else could we bear shame of our sinfulness? 

How does it feel in the Principal and Foundation when we experience ourselves to be loved by God? Julian very famously talks about the hazelnut and how in her visions or showings she saw three properties in the hazelnut: 

The first is that God made it, the second is that He loves it, and the third is that God preserves it. 

Revelations of Divine Love: Julian of Norwich

I remember one day in school, in one of the after-school training sessions, there was a statement on a piece of paper which linked negative judgments by Ofsted with a teacher feeling personal shame. It made me feel very angry. I know for me personally being a perfectionist, it is uncomfortable to get things wrong, but I would stop short of declaring that a reason to feel ashamed. I might also argue that the person or organisation making the judgement may not necessarily be accurate or may have their own agenda or priorities that the teacher may not agree with. 

Of course, feeling proud when someone tells you they are impressed may simply be the opposite side of the same coin: a point to be cautious of. Pride itself, for its own sake, can also get in the way. 

So, what is the balance? Because self-denigration, feeling ashamed in response to unjustified criticism, or maybe even justified criticism from self-appointed judges, may be inverted pride. 

The grace of the first week of The Exercises is key: it is to know ourselves as loved sinners, to hold the tension between imperfections and the harm that we may do, the lack of love in our hearts, the lack of virtue, generosity, magnanimity: to hold it in one hand and God’s love of us in the other. 

Is it good to accept compliments? To feel good when people tell us they are impressed? I would say of course: when someone recognises and appreciates our gifts it allows us to recognise and appreciates the gifts that we have been given. We may have done our best job with the work we were doing, and we know our work is appreciated. That is a satisfaction in doing the work regardless of any external reward. It’s like walking outside into the mountains and exclaiming how beautiful it is to God; an appreciation of the work, an expression of the appreciation, it is to praise God. It is to give glory to God when we are exclaiming how impressed we are with God’s work. When we allow someone else to express their appreciation of our work, it connects us to our giftedness, the abilities and talents we have received from God and that we have put them to use in the service of others. 

achievement confident free freedom
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In The Spiritual Exercises in the fourth point of the Contemplation to Attain Love, Saint Ignatius says: 

This is to consider all blessings and gifts as descending from above. 

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, trans Louis J. Puhl S.J.

The danger of modesty or false humility is that it denies those gifts, diminishes them, makes them as nothing: unimportant. Sure, there is a danger in arrogance and pride when we can think of ourselves as the big, “I am” because people are impressed with us, but, as one of the tutors on my spirituality course said several times: 

We can become attached to our smallness.

There are many “haters” out there in the world, on social media, on television, in the newspapers.  There is criticism to be found everywhere, of anyone and everyone; a lynch mob mentality. It’s all around. It is very easy to become bogged down in fear anger, negativity: to feel a lack of faith, hope and love. Such hopelessness and fear are spiritual desolation. Perhaps we need to complement each other more, not falsely, but genuine heartfelt compliments. If we’re impressed say we’re impressed. If someone tells us that they are impressed to accept that acknowledgement of our gifts and for ourselves to also acknowledge those gifts and expressed gratitude for them. 

photo of women hugging each other
Photo by Anna Shvets on Pexels.com

So, the next time you are impressed with someone, tell them. Acknowledge their giftedness out loud so they can hear it and own it too. And when someone complements you on your gifts, accept it, don’t dismiss it: accept it and than God for the gifts He so generously bestows.

40 Day Journey’s End: Day 4

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It seems strange to be writing about my first 40 Day Journey with Julian of Norwich, after leading the Friends of Julian of Norwich Lenten Bookgroup this year, but nevertheless, here I am doing just that. I have been organising with the trustees of The Friends of Julian of Norwich how we intend to continue the journey, since several people who attended the lenten course requested more. The format of Continuing the Journey will be more as I made the journey myself the first time, taking a week to pray with the material for each day of Lisa Dahill’s book, just like the 19th Annotation of The Spiritual Exercises. The Zoom meetings for Continuing the Journey will be on the third Wednesday of the month, starting in September, so watch out for more details here and especially on the Friends of Julian of Norwich website and newsletters.

Day 4 of the 40 Day Journey continues the contemplation the hazelnut:

The first is that God made it, the second is that He loves it, and the third is that God preserves it.

40 Day Journey with Julian of Norwich edited Lisa E. Dahill
Ripening hazelnuts
Ripening hazelnuts by Evelyn Simak is licensed under CC-BY-SA 2.0

And Julian asks:

But what is that to me?

40 Day Journey with Julian of Norwich edited Lisa E. Dahill

For me, the phrases that stood out when I first prayed with this material were:

…God is the lover…there can be no created thing between my God and me…He has made me for this…

40 Day Journey with Julian of Norwich edited Lisa E. Dahill

The first phrase connected me immediately to the Song of Songs. This particular book from scripture was the focus for my prayer on retreat in the summer before I started my Spiritual Direction course. It had a profound impact on my life, and my active engagement with the book lasted for a least two years. I’m still not done with it yet, but suffice to say it was the trip switch for a great deal of upheaval in my life. The Song of Songs is a love poem which can be understood as the relationship between God and the Church, or the relationship between God and the individual soul. To pull this phrase from Julian’s writings here connected me to God’s desire for me and my desire and longing for God. It became more personal and more intimate:

God is my lover.

The “no created thing” became “nothing” and I wanted nothing to get in the way. I wanted to let go of every inordinate desire I had and I started to name them, to recognise the habits and behaviours that dissipated my spiritual energy. As I imagined God pulling me closer to Him, I could feel that His desire for me was irresistible and I asked Him to help me remove or overcome all those things that get in the way. To know deeply that He has made me to love Him and to be loved by Him – this outpouring and knowing was the grace of this prayer for me.

… have not God’s rest in their hearts and souls;…and in which there is no rest…

40 Day Journey with Julian of Norwich edited Lisa E. Dahill

With the inordinate desires that swam before my eyes like a conveyor belt in “The Generation Game”, it resonated with how Julian described the effect of the “wordly business”:

It was all about my tendency to overwork, and I have written about that before. It is very interesting to read about this now that I am living with ME/CFS! The drive to work, to have a career and to be successful in it, the drive to perfectionism – in this prayer on Day 4 of the journey I recognised how these things were getting in the way of my being close to God. And yet, at the same time, in response to one of the questions to ponder that Lisa Dahill asks I wrote:

Both wordly investment and allegience to God can be lived simultaneously – and the balance is prayer.

beautiful beauty blur close up
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The questions to ask ourselves regarding our work, and our relationships, to my mind are:

Am I doing the work that God wants me to do?

Am I loving well those I am in relationship with?

On pondering the meaning of “substantially united to God”, I noted:

To be substantially united to God is a grace given by Him. We might orientate our lives so that we connect with Him as much as possible but He is the one who gathers us up into Himself in that eternal moment.

It reminds me of something that struck me years ago when I read “The Cloud of Unknowing“:

For were the soul not strengthened by its good endeavours, it would be unable to stand the pain that the awareness of its own existence brings.

The Cloud of Unkowing

The grace of this prayer knocked me to the floor and it was only the first prayer with day 4.

My second day praying with the material started with the last four words of the passage given and then moved onto the psalm fragment (Psalm 46:9-10):

…He is true rest.

40 Day Journey with Julian of Norwich edited Lisa E. Dahill

Be still and know…that I am God.

Psalm 46:10
sportive woman with bicycle resting on countryside road in sunlight
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

St. Ignatius invites use to converse with God “as one friend speaks to another” and the conversation with God at this point in my prayer was intimate and loving.

I am your rest.

You are my rest.

I am the God that heals you.

I am the one to make the wars to cease within you, the one who burns the shields with fire.

You are my love, my treasure. In all of creation I love you more.

When I asked how that could be, His response was:

You are precious to me, you are my treasure.

St. Augustine has said:

God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.

St. Augustine

Julian’s revelations about the hazelnut made me feel just as St. Augstine describes. I was warm and surrounded by light, and the people I love most in the world were also surrounded by light. We were protected and safe. I visualised myself as Leviathon, God’s own creature, another image of myself from another retreat.

I imagined myself flowing easily from fire to water and back to fire again, without any conflict between the two, or restriction in the movement from one to the other. For me, these represent the active and contemplative sides of my personality – how appropriate to be writing this in the 16th week of cycle C in the Lectionary, where the gospel reading is about Martha and Mary! I first sought out a Spiritual Director because these aspects of myself were in conflict. In the earlier stages of my deepening journey, I believed that the purpose was to live with them in balance. This mandala was my realisation that integrity was not about getting the balance, but in being able to flow from one to the other without resistance. I guess it is the living simultaneously worldy investment and allegience to God.

Overwork and the drive to get things sorted “once and for all” is a place where I need to be open to the healing, restorative love of God. The sense of not being able to get it all done (in time) creates a sense of panic in me, and of not being good enough.

How poignant it is for me to read those words now. Even then, the other part was also there:

I experience God as my true rest when I consciously spend time in contemplative prayer -then my head slows down and the war within me ceases.

I share the desire with Julian for there to be nothing between my God and me. The deepest desire of my soul is to have the freedom to be who He would have me be. I find myself reading back through my prayer journal now and being inspired again by the graces I received then.

You can find a guided Lectio Divina prayer with the material for Day 4 of the Journey here or as a Podcast on my channel: Sunflower Seed Spirituality.

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Looking the Gift Horse in the Mouth

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I’ve been thinking a lot about my mum recently. Probably because the family have now got the house cleared, cleaned and ready to sell. My eldest came back from Scotland last weekend with some things for us from my mum’s house, including the piano, which has gone to my youngest. My mum will well pleased with that arrangement I imagine. My mind wanders to a story that she repeated many times to me in the last few years of her life. She struggled a lot with restless legs and it meant she often had poor sleep and spent the small hours “walking the floors” as she described it. She had a great devotion to the Sacred Heart – her name was Margaret Mary, like mine, so no surprises there I guess. She was constantly speaking to Him through the many pictures around the house, and one of her favourite prayers was, when driving into a car park:

Please Sacred Heart, find me a parking space.

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One always opened up immediately no matter how busy the car park was, I kid you not. It happened so consistently that other members of my family, who do not necessarily believe, use it when they cannot find a parking space! Sure, we can argue about coincidence and patience and whatever rational explanation you like, I’m just telling you what I’ve witnessed. Anyway, I digress – back to walking the floors. One night, after about a week of broken sleep, when she couldn’t stand it anymore, she turned to her picture of the Sacred Heart and challenged Him with words to the effect of:

Don’t tell me to offer it up and to think about everything you went through! You only suffered for a day, I’ve been going on like this for a week and I can’t stand it any more!

An honest prayer, even though I think she believed herself to be disrespectful. She had the sense of God laughing in response and the restlessness disappeared, allowing her to get a good night of sleep.

Within this context, I also found myself reaching this point of:

Enough already!

regarding my own health condition – myalgic encephalomyelitus (ME/CFS). I described before how I had accepted it as a gift, and an answer to my prayers arising from the desire to live more slowly: to realise that it is the cure for my workaholism, because I was not going to let that go on my own. It’s been nearly eighteen months since I got sick, and then failed to completely recover from it. My first experience of chronic fatigue lasted thirteen months and then I got well. Maybe subconsciously I was holding onto the belief that that would happen again, especially with all the ways I am being proactive and that my energy does improve when I look after myself. But that is unlikely to happen this time…it is for life, not just for Christmas, as they say. In football, it is the last ten minutes of the game, when you are so very tired because you have given it all you have, but you have to dig even deeper to keep it going to that final whistle…you don’t want to lose the match at this point! It is where I am on my journey with ME/CFS and with God. I’ve accepted this gift horse and I’m looking in its mouth and not liking what I see, maybe even struggling with it sometimes, and I know that those dark clouds of despairing or anxious fear are swirling around in the distance. It’s like the Battle of Hogwarts in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows where they createe a defence bubble around the school that keeps Voldermort’s army at bay, but it starts to dismantle as the dark forces continue to attack it. I’m in Hogwarts, protected, but watching that protection begin to disintegrate.

There is another image from my prayer that plays alongside this one though: I’m sitting in the deep calm of the storm, leaning against Jesus, as it all swirls around above us. Both of these images for me are spiritual consolation. It might seem strange to say that about the first image because I mentioned fear, but when we apply some useful discernment questions here it will show what I mean.

Where is it coming from?

Where is it leading to?

In the Hogwart’s image, even in the midst of a community taking a stand against evil and working together for the common good, I am relying on my own magic power to protect me from the forces of darkness which are driving me into spiritual desolation:

I call desolation…as darkness of soul, turmoil of spirit, inclination towards what is low and earthly, restlessness rising from many disturbances and temptations which lead to want of faith, want of hope, want of love. The soul is wholly slothful, tepid, sad and separated, as it were, from its Creator and Lord.

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius trans. Louis J Puhl S.J.

I may be in the quiet centre of the dome, but without God, with only our own power, the safety shield crumbles and the darkness comes flooding in and I am afraid and overwhelmed. In my imagination I oscillate between both images. In the storm image, I am leaning on Jesus and the quiet centre is more than quiet, it is serene and safe. It is spiritual consolation:

Winter storm over the Northeast (night time thermal image)
Winter storm over the Northeast (night time thermal image) by NASA Goddard Photo and Video is licensed under CC-BY 2.0

I call consolation every increase of faith, hope and love, and all interior joy that invites and attracts to what is heavenly and to the salvation of ones soul by filling it with peace and quiet in it creator and Lord.

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius trans. Louis J Puhl S.J.

For me, to flip between these two images is no accident. It is like being shown desolation and consolation side by side in similar, but different images. Ignatius says of being in desolation:

When one is in desolation, he should be mindful that God has left him to his natural powers to to resist the different agitations and temptations of the enemy in order to try him. He can resist with the help of God, which always remains, though he may not clearly perceive it.

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius trans. Louis J Puhl S.J.

I do not believe that this desolation is where I am, although I can definitely feel the pull of it at times and I am guarding against it. The second image of the storm is explicitly inviting me to lean on Him, to discern the movements of spirits within me, to not try to rely all on my own strength or determination. And so I come back to the Principle and Foundation of the Exercises and the room of indifference:

Consequently, as far as we are concerned, we should not prefer health to sickness, riches to poverty, honour to dishonour, a long life to a short life. The same holds for all other things.

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius trans. Louis J Puhl S.J.

The essence of looking a gift horse in the mouth is to see its age. I guess the discouragement in doing so is in finding out that we have been given an old nag – a negative judgement of the gift. Where does it lead? Ingratitude. What if we were to accept the gift horse as a gift, regardless of what is in its mouth? I learned from the Spiritual Exercises that sorrow is a grace: uncomfortable for sure, but grace nevertheless. So, I’m looking at what spiritual desolation and spiritual consolation look like in this space and as I acknowledge my swirling emotions, I imagine myself in the quiet of the storm leaning against Jesus. I am not praying for healing from ME/CFS because I recognise it as the gift of healing of workaholism that I asked for so fervently and for so long, and believe me, that has not gone. Instead, I am praying for indifference in those “enough already” moments and serenity when I see those swirling dark clouds, knowing that He is here with me and I am leaning on Him.

40 Day Journey with Julian of Norwich: Day 6

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Lenten Book Group 2022 | by The Friends of Julian of Norwich

Prayer material and guided prayer.

In [all] this delight I was filled full of everlasting surety, powerfully secured without any painful fear.This sensation was so welcome and so spiritual that I was wholly at peace, at ease and at rest, so that there was nothing upon Earth which could have afflicted me. This lasted only for a time, and then I was changed, and abandoned to myself, oppressed and weary of my life and ruing myself, so that I hardly had the patience to go on living…And then presently again God gave me comfort and rest for my soul…And then again I felt the pain, and then afterwards the delight and joy, now the one and now the other, again and again, I suppose about twenty times. and in the time of joy I could have said with St. Paul: Nothing shall separate me from the love of Christ; and in the pain I could have said with St. Peter: Lord, save me, I am perishing. And so we remain in this mixture all the days of our life; but [what breaks the impasse is that Christ] wants us to trust that He is constantly with us.

Reading: Romans 8:38-39

Psalm 31: 1a, 2

40 Day Journey with Julian of Norwich: Day 6. Guided prayer.

You can still join the Lenten book group making this journey by signing up here.

The guided prayer is also available as a podcast on the channel: Sunflower Seed Spirituality

A suggestion was made during our introductory and orientation session that for some people, journaling might not be the best way to review their prayer. I commented that Praying in Colour might be a good alternative – it is what I intend to do. I have written about it before and if you would like to read more about it, you can find that information here.

40 Day Journey with Julian of Norwich: Day 4

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Lenten Book Group 2022 | by The Friends of Julian of Norwich

Prayer material and guided prayer.

In this little thing (like a hazelnut) I saw three properties. The first is that God made it, the second is that He loves it, and the third is that God preserves it. But what is that to me? It is that God is the Creator and the lover and the protector. For until I am substantially united to Him, I can never have love or rest or true happiness; until, that is, I am so attached to Him that there can be no created thing between my God and me. And who will do this deed? Truly, He Himself, by His mercy and His grace, for He has made me for this and has blessedly restored me….For this is the reason why those who deliberately occupy themselves with wordly business, constantly seeking worldy well-being, have not God’s rest in their hearts and souls; for they love and seek their rest in this thing (that is all the cosmos, seemingly as small as a hazelnut) which is so little and in which there is no rest, and do not know God who is almighty, all wise and all good, for He is true rest.

Reading: Matthew 6:33

Psalm 46: 9-10

40 Day Journey with Julian of Norwich: Day 4. Guided prayer.

You can still join the Lenten book group making this journey by signing up here.

The guided prayer is also available as a podcast on the channel: Sunflower Seed Spirituality

A suggestion was made during our introductory and orientation session that for some people, journaling might not be the best way to review their prayer. I commented that Praying in Colour might be a good alternative – it is what I intend to do. I have written about it before and if you would like to read more about it, you can find that information here.

40 Day Journey with Julian of Norwich: Lenten Book Group 2022

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First Session today, 2nd March at 3.30 – 5.00pm GMT. It is still not too late to join!

I will be recording a Lectio Divina guided prayer for each day of the 40 Journey and posting it here in the morning.

The guided prayer will also be available as a podcast on Spotify, Google podcast and other platforms. The channel is called : Sunflower Seed Spirituality.

The Friends of Julian of Norwich invite you to spend time during Lent in the company of one of the greatest Christian mystics of all time: Julian of Norwich. We will be using the book “40 Day Journey with Julian of Norwich” by Lisa Dahill and weekly meetings will be held on Zoom on Wednesdays during Lent from 3.30 – 5.00pm GMT, beginning on Ash Wednesday 2 March 2022. 

The author of the book, Lisa Dahill says: 

Your 40-Day journey gives you an opportunity to be mentored by a great spiritual writer.  The purpose of the journey, however, is not just to gain ‘head knowledge’ about Julian of Norwich.  Rather, it is to begin living what you learn, and to touch base with others once a week to share experiences and insights. – 

If you have been following my blogs for a while you will be aware that I made this journey myself over the period of a year and I have begun to share my experiences of my journey in subsequent posts. Earlier this year I joined the Trustees of the Friends of Julian of Norwich and I am excited about this being the book they had chosen for their lent book group this year. I will be leading the Zoom sessions on Wednesdays during Lent.

From the time of my own journey you will see that the book presents material for daily prayer: a section from Revelations of Divine Love, an extract from scripture and a psalm fragment. There are also points for reflection, questions to ponder and suggested prayers. The idea in the book group is to spend some time each day with the material and to join with others who are making a similar pilgrimage in the zoom meetings on Wednesdays. In these meetings there will be reflections on the week just journeyed, faith sharing in small groups and prayers, in order that we sustain each other for the week to come. 

Julian of Norwich cell.

Lent is a time when the Church encourages us to focus more on prayer and the 40 Day Journey with Julian of Norwich offers an opportunity, structure and support for us to do just that. If you are interested in deepening your relationship with God this Lent by making this journey, you can find more information or book here. 

40 Day Journey with Julian of Norwich: Lenten Book Group 2022

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So here is a series of events I am involved in with the Friends of Julian of Norwich:

The Friends of Julian of Norwich invite you to spend time during Lent in the company of one of the greatest Christian mystics of all time: Julian of Norwich. We will be using the book “40 Day Journey with Julian of Norwich” by Lisa Dahill and weekly meetings will be held on Zoom on Wednesdays during Lent from 3.30 – 5.00pm GMT, beginning on Ash Wednesday 2 March 2022. 

The author of the book, Lisa Dahill says: 

Your 40-Day journey gives you an opportunity to be mentored by a great spiritual writer.  The purpose of the journey, however, is not just to gain ‘head knowledge’ about Julian of Norwich.  Rather, it is to begin living what you learn, and to touch base with others once a week to share experiences and insights. – 

If you have been following my blogs for a while you will be aware that I made this journey myself over the period of a year and I have begun to share my experiences of my journey in subsequent posts. Earlier this year I joined the Trustees of the Friends of Julian of Norwich and I am excited about this being the book they had chosen for their lent book group this year. I will be leading the Zoom sessions on Wednesdays during Lent.

From the time of my own journey you will see that the book presents material for daily prayer: a section from Revelations of Divine Love, an extract from scripture and a psalm fragment. There are also points for reflection, questions to ponder and suggested prayers. The idea in the book group is to spend some time each day with the material and to join with others who are making a similar pilgrimage in the zoom meetings on Wednesdays. In these meetings there will be reflections on the week just journeyed, faith sharing in small groups and prayers, in order that we sustain each other for the week to come. 

Julian of Norwich cell.

Lent is a time when the Church encourages us to focus more on prayer and the 40 Day Journey with Julian of Norwich offers an opportunity, structure and support for us to do just that. If you are interested in deepening your relationship with God this Lent by making this journey, you can find more information or book here. 

Walking with Angels

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blond woman with long hair sitting on city bus and posing as angel

I’ve been thinking a lot about angels in the last few months, ever since I prayed with “Pray as You go” on the feast of the Archangels. on September 29. I’ve been pondering angels ever since, and every time they are mentioned my ears have pricked up.

My understanding is that angels are messengers of God and since I am of the opinion that regular people can and do convey messages from and of God, it equates that people might be regarded as angels in a sense, when they are fuflifilling such a purpose. In fact, I say it out loud to people, and I am not half joking. I might say:

You are an angel disguised as a student/daughter/friend/colleague.

Try it some time – it really brings a smile to their face to hear it.

Where am I coming from with this?

Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.

Hebrews 13:2

The Book of Tobit, of which I am so fond, has it as a fundamental premise. How would it have been if Tobias had been obnoxious to the stranger he hired to guide him (the Archangel Raphael)? It seems to me to be a good rule of thumb.

When my youngest was little, perhaps around the age of nine, she was having a tough time at school with some bullying. I’d given her a notebook to use as a journal so that she could vent and get it out of her head. Things tend to spin around in there. She encouraged me to read part of it once when I was helping her to tidy up her room. She had written:

I think my mum is an angel, a real, live, actual angel.

It brought me out in goosebumps and still moves me today when I think about it.

blond woman with long hair sitting on city bus and posing as angel
Photo by Anastasiia Shevchenko on Pexels.com

In The Spiritual Exercises, the first exercise of the first week is a contemplation of the angels. A long time ago, when I first became aware that I wanted the do The Spiritual Exercises, I started with this first exercise of the first week. In my defence, I fully admit that I did not know what I was doing. It was really scary. In this exercise we imagine the angels reflecting God’s glory, and how some of them decide to refuse to and they began to turn dark. I’m describing it as I remember it. When I spoke to my gentle and wise spiritual director about it, he advised me to put the book away, that it was a handbook for spiritual directors, and the Exercises were to be done with a spiritual director. How wise he was, I know that now. I regard my director as one of the angels in my life.

It has been a tough year and a bit for me with a lot of upheaval and some dramatic and permanent changes in my life. I resigned from my job as a science teacher – I posted about the day I made that decision, not explicitly, but not subtly either. I started my own business as an Online Chemistry tutor, hoping that it would give me the time and flexibility to do more spirituality work – and it has. After an infection last December, which the ME/CFS specialist believes to be COVID, in spite of the negative test, I am left with this long term, permanent health condition. My mum died at Christmas and honestly, it is the strangest thing in the world not to be calling her today. The thought of calling her has been in my head all day and I’m having to remind myself that she is not there anymore.

The last big period of upheaval in my life was when I was training to be a Spiritual director and when I did the Spiritual Exercises in 2016 and this lastest series of earthquakes seems to be to be a part of the same conversation with God. Is is almost as if we had to allow the dust to settle from the first series of events before we could move on with the next part. As I look back over the last year and a bit, I can see the angels that have helped me on my journey, in practical ways in making my work transition, in drawing me into spiritual work in ways I could never have predicted, and also in the liminal space.

I am thinking of my friend Bill Stebbe who I visited when he was dying. I read the Book of Tobit to him – he had never read it. I have a friend who worked in care homes and has been at the bedside of several people as they died. She talks about the presence she senses as death approaches, even talks to. It makes my hair stand on end and I have asked her to change the subject more that once, lest I start to cry. Yet, when I was reading the Book of Tobit to Bill, I had a sense of Raphael being there, smiling, as he listened to the story of his journey with Tobias. I have it in my head that the little dog in he story is God. I might have picked that up at a lecture I went to a long time ago, but I’m not sure.

In the liminal space, I’m also thinking of my mum. If you can describe a funeral as lovely, it was. I planned it with her a few years ago. She might even have called me an angel when we were finished. We sat down together, chose the hymns she wanted. I had to cut the list down though – she really had too many favourite hymns! But we used some of the ones we cut to inspire the readings for the mass. Three of the grandaughters sang them like angels. She would have loved it – it was everything she wanted and more.

“Being with the angels” is a euphanism we use to say someone has died. Does it make it more gentle? more easy to accept? Is it a comfort? I ask these question genuinely, because I do not know the answers to them. Both the directness of my culture and my scientific background lead me to be matter of fact and use accurate, rather than colloquial language, with no intention to deny, belittle or avoid uncomfortable emotions. People do not know what to say to someone who is grieving and we have developed some appropriate expressions to awkwardly express our sympathy. Sorrow is a grace. We ask for it in the first and third week of the Spiritual Exercises.

Constantine and the Angel Gabriel

I realise that this is a meandering post. I am contemplating the angels and they are a mystery to me. I have no tight ideas. I know I do not like stories that depict them as bad. For example, the film Constantine portrayed Gabriel as twisted; and some of the fantasy books I have read portray them as being just like people but with wings and supernatural powers. Others portray them as servants, maybe even slaves, with no perks, who are envious of humans. And in some of these stories, they seem to be punished severely by being banished from God for what appears to be even a minor expression of desire that is other than what they are perceived to be supposed to be doing. One exception perhaps is Angel-A.

Have we made angels in our own image in the same way we can try to make God in our image? Are we confused because sometimes it is other people who are our messengers from God – nothing apparantly supernatural there? I have no answers here. The only thing that makes any sense is what I experienced in the first Exercise of the first week of the Spiritual Exercises:

…recalling that they were created in the state of grace…

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius trans. Louis J Puhl S.J.

In my imagination, the ones who did not fall, chose to reflect the light and the glory of God. Maybe there is no more to know than that.

40 Day Journey’s End: Day 3

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The phrase that first caught my attention when I was praying with Day 3 of the journey was:

…it is everything that is made…lying in the palm of my hand.

I pictured the photo I had taken of a ceramic hand candle holder I have, with a hazelnut in it. I took this picture for a previous post, after the retreat day I did last year at the Julian centre.

Currently, I have a small stone with the word “serenity” written on it sitting in the palm of this hand. It reminded me of my own definition of serenity, of being conscious and aware of God’s presence no matter what I am doing. The phrase also brought to mind the image of myself, as my inner child Sunflower, while planting in the garden with God, holding the sunflower seeds and contemplating them in awe as it dawned on me that God made me. This memory is from an Imaginative contemplation I made during The Spiritual Exercises when I was praying with Psalm 139, and is a powerful consolation I have stored up, as Ignatius suggests.

When one enjoys consolation, let him consider how he will conduct himself during the time of ensuing desolation, and store up a supply of strength as defence against that day.

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, Louis J Puhl, S.J.

The sunflower seeds of course, also remind me of Meister Ekhart who I quote at the top of my blog and the sunflower, of me myself, growing into God. While these thoughts were going round in my head during this prayer, I imagined myself as being curled up in the foetal position and being buried underground, being in a sort of hibernation state, a waiting phase. While contemplating my own creation, because it is what I was contemplating, the meaning behind the images I was dwelling on, I noticed my feelings. I felt so tired and weary, demotivated and lethargic. Quite the opposite of what we envisage by a process of creation. I just wanted to rest and to take refuge in Him. There was definitely turmoil of spirits going on in this prayer:

Then it is characteristic of the evil spirit to harass with anxiety, to afflict with sadness, to raise obstacles backed by fallacious reasonings that disturb the soul. Thus he seeks to prevent the soul from advancing.

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, Louis J Puhl, S.J.

Even as my desire was simply to fall into God and remain there, my head was busy berating me for my laziness. I was making lists of everything I had to do and trying to give myself a kick up the backside to just get on with it and at the same time, I was being drawn into self pity because I lacked the energy and the desire to just get on with it. Self pity is something I cannot bear: I do not tolerate it in myself for very long. I knew that prayer was the only time I felt serene and yet I experienced resistance to pray – go figure. It is an ongoing wrestling match within me, by no means something I experienced in the past, it still happens! Nevertheless, I had the sense on Day 3 of my journey that God was not too fussed about me getting on with it, that He was fine with me taking time to rest in Him, and to sleep if I needed to. I settled into the prayer and into serenity.

…everything has been through the love of God…through the love of God…

This phrase struck me in two ways. The first way – which may be how Julian meant it? – was that it was because of the love of God that everything came about. The second meaning was what I understood by it immediately, and it was what I spent the rest of my prayer contemplating. It was “to go through the love of God” in the way that we say we have been through something, usually something traumatic, that has caused a change in us. This was my understanding of the phrase and it led me to ask:

What does it mean to go through the love of God?

It may involve suffering – the cost of discipleship, a well worn phrase. As such, we might expect it to be painful to go through the love of God. When I pin point the places where I have changed as a result of my interactions with God it certainly felt that the painfulness of it was a necessary part of the process. It took me back to various times when I had prayed imaginatively with the Good Samaritan parable. Needless to say, I have always been the poor beaten up soul at the side of the road and He has always been the one to come and rescue me and to take me to a safe, comfortable place. In retrospect, even though I was unaware of it at the time, these points were threshhold moments in my life and things changed irresversibly from these moments on.

At the end of this first prayer with Day 3 of the Journey, I found myself resting in God, in spite of the difficulties and pressures of my life or maybe because of them. It was the best place to be and I was serene.

On the second day of prayer with Day 3 I was drawn by the psalm fragment and what caught my attention was the phrase:

…you are mindful…

Psalm 8:4

and the critical voice in my head said:

..and I am not!…

I was very distracted again at the beginning of this prayer, there was a lot of noise in my head. However, when I became aware of the distractions and my thoughts wandering, I brought my attention back to the phrase that had caught me and I was able to let go of the other voices and thoughts and to not hold onto them. I may have fallen asleep during this prayer – although I do not think that I did. I may have been so still that I lost all track of time. I love it when prayer is like that, the eternal moment. I remember feeling amazed, awed. And I asked Him:

Who am I that you are mindful of me?

I felt myself being pulled more deeply into Him, and His response was personal and intimate. St Augustine says:

God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.

St. Augustine.

He made me feel like I was the only person in the world. In Revelations of Divine Love, Julian says:

This human example was so powerfully shown, that a man’s heart could be ravished and he could be beside himself with joy at this great friendliness.

Julian of Norwich: Revelations of Divine Love

Julian also says:

Our Lord God also showed that it gives Him great pleasure when a simple soul comes to Him in a bare, plain and familiar way.

Julian of Norwich: Revelations of Divine Love

Imagine, a God who loves me like I am the only person in the world, and who takes pleasure in loving me.

And this is what Our Lord wants us to long for and to believe, to rejoice and take pleasure in, to receive comfort and support from…

Julian of Norwich: Revelations of Divine Love

I for one, marvel at it. I do not doubt it from my experience of prayer. Still, I marvel at it.