Silent Retreat Day - Tent Pegs and a Ball of String

I have to admit to being just a little disappointed this morning.  I had hoped to see a labyrinth out at Cawdor Castle, thinking they had just recently built it.  There was a picture of it on the wall outside the ticket booth.  It turned out to be the maze that has always been there, out of bounds because it’s made from holly bushes and not designed for the tramping of hundreds of visitors’ feet. 

Labyrinths and mazes are not the same thing!  The words should not be interchangeable.  A labyrinth has one way in and one path with all its twists and turns.  It’s a path to walk, not a mystery to solve.  A maze has many entrances and many solutions. 

“You enter a maze to lose yourself.  You enter a labyrinth to find yourself” so it has been said.

 

One of the activities on the silent day retreat at Kilravok Castle was a labyrinth.  It had been constructed with tent pegs and string into an elaborate path with lots of turns.  It is an effective way of slowing down in life and taking time to stop, think and reflect at each turn.  Too often life is lived at break-neck speed.  If we were all little cars on the road of life, I imagine we would be screaming around corners at ninety miles an hour. 

The man that made the labyrinth talked about his experience of one.  He left all his belongings outside when he entered.  Having nothing to give once he got to the centre of the labyrinth he felt that God was asking him simply to give himself.

It sounds very new age, and not my scene – but then all that day I had been doing things that were not my scene.  Sometimes there are things that you do simply because it may be the only chance you get to do it.  If it just turned out to be a slow walk around a hundred corners then so be it. 

I didn’t enter the labyrinth empty handed although I emptied my pockets of my coat.  The weather wasn’t warm enough to leave the coat on the bench.  I took in a notebook and a pen.  The writer in me didn’t demand a written blow by blow account of what I thought about or prayed about at every turn of the path but refused to leave them behind. 

I had been reading a book earlier on in the day about the need to silence the soul so that the spirit could follow God’s Holy Spirit unhindered.  I stopped at each turn for a moment or two and stilled myself.  I wanted my mind not to do the work, but allow my spirit to listen and to hear what God was saying.

I wish I could say that it was just a slow walk around a hundred corners – but it wasn’t.  It was a path made of tent pegs and string and yet it was so much more.  In my mind’s eye there were walls.  As much as I could see other people walking in other parts of the garden, it was as if I was alone.  If I have doubts about whether I hear God or not, it’s usually because I have an active imagination.  I have a hard time sometimes distinguishing between my inner chatterbox and God’s voice.  Not this time.  My inner chatterbox was silenced. 

God talked a lot about me as a writer.  He called me His storyteller.  He told me that there is a story I want to tell that isn’t my story but someone else’s story.  My story is my own.  It is not cobbled together from second hand experiences that other people have had. My story is MY STORY.  It is a story that is unique to me.  That’s the story He wants to read.

He told me that my vocabulary needs to be extended.  There are too many words that I avoid using.  There are many scenes that I avoid writing because I avoid living them, or having lived them they hurt a lot and iu would rather not display my scars.

He talked about His Living Word in me.  There is power in words.  Words brought creation into being.  Words spoken on the cross brought curses to an end.  He has given me His gift of words and with it the power to bring some things into being and bring other things to an end.

Coming to the end of the journey, I happened to see two leaves caught in a breeze.  They spun about the lawn, skipping and turning, swirling and dancing.  It was as if one leaf was chasing the other.  It was a joyful chase.   

My walk with God doesn’t often include delightful chases.  Skipping and dancing are not words that I would use.  But I am extending my vocabulary.

Traces Left Behind

It’s been a precious privilege

To walk this road with you

To be more than a witness

Of the journey we’ve been through

So many traces left behind

That tell where we have been

A host of pictures, photographs

A trail of all we’ve seen

You’ll see me in the colours of

The knitted things I’ve made

A hundred “Humpty-Dumpties” with

My love in them displayed

You’ll taste me in the slices of

The warm banana cake

In every stew and casserole

And meal I used to make

You’ll run with me in every game

Of rounders in the field

Our endless fun with bat and ball

Delight and joy revealed

I’ll be there in the fragrance of

Those clean and pine fresh smells

Remember the assembling of

Those plastic turtle shells

Hear me in the laughter of a

Child bounced on a knee

And know that all are cherished in

My precious family

In each of you my legacy

Lives on in myriald ways

So meet together, talk and share

Throughout the coming days

My journey has not ended

It’s really just begun

The tears, the pain, the sorrows –

Of all those things I’m done

My life is with my Father

Held safe in His embrace

His is the crown awarded me

For finishing my race

Celebrating the life of Eileen Fox 1934-2013

Things My Mum Said

This time last week I was preparing to go off on a silent retreat.  This time now I am preparing to go to meet my family and share together in the loss of mum. 

Last week I sat with God sharing all my concerns about the day.  I can at times go off the deep end and I asked God to walk with me only in those places He wanted me to go.  Today I find myself praying the same kind of thing. 

Last week I picked up a book in the chapel and after reading a while, made a note of the title and author, intending to buy the book and read it slowly - “Experiencing the Depths of Jesus Christ” by Jeanne Guyon.  Having read the first couple of chapters I am finding it’s not a book I wish I had written – I come across a lot of those.  It is a book I wish I had lived.  I am shocked to discover, even in the first couple of chapters, that the life I claim to live, so close to Christ, isn’t really that close at all.

I doubt whether my mum ever read the book.  It is a possibility.  But I am finding the things my mum said in the pages of Jeanne’s book. 

“I give you an invitation: If you are thirsty, come to the living waters.  Do not waste your precious time digging wells that have no water in them” (John 7:237; Jeremiah 2:13)

“If you are starving and can find nothing to satisfy your hunger, then come.  Come and you will be filled.

“You who are poor, come.

You who are afflicted, come

“You who are weighed down by your load of wretchedness and your load of pain, come.  You will be comforted.

“You who are sick and need a physician, come.  Don’t hesitate because you have diseases.  Come to the Lord and show Him your diseases and they will be healed!

“Come!"

Anyone who has known my mum and been in the same worship meeting as her will recognise her familiar “Come!” call.  She would sometimes grab hold of my arm and whisper it urgently into my ear.  All I had to do was to come.  All that God wanted from me was for me to come to him.  Any resource I needed was with him.

She didn’t always do what she told me to do, what Jeanne said to do.  In those times when she didn’t “come”, God was so gracious and He did the coming. 

I think there were times when she would have liked to shoo Him away.  She wanted to be rebellious and do her own thing.

But God never went.

God doesn’t stop saying “Come!” He said it to Jeanne Guyon in 1685.  He said it to my mum throughout her life.  It is message that He is always saying to His children,

“Come!”