Sabbath - a rhythm of rest

"We who have lost our sense and our senses - our touch, our smell, our vision of who we are; we who frantically force and press things, without rest for body or spirit, hurting our earth and injuring ourselves: we call a halt.
We want to rest. We need to rest and allow the earth to rest. We need to reflect and to rediscover the mystery that lves in us, that is the ground of every unique expression of life, the source of the fascination that calls all things to communion.
We declare a Sabbath, a space of quiet: for simply being and letting be; for recovering the great, forgotten truths, for learning how to live again."

U.N. Environmental Sabbath Programme

I wish each of you a time out, a time of spaciousness and generosity with enough leisure to think creative thoughts, with enough quiet to hear your own thoughts (and maybe the sounds of nature too!), with enough space to breathe deeply. And then breathe again - simply because it feels so good.  May you gift yourself this - your own birthright and blessing.

I wish you a true and lovely Sabbath, this week, and every week.

Deep with the winds of homecoming

My friend, the artist Melanie Weidner, has always created images that move me deeply.  This one, Hurled Through with Birds was inspired by a quote from Rilke (one of my favourite poets!):  
"The inner, what is it, if not intensified sky, hurled through with birds and deep with the winds of homecoming."

I grew up in the mountains of south-eastern BC in Canada, surrounded by mountains resembling the ones in Melanie's print. I used to walk home for lunch most days. One fine Spring day, when I was about ten years old, cheerfully walking along, I found myself seized by the Spirit, filled with joy, scoured clean of all shadows and grime.

Of course at the time I didn't know it was the Spirit entering me. I did know that I was awe-struck, my feet pinned unmoving to the ground, as my heart expanded past what I imagined it could be. All around me BEAUTY seemed to fill the very air. I almost couldn't breathe for the sheer hugeness of it all.

Even now I struggle to find words for that transforming experience. Back then, I raced home and tried my best to tell my Mum, to ask her, desperately wanting to know -  what had happened to me?! what was this?!

She did not recognize what I was telling her about. Or perhaps she didn't have the words either... At the time I simply felt like I couldn't make her understand how IMPORTANT it was,  how life-changing, how riveting. And having no way to make sense of it, I let it slide away into my subconscious and forgot about it.

Then, 28 years later, at Pendle Hill( a Quaker Study Centre outside Phildelphia), I was given a handle to recognize this experience for what it was. In a class on Nurturing the Spirit, our dear teachers, Fran Taber and Sondra Cronk, asked us to share a time when we experienced God moving in our hearts. Boom - that day came to me! And for the first time I understood what that had been...... that time of being "....hurled through with birds and deep with the winds of homecoming." I was gifted the in-sight to see and recognize the Spirit taking up residence inside me for that amazing moment.

And how about you? Do you too have a time when the Spirit grabbed you and filled your heart with the winds of homecoming? I'd love to hear about it!  

Melanie's image was used by permission. If you'd like to see more of her art, maybe own a copy yourself, here's a link to her web-site: http://www.listenforjoy.com/art/hurledthrough.html