HITTING THE PAUSE BUTTON

I'm going to be hitting the pause button next week.  Have you ever felt the need for that?  I'm headed back to the spiritual centre at Loretto Maryholme near Keswick for a three day silent retreat.  I can hardly wait.

I'm hoping to have a slightly different experience than my previous retreat last March.  This time around, I'm going to try hard to silence my brain at the same time I silence my tongue.  That will be a tall order.

Most of the things that anyone would typically do in a silent retreat were very successful in making the "no talking" rule easy to handle.  I took a lot of reading material and spent hours sitting quietly in the sunroom, reading leisurely and snoozing occasionally.  I read a book on leading from within, a couple of novels and I read the Bible.  Even the Good News Bible turned out to be fuel for my over-active brain. 

For instance, I spent hours poring over the wordlist at the back of the scriptures, discovering new words and new meanings: did you know that the term "apostle" may have the sense of "messenger"?  Doesn't that make you think differently about the relationship between Jesus and the disciples?  And what about the months of the Hebrew calendar?  We're in Tishrei right now, autumn, a Babylonian name.  Why did the Jews retain that name from a time when they were in the wilderness? I read a short section reflecting on the spiritual difference between saying, "I believe in God", and "I believe God".  Oh, my busy brain.

This time around, I'm going to try to find the quiet centre and stay there as long as I can.  I'm going to try to move from attempts to distract myself from the silence, to sitting with it and experiencing it as deeply as I can.

I know that sounds weird - it does to me too.  I don't know what to expect, other than it will be a struggle to be quiet in mind, body and soul.  French theologian Blaise Pascal wrote that all men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.

He might be right.  Wish me luck.

Pat

Take This Thought Away With You

" Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority,

it is time to pause and reflect. "

~ Mark Twain ~

DANG IT! A BLISTER

I got a blister on my right heal earlier this week - a location where I am susceptible to friction in my boot.  It built up over a couple days of walking, getting a little bit worse each day until it forced me to take a few days rest.  It's healed up now, but I know that I will have to adopt some corrective measures to keep it from recurring...two pairs of socks ought to do the trick.

I think blisters are illustrations of life's problems in general. 

I'm going along fine, no worries in the world and then, out of nowhere, I get a little twinge that tells me something is not right.  But being me, I tell myself it's nothing and I carry on doing what I was doing - without thinking that perhaps what I am doing is the cause of my discomfort. 

A short time later, the twinge is now a sharp pain and I know that something isn't right; the pain is severe enough to make me limp, to change how I normally act.  But being me, I tell myself, "just go a little bit further, you can work through this, it won't be too bad." 

Eventually, the pain will be bad enough to bring me to a halt and force me to pay attention.  I'll examine the cause of the pain and think to myself, "Wow!  That's a really serious problem; I should have stopped and tended to that earlier.  Boy, was I dumb."

Brought to the point of admitting that I'm hurt and that I need to attend to the injury, I finally start to do what I should have done at the outset: relieve the pressure, let it get some air and dry out, apply some disinfectant and bandage if necessary.  Then change the behaviour that cause the problem in the first place, like wear two pairs of socks.

Lesson from the trail # 6: You can learn a lot from a blister...if you pay attention.  Isn't life always like that?

Pat

Take This Thought Away With You

" Most of the problems in life are because of two reasons:

We act without thinking, or, we keep thinking without acting.  "

~ from the world-wide web ~