Border Crossings

It is just over 3 months since I created my last post entitled "Celebrating Life" following my 60th Birthday.  Now so many around the world are grieving.  Thousands have more than 20,000 have died from COVID 19 and there are nearly half a million cases of coronavirus.  (Interestingly there are over 800 millions people suffering hunger around the world and we have not responded with such urgency to this crisis!  I am also convinced that if as an international community we wanted to avert a climate crisis we have the capacity to do so given the way the world has responded to COVID 19 in recent months- but I digress)   Many, many countries are in lock down with job loses and ecomnic insecurity becoming the lived experience of millions across the world.  I am fortunate to live in a country with a great health system and infrastructure.  Many are suffering much worse than we are in Australia.  None of this could have been anticipated back in ...

Cake by Maria Wakefield, Photography by Julia Montgomery My reflection on the occassion of my 60th Birthday Celebration held on Sunday 15 December in the presence of family and Frineds at Little Bay, NSW, Australia. On my sixth birthday I was given “Now We Are Six” by A A Milne.   If I remember correctly, it was Christina, my older sister, who gave it to me.   I am grateful that Christina and Terry  travelled up form Melbourne to celebrate with us.   The final and title poem in the book, I loved, learnt by heart and still remember it some 54 years later.   Some of you may also remember it: When I was one, I had just begun. When I was two, I was nearly new. When I was three, I was hardly me. When I was four, I was not much more. When I was five, I was just alive. But now I am six, I'm as clever as clever. So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever. For some reason this poem came to mind as I was reflecting on turning 6 again, or rather ...

I await, allow, accept and attend. The Blessings of Fallow Time- 12 Months from the Beginning of Sabbatical. I have recently returned from 14 nights away.  Six nights at St Mary’s Towers Douglas Park where I had a challenging and blessed retreat as part of my immersion in the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius.  I started the Spiritual Exercises in Daily life in January and anticipate it will take me the year to complete this 19 th Annotation of the Exercises.  This was closely followed by 8 nights in Melbourne for meetings, the ANSD (Australian Network for Spiritual Direction) Conference on The Dreaming and Dreams and a Professional Development Workshop on working with dreams.  Such an enriching time. While I was in Melbourne, I became aware that 12 months previously I set out on a 14-week sabbatical for rest, renewal and reorientation, hoping to explore ways of offering Spiritual Accompaniment among the fringes.  Following this rich, simulati...

Image from:  https://www.lifegate.com/app/uploads/kintsugi21.jpg I am part of a 40-minute lunch time “Connect and Reflect” Contemplative Dialogue circle that meets each Thursday lunch time at Pitt St Uniting Church, an inner-city church in Sydney.  We commence with 10 minutes meditation.   Then each person introduces themselves and answers an opening question, on this occasion “where have you recently seen beauty?” Then I placed a photo on the centre table., an example of the Japanese art of Kintsugi whereby a broken piece of pottery is repaired with gold. I posed a series of questions, each person invited to share their response.   No discussion, just intentional, attentive listening and pausing. 1. As you gaze upon the picture what do you notice? 2. What is evoked within you? 3. How does it connect with what is going on in your life at present? 4. We then paused, honouring what has been shared and noticed, what has shifted for us in our time t...

Over recent months, I have been contemplating what does friendship in the margins look like, sound like, feel like, taste like.   Multiple questions arise: Whom am I befriending? With whom am I eating, sharing a cup of tea, keeping company? Who is invited to the table, to the conversation? With whom do I engage, make eye contact with, smile at?   Who is left out by choice or by lack my of awareness? As these questions swirl through my mind, turn in my gut and rest in my heart I have been challenged by the writings of many mystics and prophets, some of which I share below.   Jean Vanier says “I can be generous:  I can volunteer to help someone living in an institution, or I can go into a slum area and listen to the people, or give them money. However, when I am generous, I hold the power. In my generosity, I give good things when I want. The initiative is mine. When I extend my generosity to you, I become superior. The equation changes, however when I bec...