homing

farewell, Holy Hill, home of my heart these past 8 months...thank you for all your love and care and stretching and soul-nurturing and adventuring and faith-exploring and laughter and the growing of gifts and gardens...(and thanks to the sun for shining bright on my last day here!)
who would have guessed when i arrived here in October how things would unfold?  certainly not i.  it was a time of deep personal and spiritual growth, and i'm certain that it has impacted me in ways that i probably don't even know yet, and won't be aware of until i get home.  

yes, home.  after one year and five months (almost to the day!) i am finally returning to the USA.  there are things i'm going to miss incredibly: the simple rhythm of daily life and communal prayer; my role as liturgical musician - and my performance buddy and partner-in-creativity; Saturday night Sabbath vigils and sung compline; the constantly shifting skies; walks on Dunmoran strand; the stunning view of Sligo/Ballisodare Bay, Knoncknarae, Ben Bulben, and the Slieve League; my window seat; pottery lessons with Paddy; spiritual direction sessions with Margaret; music sessions in Tubbercurry with Liam; cooking with Sioga; talking and singing with Travis; eating Barbara's custard w/apple tart; Rev. Allen's booming voice; being addressed as Lady Autumn and "my fair dame" by the estimable and eccentric Brother Thomas; having a whole beautiful library of meaningful books at my disposal; nobody thinking it odd if all you want to do is hole up in your hermitage and be quiet for hours on end; being surrounded by loving and encouraging people who are concerned more about the state of your soul & spirit and inner integrity than anything else...and being offered endless cups of tea.

it's like i've been enfolded in a nurturing womb, and it's been beautiful, but it also feels like the right time to leave.  i needed it, but i've been there long enough and it's time to figure out how to move forward with my life and the other aspects of my calling - it's helped me find my feet and now it's time to use them.  i feel strong enough and eager enough to press "play" and see what happens...i'm exhausted with all of this traveling and dibbling and dabbling of the last 5 years and i'm feeling ready to stop and be settled and create a life for myself.  i don't really know what that means yet, only that hopefully i'll feel less like a "wondering and wandering wind-blown leaf" and more like a little tree sapling...

Swimming the Deeps

sorry for my silence over the past 2 months, but...

I’ve been swimming the deeps

        of soul
with all the mysteries that await
        in the pressing green darkness
Enclosed and caressed
        by the surging current
Drawn down into the swirling murkiness
Reaching out-reaching in-searching
        for  -  the unnameable
                          unknowable
                          who am i how am i why am i
                          who are you
                          what is love what is God what is good
                          ?
 
Shafts of sunlight illumine the life around me
The waters churn-contract-expand
                        and me with them
        insistent in a slow soft-edged way
        demanding something more of me…
 
Yes I’ve been swimming the deeps
        captivating deeps of soul
But I must learn to use my feet again
        come up for air
And breathe into my humanness.


PS - today i took my leave of Holy Hill.  i will write a reflection on this one of these days.

an easter poem

(this poem has been gestating since it was originally conceived in February, and i think today would be an appropriate day to share it!  despite any imperfections that may remain.  critiques are welcome via email...)

lilting through an afternoon sunspell

tripping over myself with joy

i press my hands

against my breast

in fear that my heart

may else come tumbling out

if I let go...

no longer could i call my heart

"mine"...

-is that what it means

 to die of love?

-it would be annihilated

by that ultimate

ever-living

Holy Fire.

-it would disintegrate

into innumerable shining flecks

burrowing into the earth

rising on the song of a sparrow

whirling in the wind

sprinkling stardust wherever it passed

enlivening all it touched

  

and I would be

-resurrected!

but hasn't this happened 

already?

these feeble human hands

in their pathetic embrace of this

fractured human heart

            -which is even now seeping out through every pore in my body!

haven’t a self-preserving chance 

in the presence of this

infinite

ever-loving God.

my anniversary

One year ago, on just such a misty day as this, I stepped off the plane onto Irish soil for the first time and my eyes first encountered the elegant Scots pine, the graceful snowdrop, the fierce gorse bush.

I was filled with such ambition, adventure, expectation...I was approaching my upcoming experiences almost like a research project - I was going to learn darn-dungit!  Learn communication and conflict resolution skills, learn more about my own gifts, interests, spirituality, gathering information to help me with my vocational discernment.

Never would I have imagined that I would still be here a year later - and at a monastery no less!  I did not expect to end up living at Holy Hill for 3 months (much less 7!).  I did not expect to end  up doing such huge spiritual discernment.  I was interested in practical discernment!

And yet, here I am.  Still not knowing where life will take me next, but so much more sure of who I want to be, both apprehensive and excited to see how this journey will unfold...

God is impossible to predict.

risking winter

After what has been (apparently) an unseasonably warm winter in Ireland (especially compared with the previous two years!), and all sorts of exclamations and excited over the first noticeable signs of spring (lambs!, noisy birds!1 blooming snowdrops, crocuses, daffodils!), we have just experienced the three coldest days of the season - the coldest since I left 2 newly fallen feet of snow in Boston a year ago!  It was below freezing in the mornings, and the hard frost left the grass white and crunchy all day long in most places.  The rocks in the courtyard fountain are coated with a thick layer of clear ice.  The skies have been sunny and cloudless.  And the sunrises have been incredible.  Here's the second draft of a poem inspired by the weather:

Risking winter
Our winters do not want
to let us go. 

If the spring comes
before its time
it opens itself,
boldly vulnerable,
to winter's clinging
claws. 

but that is the risk we take
when we let our passionate God
love us into life.

stability

A couple of days before Epiphany, during a conversation in the car in which I was talking about not wanting to leave Holy Hill and feeling like there wasn't anything tugging me back home, the question was posed "why don't you just stay for a few more months?"

So I had a talk with Sister Pat to find out what the thinking was behind her proposal.   She made the point, “why leave if you’re happy and growing and you don’t have any reason to leave?”  Her offer was for me to stay for 3 more months and do some more intentional spiritual formation with the community.  She gave me a week to decide.

When the proposal was made, it immediately resonated with me, but there were plenty of resistances in me, too – not the least of which was the idea of having to tell people that I’d changed my plans!  I was also worried that staying here might just be a form of running away from the decisions I’ll have to make about my future because I don’t feel ready to make them yet...(Previously, whenever I thought about leaving, I would get anxious and upset, not just because I was enjoying Holy Hill so much, but also because I felt like I would be leaping into a void, and I was afraid of that.)  On the flip side, I was also nervous about the possibility of getting bored here or feeling like I’m not accomplishing anything practical.

I’ve been reading a little book on the Rule of Benedict by Esther deWall, and she/he said some things about stability that I feel articulates part of the significance for me of choosing to remain here.  By staying in one place, I am “persevering” with the inner journey I have begun here, rather than continuing “this bewildering and exhausting rushing from one thing to another,” “flitting about collecting a ragbag of well-intentioned but half-though-out ideals based on a confused amalgam of some of the more attractive elements in each.” (not quite what I've been doing, but a good point nonetheless).  As a quote I copied from another book I was reading says, “We have to seize the opportunities that lie at hand...Life must not be the span in which we DO many things but LIVE none of them.”  So I am seizing this opportunity and choosing to live it.  I am “hanging on, not running away [from myself, from commitment], sticking it out in the situation in which God has put me, and in the context of these people.”

I’m choosing 3 months of directed spiritual formation, taking the time to explore my questions about faith and about living a holy/whole life, about monasticism and what it is about it that draws me, and what aspects of the rule of life here I might be able to carry with me into my life elsewhere.  I will have support in my discernment of the next steps, and I will get to spend time choosing/singing/playing music for worship, and in the garden, dreaming up a community permaculture project!   

It’s not that I couldn’t go home and find all of these things there as well, but why leave when it’s all right here in front of me already?  Plus, it feels really good to be staying put for a bit longer, rather than moving on again.  By the time I leave I will have been at Holy Hill for almost 7 months, which is the longest I’ve been anywhere since the 7 months I spent at Agape!

I feel a deep sense of peace and joy at being able to take this time here with this community, and I feel like it's one of the most right decisions I've ever made.

happy holy-days

Dear friends,

This Christmas season finds me remaining at Holy Hill, where I have been since Oct 6, when my parents left from their lovely little tour of Scotland and Ireland with me.  It was quite the wonderful little adventure we had together! -- dashing through the rain, squishing through bogs, sheltering in castles, driving through the mountains (and through herds of cattle or sheep depending on the day), sleeping in lighthouses, riding on ferries, standing in megalithic structures older than the great pyramids, climbing in ruined church towers, comparing scones, mourning for trees, gazing at the ocean, watching the clouds race across the sky, and basking in the sun's rare glow.

As you know if you've been reading my blog, I was ready for some calm, quiet time to reflect on my experiences, rejuvenate my spirit, and consider my future, so I came to Holy Hill, which was offering a 2-month contemplative experience for young adults. 

T.S Eliot's description fits my experience here when he writes,

and what you thought you came for
is only a shell, a husk of meaning
from which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled
if at all.  either you had no purpose
or the purpose is beyond the end you figured
and is altered in fulfillment.
...
you are not here to verify,
instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
or carry report.  you are here to kneel
where prayer has been valid...

(4 Quartets: Little Gidding)

I thought I would be spending most of my time on discernment, trying to decide the next steps to take in this journey that is my life. Of course I was also looking forward to the support of a spiritual community and other young adults in similar situations, but pretty soon those spiritual hungers took over my practical quest and I was fully immersed in the program schedule:
7am morning office, work projects from 1-4pm, group book discussions on Tuesday and Friday from 11-12, silence from 4-5, evening office at 5, dinner on Wednesdays at 6, Friday night movie after communion service, Saturday morning chores from 9-12 and sabbath vigil/compline at 7:30pm followed by silence until Sunday morning. Saturday and/or Sunday afternoons often involved community outings, visiting local sites of historic/cultural/religious significance or going on walks in the woods/on the beach. Sunday brunch was the big feast of the week, when usually all of the retreatants would be present. Mondays were much needed "desert days" of solitude. Plus there were often special things going on during the week: a trip south to visit Ballintubber Abbey, a Celtic Christian ceremony at a Holy Well, a play, a trad session at a pub.

The questions about my future have not been answered, and yet I seem to have made some peace with the idea of simply trying to live in touch with myself and with God and trusting that as I do so, things will unfold...  Advent is all about clearing a place in your heart for God to enter in; trusting the goodness of God enough to let the Spirit take root in your soul and be born into the world through you.

May beauty and grace find you this Christmas season,

autumn

gratitude

so much has happened on so many different levels of life this week, that i can hardly believe that one week could contain so much goodness: pottery with Paddy, singing workshops with Petra, masses with Fr. Bernard, a festive Thanksgiving meal, a music-filled birthday celebration, a beautiful advent service, a mud-filled walk in the bay with Paddy, homemade scones by Barbara, an exhilaratingly windy beach walk with Vincent, some deep email exchanges with friends back home, and two affirming emails from my mother...
on Wednesday i wrote in my journal "i feel like i could be the sunshine on this wet, windy, grey day!"

the overwhelming feeling in my heart this week has been gratitude. 

gratitude, gratitude, gratitude.

gratitude for the beauty of God revealed in creation and music.
gratitude for friends old and new who have enough mutual love and trust to be able to share deeply and honestly and hold each other up in our joys, our sorrows, our challenges, our questions.
gratitude for the community we have formed with our neighbors, for their generosity, hospitality, humor, and wisdom.
gratitude for [Catholic] priests who do radical things and who let us [Protestants] take communion
gratitude for my parents who love me and encourage me to follow my heart
gratitude for my own journey of spiritual growth and the peaceful place i find myself in at the moment
and this week especially: gratitude for Caroline and Alex and their passionate spirits! this is paired with much sadness, too, about the departure of our dear companions on this contemplative journey
- and yet the joy remains.

a not-quite-poem

(upon being requested to write a reflection about action and contemplation...)

over the weekend, i kept being stopped in my tracks at the sight of the way certain leaves would catch the sunlight and seem to glow almost like lightbulbs. sitting in worship on sunday, with the light streaming in through the windows i was, as often happens, filled with such a sense of joy and life and peace and, well, fullness...and i thought, “how do i share that with others?” so i spent the day looking for a metaphor, of something (in nature) that fills with light and then transmits that light to others. it would have been easy enough to use the symbol of water, of a vessel being filled with water until it overflows, but that didn’t seem very original. plus, i was looking for light. the moon also offered itself as an image, but it seemed a rather over-used cliche as well. and not quite appropriate, because the moon itself doesn’t fill with light, it just reflects it...

and then i went to the chapel to pray,
and there was the beautiful crucifix,
and there was the window which,
from my lowly vantage point (the floor)
perfectly framed a bare tree on the hillside and i thought:
     in order to keep living, the tree must
     give up its golden jewels to make space for
     new life. it is the never-ending
     cycle of growth, death, re-birth; of
     resurrection; of
     the spiritual life
through water, soil,
photosynthesis
we are fed, we grow
we are filled with the holy spirit;
and when we come to maturity,
our leaves turn into sparking jewels
     topaz and ruby
     filled with light!
but as we revel in this new-found beauty, we must
     eventually,
     by will or by force,
     let it go
     send it forth
     die to ourselves
     in order to serve the world’s needs
     for replenishment.
and yet through that very act,
we receive back again that very same gift
which after a period of rest, of dormancy, revives us
to begin again.

through prayer, silence, and contemplation, one grows and is filled with the glory of God until it can no longer contain itself, and it spills out into active service for the world, and is restored to fullness and new growth through further reflection and contemplation...

suspended joy

in the woods outside my window 

amber jewels shimmer suspended
in the air

oh the magic of sunlight in autumn!

the trees cling to their 

      beautiful ornaments their
      golden treasures their
      shining
      dying
      treasures

they offer them out to me
      fingers aflame
            see?
            look at what God can do
            !

unable to contain such joy,
the beech tree shakes with delight
and sends showers of glistening
teardrops
onto the waiting
hungry
earth below.

little sailboat

today i am a little sailboat
  (who once upon a time set off
   across the big wide ocean
   her sail full of hopes and dreams and anticipation for
   a soul-full adventure
   into life
   and toward god...)

today i am a little sailboat
adrift.

the air still and heavy
the sail slack for lack of a breeze
and, having run out of fuel to motor my way along,
there is
   nothing
i can do to direct or propel myself onward
  (not that i would know which direction to go
  anyway, given the clouds)

   where am i?
   where am i going?
   how will i ever get there?

the only thing i can do is
wait
and rely on the ocean current to carry me
slowly
along...

(and someday
the wind will pick up again, i know)

the trees are black

(this is the first of two poems that i wrote this past week, not noticing until rereading them later how similar their themes were...must be a lot of waiting and trusting going on inside me right now!)

the trees are black

against a deep dark blue and yet
i know that they are green:
  green-and-brown-and-yellow-and-grey
...i have seen them.

the trees are black.

they stand un-self-consciously
their beautiful half-naked figures silhouetted
by the shining blue
sapphire light of early morning

waiting.
patiently

for the earth to turn (as it always does) towards
the sun; and be illumined
in all their autumnal glory.  and yet -
for now

the trees are black.

(pause)

8 months, 2 incredible and busy internships, and 1 wonderful whirlwind trip with my parents later, it's time to pause.
re-collect myself.
reflect.
integrate my experiences with my understanding of myself, my call, my spirituality.

what better place to do that than at a contemplative monastery?

the place is Holy Hill Hermitage, a Carmelite community in Skreen, Ireland, founded in connection to the Spiritual Life Institute based in Crestone, Colorado.  The four monks (3 sisters, 1 brother) are all from the US.

i am here with 5 other young people taking part in a "young adult contemplative experience."  together, we will be exploring our spirituality, participating in the monastery's rhythm of life and prayer, of community and solitude, through readings, discussions, and time spent outdoors in nature and getting to know the local community.

i don't know yet if my travels abroad are over for the time being, or if my time here will re-invigorate me, but i plan to remain here at least until the end of November.  where i go from here may well have more to do with the balance of my bank account than by any other ambitions for travel and exploration, although "home" (though i have many "homes" to choose from thanks to all of you wonderful people!) is beginning to tug me back in that direction as well...