Tuesday, 16 September 2008

"To Me...To Me..."

Recently in the madness that has been the last month during Spiritual Direction I had one of those moments where you are seemingly transported beyond yourself.

Towards the end of our session I was encouraged in prayer to open myself up to what I wanted to say to God and indeed what God wanted to say to me. Two things came through, the first was a yearning whereby I had a real sense of God missing me. It blew my mind that God could miss me!

It has left me with a sense of how it is I hold God at bay as I go about my daily life, and left me asking what it is I place between God. This is of course something that I am going to have to unfold more, however it was a gentle reminder of how easily I turn off from the reality of God being ever present.

Then as we were sitting there in silence I had the oddest vision.

There were no kittens, puppies, harps or clouds. Instead I was on a battle field surrounded by a thin mist. All around me were the sounds of swords clashing and fighting, of horses screaming and people dying. Underneath all this madness I was aware of the constant smell of death.

It seemed as if I were all over the battlefield.

At one moment fighting here, at another over on another front fighting there, carrying water here, dragging bodies there, always though I was in this battle against an enemy in the smoke and fog. In this battle I had many roles and many views, I was exhausted and alone, unable to see those who fought with me.

Then through it all there came a cry that cut across all other sounds.
It was the commander shouting out “To Me, To Me!”
Suddenly there was a focus and a call greater than the call to rise up the sword once more. It was as if all of the me’s (remember I was in many places) heard the call simultaneously fell back to that call “To me”.
When I/we did this we found ourselves outside a tent surrounded with smoke.

Although it ended here the sense was, that now it would be okay the Commander may send the now me singular out again, but we would not be alone he would be with us. We would not be scattered, we would know where and who we were, and indeed why, we had direction.

Although I have had such moments before, they have never been so military based. Although this surprised me it was at the same time right.
That evening as I sat in the installation service the reading came of a tent in the wilderness over which the spirit rested. I sat there with my jaw dropped to the floor.

Monday, 15 September 2008

Lifting Women’s Voices in Prayer - Calling Women Prayer Writers

Hi folks
this came across my desk the other day and seeming extremely worthwhile to those of a female creative spiritual bent , I have placed it here.

Lifting Women’s Voices: Changing the world through prayer is part of a grass-roots effort to unite Anglican women from all corners of the globe in prayer. A group is working to compile a new collection of prayers by women from throughout the Anglican Communion. They are inviting Anglican women to help create this prayer collection!

All interested Anglican women are invited to craft and submit a short prayer for publication. The final submission date for prayers is 15th Oct 2008. Prayer texts can be e-mailed to
prayers@cpg.org or Rebecca Hills at rebecca@scm-canterburypress.co.uk.

Lifting Women’s Voices: Changing the world through prayer will be published in the late spring of 2009. All royalties from this project will go directly to the International Anglican Women’s Network and the Episcopal Relief and Development fund.

The aim of the 'Lifting Women's Voices' apart from creating a resource is to reveal how Anglican women worldwide are deeply connected by global issues, even across cultural and economic divides—and affirm that nurturing womens inner lives of prayer, offers all the courage to care and advocate not just for ourselves, but for sisters everywhere. This collection of original prayers from the worldwide Anglican Communion makes connections between women’s personal lives today and global concerns of women. They show the connections between a woman’s prayers for her child in the West and the plight of child labour in the third world.

The extraordinary process of prayer gathering has already facilitated the sharing of stories and concerns of women from all over the world and we would very much like you to be part of this process by sharing the news of our project and getting women from your diocese involved.

The book will feature a foreword by the US Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, and the editorial board includes, among others, our own Jenny Te Paa.




In Search of a Theologically Juicy Human Experience

Today I am trying to get my head around bringing together the latest edition of the Ministry Times (I will post the link later). And what I am noticing reading through the content here is something lacking.

There are some interesting pieces which so far look like this:
*Ordained a Servant for Christ’s Sake – + Victoria Matthews
*Ordained a Priest - A Study Reflecting On Ordained Priesthood
*Supervision Pieces
*Pakeha Identity -Naming and Framing it for Anglicans in Aotearoa
*Training in Supervision

But I am missing something this time and I am not sure if it is the human nature piece or that I am looking for something really theologically juicy.

Of course this raises another question for me which is: Is my dissatisfaction with the content anything to do with the magazine or is it me who is wanting a human nature experience or indeed something theologically juicy … or in fact a theologically juicy human experience?

Such are the wonderings at this stage of the game.
Blessings
Megin the wind