Stranded on the Mainland: Inner Pilgrimage and Living Alone as a Spiritual Path:

Last night someone helped me to electronically sign an important document on-line, for which I am very grateful. Something the person said about my signature struck me powerfully as I was praying and reflecting this morning. "I can work with this," he said.  He didn't say, I THINK I can work with this? He said I CAN work with this. I imagined God saying those words about me, "I can work with her."   If God has confidence in me, and God is in me, then I can have confidence in me too.   I am a Beloved Signature of God!!!  And so are you! Cb https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inXC_lab-34  

Yesterday I attended my first Tenebrae Service (on zoom).    "The name Tenebrae (Latin for "darkness or "shadows") refers to the ancient monastic night and early morning service, rich with psalms and prayers... with an opportunity to enter into Holy Week through prayer, music, and reflection." (St. Basil's Bulletin).     It was a beautiful Service of Shadows.  Filled with "time" that has that liminal quality it can sometimes have for me (and maybe for you?) of standing still and moving at the same time. Over the years, I have spent a lot of time in monasteries and with religious communities praying the liturgy of the hours and singing ("really uncomfortably!") the psalms.  But last night, at the Tenebrae Service, my inner monk found me!  It was such a gentle, unexpected, remarkable surprise. I take back everything I ever said about technology.     It was the first time I ever truly enjoyed singing and praying the psalms with oth...

Blessings This Palm Sunday!   "Palm Sunday is a Christian moveable feast that falls on the Sunday before Easter.  The feast marks Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem." (wikipedia).  We know what He will face shortly.   In my last blog post I talked about the difficult subject of abortion and loss. I shared the story of my brother having bought me an opal ring as a thank you gift for a trip to Mexico around the same time.  The truth is, I don't think my brother bought the ring-- I think I bought it myself and told myself he did as a way to somehow comfort me later.   I explained how the opal had long since fallen out of it's setting and been lost.   How I replaced the stone this year and now the ring is a symbol of the child I lost.   Tough post yesterday.   So today just a Hafiz poem: A Strange Feather All The craziness, All the plots, All the ghosts and fears, All the grudges and sorrows have Now Passed I must have inhaled A s...

In a recent Faith Sharing group at St. Basil's, I shared about a ring my brother bought me as a thank you gift for a trip to Mexico where we met up with some of our cousins and friends of mine from work. The ring was and still is beautiful-- 14 k gold with an opal in the centre, my birthstone. The word "birth" is not lost on me as I write this blog post today.   Back when my brother bought me the ring I was lost, angry and struggling after having had an abortion.    Now fast forward about 30 years and back to my Faith Sharing group: I continued telling them the story about the ring my brother bought me a long long time ago in Mexico.   I told the group how I still have the ring, but that the opal fell out of the setting years ago. Stay with me:  At the half-way point of Lent this year I had an impulse to retrieve from my jewelry box the ring my brother bought me in Mexico.  Immediately an idea came to me.   I would fix the empty ring that was missing...

Today is the  Vigil of the Solemnity of the Annunciation of the LORD-- a good day to launch a blog called, Stranded on the Mainland . Thank you to my Basilian spiritual director Fr. Morgan Rice for giving me the phrase 'Duc in Altum' (setting out into the deep).   So I start-- in the middle of a pandemic lockdown, on the shore so to speak, ready to dive into the deep--whatever that deep may be. In addition to, and against the advice of, the Ontario College of Social Workers, I'm making the decision not to renew my professional social worker registration this year. I'm giving it up for Lent in order to focus on trauma therapy and to follow the promptings of my heart to be a fulltime writer.   Having been a social worker is a valued part of my outer journey. It's time to lighten my backpack. What dream is God prompting me to let go of in the middle of this pandemic? What dream am I holding onto or neglecting? Who am I following?  Do I feel peace or fear? I think I...