Listening to Fr Mike’s Homily the title for something else came to mind. Giver, Gift, Gifting will become a series based on Pope St. John Paul II’s On the Dignity and Vocation of Woman. Yeah I know I’ve been talking about this forever. Sometimes it’s all about the right time, place, and specific focus I may start to work on the proposal to submit to my pastor this afternoon in a coworking session with a friend. As I listened to Fr Mike’s homily my own thoughts bubble and whirl up to the surface alternating with, “this is so good” and “whoa!”
As I listened further to this Homily I got to thinking about our last formation weekend until September, this silent retreat that started so well, until that is I ran into myself like a ginormous ocean wave crashing on the rock that is both startling in intensity and exquisitely powerful. Ooooh How I love how threads come together!
Hang on I’ll be right back to that thought. In a recent mail delivery I received an unexpected package from a friend. Now I love packages however I was a little confused, there was no note explaining, the why of this beautiful gift of red thread, red glitter thread, red silk thread, red cotton thread and red polyester thread. And it’s not just any red, it’s a red I can wear, so if you know me it’s on the bluish side of red, a delightful autumnal color. Squeee. This will delightfully complement all the newly acquired purple thread for this quilt I’ve had in mind for a while.
Silence. There are different types of silence
the calm before a storm
when there is no noise/sound
the quiet of a heart in tune with God
the quiet of a mind at rest
that first deep big snow
On the silent retreat there was a moment where I realize now that going out of my room to the Chapel, for a walk, or to the Lodge would have given me the space to break the overthinking brain at work, to give my thoughts a chance to do some passive, rather than active thinking. Taking the time to walk out of the room and go someplace else would have allowed me to reenter the quiet of heart I’d had all day. That place of Communion, the Freedom to Listen for the voice of God in the midst of the thoughts crashing against the rock. It is not lost on me the irony of both what I sought in that moment and the Scripture reading from John where Mary Magdalene is at the tomb that Resurrection Morning.
Jesus asks Mary Magdalene why are you weeping? And as I started thinking about this, thinking about how do I answer this question, the thoughts went to how intimate a moment this was and “why is she clinging to His Feet” and “what does that even mean?” You see I’d always imagined this moment with our Lord holding Mary in His arms, embracing her. Why would she be on the ground like that? Oh yeah, this is God and in all likelihood I’d have had to excuse myself for a bio break, urgently, post haste. She asks a question and she gets an answer in hearing her name Mary knows. She is also given a mission in this moment,
Jesus said to her, “Stop holding on to me,* for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.
From the USCCB website:
[20:17] Stop holding on to me: see Mt 28:9, where the women take hold of his feet. I have not yet ascended: for John and many of the New Testament writers, the ascension in the theological sense of going to the Father to be glorified took place with the resurrection as one action. This scene in John dramatizes such an understanding, for by Easter night Jesus is glorified and can give the Spirit. Therefore his ascension takes place immediately after he has talked to Mary. In such a view, the ascension after forty days described in Acts 1:1–11 would be simply a termination of earthly appearances or, perhaps better, an introduction to the conferral of the Spirit upon the early church, modeled on Elisha’s being able to have a (double) share in the spirit of Elijah if he saw him being taken up (same verb as ascending) into heaven (2 Kgs 2:9–12). To my Father and your Father, to my God and your God: this echoes Ru 1:16: “Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” The Father of Jesus will now become the Father of the disciples because, once ascended, Jesus can give them the Spirit that comes from the Father and they can be reborn as God’s children (Jn 3:5). That is why he calls them my brothers.
There is such richness and depth here it is easy to see how my thoughts started crashing against my heart, making me think that I wasn’t understanding. (I probably need to ponder this more at some other time.) A few days later I stopped to read this passage again and begin to answer the question Jesus asks, “Woman, why are you weeping?” In this I began to hear, “Blessed are they who mourn,” for indeed they are. This is when the journaling opened up, where I was no longer annoyed with myself for not reaching out to my spiritual director for the day. Because that happened too, I got so annoyed with myself at one moment that permitted the waves to continue crashing up against the quiet of my heart.
One of the things I discovered was the thing I’ve wanted for a long time, intimacy with God, is something available to me quite easily. The effort on my part is minimal. I can come to the silence of my heart to listen to the Holy Spirit at any time. Some days it’ll feel as though I’m making some kind of massive effort, and some days it’ll feel like breathing on a cool spring morning by the ocean, with the waves gently lapping against the shore.
The calm after the storm has arrived. Now onto the summer reading for both spiritual direction and personal.
God bless,
Teri
A Quilter's Heart 