Happy Monday of the fourth week of Lent….I started writing this last week – which is not unusual for me.
Sunday’s Gospel from John is where Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at the well. There is much about this encounter that I don’t fully understand, giving me an opportunity to go deeper. While on the app formerly knowns as Twitter a writer I follow shared this poem he wrote that spoke to my heart.
At an one of the first few meetings with my Spiritual Director, he asked me why I am seeking spiritual direction. My answer: to grow in greater intimacy with God. Later came a longing for silence.
As the Deacon proclaimed the Gospel, the word intimate came to mind. John is, as part of the restoration of humanity to our Creator, showing us this sublimely intimate moment with this woman, who is an outsider both to the Jews (tribe of Judah) and Israelites, but also in the community in which she lives. Oh the loneliness and heartache, the desire for friendship and community. The desire for intimacy and belonging in one’s own community. These are good desires.
There are desires that God places in the coeur of our being, intimacy with himself is one of them. Prayer, another. Mourning. A hunger and thirst for righteousness. When I shared the desire for greater intimacy and another longing of my heart my spiritual director said this quite plainly. These desires are gifts, pearls of great price. The response to intimacy on my part is letting the One Who Loves me Completely in, to the places of my heart where I am fearful, discouraged, hurt, angry, ashamed. And more deeply into the places where I am encouraged and encourage others, where I am unabashedly bold, where I am freest, where I am filled with peace and joy. This intimacy God seeks with us, gifts to us, desires for and from us, is a both/and kind of intimacy. It is both the wounded places and the healed places, as a woman, as a human being there is still more to give over to the One Who Loves me and knows me best.
Prayer is one of the most intimate conversations we participate in. In conversation with someone she said, “I want to pray like you, teach me, but don’t make me do it.” As part of my “work” I teach free-motion machine quilting, and prayer, like quilting takes practice. And time. Time and Practice. Practice and Time. This conversation (along with a few others) has prompted me to teach prayer later this year. In order to prepare to teach prayer I need to pray and study. As a wanna be Lay Dominican study is a form of prayer. And so now I study and some of this study comes from unexpected, yet quite delightful, places: the Office of Readings, the poem above, a book written by my spiritual director and the catechism, and experience.
Prayer is sometimes difficult. It is so much easier to scroll through reels on the apps or meet friends for coffee or quilt. Quilting is the work I’m given, yet it can, and sometimes does, take me away from that which is truly important. Quilting is often a prayer for me. So, there’s that. Going to prayer in that difficulty is graced. I do not need to feel anything when I go to prayer. My feelings, while neither good nor bad, do not rule – guide – dictate – how the prayer bears fruit in my life, in how I respond to others, how I respond to myself. Not praying also bears fruit, life becomes cluttered and icky. Prayer is quite beautiful, even when I don’t experience it as such.
When I was little and life was going wackadoodle I prayed and prayed and prayed. While it didn’t seem like it at the time God was hearing the prayer of the broken hearted little one. While the prayer didn’t magically repair all the things that were breaking my heart, I am seeing that it allowed me to allow God into the places of my broken and wounded heart.
Prayer is sometimes so sweet allowing my wounded heart to share with the Father all that is broken, to be held by Him listening to his heartbeat in a steady calming rhythm. Sometimes prayer goes to Elijah’s cave. Sometimes prayer takes me to the most delightful, trusting place of having the Lord take me by the arms and swing me around, my head thrown back in great glee. Sometimes prayer is a deeper conversation with a good friend. Sometimes prayer is a sunset.
Just like sometimes quilting is easy and sometimes quilting is hard. Sometimes quilting comes like breathing. Sometimes quilting is like a papercut.
And this is right now what I’m pondering: intimacy, relationship, prayer, quilting. Sometimes this feels like what is next and yet it’s not what’s next as much as how do I become more fully present to this moment.
Happy Fourth week of Lent – as this is where it’s landed. May it be a fruitful time of ever deepening intimacy with the One who Loves us completely.
God bless,
Teri
A Quilter's Heart 