Sep 26 2008
Morning Meditation: Slanted Light
Reflections submitted by Christine Phoenix-Green
Good morning!….it is crisp this morning with bright cool light slanting through the trees and into the windows…the best! The crickets are still out there, but softer and very close to the ground. Last evening before I went to the meditation group I drove onto the grounds of Our Lady of Peace retreat house…a castle in the woods by the sea, now empty and abandoned, and parked my car up the road past the parking lot so I could see the pond…and to my surprise right there on the grass next to a road was a strong and slender young buck, with a rack of antlers, big ears forward in alert watching me about 6 feet from my car. I rolled down my windows and shut off the engine and we just studied each other intensely for about 20 minutes.
Off to my left near the road was one of the huge ancient beech trees, and a family of squirrels high up on a branch were shaking it vigorously and tossing nuts onto the ground to collect later. Suddenly there was a “squirrel alert” (the rapid clicking and chatter of alarm) and about a yard from my car a red fox loped by chasing a squirrel that JUST made it to the tree and kvetched and swore profusely at the fox once it got up to the safety of a branch. It is not usual to be so close to this gift of the wildness of nature and these awesome grounds of Our Lady of Peace Retreat house are like being in a Robin Hood forest of merry old medieval England. Like a dream. Had I been moving fast and in a hurry, and not in a state of ” silence, stillness, solitude and simplicity” (!) I most likely would have missed this little cameo.
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The A Time Apart-Finding the Stillpoint in a Worldwind Life Retreat
(part of my upcoming Everyday Mystic Series) is a weekend quiet retreat, Oct 31-Nov 2 to be held at the Christian Brothers LaSalle Education and Retreat Center in Narragansett, Rhode Island. Cost is $275 which covers meals, lodging and 5 conferences on the practices of Silence, Stillness, Solitude, and Simplicity and a preparation on Dreams for Saturday nights deep sleep. Registration is very limited.
Please call Christine at (401) 364-9523 for more information, or a descriptive brochure.
Upcoming retreats:
- Parting the Mists: Dreams and Inner Healing in February 2009, and
- Veriditas: A Green Spirituality in May 2009 at the LaSalle Center. Dates: tba. (Bio)
Christine Phoenix-Green
cphoenixrising@earthlink.net
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