This week was really interesting.
The group were doing guided meditation (a dangerous thing in the eyes of the Orthodox Church, and for jolly good reasons), and the one woman who was desperately seeking God, and was just as equally terrified of Him, "heard " Jesus say to her "Get up, little girl".
This really shook her, but after the meditation was the start of Great Silence so she didn`t get chance to discuss it with her spiritual mentor.
The early services next morning showed the Gospel reading at Mass, which described Jesus saying to the girl whom everyone believed to have died, "Talitha Cumi", and this poor woman was nearly prostrate with fear at the coincidence.
It literally reduced her to tears and fear, that Jesus had spoken to her in the quiet of her heart, then repeated His message in the Gospel reading at Mass.
Her mentor was very reassuring to her, explaining that sometimes God does do some quite interesting things to get our attention and to show his love for us. She did feel better, but felt unable to receive a blessing at Mass subsequently, saying she felt too unworthy to approach whilst the priest held the Body of Christ.
Her nun-mentor said most emphatically that it was precisely because of our unworthiness that we all need to approach to receive healing and blessing in order to survive and to grow.
The woman living in a menage a trois heard that her "friend`s" father had died suddenly, and she was anguishing over whether to go to the funeral. She decided not to, but after much thought asked the Abbess if she could have a "weekend pass" to meet up with the two men.
She commented that the complete selflessness of the nuns had made her realise how selfish and demanding she was in her marriage, and the expectation that her husband would put up with the other man because she "needed" to live like that. She said she wanted to talk to her husband about how he felt and what he needed and wanted, and that she felt she was likely to hear things that she was afraid to hear.
The high achiever business woman said that she felt afraid to think about what life was going to be like outside the convent, as did the previous woman.
They all seem to have felt very very secure in the Enclosure, with the example of Iona, the young evangelical who was really struggling with the seven services each day and found them regimenting and limiting her freedom of expression.
All I could think was that it was a good thing she wasn`t in an Orthodox Convent, LOL. In this Convent they had a nun doing liturgical dance, which seemed a pretty free-form mode of worship to me :-)
Looking forward to next week....
BTW Ian, have you tried logging into the site using a "global" email address like a Goggle account to see if that makes any difference ? I can send you an invite for a Google email account if you want !
1 comment:
What is "guided meditation"?
Thank you for the offer Elizabeth, but it bases its descision via the browser, not an e-mail: it can tell my ISP is in Australia and doesn't let me through.
Ah well: your descriptions are just as wonderful as I imagine the programme to be. Thank you greatly.
I heard back from our BBC-equivalent, and The Monastery will be shown 'soon'. Hopefully The Convent will follow: though we are producing our our version of it also -- I'll blog about that when it comes on.
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