This week we will reflect on one more of the images from Sacred Spaces by Margaret Silf, Groves and Springs. She uses the image of the spring as a symbol of something that rises up, giving pure water without our effort, watering the growth of the surrounding trees, which form sheltering groves around the source of the spring. She asks us to pause here and draw deeply on the hospitality these blessed circles offer us.
- Whilst we pause, Margaret asks us to reflect on our life journey. Have there been desert times and places? What has sustained you? Perhaps it was the encouragement of particular people or by a particular community or circle to which you belong. She asks us to notice and celebrate that circle thankfully and to contemplate how it might become even more open and welcoming, and oasis for others. In doing this, Margaret suggests we express a fragment of Christ’s nature to others passing through, and that they express their own fragments of Him to us.
- Consider a scriptural story of quite amazing hospitality and encouragement in Luke’s Gospel, chapter 24. Two weary and disappointed travellers on the road to Emmaus, Jesus was dead and their hopes and dreams buried along with him. A stranger joins them, listens to their story, and tells them in a fresh and vivid way their story which would take them beyond their own compulsions and power struggles to something beyond themselves. They shared a communion meal with the stranger, which changed their way of seeing things. God passed through their immediate experience and transformed it.
As you prepare to relax in body and mind, to slow your breathing, and enter your meditation, let yourself become aware of your times of genuine communion and companionship, particularly during this difficult time of isolation. We come together, though we are apart, as sacred groves of friendship…one in the mystery embodied in the eternal spring.
Love and every blessing
Kathryn
Sacred Spaces – Stations on a Celtic Way – Chpt 5 – Groves and Springs, p 108 – 133.
