FEENY WOOD. Retreat. Reflect. Restore.

Over the past two years my husband Bob and I have been responding to an invitation of the heart. When I’m most awake and sense something percolating up into a compelling vision, I interpret it as God saying, Look, look, over here! Given who I am, where I’ve been, and what brings me fully alive, is it any wonder that God’s invitation for change can be particular and specific?

FEENY WOOD is a seed that was planted in my heart through a book — Poustinia, by Catherine Doherty.

Feeny Wood arrived when I noticed and responded to an inkling that niggled and captivated me, then compelled us to leave our family home of 18 years, move to a countryside location, and begin to open our lives more fully for the sake of others.

We are fairly certain that Feeny Wood is a God story.

Here’s what Creator says:
Be alert, be present. I’m about to do something brand-new. It’s bursting out! Don’t you see it? There it is! I’m making a road through the desert, rivers in the badlands.
Isaiah 43:19

Feeny Wood is a contemplative Christian retreat and our home. It is a place of refuge and prayer extending welcome to those in need of rest, reflection, and spiritual refreshment individually and in community.

Feeny Wood has become an unfolding and defining chapter in our lives.

Find out more HERE at our newly launched website.

Since November 2018, we have nestled into our home, built a prayer hut — a modern woodland Bothy — and created a tranquil courtyard garden. Feeny Wood is now open for individuals seeking a half-day or day long retreat. Through a trusted community partner, spiritual direction is available to our guests. You can reserve your time through the website.

Our vision going forward includes creating a woodland sculpture trail and a meadow labyrinth, holding small gatherings focused on living an artful faith-centred life, and publishing a blog series of spiritual meditations. God continues to lead us in the way.

Our first guest spent 5 days on retreat and said,

Everything at Feeny Wood is saturated with beauty and meaning that draws the spirit into restful reflection and renewal. The hosts are the definition of hospitality. I will come back time and time again. Thank you so much for providing this space for me! 

Come on over to our new WEBSITE, subscribe to our email list, and be in the know about upcoming happenings at Feeny Wood.

With deep gratitude to Joel Clements of Brainstorm Studio for capturing our Feeny Wood sensibilities so beautifully in branding and website design.

And for my dear husband, Bob, whose large-hearted YES continues to embolden and sustain me — I’m so grateful for our shared years of adventures.

A hundred thousand welcomes. Céad míle fáilte.

Lesley-Anne

 

NaPoMo poetry party.7

It is with great pleasure that I introduce you to Christine Valters Paintner, who joins us today from Galway, Ireland. Many years ago I read Christine’s book, The Artist’s Rule. Her writing was a refreshing invitation to me to consider how spiritual and artistic practice might be meaningfully interwoven. I read Christine’s book again years later, and the practices continued to be integrated in my life. Then, in 2017, I had the immense privilege of spending a week with Christine at her “Awakening the Creative Spirit” facilitation training in Perth, Scotland. My life is undoubtedly marked by her wisdom, and grace.

Christine is a Benedictine Oblate and an accomplished author, poet, artist, and teacher. Her Abbey of the Arts is an online monastic community offering “pilgrimages, online classes and retreats, reflections, and resources which integrate contemplative practice and creative expression.”

It is wonderful to have you here with us today, Christine.

1. What is your present unique version of life teaching you?
Christine: I am being reminded how much I adore long stretches of time at home in quiet spaciousness and how my own creativity erupts freely in those conditions. 

2. We often say we wish we had more time for certain things. Having been given this gift of more time, what are you spending it on?
Christine: I am writing more poems, but also immersing myself in some other creative projects including a lino block art series for a book on Mary I am writing, collaborating with videographers to create videos for some of my poems, releasing a new album we produced and starting to dream into the next music album already. I am also sitting in silence and listening a lot more.

3. What is one surprising thing that happened today?
Christine: I was standing in the grocery store with a scarf over my face picking out Doritos for my husband and a recording of the voice of our prime minister came over the PA reminding everyone why we were practicing social distancing. I started to weep at the surrealness of the moment, at all the suffering right now, and all the grief in my heart in the midst of trying to carry on the most ordinary tasks.

You can access Christine’s poetry collections here:

Dreaming of Stones
https://abbeyofthearts.com/books/dreaming-of-stones-poems/

The Wisdom of Wild Grace
https://abbeyofthearts.com/books/the-wisdom-of-wild-grace-poems/

I appreciate the poem you have offered us because it recognizes a world of darkness and of light, and the need to hold space for humanity in the tension of these realities. To me this is the contemplative call, and one I believe you answer richly.

May the road rise to meet you, my friend,
Lesley-Anne

p.s. and this, the sound of your voice, blessing all of us.

 

In a Dark Time

Do not rush to make meaning.
When you smile and say what purpose
this all serves, you deny grief
a room inside you,
you turn from thousands who cross
into the Great Night alone,
from mourners aching to press
one last time against the warm
flesh of their beloved,
from the wailing that echoes
in the empty room.

When you proclaim who caused this,
I say pause, rest in the dark silence
first before you contort your words
to fill the hollowed out cave,
remember the soil will one day
receive you back too.
Sit where sense has vanished,
control has slipped away,
with futures unraveled,
where every drink tastes bitter
despite our thirst.

When you wish to give a name
to that which haunts us,
you refuse to sit
with the woman who walks
the hospital hallway, hears
the beeping stop again and again,
with the man perched on a bridge
over the rushing river.
Do not let your handful of light
sting the eyes of those
who have bathed in darkness.

—Christine Valters Paintner

 

Walk in the near wild

The book said take a walk in nature, centred, open, considering, look and see what is the divine grace in that wild place.

The middle of a dull warm snap here and snow is melting mush so I went to the most clear pathway I could find that winds through a small marsh not far from my home. The gates were locked to cars. The pathway was clear of snow. I began to walk and look. Asking what does this mean? Asking what does this mean for me?

I saw Osprey’s nest, high on the sport’s field flood lights. A platform built for her safety, I suppose, but not quiet and away, close in and loud in seasons of stiff competition on the pitch, and I wondered why wildness might choose this tamed space…

I saw a Mallard pair, in a ditch of melted runoff, making their way carefully through a fallen tree’s gauntlet of downed branches. Where there appeared to be no way through, they find space enough and carry on down the waterway…

I saw what used to be 18 holes of mini golf, now stockpiled here and there with junk and overgrown with weeds and small shrubs and the sound of birds who forage and find shelter in the convergence of cast away and redemptive things…

I was frustrated somewhat by 2 large dump trucks, the sound of their revving engines, the road adjacent to my cleared walkway where they worked with loads of soil, beeping, passing too close. My ideal vs reality, finding a simple path in the midst of complexity, messiness, noise, real life. Both, and…

The air was warm. A sense of being apart, yet part of something. I breathed in the fresh air, stretched my underworked muscles, said hello to a couple of humans and their dog who walked by. I kept looking all the way back to my car. I kept asking…

What is language? What is this craving for our experience to mean something that then requires articulation? What if it is only for us? What if it does not require mere words?

A walk in the near wild…nearer to…

I’m not one to pray out loud

That hasn’t changed for me ever in my life, and sure I could say the same thing about how I feel when I have to speak in a group about anything, but praying out loud is somehow heavier. So what happened today may be God doing what he always does, or God doing specifically what he had in mind when I prayed what I prayed, or God doing what he was going to do aside from anything I prayed. I wonder?

There’s more to it… I struggle with the repetitious nature of group prayers, the competitive feel of it sometimes, the limited vocab we use, the way I believe God might find what I say trite or redundant given he already knows everything there is to know. Still there is mystery in prayer, and I have been reading a book lately that points to a way of being with prayer that is quite attractive to me…to live my life as a prayer…everything matters…everything counts…when my heart is in a posture of reverence and gratitude before the Father. These days I am leaning more into a contemplative way of being in prayer. It’s a learned way. It’s a way I want to learn more about.

But prayer can also be specific, and at a given time, alone or in groups. And as the various members of our group prayed around the circle today I wondered, what on earth can I offer with integrity?

All I know is this…sometime between 2:15 and 2:45 pm today I prayed a short prayer out loud in a group setting. Very short. Pretty much these words;

God, we have so many needs here. And you are a God with lots of connections. Could you please send people to help us?

And when I was done praying I began to do what I always do…self analysis, critical dissection of my choice of words and how odd and how silly and really, couldn’t I have said something a little more eloquent than that? Condemnation…yes!

Fast forward 30 min to when a member of our community joined our meeting with a huge  smile, and we soon found out why. In another meeting that kept them late from ours, a meeting where our representative often feels unheard; today tangible and wide support was offered up to us in ways that left our representative dumbstruck. A shift occurred this afternoon. Between 2:15 and 2:45 pm.

Coincidence? Reading something into nothing? Or, could a short prayer offered up in earnestness count for something in the spirit world that changes something in the real world?

I wonder…

Someone at the meeting said maybe I should pray out loud more often… :) I’m not convinced yet.

 

Welcome, love and fear

Every human being is motivated by either love or fear, he said, in every  action ever taken. I contemplated his statement, wondering how true it really was for me. Just as I held each statement this wise counselor spoke, and everything I said as well, weighing out my authenticity, the truth of my disclosures. Was I creating something more, or simply telling my story?

So, he asked, when is the last time you were able to say I trust you with my life, my love, my everything? I don’t know, I said. Maybe never. There is no right or wrong answer, he said, it’s just what you know is true in your life experience. How could this be, I thought, have I never fully trusted, have I never felt freedom in love? My mind jumped back 30 years, then more recently, then to last week, and the reason for seeking counsel in the first place. My lack of trust, and my longing to belong, and what did it all mean?

The conversation continued to how mistrust of others and a possible deeper underlying fear of rejection can result in missing out on the beautiful potential of enjoying the fullness of loving community. Fear of rejection leads to withdrawal and isolation, and the vicious self perpetuating circle of fear, mistrust, and withdrawal from relationships continues. Allowing myself to fully engage in loving community could break down my walls, crack open my heart, and trust and belonging would grow. But fear of rejection is undermining what I desire. I wonder, is this true of me? Really? I want to argue it. I want to ignore it. I want to call it psycho babble.

Today I experienced how my view of life impacts not only me but my family. And I felt a little sick to my stomach as I considered the truth; my fears are rippling out into their lives. So maybe identifying the core issue and making room for a new reality is the way forward? Rather than denial or avoidance, to welcome all in, in a new way, following some recent teaching at SoulStream, Living From the Heart. I have been learning a posture of opening to the difficult and painful things in me that need the touch of Jesus. It is called Welcoming Prayer. I feel it may be the way…in this quiet welcoming way of the heart. And so I say…

Hello fear, welcome. Hello mistrust, welcome. Hello self protection, welcome. Hello rejection, welcome. Hello disappointment, welcome. Hello hunger for love, welcome. Hello. You are welcome here. You too are loved.

The good book tells me Jesus was despised and rejected of men. Jesus was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Who better to understand what I do not yet, than the one who knows me and these newly defined feelings, from his firsthand experience. Who best to be with me as I welcome all those things that make me much afraid…

Jesus, what would you say to me in the presence of all my fears and feelings that we have welcomed here together? What would you say to my heart? I’m asking…

Come to me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Come, my beloved. Bring your love and your fear to me. All is welcome here. Come and rest in me. Just come. Let us consider these things together.