The Convent Diaries 21-30
 
 
The Soundtrack!
 
1. Raindrops Keep Falling On My head: Henry Mancini - Greatest Easy Listening Collection
 
2. Life is Sweet: Troubadours of Divine Bliss - Off The Cuff: Live at the Winchester
 
3. Holy Now:Troubadours of Divine Bliss - Off The Cuff: Live at the Winchester
 
4. Peaceable Kingdom:
Patti Smith - Trampin’
 
5. Troubles: Beta Band - Heroes to Zeros
 
 
 
days - thirty-one to forty 14th February 2006, ...a breeze blows the dying heads of the freesias in my window... Where am I today? A better space, lighter, more hopeful. No longer chasing, racing, pacing the floor in search of the door. It is like Rumi said - the door opens from the inside. Through this door, dreams come walking. There is still a part of me afraid to dance with these dreams, afraid to invite them in, but they hover, waiting, and my house is empty, and big. Perhaps today is the day that I throw back the doors, make dresses from the dust covers and dance the whirl-i-gig of hope with my guests... This fractured world needs a new heart. How can I help to grow that heart?... In the distance, a slight strip of silver sea loops around me. My dreams are as limitless as that sea, as limitless as my love I can have dreams again - enjoy this, this single moment of bliss...later, PM - I cried today at the Requiem Mass of a stranger, my heart full of sorrow at my absence from Simon as he grieves. I thought too of my own father, felt a deep sadness at the lack of relationship between he and I, the silence in his deafness that stands between us like a stone, the gulf that feels too wide to cross. Am I afraid to reach to him incase he pushes me away again? yet I know I need to do this, to fill this silence with love. Who am I punishing now by holding back this love? to love, rather than be loved, to console, rather than be consoled. These are my creators on earth and more than this, my own heart will always be broken until I can give my love without fear or anger. It hurts me to hold on... What do I dream? I dream of living in this world as me, filled with the light of love. 20th February 2006, In this place, Love has spoken to me. Physically, I feel tired - but otherwise, how do I feel? Peaceful within, giggling, a sense of laughter pushing outwards, filled with beauty, excited... Only in entering inwards and outward of the self and Self, like the breath, can we stop this leaf-dance...this ‘chasing the wind’... Obedience is to a Rule set by another hand. Discipline is the inner guide that keeps one centred. To live a completely undisciplined life is to live without listening to the soul-voice, intuition - the soul-navigation-system we carry inside. I have lived this way and it left me empty and carrying not peace, but an inner storm. But, to obey another’s rules is to hand over that self-guidance, to live a life externally governed and not free - and any rule is subject to abuse - to blindly follow another without question is reckless... For me to care for myself within this community was my act of participation... Would I have been a better person if I had exhausted myself physically, psychically and not listened to my inner-medic? I would have been obedient to the rule, but not to my soul-guide... My commitment was ultimately to grow into a deeper awareness of my path, my soul-voice and my heart - to hopefully hear again the guide and Love I have heard all my life. I have faced prejudices and demons within, found joys and peace and learnt, through subtle acts of strength and surrender, courage and forgiveness, to listen and trust Love again. Now I wake and go to sleep with a feeling of intense joy radiating from deep within. I feel excited - filled with light-bubbles and wanting to laugh out loud at the brilliance of life. I am Love’s Fool, divinely mad and on a path to who knows where! “You too were for rapture strung”... 16th February 2006 I watched the dawn again... without fanfare or glory, the night rolled itself into day. Even the birds were caught unaware... I fell asleep looking my own face straight on, knowing the pain I carry is what stands in my way... “Leave your fear at my feet” he said, “walk free”. My fear starts to jump up and down, throw water balloons in my face to scare me. It is afraid. “Come, come little child of terror - you can relax. It is time to let go.” All my life I have been bullied, because people have misunderstood me, saw me and felt - what? Uncomfortable?... but to be different from my self caused too much of a split, because my integrity was all I had... It strikes me as I sit here that Jesus was exiled, ridiculed, scoffed at and bullied... in the end, they killed him because they were afraid of his ‘difference’... I sat in the chapel last night and gave to god my past hurts, all the times I have been beaten down, the times I have felt that it is not o.k to be me... and the question came back: “I give you the path of love - do you want it? I answered yes and heard this: “walk the path, it is yours to walk. It may bring exile and ridicule. Walk it with a strong heart and belief. All is well.”. And it is. I know now that losing my child helped me to learn that love cannot be held onto, that to love means also loss - to understand that love is not about love in return. And only when I was ready to let go, did love return to my soul. 23/24th February 2006 “I have no words for this dark mystery; How can I understand or explain the superabundance of riches, the disproportionate love of a heart on fire?” (Jacapone, Laud 61) Reading Jacapone, it strikes me that he is trying to achieve that balance between ‘rapture’ and simplicity - in other words, trying to contain ecstatic, limitless love within the framework of a simple language - this is what I am working to master, for if in poetry we can explain the most complex, the most expansive emotional experience, within a simplicity of words, this “transforms their tongues into arrows that pierce the hearts of others” (Laud 81)... What was Brother Andre said? - never give up writing poetry, because poetry offers us the key to the simplicity of being - through the simplicity of the words it uses to summon up the very spirit of Being. later...5am, last day... O Love - you have shattered me, poured me out like the river to the sea; let me keep flowing.
 
Days One to Ten Days Eleven to Twenty Days Twenty-one to Thirty Days Thirty-one to FortyConvent%20Diaries%201-10.htmlConvent%20Diaries%2011-20.htmlConvent%20Diaries%2021-30.htmlshapeimage_7_link_0shapeimage_7_link_1shapeimage_7_link_2shapeimage_7_link_3