Last weekend I was in Roehampton as part of the team on a vocation discernment retreat. During it I shared a few photos on social media, to tell the story of the retreat, as well as ask for prayers. Here now are the four images, with fuller stories...
There are a couple of huge lavender bushes outside Barat House, currently bursting with flowers and alive with bees. Some years ago, just before our first-ever discernment retreat there we put a little vase of sprigs in each participant's bedroom - and thus a summertime tradition was born! Lavender is renowned for its fragrance and its soothing, healing properties: traditionally, its flowers have represented silence, devotion, purity of intention, grace and calmness - all of which we would certainly wish for our participants, and for ourselves, too.
This was the centrepiece in the room where we met; where we talked, reflected, questioned, shared our lives and ideals. The hands are empty: because they have given? Or because they're waiting to receive? I posted this photo with a request for prayer for open, listening hearts, attentive to whatever God might be whispering...
On Saturday we ended the day with adoration in the Sacred Heart chapel, which some of us had also prayed in, individually, during the weekend. Despite its garish colours and fussiness it is a place of stillness and interiority, whose walls are infused with the prayers of the hundreds of nuns and students who have found God there, and responses to their concerns and petitions, for over 150 years. Their spirits surrounded our small group, along with the spirits of the saints on the altar, whose lives and writings have, over the last two millennia, contributed to devotion to the Sacred Heart. Truly, "a cloud of witnesses..."
On Sunday morning we joined the community at Duchesne House for Mass. These words, on the wall of their entrance hall, are good for all of us, whether we are actively discerning our futures or simply seeking to follow Jesus day by day, hour by hour...
With gratitude to all those who accompanied us last weekend with their prayer, and who continue to hold us all before God.
On Sunday morning we joined the community at Duchesne House for Mass. These words, on the wall of their entrance hall, are good for all of us, whether we are actively discerning our futures or simply seeking to follow Jesus day by day, hour by hour...
With gratitude to all those who accompanied us last weekend with their prayer, and who continue to hold us all before God.
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