Switch To Silence

Five Christians from the Netherlands fed my body or soul last week. Naomi, our Open Gate former manager, left her family in Utrecht in orser to cater for David Cole's retreatants, helped by her friend Maryke. She gave me two portions of lasagne and endless portions of chocolate banana bread and butter pudding to put in my freezer. It will all be gone by tomorrow!

Mirjam van der Vegt (a novelist) and her friend Margrete (a designer) have launched a company named Switch to Silence. They came to write an article about Holy Island and interview me. They aim to induct over-busy, over-wordy Christians into the senses, sights and sounds of silence. Their web site http://gb.pinterest.com/switchtosilence/ points us to literature, places and poetry that do this. I like this by Wendell Berry:

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

On the same day of their interview, unknown to them, Marc Pranger rang from his bustling Netherlands family home. He has a prophetic ministry. Bishop Tony Palmer, who advises the Pope, suggested that Marc read 'Exploring Celtic Spirituality'. Marc had emailed: 'I have a longing to bring the simple house church together with liturgy, symbols, rituals. It seems that I have to learn more about the Celtic (and converge) church to gain understanding. But at the same time to seek rituals and to start writing thoughts and seek new rituals with meaning, around incense, candles, the cross, the communion. It is not recognition I seek, still I believe that being anointed for this call will be a part of this journey at a certain moment. It is a new and yet old journey for me even though I have written prayers before, also in Twitter format ( https://twitter.com/prayerandwonder).

So we seek to encourage one another.

Posted at 02:59am on 2nd June 2014
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