Coracle news

Retreat: 15th January 2011, Pencaitland

Posted Thursday 20 January 2011

Together and alone, stilled

We gathered for stillness, for musing on images (Odilon Redon’s The mystical boat) and scriptures, story (Irish pilgrim monks on peregrinatio*) and poem, together and alone. We munched and discussed, walked and prayed, and ended with a warm and composed candlelit liturgy. The thread was the theme of the phases of faith, pondering both the analogies that seem to be around (bridge, chrysalis, landscapes) and the images and terms (shipwreck, desert) used to describe the inherent transitions.

Pleased to be carried

Just picking one image from the day, that captures some of the journey of faith; its threefold clumsiness, challenge and delight. Rilke observed the swan, its ungainly walk when on dry land. He likened it to our clumsy and awkward living. When it ‘nervously lets itself down, the water gladly receives it, and the swan is now all effortless and joyful. Letting ourselves down into the particular grace that is ours, a sense of belonging or calling, a natural ease envelops us and we grow. Do I know where grace is for me, in my own life, and am I moving towards it?

The Swan, Rainer Maria Rilke

This clumsy living that moves lumbering as if in ropes through what is not done reminds us of the awkward way the swan walks. And to die, which is a letting go of the ground we stand on and cling to every day, is like the swan when he nervously lets himself down into the water, which receives him gaily and which flows joyfully under and after him, wave after wave. while the swan, unmoving and marvelously calm, is pleased to be carried, each minute more fully grown, more like a king, composed, farther and farther on. - translated by Robert Bly

Materials used

Joann Wolski Conn's restatement of James Fowlers' seminal work on stages of faith Alan Jamieson's Off-road faith Analogies of faith phases and transitions Perigrinatio and Wendy Beckett on being taken where He chooses Rilke and the Swan, plus scriptures * an alternate take on pilgrimmage