Healing The Past, Living The Present, Hoping The Future

Maranatha Retreat House – Healing the past, living the present, hoping the future. Fr.Geoffrey Monty SJ and Judith . Friday 5 to Sunday 7 June 2009 Friday 5 June 2009 20:00-21:00 Session 1 Introduction meeting. Judith . Welcome to Maranatha silent retreat. We will create spaces for you to speak. Other time to speak is during the mass. About half of you have been here before. Ambience. You might be serenaded by frogs and insects. Instead of fighting the sounds enjoy the sounds. Resistance will irritate even more. Monty’s fourth year. He brings his own deep experiences and insights. Many books. Started training for 31 spiritual companions in Kuala Lumpur. 08:14 Monty. I am unable to help with marital experiences. We have our own heels. I have a long experience of walking with people who have struggled with life. Silence. Malaysians love to talk. We plea on bended knee for silence. When we speak to God we chatter away. At the end we pause “Have I left out anything?” We don’t give God any time to say anything to us. Silence is a chance for God to speak to us. You will be surprised what a chatterbox God is if you give God a chance. So give God a chance. At 8:45 we shall take leave to pray. Tomorrow there is breakfast. 9am six halfhour inputs.To make you spend time with the one who Loves you. God is waiting there with the candles, perfume, in the honeymoon suite. Tonight, just sit in the presence wherever you find God. Just sit there and let God enjoy you, look at you. I discovered on past retreats that some people can’t stand people looking at them. Some people can’t stand God looking at them. They think that God sees nothing but warts. Allow yourself to be looked at by God. Look back at God that way. Monty: I was babysitting my Godsons. “Got to go to the bathroom.” Father took son to sit on WC. It struck me that this was a perfect image of how God looks at us. God doesn’t look at us with embarrassment or shame. God looks at us with interest. God is interested in us, in everything in us. Look at God and let God look back at you. Breathe in God, breathe out God. Allow yourself to be surrounded by Love. We are surrounded by Love. We aren’t aware of it because we are so busy. Second suggestion. Think of the good things in your life that has happened to you. Often we are only aware of the past hurts, past destructions. A dreadful thing happens to us. We forget all the good things that have happened to us. We should sit and remember the good things that have happened to us. The Good in your life has brought you to this place. Has deepened your sense of. Ask God to show you the good things in your life. Often we can’t see the good things in our life. South America. Growing up, I thought my life was completely utterly awful. Suddenly came to me all the good things my father did for me. I took this for granted. South America. Bright one in the family. Look after the rest of the family. One scholarship was to London to study chemical engineering. I cancelled scholarship and told him couple weeks after. I want to be a priest. My father didn’t scream and rave. He kept quiet a couple of days. My mother kept silent for 3 years. That is a gift. My father put his hopes for family on me. He accepted this was my path. The gift my father gave me was my freedom. He allowed me to be whatever I wanted. God treats us in the same way. Ask God to show you the gifts in your life. Sit with them. This is not a laundry list. When you sit with gifts you can open them. When you open a gift, it opens

you. Suddenly you realize there has been a whole pattern of love given in many different ways. Suddenly aware of all the love poured into your life. What could that do to you now? 3 things. Become less anxious, because you have been looked after in a certain way. Fills your life with a sense of gratitude. Today my broken spectacles were repaired by a stranger who wouldn’t accept payment. God sends people in your path who look after you. Sit and ask God to show us the things in our past. The people who have given us Life, even tiny bits, and just acknowledge them. We discover our hearts become more open. There are some things in our life, at the time they were happening were painful. If is only years later we look back and realize that those things that were awful were actually liberating for us. Those moments in our life are Covenant moments. Passover moments. Think of those moments in your life when you were trapped. And you were liberated. All of us have those moments. We are looking at how God actually operates in our life. And not in terms of what scripture or theologians say. Our own lives as sacred scripture. Sit in the Love. It will transform you into becoming more graceful, loving, than anything in your life. One way is to remember the good things in your life. Celebrating the good things in your life by remembering them. Most Catholics celebrate the Eucharist. Celebration of the Eucharist is a Remembrance of goodness, love and sacrifice. We remember that we are loved. Sit here tonight tomorrow not only remembering we are loved but acknowledging that Love. Think of the huge lie we are telling ourselves. God knows us better than we know ourselves. God knows loves, desires and cherishes us. We are unfinished business. God hasn’t finished creating us. We are still being created. The past is not finished. Sometimes the past can be transformed. Sit with the gift of what has been good in your life. Celebrating fruits. Tonight, find a quiet space, sit with the gift, open it and enjoy it. Celebrate it by enjoying it. I don’t like durian. I am curious to see why people like eating durian. Durian lovers eating durian display a primitive look of enjoyment on their face, which fills me with horror. One day we will do retreats where we eat fruits in silence. Durians in that corner, mangoes in this corner. Silence, except for “grunts of satisfaction”. People think that retreats are heavy and serious. They are not. They are very simple. Prayer for each other. Sometimes when we can’t carry ourselves, others pray for us. Saturday 6 June 2008 09:00 to 09:30 Session 2. Agong’s Birthday. Monty: Spiritual Direction. You can talk of anything you want. Confidential. Counselling Difference between Therapy and Spiritual Direction. I can’t do therapy. Therapy e.g. Cat habit of marking territory; depression, abusive family, desire to have control, reaction from people; causes of unhappiness. Spiritual direction is different. When you want to develop a relationship with God. I have difficulties with prayer, with the presence of God in my Life. Trapped by peculiar image of God. Spiritual direction isn’t a question of techniques. Spiritual Direction is a gift to some. Everyone has a different approach. My approach is, being empty. To listen what God has to say. Being a Postman. In retreats, we discover our connections to ourselves, to God and to each other. Paul: We are the Body of Christ, walking together. Abraham “Being Obedient to God’s Call.” (Chapter 2, MCS-7).

When we go on a spiritual journey, we enter into new spaces, we encounter ourselves in different ways. Last night you revisited those moments in your past that make you joyful. Very necessary to remember those things. That is why we have festivals, birthdays. If you have things in your past which are not pleasant you need to balance with things that are pleasant. Book of Genesis finishes with story of Joseph, last son, spoilt brat. Falls from position of favourite to becoming a slave. And works himself up to be favourite of steward. He is imprisoned again. Explains dreams to two. One rescued. Interprets King’s dreams. He rescues his brothers from famine. Joseph’s life contains several cycles of Ups and downs in his life, just as in ours. Our understanding of our past is never finished. When we think we know our past now, we don’t know our past. What we know is our present understanding of our past. Aspects of our past that still cause us pain. We do not understand why they happened. Today what I like to do is spend some time, praying about those aspects of our past that do not fill us with gratitude, joy, that make us feel insecure, unhappy. Go back to past in a particular way. Have a sense of being held by God. Ask God why did ‘X’ happen to me. Notice. Asking God to tell the story of what is happening to me. Luke Emmaus. Disciples had a particular understanding of past events. Interpreted in terms of achieving a master race. Going home with their unredeemed histories. Meet strange man. Starts telling them their story in a different way. Their hearts burned. Only when they come alive do they see who they are walking with. Just sit and ask God to tell you the story of your life as God sees it. The nature of God’s Love is to go to the damaged and broken parts of your life. If someone says “I’m hurting” it is natural for us to say “How can I help them”. Jesus desired that each of us be loving and free to enjoy the world. When there are things in our life that do not cause us delight, we ‘suck it up and move on’ but if we keep sucking up poisons we become poisoned. You can always tell joyful people because they make you joyful. Being joyful doesn’t mean that you don’t have problems. Even Jesus had problems. I sometimes ask people to pray about Jesus’ unredeemed history. The pain in that man’s life. I wonder what he thinks about all those children who were killed by Herod. Does he have survivor guilt? The past that sometimes traps us is not of our making, it is the past we were born into. The past of Jesus was filled with corruption and destruction. Religious authorities of Jesus’ day were not nice men, they were filled with power hunger. Sometimes the way we were trapped by the past… we would claim, “if only we had a perfect history things would be perfect”…our witness in this life is to life simply joyfully, in the realization that we are loved. Monty: My adolescent love Anne. Told her my deep dark secrets, I thought these would be viewed with horror but she just laughed and laughed. When you are in love, your lover doesn’t look at your deep dark secrets, they love you unconditionally. We shouldn’t think of God as being horrified by our past dark secrets. It is very important that we learn to forgive ourselves. What does it mean to forgive yourself? In South America, hate carries on for generations. As children our parents’ families didn’t speak to each other and as a result we children didn’t speak to parents. I am concerned that community must build bridges because feelings carry on. Unredeemed parts of our life are parts that aren’t in community. We are looking for an integration. We can’t do it for ourselves. Only God can. First step in learning forgiveness is learning to hand over brokenness to God. Jesus on Cross can’t forgive those who crucified him. He hands over his anger to Father. He asks Father to forgive them. It is Father who brings Jesus to resurrection. Jesus does

not resurrect himself. Resurrection is different from coming back alive. When we are forgiven we discover not old life but new and transformed life. It changes the way we look at ourselves. When Jesus is resurrected his enemies do not recognize him, his friends recognize him. When we pray for forgiveness we are given the grace to see ourselves in a different way, and the grace to see other people in a different way. Please don’t think we know what forgiveness is. When you are in prison all you know is what it is to be trapped, not what it is to be free. When prisoners are released, they do freedom things (smoke, drink, sex) and after a while they realize they cannot do the same thing over and over so they commit crimes to get back in. Freedom is the ability to do things responsibly in God’s direction. Sit, breathe in the love, ask to go to the broken places of your life. Breathe it out to those places in your life. Sit in Love. 09:27 Discussion Sometimes we can’t go to difficult areas. Monty: We offer those areas to God. [Ignatius Huan: The hour is not of your choosing]. When we grieve we hold on to those areas and they trap us. No use going into those areas because we remain trapped. All we do is ask the Father to go into those areas. One of the interesting things about Jesus is that he goes ahead of us before we can go. Inviting Jesus to go before us, into those areas where we can’t go. You don’t have to go yourself, ask the Father. There is a dreadful temptation that says we have to go into those areas yourself. We don’t. Do the little things first, rather than the big things. I didn’t have particularly good time in my school. School was big and ugly. Years later I went back I discovered how small everything was. If I hadn’t gone back I would not have had the chance to change that broken image.My father’s brother. Became old man in a wheelchair. He couldn’t have children. When we forgive we see people as they are. We see ourselves as we are. Sometimes best left alone. Just wonder if that is the right approach. Monty: If God wants you to deal with it let Him tell you how to deal with it. Don’t terrorise yourself. Saturday 6 June 2008

11:30 to 12:00

Session 3.

Monty: The silence is settling in. God only speaks to us in the present. Only God lives fully in the present. None of us lives fully in the present. We live a large part in the past. If we live in the past, we don’t try to redeem past, the past influences our present. If the past is redeemed we can see the present more fully as it is. How to live as best we can in the present moment. “For I am certain of this: neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nothing already in existence and nothing still to come, nor any power, not the heights nor the depths, nor any created thing whatever, will be able to come between us and the love of God, known to us in Christ Jesus our Lord.” [Rom 8:3839] Nothing can separate us from the presence of God. It isn’t the past that makes us who we are, it’s what we do with the past that makes us who we are. Harry Potter has discovered his strange gift, understanding language of snakes, thinks it is the language of evil. Dumbledore: This is your gift who you are, use your gift. It’s how you live in the present, not how you live in the past. Gave lots of gifts perfume shoes hats to grandmother, stored up for years, never worn. We never enjoy our gifts from the past. Like being given a gift that you haven’t opened.

My brother Conrad, incredibly beautiful spoilt rotten. Dallas second brother, striking. I am short fat ugly, overripe gourd. Compared with my beautiful brother. I never enjoyed my looks. We need to enjoy ourselves now. One of the ways is to live in the present. To do this we need to work on the redeemed past, see the things we are grateful for. When we start looking at our lives in terms of gratitude, we discover how many things are good. Our Good Body. Wood splinter in finger irritates, drives crazy. It’s the little things that irritate and drive crazy, despite perfect health. Ignoring the big gifts. Next prayer period, write down all the things in your life that are good for you. “Good bowel movement today.” Become aware of the gifts of the present. Ask your body what it wants to show you. Memories are contained in our brain and also in every cell of our body. We ask body to tell us what it wants to tell us. Start with feet, toes, instep, ankle, calves, thighs, hips. Massage. What sort of images are triggered as each part is massaged. We listen to our minds but not to our bodies. You are doing a meditation of being present to the present. Become aware of breath entering and leaving body, of movement, of space around body, light, sky, frogs croaking, dogs barking. Aware of people that shape your space, the people in your life. Something interesting happens, you become very still and aware that you are connected to God and that God is connected to us. Not in abstract way but connected. We start discovering how God speaks to us through our body. There are forces in our life that stop us living in the present. One of the forces is the desperate need for security. We’re on spiritual journey, not quite sure where we are heading, we instinctively look for signposts, systems, ways of dealing, that we become too attached to. People asked me You’re supposed to know everything. Do I look like God to you? People are looking to me for security. The only security you will get in this world is the security of being rooted in God’s love. Retreats offer to each of us is a rootedness and a deep and profound relationship with God. That is what Christ came, to say, The Father loves and desires you. He didn’t say, “Follow me you’ll have lots of money and botox.” Going to camp, if you’re alone, you feel afraid unless you’re with someone, and then you become more daring. On this journey God is always with us, that gives us the gift of taking risks, because we know we are held in God’s love. When we are not rooted in God’s love, we are insecure and we go around asking “What should I do?” [Some people like to be asked that question, it gives them a feeling of power.] When we are rooted in God’s love, it doesn’t matter whether we are doing the right or the wrong thing. We are willing to take the risk. Child feels loved, is not frightened to make mistakes. Child who feels not loved, is frozen and frightened to make choices/mistakes. Prodigal son. [Lk 15: 11-31]. Takes all wealth and squanders. Goes back he thinks of punishment but instead receives rejoicing and forgiveness. Son discovers he is loved so much that he can come back, not as a slave but as a son. Tragedy is the squandering, and the other brother who never risks and who gets angry. You have to feel deeply and profoundly a sense of the Father’s love. If we do not, we crash through misunderstanding. Christ offers us rootedness, Christ does not offer us security. Love the Lord with all your heart, mind, body, soul = be rooted in God’s love. We find it very difficult to live with mystery. Show me God, what you want me to do. Show me the map. God trusts us and waits for us to walk and produce our own map. When I was a Novice Jesuit in Nova Scotia, One Christmas, my co-novice John brought pumpkin into Crib. There was a look of stunned silence. He was not long

for the world of the Jesuits. John and Ian. Years later I visited John, his 3 sons. Slept in 8 year old Ian’s bed. But Ian wouldn’t give up his bed and slept in it while I was there. It was a difficult time for children with Monty around. One day John had to take Monty and Ian for a long drive. During the drive, John asked Monty about the difficulties of looking after Ian. “What would you do?” Never ask a Jesuit what to do. Monty: “If you are having all the difficulty with him I suggest you put Ian in a home so that he could be properly looked after.” John was silent for half an hour but afterwards made a decision “I’m going to love him and do my best for Ian.” That was Monty’s First insight: God Loves us and hopes for the best. Mud flats. Then we got to the mud flats and John and his son Ian rolled around in the mud flats. His Son was a priority. That was Monty’s Second insight. Giving his son the security of being loved. Reflection: Open those gifts see where they are leading you to. 12:03 Sat 06-0609. Saturday 6 June 2008

15:30 to 16:00

Session 4.

Dr John Loh: Suffering in the end of life. How is that reconciled with being rooted in God’s love? Is He showing us a door in which to enter? Monty: What is hopeful is that to know that in life you have passed through many such doors. Monty: It is not easy to be so confident of God’s will. I am God’s mercy than I am confident of my own abilities. God does to be destroyed. How can we develop a sense of that love that Only by looking at our lives. We become aware of how often we been destroyed.

more confident of not allow the world is so confident? say we could have

Dr Loh: Some people die at 8, 20, at the peak of their lives, their lives were taken away. What is the sense of this? Monty: I do not know what sense you mean. Some children have greater trust than adults. Why do you need 40 years? One of the greatest gifts is the gift of time. We need to discover, go out through that door. Dr John: Some nuns religious have great sense of confidence, a huge part of humanity do not have confidence in God’s love and mercy. Monty: Three things. You have a very high opinion of priest and religious. My path is like your path. We are both following something our paths desire. I have seen priests nuns most miserable about death. Some sulked for two years. On other hand, I’ve seen nonpriests and non-religious lead good lives. There is a big difference in lots of humanity being caught up in things. You do not have time to sit here open up and experience. Dr Loh: I sit here experience it, when I go back, it’s gone. Monty: You take breakfast, lunch, tea, dinner. You eat so you can continue to live. How many times a day do you sit with gratitude to God? You can feed your body but you also need to feed your spirit. Pay attention to your experience. When you pay attention to experience, it grows. We need to tell people that we love them. We need people to tell us that they love us. Monty: When we ask people to pray, what are we asking? Prayer is simple, it is being attentive to your life. When you are attentive, you discover the forces and

dynamisms that define who you are. That God loves you. When we are attentive to where we are, we become attentive to this journey that deepens our relationship with God. Today’s session is on being attentive to the present. Rumi, contemporary of Francis Assisi (12th C). Mystic. Tells stories. Drunk man in front of house. Patting the ground. For one whole hour. Patting the ground next hour. Others ask “What did you lose?” “I lost the key to my house.” “Are you sure this is where you lost what you’re looking for?” “The key is lost in the darkness over there but I am patting the ground here in the light.” Saying the rosary, and being miserable, are not compatible. They are where they think the light is. We have to be where we are to find ourselves. We would like to be somewhere else. We struggle to be somewhere else. And we don’t find ourselves. How difficult it is to be where you are now. So very important to sit, and keep on sitting in God’s love. You start coming back to yourself. Why do people want to be somewhere else? Because we think, we would be perfect. But we are not perfect. We will never be perfect. We will always be invited to journey deeper and deeper into love. And the journey never ends. Most of us haven’t a clue what perfection is. Parable of the wheat and darnel [Matthew 13: 24-30]. Man sows wheat seed. Servant says Look weeds (darnel). What shall we do? Pull up weeds? No, don’t pull up weeds, can’t distinguish. Often we can’t distinguish good and bad. People say “I need to know what to do”. They don’t trust God. Often they don’t do anything, and end up miserable. One of the ways of living in present is to learn how to risk. Not risk stupidly, but when we have the sense of being held in God’s love. What is our work in living in the unredeemed present? Think of people who want things to be different. Guess what happens? They don’t become different. How to live amongst pain, suffering, without being trapped. We are creatures, we aren’t God. French theologian Jean Martin. “The more we become aware of humanity, the more we become aware of how powerful God is in our world and how fragile and vulnerable and limited we are.” The more we become incredibly grateful for the little things, we start becoming aware of the enormous things. At the end of John’s Gospel [John 21: 20-22], Peter and Jesus are walking on shore of Tiberias. Jesus tells Peter about the kind of death by which Peter would give glory to God and says to Peter “Follow me.” Peter looks back at John following, asks Jesus “What about him, Lord?” Jesus says it’s none of your business – “If I want him to stay behind till I come, what does it matter to you? You are to follow me.” When we look at another person’s suffering and pain, we think: How can God treat him that way. Sometimes we need to know that it’s none of our business. You aren’t the 8-year old child who died. Different people walk different paths. We haven’t a clue about those other paths. Being in jail affects a person’s transformation. They have nowhere to run, they have to face themselves. God doesn’t make bad things happen. But if bad things happen and one doesn’t run away, transformation happens. Montreal, Bishop, huge ethnic populations that don’t get along. City Port, lots of drugs. Very complicated. Worried about his staff. Couldn’t solve it. Asked God, trusted God to tell him what to do. Things came to him what to do. We live in God’s world, in God’s time, in God’s space. Our witness is to wait on God in that way. When we don’t wait on God, we think God should do this, God

should do that. We become very self-righteous, we go and tell God wants you to do this and that. We create violence. The truly righteous are very very humble, very simple. Violence to ourselves and violence to others because we think we know the trust. Truth without love is a lie. My family is famous for fights. People tell each other the truth, without love, it is destructive. Love without truth is also violent. If you love a drug addict, you are encouraging their disorder to control their lives. We need both truth and love. What is the loving truth? That we are God’s beloved, absurd as it may seem. We don’t accept that truth. If we accept a lie we do violence to ourselves. Kingdom of Heaven is overtaken by violence. Overtakes the realm of simplicity, peace, joy, delight. Elijah. Elijah vs 400 prophets of Baal [1 Kings 18:22-39]. Who is truly God? Contest. Ox chopped in half. One on each altar. Baal prophets – nothing happens; they use violence (whip and cut themselves) to bring God down on altar. Nothing happens. At night Elijah, asks water to be poured on the altar offerings. Elijah calls on God, fire consumes offerings and altar. Think how often we do violence to ourselves thinking that this will bring God into our world. People go to church when they don’t want to go to church, and end up being angry at the priest, angry at God, they think violence to themselves is the right thing to do. Violence happens in generation gaps. I think, we should ask the older generation, not to make the younger generation do what the older generation wants them to do, but to ask God to show the children what to do. Violence takes away the peace. We need to ask: What is the violence within us, around us? What takes away our peace, our joy, our delight? Often we indulge in violence because we are afraid. Fear breeds violence. What things in our life trap us in fear? Old woman, mother general. Monty was complaining to her about Jesuits. She says, Monty, why do you give away your joy? Simone Weil: False Gods transform suffering into violence. True God transforms suffering into pain. False: When you suffer you should do xyz. Go out buy land, Mercedes, do violence to yourself. The nature of being a creature, of getting old. Don’t have to make a drama out of pain. We are not trapped in the non-redeemed present when we can do something about it. If you watch violent news as a victim, you are trapped. But if you watch, and say, I can’t do anything except pray for them. My Father. What can we do? We can affirm what is good in life. Tell the people we love that we love them. My father, not very good at expressing affection, especially to male children. Father had 3 hours sleep, took me to airport, on the way picked up friend. At airport, my father grabbed and kissed me on my forehead, it moved me. 45 years ago. It was an act of love. What acts of love can you do? Tiniest little thing that transforms. An act that shares and celebrates life. People you don’t like, don’t stand in the way, step aside, it’s between them and God. Areas of violence, breathe out love on them. Breathe in the love, breathe out the love. Be gentle on yourself. Question: How do you tell if you are self-righteous or hearing something from God? By the way you treat other people. Gentleness and humility. Passive aggressive is not gentle. As we live in unredeemed present we are on a journey, this is a journey,

filled with people with a longing to God.

End – 16:09 Saturday 06-06-09.

Eucharist at 6:00pm. Sunday 7 June 2008

08:58 to 09:30

Holy Trinity Sunday . Session 5.

Today’s theme is How to look at the future. How we have lived in the past, how we live in present and how we will live in the future. As we travel towards God, God also travels, keeps coming constantly, to us. A retreat is a space where we can allow that coming together to happen. Each of us is, in our own way, a mystic. Mystic = Not just strange experiences. God has a desire of every part of us. There is no part of us that God does not desire. God desires not just our heart and our soul, but our whole bodies. Often in a prayer retreat we are invited to that intimacy. We experience that passionate desire for intimacy as a sense of longing. Most people are afraid of the longings within them and they try to fill it up with things. Silence is filled up with noise. I suggest that longing creates an open space. In that open space we encounter God. How do we experience that open space? Several ways. People who are overwhelmed by a Sense of conflict - most of our life may be conflictual. We try to run away from that battlefield. We have to encounter Christ in the battlefield, as the peacemaker. Not as peacelover or peacekeeper. We all love peace. Sometimes we so love peace that we are willing to give up our integrity. E.g. “Do whatever you like, just for peace.” Or when children fight, we don’t want to take sides. Christ as Peacemaker enters the violence of our lives (we use violence to protect our space). With Christ we find we do not have to protect those spaces. E.g. academic politics are vicious because people have so little to lose. If you are very very fragile, everything threatens you. Actually if you are rooted and fairly strong things don’t threaten you as much. If you live in a glass bubble, anything can come along and break bubble so you do anything to protect that bubble. If you live in a strong stone house, the harm that comes doesn’t bother you. Peacemaker is rooted in that intimacy that when things come along they don’t break down your walls or destroy you. Experience that longing by a sense of emptiness. When we become afraid of emptiness we try to fill it up and become addicted to things. Addicts try to fill up their emptiness by filling it up, with work, with sex, with churchy things. Become defensive when someone says to them, “Why are you doing that?” When such people encounter God, they are the pearl of great price, they have to allow God to find you, by being empty and not being filled up. If space is filled up, God has no space to come in. Sometimes we are filled with punishment, shame, condemnation. I don’t like myself, I try to be pious. We need to encounter God who delights to be with us. Jesus delighted to be with prostitutes, tax collectors, sinners. God delights to be with everything we are. God is not ashamed of any part of us. God desires to be with us in those areas we feel ashamed of. God desires to roll around in our mud. Rather than be perfect, accept your imperfections. Your imperfections are a gift because that is where God desires to encounter you. In encountering God you realize who God is, instead of encountering theology. You discover a God who is personal and intimate to you. Samarian woman. Now we found and go for ourselves. People who are overwhelmed by suffering. a. Woman haemorrhage 12 years. [Mk 5:25-34; Lk 8: 43-48]. After a while, people shun those who suffer because they can’t deal with suffering. Allow God to enter into suffering. Travel with one who also suffers, without becoming a victim of

suffering. When each of us is broken. “I wish I were so and so.” Look at them. Happy. Good marriage. Good body. “But do you know what they suffer?” Asian culture is very good at putting on nice faces. Can’t bring themselves to talk about it. Christian belief is that God has already conquered evil and we are already ‘saved’. What does that mean? That all paths lead to God. All paths which you choose to walk on will enable you to meet God. We need to hold on to our gift of a God that is bigger, more powerful, more compassionate, more merciful than any of our wants. Why doesn’t God do something about the wretched state of affairs in people’s lives, in the state of the world? The answer would be for each of us to ask God that question. Not to ask the priest to give an answer. We don’t understand why we don’t get everything now. We don’t trust God. It is useful to sit with the gift that we are in God’s love. 20 years ago, I asked, in concentration camps how did people survive after that? Having lived through trauma, we become very fearful of giving things up, we hold on to things. Children couldn’t distinguish US Army from Nazi uniforms. Fear in children. Allies found a simple way out of the hyperattentive state of children in fear. Allies gave children a loaf of bread. Children felt secure and slept with bread. We need to sleep with our bread. [Or diamond bracelet. Or Irish grandmother with bottle of gin.] We can find for ourselves what allows us to become gentle with ourselves. How to sit with this gift that we are loved, the gift that we are invited to open. Sit with the gift that we are saved. Start to enjoy life. Not Disneyland life. But see some of the good things in life because we are not so hyper-attentive on what is destructive, we can see other worlds. We need to cultivate this gift of enjoying life. Toronto beautiful window displays Tiffany’s Yonge Street. Meant for all to enjoy, not just the rich. Liberating moment to try on a diamond bracelet even though we know we can’t afford it. We deny ourselves simple pleasures. Go to the expensive shops and touch all the expensive things. Cheap therapy. Need to do things like that. Craziness is a gift. Parable labourers in vineyard. Hire labourers from morning to late in the day. Same pay. Very upset. Anxiety. When we encounter God, we know we are loved and will be looked after, even though things will continue to be hard. Anxiety is in those who have not encountered God and fill up their emptiness with everything. That’s why people are afraid of silence. Vivienne: When we are on the right path, we get tempted. Monty: Sometimes it’s the nature of evil to be malicious. When we are suffering, guess what evil people do, they enjoy our suffering and delight in making us suffer more. Scratches to our new car. We discover moments of joy, gratitude, when we accept the gift that is given to us freely. Reflection. Vivienne: How are we supposed to feel looking at others who are suffering? Monty: We should accept how we actually feel, not what we think we should feel. We can only be merciful as we are, not as we wish to be. If I see beggar and I only have MYR5, I need the 5 to look after my family, I cannot give to beggar and say “God will look after my family”. Our hearts get wounded because we think we can’t ignore the suffering of others. What we can do is pray for

beggar. 1992 after watching Les Miserables. Walking along London Embankment. Walking some distance behind an elegant couple in evening dress. They passed a beggar. Woman bends down, gives cigarette and lights cigarette for beggar. Done without condescencion. It was a tiniest little gesture that transformed me. Huge gift to me. You can give what you have. You can’t give what you don’t have or what you can’t give. We are asked to prepare for God to come in our lives. How to live empty so that when God desires to come, he finds a space. How to live hopefully, waiting for God to come. How? Become rooted. Sit in that love that desires to hold each of us, sit in those areas that are empty, suffering, lost. Why? We don’t walk to the future. The future comes to us. God comes to us. b. Annunciation comes to us. Mary does not go to anunciation. c. Baptism doesn’t come to Christ. Christ waits for the Father. d. Jesus has waits for the Father and Peter to connect so that Peter can say “You are the Christ.” [Jn 21:15-19]. e. Lazarus story. We know Jesus can cure from a distance. We know Jesus knows about Lazarus’ illness. We know he is friend. Why doesn’t he go right away? He WAITS for the Father to tell him when to go. f. Agony in Garden of Gethsemane. He WAITS for the Father. g. Christ hanging on the cross. He WAITS for the Father. h. We are asked in a similar way to wait on the Father. Doesn’t mean we do nothing. We think of how to serve the Father who desires to be in our lives. Breathe in the Father, Breathe out the Father, ask for the grace to be open to allow Father who is waiting to come in. 09:44 Sunday 7 June 2009 Sunday 7 June 2008

11:30 to 12:00

Session 6.

Luvenia: On Healing the past. There are times when there is a feeling we can’t comprehend, can’t go away, can’t put a finger on it. How do we come to terms? Monty: When sit without feeling, what images come to mind? Blank. Where does that feeling touch body? Mind. Technique called ‘Union Therapy’. Sit with that feeling and speak to it. Write down who you are. Ask the feeling to tell you what it is and what it wants to tell you. Starts a dialogue. Fear and Anxiety. Monty: Fear has an object. Anxiety doesn’t have an object. Unpack the forces that create the anxiety. To Kierkegaard, Danish existentialist, the definition of anxiety is different from psychologists: “Anxiety is the dizzying experience of freedom.” Sometimes we are dreadfully afraid of freedom and freedom makes us anxious. Sometimes this is because of our upbringing. We are afraid to go out on the road. We develop an anxiety because of the fear of freedom. Freedom causes everybody anxiety. People like order, being secure, a sense of belonging. Step out into unknown is very frightening for people. Question: Last 2 days on visiting the past. Can’t find what it is but am haunted by past. We can be free of something but we don’t leave it because our identity is part of our past. Monty: We have to work against those things that make us anxious, to work against forces that pull us back. Jesus cast out Gerasene Demoniac [Mk 5: 1-20; not Lk 4: 33-35]. In the end he says “Can I follow you?”, Jesus says “Go home to your people and tell them all that the Lord in his mercy has done for you.” Why didn’t Jesus ask him to follow? It may be that the demons cast out leave one so vulnerable that it takes a long time to recover psychic energy, and recuperate. We have to learn techniques to recuperate, recover our

strength. Dr Loh: A lot of people complain of anxiety. Think they are not happy with themselves. Yesterday Monty mentioned that we should look for key to our past. Their past is in their relationship with God, parents, family, environment. Must we heal each section or can we let sleeping dogs lie? Why bother to heal? Some people are angry with father, they are happy except for that particular point. Why should we try to heal it? Monty: People angry with father often have authority problems. Anyone in position triggers the demon. We think they are isolated but they aren’t isolated. An abscess on foot is isolated but it spreads. Monty: A person might be reconciled with father, but the father might not be reconciled with that person. Create healthy boundaries so that we are not taken over by our readings and their readings of the past. That is why we need to deal with problems as they arise. John: Therefore we have to deal with it as they arise. Monty: Unless you take Prozac. Teresa: I see a lot happening in families. Something is bothering. Maybe not bothering about what is going on. IF person is not aware what is going on. Not growing. Becomes a stumbling block. How does the person become aware of this so that it can be handled before it becomes a generational problem. I see a lot in Universities dealing with students. Monty: Something we have no control over. Teresa: How do we get ourself right? We let God speak to us. Monty: Huge huge question. Monty: When we live in security we have a certain mindset. This is the way things should be. Just because it is our security it isn’t the security of the ones we love. When we try and impose, we create chaos. People are made in God’s image and likeness. Not in our image and likeness. How our own security, mindset traps us. Living out of a closeknit setting. We confuse what is habitual with what is real, a huge difference. Generation below feels that what is habitual (real) for you isn’t habitual (real) for them. Traps of living in closeknits. Second issue. Certain close knits, mindsets don’t give us freedom. We continue to live in them even though they trap us. That’s why the anxiety comes. Now we are aware. We don’t want to be conscious of it. Awareness eats away in the background. We need a really good spiritual director who can hear your story. And then we discover the gaps in the story and ask what’s in those gaps. Everyone says Asians are very respectful of authority. Guest what I see? A whole range of revolutions. We are trapped by respect for authority. Why do we spend our energy on mindsets that do not liberate our life. Pharisees do it constantly and ask that it be done constantly. We do it because we get power, approval, it taps into our self-image. Dr

Loh: That is why we cannot recognize Jesus.

Monty: More important to ask why we don’t recognize Jesus when he comes into our life. For instance, we want Jesus to respond to us every Sunday when we take communion. Jesus asks an interesting question: Don’t live the way the Pharisees live. How radical Jesus is. He asks, “What is the first commandment? To Love the Lord with all your heart and mind and soul and body.” He didn’t say, “Love the Law, the Temple.” They killed Jesus because he set God above Temple. Archbishop Cameron said of Church: “Not: The Church which continues the mission of church. But: Those who do the mission of Christ are the church.” Our call is to Wait on the Father. Our call is not to Wait on the Church. Our call is to bring the Church to the Father. That is a very powerful mission. Vivienne: Dealing with past is hurtful but that’s the only way I can heal. Shoving

under carpet doesn’t help becomes it comes up in other ways. Monty: retreats are like oases. Sit, collect energy for the journey. We share stories which hopefully help us to know what the next step is. Lady: a. Concept of having joy in our lives is very intriguing. How can a homebound person experience joy? b. Monty: This is a counseling question. What are the circumstances? c. Frustration that she can’t do things. Doesn’t want to go out much. Is she joyful? Very funny, not sure how much joy. d. Monty: My sister believes in stimulating my mother 96y. Plays music. Mother sits patiently and listens to music. When sister goes, mother says, “Turn off that damn thing.” e. If she is happy staying at home. f. Monty: Sometimes people are very content sitting there doing nothing. g. That can’t be life itself. Mother with Parkinson’s. Major daily task is Going to bathroom. So, are we imposing on her? h. Monty: We are projecting our image on our mother. It is very difficult to let people go free. i. Monty: When someone we love has died. Sometimes it is very difficult to tell people it’s time to move on. j. I have difficulty with reconciling that. She may not think it is time to go until all children are settled. Monty: We are journeying in intimacy. The retreat is now beginning for you. When real questions arise. The journey into connectiveness, bonding, relationship. Nobody enters into the fullness of life until everybody enters into the fullness of life. Heaven is a relationship with the Father. Ask yourself if the people we love can have a relationship with the Father. And an even fuller relationship with the Father if they have a relationship themselves with the Father not with us. Real relationships aren’t directed to us, they are directed to the Father. Ignatius. As we enter prayer we become more attentive to who, what, where we are. That level of attentiveness gets us connected with our body, our spirit, those parts that need looking after, awareness that forces of good around us are connected with us. In a sense, Heaven is always around us. That’s why, Christian ‘escatology’ is already now an object. Hallmark cards, eating too much chocolate, all very nice. In real nice, it’s how to actually feel it in your body, aware of it all of the time. We are journeying constantly without intimacy. The journey can carry us towards or away from intimacy. We need to ask simple question: Does what I do bring me closer to God or away from God? Don’t think pious thoughts. Does our journey carry us towards a real lived life or away from a real living life? Zen story. Monk who wants enlightenment. He goes monastery to monastery to ask masters how to get the enlightenment. Goes up a particular mountain to get enlightenment. Meets an old monk coming down, carrying a little bag. Old monk answers, “Yes, have reached enlightenment.” Young monk asks, “What happens after enlightenment?” Old Monk picks up his bag and goes down the hill. We often think that Heaven is like Hollywood or Bollywood and they lived happily ever after. Heaven isn’t like that at all. Heaven is maintaining loving relationships with whoever you encounter. Sometimes, you can’t do it. You have to accept that you aren’t God. God maintains loving relationship with everybody. Everybody doesn’t maintain loving relationship with God. We can live our lives in such a way that people find our way of life joyful. Not so they want to become like us, but become like who they truly are. The only way we can live like that, knowing we are on a journey, and that we change constantly, we constantly need to sit in love. We need

to remember that we are loved. How can I do that? As you brush teeth, sitting on bed. Ask to be shown the things in your day that have given you life, given peace, joy, sense of excitement and wonder. Ask to be shown rather than go looking for it. Not a check list. People often do not know what they want, who they are. We don’t know ourselves. We haven’t seen our eyes, only reflections of our eyes. Mirrors create reflections, images, not the real thing. I suggest we look at God and how God looks at us. Look at ourselves with the eyes of love. Look at each other with the eyes of love. Doesn’t mean indulge. Look at the world with eyes of wonder. Final three things. Exercise. Three doors. k. Behind first door is what you really want. l. Behind second door is what stops you getting what you really want. m. Behind third door is helper. In prayer, don’t open the doors but WAIT for the doors to open. God will show you the next step. What we also need to do is, ask ourselves, what resources do you have at your disposal to live a life that is joyful. What resources do you need to live life joyfully. Please note the different between need and want. Hasidic mystic. Zulcia 1785-1825. Polish Jew in pogrom. Very poor. People felt sorry and gave stuff. He gave it away. Wife very upset. Said to elders. You must speak to my husband. Elders said to Zulcia. He said I have everything I need. God gives me everything that I need. What has God given you that you need? God has given me poverty. He realizes when he is poor he has radical dependence on God. Mother Teresa. Afternoon walk looking for beggar children to wash and feed. away. Brings him back. Runs away. Very curious. Follows him. Finds him with awful woman, cooking. “Why have you run away?” Boy answers, “Here is home.” need to know where our home is. Our home is where we find love. Our home is love is shared.

Ran an We where

Sit and ask what gift has been given to you on this retreat. Or sit and ask doors to open. Retreats are stopping off places. Retreats never end. Ask what you need for the next journey. End 12:25 6th Session Sunday 07-06-09. Eucharist 2:30 pm.

Notes by Patrick Sunday 7 June 2009