Solitude

It's a beautiful evening here in Iqaluit.  Temperature is 2C and the bay is full of icebergs again, blown in by the wind on the high tide.

Sarah has arrived home this Monday evening having left Sunday lunchtime.  She flew to Ottawa, a three hour flight, then to London, a six and a half hour flight, then to Dublin, just an hour, and then a 2 hour coach journey to Belfast arriving at 6pm.  The children collected her in Belfast and brought her home. I had a short Skype call with her and she is sleep deprived so hopefully a good sleep will put her on her feet again.  Having been away for 8 weeks it will take some time to adjust back to the ways of the Metropolis of Carrickfergus after the small scale life in Iqaluit.

My time now moves into a different phase.  Part of my thinking was that I should have period of solitude and quiet and that is what I am having now.  The enforced restrictions and lack of distractions require you to think more deeply and re-establish disciplines of prayer and quiet that get lost in the busyness of life.  I now have an opportunity to have time just to listen and to recapture a deeper relationship with God.  Its hard to explain what that means in practice but I find this helps:

Mother Theresa was once asked about her prayer life.

The interviewer asked, “When you pray, what do you say to God?”

Mother Teresa replied, “I don’t talk, I simply listen.”

Believing he understood what she had just said, the interviewer next asked, “Ah, then what is it that God says to you when you pray?”

Mother Teresa replied, “He also doesn’t talk. He also simply listens.”

The greatest gift you can give someone is simply to listen to them. It is the greatest gift God gives us. He listens, as no other can, to our deepest thoughts and feelings, our dreams and fears. Correspondingly it is the greatest gift we can give God, to listen for his insight into our lives. Just praying, opening yourself to God, is an act of faith, of trust.  That is what I am going to try to do for this next few weeks.

"Be still and know that I am God."  Psalm 46:10

Blessings,

Mike