I’ve chosen garrison as my word for 2023.
Occupy, Fortify, Secure
Christ as this siege of our inner life
We must have the same spiritual defense as Jesus did.
How do we go about achieving this?
I’ll go back to 2016
I was heading to the Bahamas for a long weekend at a grief writing retreat with Mirabai Starr. The location was the Sivananda retreat center- replete with monks in long flowing robes.Upon arrival, I had encountered a mentally ill young woman who threatened me and after not sleeping the first night I had to move my sleeping location. Due to this sense of a lack of personal safety, coupled with being on my own without friends or family, coupled with the new to me religious order of the monks, I was riddled with anxiety.
I remember beginning this conversation with Christ– more like a pestering.
Where are you?
Are you here?
Are you accessible to me? Are you alive…a help at all?
I’ve come to recognize that yes, not only had I brought Christ with me but he was the light in each person I encountered.
I had nothing to fear. The foreign nature was a surface, earthly layer that did not mean that the soul was not recognizable to my own.
From this moment on, I, like Alice Walker, knew “Any God I ever felt in church, I brought in with me”
Christians I have encountered live with a lot of fear and anxiety and in my expereince and humble opinion
would do well to keep looking within for the power residing in the soul and not an outside entity. Calming the nervous system and finding regulation (self and co) is one reliable way to maintain secure attachment to the Love that is always
available.
encounterillumination 