23 July 2006

God is Good - Part 1

I've been away on a four-day silent Ignatian retreat. It's hard to know where to even begin and hard to know what to say other than 'God is Good'.

After a really incredibly hectic year at theology college where I felt like I had more to do than was humanly possible in the time allotted, I got to be alone in the silence, just me and God.

At the beginning of the retreat, we were asked to be silent for a few minutes and think about God looking at each of us and to notice the manner in which God was looking at us. I was really surprised to see God chuckling at me. I think that there was an elbow nudge there too. That pretty much set the scene for the next four days.

A lot of what happened on retreat is private, but I'd like to share the events of the first morning. I went for a walk into the town and I saw these daisies in someone's garden. I've never seen daisies like these before - they look like they've had a bad hair day. When I saw them, God said to me, 'You may be weird, but you're beautiful'. That seems about right.

And then just to make sure I'm listening to God - OK hit me over the head if you have to - I'm walking down the street when I'm approached by a woman who seemed to be about eighty. She was making a determined beeline for me and I thought we were going to stop and have a chat. Instead, she threw both arms up in the air pointing at tree above our heads and said with a big enthusiastic smile 'Isn't it beautiful!?!?' and kept on walking. :-0

It was a good retreat. God is Good.

4 comments:

Sally said...

awesome Pam!

Anonymous said...

I love it! I'm pretty sure that God mostly is chortling at the stuff I come up with and get into. Like I Love Lucy. :)

Anonymous said...

loved the bad hair cut daisies :)

thank you for sharing this

PamBG said...

Sally, Mary Beth and Lorna, thanks for sharing the experience with me. I'm glad it spoke to you. :-)