Seasonality of change

In my vision, the core purpose of an intentional community house is to welcome contemplatives who yearn to become a living presence to the seasons of change, the unfolding rhythms of life moving through cycles of birth, death and rebirth, and to the evolutionary thrust flowing through stages of order, disorder and reorder.

Creation spirituality is a holistic perspective: all-encompassing and universal. In that sense, it is not confined to a particular faith or denomination. On the contrary it is present, in various guises, across all great traditions, all wisdom schools, all philosophical questioning and all contemplative practices whatever the creeds and dogmas sustaining them.

In the Christian tradition, creation spirituality brings together three distinct streams each one corresponding to a season.

1. Carmelite spirituality with its commitment to silence and friendship with God, noble pursuits that thrive in the winter season of inner listening and trawling the dark nights.
2. Franciscan spirituality with its emphasis on listening to the cry of the poor and, by extension, listening, in spring, to the birth pangs of the Earth awakening and surrendering to the Paschal mystery.
3. Benedictine spirituality parsing the rhythms of life through prayer and work, ora et labor, blooms in summer when we work the soil and go out into the world to pursue a pilgrimage of identity.

Once the harvest is in and has been duly celebrated, we gaze into the abundance and give thanks for all that has been given and revealed, notwithstanding what still remains concealed. We then turn towards the vanishing point on the horizon of the mellow autumn haze and bear witness to the path beckoning us onwards.