The World is Our New Cloister

Canadian City

 Reverence and devotion open the soul to intimacy with God…

When you pursue a relationship with your soul and God you are answering a call. You are being called to build your spiritual stamina so that you can channel grace in this world for this world. Our new monastery, the world, is in desperate need of the strength of your soul. Caroline Myss, Page 96, Entering the Castle

Jesus challenged us to be in this world but not of it. The mystics of today try to fulfil Christ’s challenge. Though some mystics still do enter a convent or a monastery in order to pursue a relationship with God, many more live in this world as contemplatives without a cloister. They pursue their ordinary day to day lives while living out a life of prayer within their souls.

These modern-day mystics are answering the call of God to channel grace into the world. They see the desperate needs within the world and they bring them before God in their time of prayer and praise of the Sacred One.

Getting Boats to Harbour, Italy

As they open their souls in intimacy with God they build up their spiritual stamina. They receive grace from God in order to channel God’s grace into the world. They live in this world whole-heartedly and, by living in God and God in them, they understand the call of God to them is to be an intermediary for God’s grace and blessing on the world that God has created for us to live in.

© Judith Lawrence

Your Soul is Divinity in Miniature

Womb of the Morning by Judith Lawrence

Your soul is a masterpiece of divinity in miniature. Its power is connected to the whole creation. … [T]he reason you have descended into physical life is to unleash the power of your soul upon Earth…It is a journey that brings you directly into the world. It brings you fully into your soul, and into your power in the world. Page 85 Entering the Castle Caroline Myss

God has created us in his image. God has created us to be his hands and his feet in the world. Our souls have been created as masterpieces of divinity in miniature. We are finite, of course, and cannot do all that God does. But, when we each do the part that God created us to do then God’s will for the world will be done.

If we think that the part we have been created to perform is so small that it will not matter if we do not do it, then God’s master plan for the world will take that much longer to come into being.

Lighthouse at Night

We were each sent into the world to “unleash the power of our souls upon the Earth” for God’s glory and that God’s grace may be given to all. The power of our souls is not to be unleashed for our own needs and desires but for the sake of God’s kingdom and peaceful reign upon earth.

We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves. 2 Cor 4: 7

© Judith Lawrence

Grace—the Power of God

Waterfall

Grace is the word we give to the power of God that we recognize in our lives. We long to make this power so real that we can hold it in our hands, or feel it like heat running through our bodies. We want to know that this divine substance is real and that it protects us and heals us and flows down from heaven when we request it. Caroline Myss Entering the Castle Page 17

 I have a desire to reconnect with the divine, the Sacred One. I long to be part of this great sacred outpouring—that sacred filling of my soul’s well and its overflowing into the world and back again into the Sacred Presence.

The Sacred Power pours itself out continuously like a great waterfall onto the wheels of life, which turn and run the creative generator allowing the Sacred One to work its wonders in our lives and the lives of others.

This power we call grace; this power is available to us all at all times. However, as we go through our daily lives we may find ourselves getting into a rut that brings us into the doldrums, a state of spiritual stagnation, where we become sluggish and lacking energy.

Muskoka River

At such times, we need to reconnect with the power of God; we need to rededicate ourselves to a life of prayer whereby our soul’s wheel of life will again be turned by the flow of the river of life. That flow is always available to us but sometimes we need to be reminded to stand in its Sacred Power and drink from the Spiritual waters of Grace.

Then the angel showed me a river with the water of life, clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb. It flowed down the center of the main street. On each side of the river grew a tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, with a fresh crop each month. The leaves were used for medicine to heal the nations. Revelation 22: 1-2 [NLT] New Living Translation

© Judith Lawrence

Grace is Always Available

Grace is available to us always, at any stage of the creative journey.…At all levels of creative endeavour, the Great Creator is present and partnering with us.

Blue Heron, Celtic Knotwork, J. Lawrence

[T]he Great Creator always gives us strength enough and support enough and guidance enough to meet the precise creative challenges at hand. We may be overwhelmed but God is not. If we fail at Plan A, God has an endless supply of Plan B's. There is always not only a fall back position but also a net. That net is having the faith to try again. Julia Cameron Walking in This World Page 154

Whether we are creators using a paint brush, a pen, or a cooking pot we will be faced with challenges along the way. Sometimes we will feel overwhelmed by what confronts us and perhaps even think that we can’t go on—we feel it’s more than we can handle.

This is when we become aware of God’s grace given to us in abundance. God gives us strength, support, and guidance when we call out to him. We may think our chance has passed us by but if God has called us to do something there is always a way through to the end.

When I became deathly ill in November of 2010, just a few weeks before my manuscript was due in the publisher’s hands, I thought that there would be no possibility of completing that book. God, however, brought me into a fall back position and, with the cooperation of my publisher, I was able to get to the end of the book and see it published.

Partnered with the Great Creator and helped by friends and my publishing partners the work came to fulfillment. To God all things are possible.

© Judith Lawrence

Grace of Creation

Summer Pathway

When we are afraid to begin [our creativity], it is always because we are afraid we are alone. …But we are not alone. God is present everywhere. The act of making art is a direct path to contact with God, and we do not need to travel any geographic or psychic distance to experience the grace of creation in the grace of our own creating. Julia Cameron, Walking in This World Page 21

When we are practicing our art—writing, book-binding, Celtic Knotwork—whatever it may be, we are connecting to God, walking to God, on a direct path.

When we practise our creativity we experience the grace of God’s creation in the grace of our own creating.

God is the Great Creator and God gives to us the gift of creativity. God wants us to share with him and our fellow human beings, the great joy the gift of creativity affords in our lives.

Those who make heavy weather of their creativity have not fully accepted the gift of creativity given to them. God desires us to delight in our ability to create and when we take on our creativity with reluctance, misgiving, or a heavy heart it is as if we are rejecting God’s gift to us.

So lose the attitude of guilt, reluctance, or unworthiness when practising your creative gift; take up your creative bent with whole-hearted joy, reverence, and gratitude, Experience the grace of creation in the grace of your own creating.

© Judith Lawrence

Requesting God’s Grace

Some mystics wait just for the pure experience of grace and the divine. Grace is the word we give to the power of God that we recognize in our lives. We long to make this power so real that we can hold it in our hands, or feel it like heat running through our bodies. We want to know that this divine substance is real and that it protects us and heals us and flows down from heaven when we request it. Caroline Myss, Entering the Castle Page 17

We have the ability to recognize that God gives us his grace—his power to heal us in body and spirit. Personally, I have never felt God’s grace in a tangible way, such as a sensation of holding his power in my hands or feeling the heat of God’s grace running through my body, though some do have this ability, I believe.

However, I do believe that God’s grace is real and can heal us from our bodily ailments and our spiritual ills and does so if it is the right thing for us in a particular moment of time.

I believe this and know this because I have experienced God’s healing grace in my life. We do not have to be mystics in order to know and believe in God’s grace and the power of his healing love; but the more we spend time in God’s presence the more we will be aware of God’s grace in our lives.

© Judith Lawrence