Hidden Contemplatives: Retreat

Wednesday, 18 February 2015

Retreat

If the Cross is deeply contemplated, it is saying that love is supreme, and that the darkness and the apparent unfairness of life can be endured. In the Cross, love is able to speak ... speak to any human situation, whether of loss, of persecution, of disillusion.

Fr. John Woolley

As we begin the Lenten season, it reminds me again to look within, to recognise those unhelpful hiding places and defensive positions, those habitual reactions to others and to life, and to seek Love's comfort, Love's help, Love's understanding, Love's patience, Love's company, Love's solitude, Love's resilience, Love's invitation to surrender and overcome, Love's rest.

Hidden Contemplatives

"There are many .... who serve God with great purity of soul and perfect self-sacrifice in the active life. They know how to find God by devoting themselves to him in self-sacrificing labors in which they are able to remain in His presence all day long.

They lead lives of great simplicity. Without realizing it, their extremely simple prayer is, for them, so deep and interior that it brings them to the threshold of contemplation.

Although they are active labourers, they are also hidden contemplatives because of the great purity of heart maintained in them by obedience, fraternal charity, self-sacrifice, and perfect abandonment to God's will in all that they do and suffer."

Thomas Merton

Profile

Anne Marie Maguire is a T'ai Chi and Qigong teacher, Herbalist and Naturopath, with special interests in the mystical traditions, energetics, plant medicine, and the inherent rhythm found in Nature. She currently teaches T'ai Chi and Qigong, with a focus on meditation and spirituality.

She has a BA in European Studies & Languages, and completed an MBS in 1995 in Dublin City University with her thesis exploring Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.

She has worked for Irish, German and Australian multinationals writing informational, promotional and spiritual material.

She has travelled extensively, with periods of time living in Germany, France, and more recently, New Zealand and Australia. She wrote a spiritual travel blog throughout that latter time. She now lives in Ireland, her home country. She is a lay Associate of St. Mary's Cistercian Abbey, Glencairn, Ireland.