Shell shocked

Most of my week's gone on getting things together for our FIRST EVER St Hackett's Youth Group weekend. Remember that episode of Father Ted with Graham Norton as Father Noel Furlong? Arran jumpers and singing 'The Whole Of The Moon' at 3am in the dingiest caravan in Ireland? Well that's not going to happen.....!

Anyway - little time to blog this week, but a supplementary to my last entry. If you're joining us at this point, the question was "why is it that some things are better seen when we don't look straight at them?"

I still haven't processed that, but let me submit the following as supporting evidence:

Yes indeed - a shell. Drawn by me several years ago. Nothing exceptional about it except that I really can't draw for toffee and this is probably the best piece of art I've ever produced. It is unmistakeably shell-like.

My spiritual director at the time had given me a little task to do. She asked me to draw something, anything I liked, but to approach the task in an unusual way. She asked me not to focus on the edges and contours of whatever it was I'd chosen to study, but to look at the space around it. At first I thought she was bonkers (and told her so) but by the end of the session I knew exactly what she meant.

It was difficult at first, trying not to focus on what was so obviously in front of me, but looking at the space rather than the shell, softened the whole process and led to results I never thought I was capable of.

And I know now why she gave me that exercise. At the time there were a lot of things looming large in my mind, and she'd often tell me 'not to hold them so tightly'. Drawing my shell was an object lesson in how much better (and easier) things can be when we approach them with a little latitude. Makes sense?

TODAY'S SHIMMERING INSIGHT OF GLORY: You found God? Great!! If nobody claims him, he's yours in thirty days.