July 2023 Updates

Hello beautiful soul, I hope your living has been easy this summer; filled with fun and family! 
​
Since I last wrote to you, the details and dates have come together for a 3 day / 2 night retreat and is scheduled for September 15-17, 2023. Reconcile with Christ: A Retreat for Healing Your Relationship with Love is a retreat offering born of my deep faith and very personal walk in reconciling my own relationship with Christ and the inner healing work that has resolved judgment, fear and bitterness in how I used to perceive 'people of The Book' as a whole.  (Read more about my story here). 

If you are like me, maybe you have run in the opposite direction of church or the Christian path in order to avoid zealotry or conflicting dogma only to separate yourself from the beautiful wisdom contained in said 'book'. Maybe you have read every spiritual text EXCEPT the Bible - or maybe, you even rankle at the word Bible, Jesus, repentance, sin, righteousness and others - a sign of unhealed wounds.

This retreat isn't about conversion, but it is about a conversation with a new understanding of words that foster healing (which is a choice) so that you can forgive the people your wounding stems from and follow wholeheartedly wherever your soul is being called. Key to this healing is recognizing that this wounding came from people not Christ. If your heart is calling you to (or back to) Christ and you don't know how to 'get there', well then this retreat is for you.

I have had several more meetings with pastors in various denominations and continue to refine my understanding of their and/or their church community's fear or resistance to the supernatural 'something more' that God has available for us all and I find the biggest challenge for me is in speaking words that cultivate the conversation. This can be tricky in deed!  This is something I am walking with in spiritual community as well for there is a whole separate set of trigger words (i.e. land mines) that can shut the whole attempt at communication down instantly.  We all know what it's like to hear a certain word that when we hear it, our minds close down and our ears stop listening. Anyone in the healing field understands the trickiness of 1) knowing the words that trigger and 2) avoiding and replacing them for a time in order that healing can happen. A sign of healing is when that 'word(s)' is no longer a trigger but has been neutralized and understood in its original meaning. We are wounded by words many times because of the tone with which they are spoken to us - and connotation gets glommed onto a word simply because of the emotion used to deliver the word as well as the emotion in the receiving of it.

'Bridging islands of consciousness' as God has referred to it when talking to me, is the 'what' I am doing and the 'why' is to connect more people in outwardly opposed camps to the heart of The Message that 'the Kingdom is near' when we are connected through the gateway of Love, that heaven on earth is the reality of our purpose when we are in our full-beingness, when we have embodied (recognized) our inner light is the same light that lives within all and it is our job to uncover (unveil) it within ourselves and then stand as the lamp on the table so others can see their way through the darkness too. Whew!  I know that was a long sentence but if you know me, you know that sometimes a stream of consciousness needs to simply flow ~

This is the image Spirit shows me to illustrate the 'islands' of consciousness' in "the Sea of Me": picture a vast sea dotted with beautiful islands that from one perspective appear separate.  When you look into the sea however, below the surface, you see that the islands are all peaks of one landmass. Through this imagery, God also shows me rainbow bridges between the islands that represent the covenental promise of The Creator of us all. It is we, too afraid to immerse ourselves in the uncharted depths of the Sea of God for fear of the unknown or fear of that which looks/sounds different than we. The invitation is for us to have the courage to allow the current of God's Whole/Holy Spirit to carry us to 'new to us' places, experiences and expanded understanding.

To walk with God means to allow God to lead. It means to not limit the Whole of His Spirit, for creation is ever new, ever expanding.  The Seed of Creation however is the Spirit of Love and in Judeo-Christian tradition Adam walked and talked with God.  It was the natural state. It was heaven on earth.  Jesus came as the second Adam to help us remember Who we are in the Family of God, the Family of Creation - to reflect for us what is possible when we allow our hearts to lead us instead of our minds.  When the heart is activated then the mind follows where the heart leads. When the heart is closed or in a state of non-forgiveness, the mind is untethered. Without an anchor, the mind can believe things that prevent us from knowing the true purpose of our existence here and now.

Thank you for listening with an open heart as I continue sharing - however challenging anything I say, I pray that you have the courage to step into the unknown whatever the unknown is to you. The unknown can be opposing political views to your own, a stereotype you have about an ethnic group, a discomfort or judgment you have about a different socioeconomic group, or assumptions around what any particular religion or spiritual path is all about.  I encourage you to hold yourself accountable and look inwardly at where you have assumptions or stereotypes around any group that you don't interact with.  Stretch yourself, stretch your heart, stretch your mind and see if you can perceive God within that other.
​
The invitation is intimacy with God.  To see 'into-the-sea-of-Me'. ​Many blessings on your journey as you continue your pilgrimage into the Heart of Who You Are.
​
Dammah

Retreat Info Here