Grow Soul – – Sarah Cledwyn – Spiritual Direction

Pain, Suffering and Relief

I was speaking with a colleague recently about a possible talk on suffering for their community. It’s been a while since I had a speaking engagement and I found myself having one of those moments where you meet someone new and you each take turns saying something that really resonates. It was a fun conversation. I had to chuckle as I spoke with the friend who referred me to speak on this topic. She said, “When I heard the topic was suffering, I knew exactly who could speak to that”.

I have been recently launched into another stream of learning …

Transformation

by Grow Soul

Right here with you

This past week has been intense. I was in a gathering the other night where we all checked in and as I sat in silence, I wondered how to name what was happening for me. An image came right away. When I was in labor with my first child, it became clear he had flipped upside down and was stuck that way. From the moment we discovered his position, my midwives told me not to push. Sometimes that physical urge is described as similar to the urge to throw up or sneeze, but with exponential intensity. Try stoping that when …

Flourishing

by Grow Soul

Who has the time?

In general when a child asks me a question, I feel a responsibility to answer their question with good will and honesty. “What time is it?” 11:58 I might answer. Specifically, when a person asks me a question shortly after I have already answered the question, I can get playful. “What time is it?” Now, I say. Dinner time, I say. Daytime, I say.

In our time focused culture we give a lot of power to the clock, to the ordering of the world in precise organized ways. Time is a real thing. We experience ourselves and others aging. We …

Transformation

by Grow Soul

Life is like a Labyrinth

I love walking the labyrinth. I am fortunate to have several labyrinths available to me with a short drive from home. Invariably I try to get myself oriented on the path and just as reliably, the path itself keeps undoing me with each twist and turn. I thought I was surely almost in the middle when I am led to the very outside ring. I thought I was almost out, when I take a turn towards the center.

Labyrinth

Imagine my bemusement today as I settled in to work on some tech issues and stumbled right into a different sort of …

Letting Go

by Grow Soul

And We’re Back

I feel like I just got back somewhere after a long journey. Sometimes a move forward in our lives, in our business or any place else takes us on a winding road we never expected. For me this happened when I moved my website to a different platform. The blog capability was awful. It wasn’t made for that. I did some research and learned about all the work arounds, but basically I just didn’t focus my energy there and let it lie for over 2 years. It feels like I’ve been gone for a long time.

Come on in!

Oh dear ones, I …

New Life

by Grow Soul

Opening Day reflection

We have crossed the threshold into a new year of RE, of Spirit Play. Were you ready? I know that getting and being in a state of readiness is something we had to return to again and again in our class yesterday. In Spirit Play we ask the children and ourselves to get ready for class by getting quiet in our bodies, minds and hearts. We help ourselves get ready by sitting quietly (criss cross applesauce) with our hands to ourselves. When our attention strays, we ask each other and ourselves kindly and gently to get ready again. We bring …

Spirit Play Reflection

Joys and Sorrows

This week the moment in Spirit Play that captured me came right at the end of class. Everyone was doing their work. We had about 5 more minutes before it was time to clean up and re-gather on the rug for our closing song. An adult came in the room. I reminded him that class didn’t end for 15 min. but he was a new member who was still on summer service schedule and they had missed church. His son was lagging behind in the hallway, not quite ready to come in. Inside me two things happened.

… Category

by Grow Soul

Spirit Play Reflection- Presence and Absence

Absence and Presence

For the first time this year I missed a scheduled Spirit Play class. I traveled over the weekend to see family and wondered how class would go in my absence. I felt very fortunate that a wonderful sub was found and felt a lot of gratitude that my spirit play friends were being held in the capable hands of others in our community. And the last few weeks of holidays and breaks meant that I have been out of the classroom for several weeks in a row. In our classroom I strive to connect with each person

… Category

by Grow Soul

Spirit Play reflection- Buddha and the Mustard seed

Last week we worked with the story of Buddha and the Mustard seed. In this story a child dies and the mother searches everywhere for a mustard seed from a house that has known no sadness, loss or death in order to heal her child.

There were e-mails from teachers before Sunday, grappling with how they would tell this story. It puts us adults on the edge of our comfort to talk about death, especially with our children. I wonder how it went in your class? I wonder if you had children who said they had been sad at the …

Bringing Mystical Experience to Spiritual Direction

I have been having several conversations lately about mystical experience. For the first time in a long time I launched right into a few of my own stories and experiences with someone who I thought was a safe person. She told me about a Jesuit friend of hers who says, “When someone tells me about something like that, I ask them if they had enough sleep, if they had eaten and if they had a good bowel movement”. I have been processing ever since. If I was with that Jesuit and brought something that I experienced as holy and an …