COME AS YOU ARE.

Quiet : Reflective Time  (December 3, 2014).

Today was a quiet day. We were invited to meet with ourselves and God. We were also asked to look at how “come as we are”.  We looked back on the experience of this OASIS during last eleven days already. In our personal reflection, we are invited to reflect some of the most moving experiences of our live up to now.

Our activities began by morning prayer. It was led by the Province of Chile with the theme "The world is in your hands". Through the song "Come Holy Spirit" (in Spanish) we reflected the role of the Holy Spirit in our live. Furthermore, we were asked to take a picture "A hand brings the world." Personally, we were asked to answer the question, "What beautiful things I have to give?" and coloring it. The picture would be shared in the evening prayer. Ending the morning prayer, we were invited to contémplate various stunning images of God's creation with the theme, "When God paints, He makes all things beautiful."

After breakfast, Sr. Claudia gave us an introduction to "Guidelines for the day." The theme of today's recollection was "COME AS YOU ARE."

Some suggestions which we lived for personal reflection was as follows:

a. We started with a moment of prayer.

b. We went trough our reflection material and stay with what we touched most.

c. We made a WORD POEM with the letters of the Word the which was speaking most to us.

1. We wrote the letters of our Word vertically on our paper.

2. Let the line call now,  we began with the first letter of the line.

d. FLOW WRITING

1. We copied the sentence of W. Jager in our notebooks.

2. Then we continued to write what comes into our minds, starting with this sentence.

"A spiritual way which is not leading to daily life and to our fellow brothers and sisters leads astray and is a dead end. .... "

3.  We didn't think, didn't stop writing. Our pen had to be in continual writing.

4. If we did not know what to write, just there... at the last words ...

5. We wrote for 10 minutes !

6. Then, read aloud what we have written and underline the most important words. We made with these words a few new sentences.

e. We took time to revise our personal story in the light of what has been presented the last days.

f. We ended with a moment of prayer.

After lunch, we have experienced the following activities:

a. Sacred / Pilgrim Dance (Led by Sr. Claudia T.)

This dance invited us to realize our existence in the Holy Ground. We are asked to remove shoes when undergoing movements. The dance reminded us of the story of Moses at that time. He set foot in the holy land and saw burnt bush. That was where he listened to the voice of God and following His will with all humility and surrender.

b. Healing Prayer (Led byBro. Johan M.)

We were invited to pray with a number of the body movements and aware of our breathing. Through movement, we were invited to contémplate what happened in ourhearts. We were aware of our very touched event in our live. We appreciated the magnitude of God's love to us respectively. We hope that God heals our wounds.

Ending a series of reflections today, we were gathering in a group of Contemplative Dialogue. We shared our experiences about how we have lived today and reflecting a very touching experience of life in our hearts.

We closed our quiet day by the evening prayer. We shared our personal qualities that we wanted  to contribute to the world. Reflections about "Take Time" and prayer "Everyday God" were finishing our evening prayer.

By Eustachius Robert EkoWijayanto - Chile