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DROPPING OUT FOR FIVE WEEKS
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Dear Friends,
Hello dear ones,
Next week – Wednesday, I leave New York and drive to Larchmont to give a talk. I will stay there overnight and the following day I’ll drive five hours to Rye, New Hampshire for another talk. On Friday, I’ll drive to Barre, Massachusetts to embark on a five-week silent retreat.
I like to put at least two months of silence into my life each year. I can’t explain why it is I’m drawn to silence – maybe it’s because I speak so much – but it takes some doing to drop out of one’s life for such a long time, and the desire for this annual retreat dictates my choices of livelihood and all the other choices in life. For instance, I can’t see any corporate employer being thrilled to have me absent myself for two months to go sit on a cushion and watch my mind. I would soon be shown the door!
I always feel when embarking on a long retreat that I am about to dive into the core/essence/heart/center of life. People often think that this means one is removing oneself from life. It’s exactly the opposite – it’s about becoming fully aware of one’s life moment-by-moment and understanding on a cellular level that everything arises and passes away, from the tallest mountains to the breath in my nostrils.
I will be away during the November elections but have applied for an absentee ballot because I feel it is a privilege and a duty to vote. (omission -- too preachy) It is in Divine Right Order to abide by the precepts of the society one lives in as long as those precepts are just. Did Jesus not pay taxes? He demonstrated as such when he asked Peter to cut open the fish to find the coin with which to pay. And did he not say, “Render under Caesar the things that are Caesar’s …”?
Well, now I’m getting preachy – sorry!
The other day I went to see the movie, “The Queen” about the Queen around the time of Princess Diana’s death. It is quite wonderful; Helen Mirren plays Elizabeth II – she is the Queen, and she does her perfectly. Of course I loved it because I have always had such a longing to be Queen of England. I’d like to be a hermit, live in solitude and meditate and at the same time be the Queen – maybe in another lifetime I can do both.
I once had a therapist who told me that the stork had dropped me in the wrong house. Initially I thought she was joking, but when I got to think about it a little more, I thought it made sense: maybe the stork got a bit confused one foggy evening and went off course – it meant to deposit me at Buckingham Palace but dropped me in the London suburbs instead!
The horseback riding is going along a clop – I just love it. I fell off taking a lesson in Pennsylvania – didn’t hurt myself but felt very happy to have that over with. I was so frightened to fall off and now I have -- so I’m not frightened of it any more!
I will be beaming lots of metta (loving kindness) while on retreat, so if you feel a glow of well-being you’ll know that you’re on the receiving end and I’ll know that you are beaming the same back to me.
With much metta and mudita to you all.
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With Love,
Lorna |
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10/5/2006
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Lorna Kelly
"Write that book for the Glory of God
and the Good of people"
- Mother Teresa
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