Elijah the Prophet

My dear Friends
Life at the moment is both radiant and difficult. This occupation sort of chose me; at the end of 1999 I lost my job as a carer, and told Fr Brendan, the priest who looked after my spiritual life at that time. It coincided with a feeling I was going to die, probably, as someone said at the time, a death to the self, and a more full expression of living in God and for God. Father Brendan said he was sorry, that sometimes mystics like St John live to a ripe old age, although they yearn to be with the Divine, and I just had to get on with it. And, he said, not to worry - God would find me a new work.

And what a work! Constantly at the 'coal face' trying to help all sorts of people in all sorts of different situations. And this often brings about confrontation, sometimes necessary in order to come to resolution. How I long for a quiet life! But I try to follow God's will and often there is a good result, and sometimes there is no need for confrontation at all. Much of this will only be known in the next life, and thus I am following in the steps of Jesus and am the seed that dies in the ground.

I couldn't do all this without the love of God and the love of my friends, a love, which according to C.S. Lewis, one of the great Anglican spiritual writers (and author of the Narnia Chronicles) is the highest love of all.

My dear friend Rita says she quite understnads how the heart leaps at the thought of Friendship. And it was my heart that leapt in the Jesuit monastery in North Wales in December 1987 when I discovered my greatest and my constant Friend of all.

Shalom deep in your heart
Sister Gila