My dear Friends
Have you ever done amy voluntry work? Volunteering is a good way to get to know people and to use your skills. In the past I have worked with the elderly and also in the Oxfam shop in Cambridge, although my skills with a till are not very good.I have also worked with the Women's Royal Voluntary Service in the local hospital, washing dishes and serving meals, a job which I quite enjoyed.
Now I am branching out into the world of cats, albeit at secondhand. There is a charity shop in Cambridge called The Cat Flap, selling all kinds of items and probably even something for cats! So as I have a beautiful pussy cat called Thomas I am giving it a go, maybe twice a week. It's a bus ride away, over the bridge in Mill Road in a bustling international neighbourhood so it will be fun. Wish me luck!
Shalom from
Sister Gila
Tuesday, 25 May 2010
Friday, 21 May 2010
My religious journey (Part 3)
In August 1999 I went to see my Bishop Peter Smith to tell him of my calling, of founding a religious community. He was very sympathetic and asked me to write a Rule of Life. I woke up the next day on the Feast of the Assumption and wrote 6 pages under the guidance of the Holy spirit. Constitutions followed over the next few years. David and I were divorced and annulled in the year 2000. But although I recruited as best i could, no-one has come to join me. I started an Association of Friends, sending them a Newsletter twice a year and now The Little Sisters of Joy is turning into a foundation for Peace and a registered charity.
This has come about in a rather unusual way. IN July 2004 I went to see my present Bishop, Michael Evans, about The LIttle Sisters of Joy.It was not altogether a fruitful meeting, but it was still something of a shock when he rejected the whole thing in a letter in November of that year. Carry on with the peace and reconciliation, he said but you have not suffered enough to found a religious community and yor gifts can be better used elsewhere. 4 days later, in the middle of the night, I felt moved to look for at a book of music. I went into my living room and my hand fell on the Canadian Book of Catholic Worship. All the hymns that I loved from all over the world were contained in that little book and I spent most of the night weeping. I felt that all the seminal moments in my life were coming together and fusing into one question from God: 'Will you go back to Toronto?' I slept again for a little while and at 8am went into my living romm where from the window I could see the first frost.
Later that day and all through the coming week, I felt that god was asking me to set up a Foundation for Peace and Reconciliation, based on the Friends I had gthered. I felt the presence of mary very strongly, while I was 'giving birth' to this Foundation.
At the turn of the year I decided to look into emigration to Canada. I decided I might as well go the whole way. At the same time I decided to make a trip to toronto. I stayed with the Missionary Sisters of the Precious Blodd on Madison Avenue, a central location near the University, which I also explored. The Sisters' house was very nurturing and I made my daily excursions from there quite happily, enjoying the delights of this lovely city. I went to the local Churches and the Cathedral for Mass.
I made 2 subsequent visits to Toronto and on one occasion met the new Archbishop. tom Collins, who issued a welcome for me to bring a community over there. He listened to the last page of my Constitutions and said: 'They are beautiful, Gila, especially the part about hospitality.' I even found a building which I thought would be suitablee for a Motherhouse for The Little Sisters of Joy-the location was near to the place I was staying in, with Gary, a Jewish man and his wife EMiko.
On my 3rd visit I went to stay with my cousins near Calgary but on my return my illness reared its ugly head again and I landed in the psychiatric hospital, where I decided I could no longer emigrate after all. Sinsce then things have gone quiet and I patiently await God's will for the next step.
Shalom from
Sister Gila
This has come about in a rather unusual way. IN July 2004 I went to see my present Bishop, Michael Evans, about The LIttle Sisters of Joy.It was not altogether a fruitful meeting, but it was still something of a shock when he rejected the whole thing in a letter in November of that year. Carry on with the peace and reconciliation, he said but you have not suffered enough to found a religious community and yor gifts can be better used elsewhere. 4 days later, in the middle of the night, I felt moved to look for at a book of music. I went into my living room and my hand fell on the Canadian Book of Catholic Worship. All the hymns that I loved from all over the world were contained in that little book and I spent most of the night weeping. I felt that all the seminal moments in my life were coming together and fusing into one question from God: 'Will you go back to Toronto?' I slept again for a little while and at 8am went into my living romm where from the window I could see the first frost.
Later that day and all through the coming week, I felt that god was asking me to set up a Foundation for Peace and Reconciliation, based on the Friends I had gthered. I felt the presence of mary very strongly, while I was 'giving birth' to this Foundation.
At the turn of the year I decided to look into emigration to Canada. I decided I might as well go the whole way. At the same time I decided to make a trip to toronto. I stayed with the Missionary Sisters of the Precious Blodd on Madison Avenue, a central location near the University, which I also explored. The Sisters' house was very nurturing and I made my daily excursions from there quite happily, enjoying the delights of this lovely city. I went to the local Churches and the Cathedral for Mass.
I made 2 subsequent visits to Toronto and on one occasion met the new Archbishop. tom Collins, who issued a welcome for me to bring a community over there. He listened to the last page of my Constitutions and said: 'They are beautiful, Gila, especially the part about hospitality.' I even found a building which I thought would be suitablee for a Motherhouse for The Little Sisters of Joy-the location was near to the place I was staying in, with Gary, a Jewish man and his wife EMiko.
On my 3rd visit I went to stay with my cousins near Calgary but on my return my illness reared its ugly head again and I landed in the psychiatric hospital, where I decided I could no longer emigrate after all. Sinsce then things have gone quiet and I patiently await God's will for the next step.
Shalom from
Sister Gila
Thursday, 20 May 2010
My religious journey (Part 2)
At the end of the week things calmed down and I came into a kind of haven. But the road to baptism was not easy-it took until Easter 1989 until I was received into the Catholic Church.It was a glorious night at the Easter Vigil and I was baptised and confirmed and recieved Holy Communion in the peace which passeth all understanding.
In June 1989 I went back to Israel for the first time in 21 years. It was a momentous time. I made a retreat on the Mountain of Beatitudes with Sr Noboko of the Little Sisters of Jesus.
I also visted Neve Shalom/Wahaat al Salaam/ Oasis of Peace, a community of Jews and Palestinians living together in the Ayalon Valley. Each child learns Hebrew and Arabic in the School for Peace. The community was founded by Fr Bruno Hussar, a Catholic priest from an Egyptian Jewish background. HIs autobiography is called 'When the cloud lifts.' One day it lifted and God spoke and asked him to found a community of Jews and Palestinians living together. A tall order, but he started. At first only a few hippies came to help him and he said to the Lord: 'If you dont send a family of Jews and Palestinians within a week, I'm quitting!'But they came. Fr Bruno led me down to the Dumiyah, a building with a white shaped dome whose name means deep silence. As I stood inside facing Fr Bruno, I felt I had come home.
Later that year I met more of The Little Sisters of Jesus and felt it was my destiny to become one of them. But they finally rejected me in 1998. A month later I went to the Sisters of Pomeyrol in Provence. In the House of Silence I felt I received a call to found a new religious community of women. On my return to Paris I met Cardinal Lustiger and took a vow of celibacy before hime. Then I met Maryvonne le Goanvic and we officially founded The Little Sisters of Joy on the 7 March 1999 in the upper room of 22 Newton Road Cambridge. We hope to start the community in Israel, but Maryvonne told me the following year that she could not continue as she could not live the vow of poverty. I continued to live a normal consecrated life and returned to Israel for 3 months that spring. It was a marvellous time and I felt a reconciliation of opposites within my deepest being.
(To be continued)
Shalom from
Sister Gila
In June 1989 I went back to Israel for the first time in 21 years. It was a momentous time. I made a retreat on the Mountain of Beatitudes with Sr Noboko of the Little Sisters of Jesus.
I also visted Neve Shalom/Wahaat al Salaam/ Oasis of Peace, a community of Jews and Palestinians living together in the Ayalon Valley. Each child learns Hebrew and Arabic in the School for Peace. The community was founded by Fr Bruno Hussar, a Catholic priest from an Egyptian Jewish background. HIs autobiography is called 'When the cloud lifts.' One day it lifted and God spoke and asked him to found a community of Jews and Palestinians living together. A tall order, but he started. At first only a few hippies came to help him and he said to the Lord: 'If you dont send a family of Jews and Palestinians within a week, I'm quitting!'But they came. Fr Bruno led me down to the Dumiyah, a building with a white shaped dome whose name means deep silence. As I stood inside facing Fr Bruno, I felt I had come home.
Later that year I met more of The Little Sisters of Jesus and felt it was my destiny to become one of them. But they finally rejected me in 1998. A month later I went to the Sisters of Pomeyrol in Provence. In the House of Silence I felt I received a call to found a new religious community of women. On my return to Paris I met Cardinal Lustiger and took a vow of celibacy before hime. Then I met Maryvonne le Goanvic and we officially founded The Little Sisters of Joy on the 7 March 1999 in the upper room of 22 Newton Road Cambridge. We hope to start the community in Israel, but Maryvonne told me the following year that she could not continue as she could not live the vow of poverty. I continued to live a normal consecrated life and returned to Israel for 3 months that spring. It was a marvellous time and I felt a reconciliation of opposites within my deepest being.
(To be continued)
Shalom from
Sister Gila
Wednesday, 19 May 2010
My religious journey (Part 1)
My dear Friends
I was born in London in 1951 into an Orthodox Jewish family. My father took me to the Synagogue at a very early age and I loved it. I also loved the Sabbath and the Festivals. I went to a Jewish primary school until at age 11 we moved to Glasgow. I went to Glasgow Universtity and stayed in a bed sit and one night had a dream about Christ. My friend took me to an evangelical Christian who almost converted me but I was rebelling against my family and it just wasn't the right moment.
In 1979 I had a massive nervous breakdown and when I was better I took singing lessons which brought me back to God. IN 1982 I moved to Cambridge to study music at the Technical College and at the same time returned to the Reform Jewish Synagogue, where I began to take servises and my faith deepened. I also married the pianist David Christophersen. In 1987 I wern to St Beuno's retreat Centre, North Wales, on a retreat of deepsilence. One day I rested above what I discovered to be the chapel and suddenly my heart leapt and I was flooded with joy.'Oh dear its Him again,' I said to my self and went to the prior to decide what to do.'This is a consloation and we leave it at that,' he said. But all the rest of the week I got to the heart of myself in prayer and discovered my true self.
Six months passed on my return to CAmbridge. I felt the need to go away again and was going to take a friend to Cromer but no-one could come with me. So I went alone. On my way home I was praying at the beach for my mother and suddenly St Beuno's was encapsulated in my mind and I was in that dimension that is pure God. Driving home I looked for a Church and found a little Saxon one on the right hand side. Going into the graveyard I knelt down and said 'Ok, I'll do anything you ask' and in the still small voice it was the Lord. IN that moment my life changed forever. All that week it was as if I was taken to heaven and back, different Catholic women popped in and out and I disovered they were Mother Julian of Norwich and Edith Stein who were helping me into this new life. Edith Stein was a GErma Jewess and philosopher who became a Carmelite nun and perished in the Holocaust.
In the middle of the wee I was at work and my colleague ased me if I had discovered the blue field of flowers behind the Institute.Going with her, Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem Heaven Haven flooded into my mind:
I have desir'd to go
where springs not fail
where flies no sharp and sided hail
and a few lilies blow.
And I have desir'd to be
where no storms come,
where the wind is in the havens dumb
and out of the swing of the sea.
And so I received a religious vocation.
(To be contd)
Shalom from
Sister Gila
I was born in London in 1951 into an Orthodox Jewish family. My father took me to the Synagogue at a very early age and I loved it. I also loved the Sabbath and the Festivals. I went to a Jewish primary school until at age 11 we moved to Glasgow. I went to Glasgow Universtity and stayed in a bed sit and one night had a dream about Christ. My friend took me to an evangelical Christian who almost converted me but I was rebelling against my family and it just wasn't the right moment.
In 1979 I had a massive nervous breakdown and when I was better I took singing lessons which brought me back to God. IN 1982 I moved to Cambridge to study music at the Technical College and at the same time returned to the Reform Jewish Synagogue, where I began to take servises and my faith deepened. I also married the pianist David Christophersen. In 1987 I wern to St Beuno's retreat Centre, North Wales, on a retreat of deepsilence. One day I rested above what I discovered to be the chapel and suddenly my heart leapt and I was flooded with joy.'Oh dear its Him again,' I said to my self and went to the prior to decide what to do.'This is a consloation and we leave it at that,' he said. But all the rest of the week I got to the heart of myself in prayer and discovered my true self.
Six months passed on my return to CAmbridge. I felt the need to go away again and was going to take a friend to Cromer but no-one could come with me. So I went alone. On my way home I was praying at the beach for my mother and suddenly St Beuno's was encapsulated in my mind and I was in that dimension that is pure God. Driving home I looked for a Church and found a little Saxon one on the right hand side. Going into the graveyard I knelt down and said 'Ok, I'll do anything you ask' and in the still small voice it was the Lord. IN that moment my life changed forever. All that week it was as if I was taken to heaven and back, different Catholic women popped in and out and I disovered they were Mother Julian of Norwich and Edith Stein who were helping me into this new life. Edith Stein was a GErma Jewess and philosopher who became a Carmelite nun and perished in the Holocaust.
In the middle of the wee I was at work and my colleague ased me if I had discovered the blue field of flowers behind the Institute.Going with her, Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem Heaven Haven flooded into my mind:
I have desir'd to go
where springs not fail
where flies no sharp and sided hail
and a few lilies blow.
And I have desir'd to be
where no storms come,
where the wind is in the havens dumb
and out of the swing of the sea.
And so I received a religious vocation.
(To be contd)
Shalom from
Sister Gila
Tuesday, 18 May 2010
Deanery talk
My dear Friends
I was due to give a talk on my religious journery to a group of Anglicans this week. Unfortunately adverse circumstances have made it not possible, but I will publish the text of what I was going to say on the Blog later this week.
Shalom from
Sister Gila
I was due to give a talk on my religious journery to a group of Anglicans this week. Unfortunately adverse circumstances have made it not possible, but I will publish the text of what I was going to say on the Blog later this week.
Shalom from
Sister Gila
Monday, 10 May 2010
The Carmelites
My dear Friends
I have not been feeling too well lately, but thought it would do me good to go and see my friends in the Hertfordshire countryside. so last Thursday evening I hired a little car and set off on Friday morning.
Where is Ware? You may well ask. Ware is equidistant from Cambridge and London, on the A10 road.It is a very pleasant drive and I bowled along in my little new red car. One hour later I was on the hill and facing the monastery of my dear Carmelite Sisters.
Carmel takes its origins from Elijah and Mount Carmel in Israel. Many years ago a group of hermits gathered round the mountain and much later the Carmelite order was established, being reformed in the time of St Teresa of Avila. Carmel is an enclosed Order and the main activity of the nuns is to pray for the world, of which they have a good understanding. I attended Mass, at which there was a priest who gave some good preaching on our vocation in life. Then I went to talk to my friend, one of the Sisters, who entered in 1951, the year of my birth-I regard her as a mother figure. After we had chatted happily for some time I had lunch, then took a walk, afterwards returning to chat to my friend again.
The monastery is on a hill, with some delightful countryside round it, and one or two farms. so I enjoyed my day out and sped home in the little red car.
Shalom from
Sister Gila
I have not been feeling too well lately, but thought it would do me good to go and see my friends in the Hertfordshire countryside. so last Thursday evening I hired a little car and set off on Friday morning.
Where is Ware? You may well ask. Ware is equidistant from Cambridge and London, on the A10 road.It is a very pleasant drive and I bowled along in my little new red car. One hour later I was on the hill and facing the monastery of my dear Carmelite Sisters.
Carmel takes its origins from Elijah and Mount Carmel in Israel. Many years ago a group of hermits gathered round the mountain and much later the Carmelite order was established, being reformed in the time of St Teresa of Avila. Carmel is an enclosed Order and the main activity of the nuns is to pray for the world, of which they have a good understanding. I attended Mass, at which there was a priest who gave some good preaching on our vocation in life. Then I went to talk to my friend, one of the Sisters, who entered in 1951, the year of my birth-I regard her as a mother figure. After we had chatted happily for some time I had lunch, then took a walk, afterwards returning to chat to my friend again.
The monastery is on a hill, with some delightful countryside round it, and one or two farms. so I enjoyed my day out and sped home in the little red car.
Shalom from
Sister Gila
Monday, 3 May 2010
The movies
My dear Friends
Despite the sunny weather (although there's a bitterly cold wind today) I have been getting some recreation by going to the movies. There's a very good cinema in Cambridge called The Arts Picturehouse, which shows some modern, if esoteric films. Shutter Island was a grim movie about an asylum on the island, which a police lieutenant goes to investigate and ends up as a patient in the institution.
Nightwatching was a much more gentle film about Rembrandt and his making of his famous painting The Night Watch, the original of which I have seen in the Ryks Museum in Amsterdam.
A Father and his children was about a filmaker whose operation goes bust; he commits suicide as a result and his family are left to pick up the pieces from his business. I am Love is a haunting Italian movie about a dynasty which has its tragedies, but the film is made with a great deal of sensitivity and creativity.
But I drew the line at Dogtooth, a really peculiar Greek film about a family (incestuous amongst other things) which doesn't leave their family home.
I generally go to all those movies with my friend James, who enjoys them as much as I do.
Happy watching
Shalom from
Sister Gila
Despite the sunny weather (although there's a bitterly cold wind today) I have been getting some recreation by going to the movies. There's a very good cinema in Cambridge called The Arts Picturehouse, which shows some modern, if esoteric films. Shutter Island was a grim movie about an asylum on the island, which a police lieutenant goes to investigate and ends up as a patient in the institution.
Nightwatching was a much more gentle film about Rembrandt and his making of his famous painting The Night Watch, the original of which I have seen in the Ryks Museum in Amsterdam.
A Father and his children was about a filmaker whose operation goes bust; he commits suicide as a result and his family are left to pick up the pieces from his business. I am Love is a haunting Italian movie about a dynasty which has its tragedies, but the film is made with a great deal of sensitivity and creativity.
But I drew the line at Dogtooth, a really peculiar Greek film about a family (incestuous amongst other things) which doesn't leave their family home.
I generally go to all those movies with my friend James, who enjoys them as much as I do.
Happy watching
Shalom from
Sister Gila
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