Who am I and what do I seek?

[Geoffm]

I am a person who has appreciated the love of family and friends. I have always been a searcher. Even when I became a Catholic Priest I had many questions. Their number increased after I studied and taught science. I have been deeply affected by the abuse of children by some of my colleagues and by the inadequate way some authorities have dealt with the issue.

I seek at a deep level to share with others who think about issues and how those issues relate to a divine being. I look for a respectful listening to my experiences and my insights. I hope to do the same for others. I struggle when those in political or church positions of authority will not enter into genuine dialogue but expect others simply to accept their particular wording of what is to be believed or what is to be done. I think that truth does exist; I believe that there is no one formulation of that truth. I believe in the primacy of conscience.

I have had the idea of something like the Pearl Seekers in my mind for many years. I believe that many others are looking for a place to search as equals for a relationship between real life issues and a spiritual reality.

[Pierre]

I am the result of Evolution, even though it might not match Darwin’s theory. I am the result of a sexual intercourse and not a genetically engineered product. I am the relay of creative chain that started millions of years ago. But this is only a mutilated vision of me. I am also a cosmic bundle of emotions and a current ‘expression’ of past inter-action with my environment.
I grew up in a post-colonial, post-war multicultural society and was from an early age confronted with cultural and spiritual idiosyncrasies with little help to resolve them coming from my parents, relatives, or teachers. Today I have grown physiologically and I think intellectually, I also have a family to love; but I have yet to identify what makes me a cosmic singularity.

I seek what many before me have sought using mystical or scientific knowledge. I seek the true nature of ‘man’ and its relationship with the mystery at the heart of our reality.

I hope that PearlSeekers will provide the help I needed when I was younger grappling with my issues.

[Dorothy]

Who am I?
A fairly ordinary person who cares about people and our world and who is saddened by inequity, injustice, intolerance, indifference and exclusivism and who, as best she is able, tries to give care and respect, support and dignity to people who come across her path.

Initially brought up Anglican and having travelled through many protestant denominations, once I might have fitted the bill as Christian. Now I am no longer sure the church would accept me as this, for I don't feel at home in churches, nor with staunch, completely convinced 'Christians'. I know I don't want to claim an exclusive right to God in adopting that (or any other) label. Nonetheless I have known friends from many branches of Christian faith, friends from other faiths, and friends with no faith, who have reflected Christlikeness to me in the way they live their lives. Their seeking to understand what life is about and what sustains it has informed my own quest.

What do I seek?
Relationship and community with people who care about life, other people and our world, with people who seek to understand who or what we seek when we say we hunger for "God"?

The pearls I seek are people whose lives have been changed by the grit in the oyster shell (life circumstances), people who have reflected on what they have lived and learned, and what they have come to be because of that. I seek to hear the stories and the wisdom of such people and, perhaps, if I am welcomed, to share my own.

What attracted me to Pearl Seekers?
I came to Pearlseekers having read an introductory article in OnLine Catholics. Something about the very first webpage's gentleness and simplicity, its lack of rules and regulations, and its intention to mutuality, welcome and open-ness attracted me. Even though that first site might now be perceived to have been "primitive" and lacking, it had a certain naive, open innocence that appealed to me. I felt I could be at home there.

[maureen]

I'm a reformed conservative Catholic. Until the late 1980's I believed everything that had been taught to me growing up and attending Catholic schools in the 1940's and 1950's. When my six children were young I felt responsible not only for my soul but for their's and my husbands as well. Then my children started to grow into adulthood and I began to realise that they were all wonderful beautiful people even though they thought differently to me and I began to listen to what they were saying. One of my eldest daughter's favorite songs when she was a teenager was "Teach your children well" and when I now think about it I think I learned more from my children than I ever taught them.
I think what I am seeking is food for my spirit, maybe some understanding of the way I now feel, which is a bit like a ship without a rudder. Basically, I am a very "all or nothing" type of person and so I have difficulty in holding on to the life giving parts of the church, of which there have been many over the years, and disregarding the parts which I find soul destroying.

[smithy]

Hello fellow Gems,

My name is Smithy. Thank you for the beauty i have fround in your contributions to pearl seekers so far. You are very enriching individuals.
Firstly i am a creative speller so read with kindly eyes my efforts please. Secondly i am another looking for more than is available in Parish. Thirdly as more is given to so many, i am encouraged to share what has been gifted to me in gratitude and hope. Fourthly i have a sense of fun that i like to share and maintain to keep a balance from my dominant thinking drive.

In seeking connectedness with other journeying souls i seek contact, enlightenment, wisdom, kindness and change. I offer a listening heart and respect for your giftedness.

Today is a beautiful day rich with possibilities. As i work along, my mind listens to the noise of worldly news, my heart prays for those in pain but my soul sings in freedom and joy.

SHALOM

[Colum]

I've called myself Colum, pretentiously but respectfully, after Colum Cille, the great 6th Century Irish mystic and missionary who founded the wonderful spiritual centre of Iona, off the coast of Scotland. He was closely connected to the ancient royal Irish family of Donegal whose surname I bear. I suppose I relate strongly to and admire very much the Celtic spirituality he represents. The ancient Irish (and some contemporary ones, too) seemed to have a way of connecting to and dwelling within the spiritual and the mystical in nature and in life. I find myself drawn more and more, in a similar way, to a meditative relationship with the divine in all things, in all people and within myself - a way that does not seek answers and dogmas which cover all of life's questions, but rather is content to live within the uncertainty and the mystery which belongs to a wild, ungraspable God who will always keep us guessing, and continually leads us on. I have grown up and lived within conventional Catholicism and I accept its vision that, ideally, christianity is primarily directed at creating a people, or community, who will reflect the love and compassion and justice of Jesus to the world. This is meant to be the point of its sacraments I think, especially Eucharist. I try to take part in this as best I can. But I also believe that there is another dimension, a personal one, to be found in the life and saying of Jesus. This is why I was attracted first to the Pearlseekers. I think, for example, in his little saying about seeking pearls, Jesus was talking about individuals, not so much about a church or a community. I've tried to explain how important this parable was to me in my post under 'My Spiritual Journey', so I won't repeat it here.
The decision I refer to there was whether to marry or not. Important for anyone, but especially difficult for me because I was ordained in the Catholic Church, and to marry meant having to give up ministry at that level. But the call from another was, for me, a call from the divine within her and me. The wild God of surprises threw me right back on myself. Something I read at the time said, 'God doesn't only ask us to give up things that are bad...' I believe that God has placed within us all a desire for the ultimate good - so much so that we can trust what we find deepest within us - the pearl of great price. To be satisfied with less than what we find there - what really satisfies our deepest longing, is to insult the God who made us. Ultimately that is where we will find God. To keep looking for that one pearl is to live in God's kingdom, I believe. Also a bit of an artist, I'm at present working on a painting on the subject,'The pearl of great price.' It means a lot to me.

[Christine]

indigoOne aspect of coming to middle age is that I have no answer to the first question. That stated, I should stop writing however I'll continue in the hope I write something of interest...to myself.

My life path has taken many directions. As a perpetual child of curiosity & story, on this day, in this very moment, I see myself as a potential life working toward fulfilment..and I need remember that as the dark veils tend to drop when least expected!

Right now, I have this lovely image of myself sitting inside a cocoon which moves through life with me peering out and recording events through my whole sensory system! As a child my all-sensory sensitivity and imagination often resulted in me being 'left to play alone' & I learnt my inner world was my source of security. Without the love of my paternal grandmother I am sure I would have died very young.

In primary years I tried to conform and join the outer world but as a plump, sweaty, non-sporty, non-academic, non-girly, non-groupie type I always ended up in the back row or on the reserve team with the other odd bods.

As a teenager I miraculously developed a persona which resulted in ease and enjoyment of events. Years later I realised that for the most part I was simply merging with the group dynamic and reflecting everyone around me so I wonder, was I ever there or anywhere?

The ability to merge and my decision to be in the world worked until I came to my late 20's and birthed my three children. Then the entire memory & mystery of love, wisdom and knowledge opened me back onto myself as I saw God reflected in the eyes of my new born children. That meeting & that knowledge has never left but now sits somewhere just beyond me.

I feel a shadow of it reflected in nature, in some art and music but there is absolutely nothing in the outer world which holds the mystery of all life and all time as does the eyes of a new born baby. Ofcourse I do see it at times. It's in the innocence and delight of the eyes of all children. People in love have a radiance. The eyes of someone fresh from meditation often holds that quiet knowledge. Relaxation & being happy deep down in the soul or even when in grief, our eyes may reflect something of divine mystery but I have never fully re-experienced that moment of 'awe' and I may not until I am ready to die?

Unfortunately without knowledge of 'an awe experience' most people do not or cannot understand & again I found myself misunderstood and ostracised from mainstream living & finally from my own life.

Assistance always comes and a major help for me was to recognise myself within ancestral heritage. I am a Celtic/Anglo Saxon & one day I realised I am a unique composite of thousands of people steeped in DNA seeded in what is known as Pagan or natural lore. When I knew this I began to understand why part of 'who I am' identifies & understands global indigeneous knowledge.

So was I a hippy? No, somehow the idea free love did not have a freedom I understood but at least I knew there was a tribe who resembled something of who I thought I was, I just needed monogamy and no pot.

I was not free enough to be a flower child...I was too wild and irrevant to belong to the traditional Catholic church...My visions were too extreme and ungrounded for sensible, stable realistic people and 'I'd seen God' so I was definitely outside any belief systems. In many ways I was homeless except God always provides shelter even for the hopeless. While their is the faintest spark of hope even on the darkest night..God is watching.

So I've come to accept it is my path to walk as gently as I dare along the Multi-dimensional Highway named, Darknight of the Soul with potholes,dead ends,loop road,falling rocks,flooding and no flood lights. It is lonely but it is also a very busy, well trod road.

One of my favorite movie scripts is the Matrix. Nemo is given the choice to take one pill and never wake or the other pill which opens the journey which cannot be left until....the end.

What do I Seek
There are two things I seek. First I want too share with others who don't know... but live to know. I also seek to understand sense of place...which involves resolve of how my ancestors lost their sense knowledge of belonging.

Increasingly I am comfortable knowing I will reconnect to that 'fullness of God' when I die (I have reason to know this but will save it for another day)
I am not 'well educated' in the standards of our society but do have an ability to tell story. I feel when stories are delivered with integrity they inspire and assist others. To inspire one person through the dark night of the Soul may be my life work?

A friend who has a background in acting and radio journalism recently told me my gift is in the energy of my voice...'you should tell the stories, speak them Christine.' and that is what I want to do & that is clearly a good place to stop writing. Walk Gently

[josie]

I'm a late 40-ish wife and mother of three adult sons. I have a fairly settled and blessed life. I'm very family orientated and believe strongly in the strength of family (whatever form that takes).

I am very passionate about parish life as well. My husband and I help facilitate Marriage Preparation in the Upper Hunter. We also organise an annual youth camp for the Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle (Camp Dio).

Last year I started the TWEC Christian Ministry and Formation Course. I am finding the sharing of experiences, expanding of knowledge and understanding very stimulating and rewarding.

What do I seek?

My background as a Catholic has in recent years led me up a path that has involved a quest to understand myself, my faith and what it means to be a Catholic (for myself).

I was brought up in a mixed religion household; my father was an Anglican (ten years ago at age of 70 became a Catholic) and my mother was an unchurched Catholic. My Dad was the one who took me to Mass each Sunday and I attended Catholic schools in the 60s and 70s.

I used to feel inadequate and confused and left out because my family did not practice the same devout Catholic practices as some of my peers. I guess as a child I felt embarassed by my lack of knowledge and understanding.

It was only when I had my own children that I was able through the strong pastoral leadership I experienced at our parish school to feel more confident about my place in the Catholic church.

I'm seeking growth and understanding, information and shared experiences.

God bless all involved with Pearlseekers and thank you for sharing your stories.

[jeannie]

[/B]stream of consciousness
Who is this jeannie hiding in a bottle?
A frightened child? A naughty girl? A woman haunted by fear and guilt?Searching here and there in this group and that.
Well I am a tribal catholic and I'm not ashamed of that.I took refuge from an abusive childhood in the practice of religion.I had to find a loving father somewhere. For many good reasons I have remained a faithful catholic for over 60 years.
I'm finding it more difficult these days to see Christ's message in the institutional church. I'm fed up with trying actually.I think the answers are within me and not to be dictated or prescibed by any body of men; especially men who are arrogant enough to think they are the ones who know what's best.
I'm trying to believe that I'm OK as I am and that that's how my creator wants me.
I think I'll give up the search and the questions and try to live
a loving, caring and reflective life,questions and all,
faithful to the message of Jesus for whom everyone was in.
Pearl Seekers embraces all . I admire the principles and all the people I've met but my head is heavy with words and I think I must let it be and let myself be.

Love jeannie

[jeannie]

stream of consciousness
Who is this jeannie hiding in a bottle?
A frightened child? A naughty girl? A woman haunted by fear and guilt?Searching here and there in this group and that.
Well I am a tribal catholic and I'm not ashamed of that.I took refuge from an abusive childhood in the practice of religion.I had to find a loving father somewhere. For many good reasons I have remained a faithful catholic for over 60 years.
It is becoming more difficult for me to see Christ's message in the institutional church. I'm fed up with trying actually.I think the answers are within me and not to be dictated or prescibed by any body of men; especially men who are arrogant enough to think they are the ones who know what's best.
I'm trying to believe that I'm OK as I am and that that's how my creator wants me.
I think I'll give up the search and the questions and try to live
a loving, caring and reflective life,questions and all,
faithful to the message of Jesus for whom everyone was in.
Pearl Seekers embraces all . I admire the principles and all the people I've met but my head is heavy with too many words and I think I must let it be and let myself be.

Love jeannie

[glesha]

Hi I'm new to this website. I've been a Catholic all my life and my most recent move in my formation has been to join a secular order. There are quite a few around that follow Saints such as St Francis, St Benedict but my choice has been the Carmelites.

Their specialty is joyful prayer and inner growth.

In my parish there is a great need for the laity to be more informed on scripture, prayer and what living the gospels means.

Any suggestions?

Grahame

[John H]

Who am I ? What do I seek ? What brought me to Pearl Seekers ?

I have now retired and have the opportunity of reading widely and reflecting. This reflection has shown something of the richness of moral issues.

I see much ‘rush to judgement’ and attribution of motives for actions. Compassion and efforts to understand Why are in short supply. These shortcomings apply to many moral questions. Simple answers and hard edicts don’t fit the complexities many experience.

I hope the dialogue of the Pearl Seeker forums will illuminate ways of bringing assessments to situations while giving due regard to the advice offered by the Church.

[Annie]

I am a mother and grandmother. When my children were growing up I saw the world differently, and again through their eyes. Now that I have grandchildren, my eyes are being opened again.

I am more able to accept different viewpoints and ideas than when I was young. I don't have the same passion to change the world - to a world that I want to suit me. I still do have a passion to be part of the change where wrongs need to be righted but I am more able to see the broader picture.

I hear the politicians squabble; they find fault and bicker; they denegrate the ideas and dreams of others. I think that I would like to change that sort of world. Why can't we accept that the opposing team has some good in their ideas; some good people amongst their group; achieved some positive outcomes. Why can't we work together for the best for those we work for?

I think that I am looking for a place to be accepted, for a community, for somewhere to share my thoughts, ideas, dreams and visions. I am looking for somewhere to just be. I might not be the best in the world at many things but I am happy to use what I have and know that I have done my best. I guess my priorities have changed once again looking at the world through the eyes of a child.

When I look at my grandson, he does not ask that I be perfect, just love him for the way he is. If only I could be like that for everyone.:)

How has being a parent or grandparent changed your priorities? dreams?

[elysianprincess]

"Toys" aka robin williams - let innocence and joy prevail!!!:)

[angel]

Hi Annie
I was interested in your viewpoint of seeing the world differently when you had children and then grandchildren. I think that's great. It means that you are growing and changing, not making the world revolve around you, but rather being open to new things, new ideas, new understandings. My four children are all adults now, the two boys married. I haven't any grandchildren as yet. But it's interesting to note how I have changed too over the years. I was very "religious" at one stage, would go to daily mass, attend all church services, be in all the church activities, committees etc. And then, one day I came to understand that this church was no longer community for me. When all people can be accepted as a vital and integral part of the church and valued for their giftedness, and when women are accepted as being called to a priestly vocation too, then I would feel more that this church community was about what is real in the world and what is love in Jesus's church. For me, the Church is man made. Spirituality is about Jesus. And who could be a better role model than that, for us to follow? At least in the Christian tradition.
I have come across a number of churches, in which the people have not come across as caring or really accepting etc. Many judgements have been made, if you do not think the way they do, or the way they say you have to think - rather than being challenged about their belief system and see what they really believe, they would prefer the comfortable life of being told what to think and do.
I have been fortunate to come across a lovely group of people who, even if they do not think and feel the same as I do, allow me to speak my piece and respect me for that. They do not feel that they have to convert me or tell me where I'm wrong. And I do the same for them. We listen to each other, with our hearts. We walk alongside each other and support one another. This is how I see Jesus - walking with, loving, listening compassionately, making suggestions but mostly loving us into perfection, who we were meant to be.
Hope all goes well for you, and congratulations on being a grandmother.
Angel



I am a mother and grandmother. When my children were growing up I saw the world differently, and again through their eyes. Now that I have grandchildren, my eyes are being opened again.

I am more able to accept different viewpoints and ideas than when I was young. I don't have the same passion to change the world - to a world that I want to suit me. I still do have a passion to be part of the change where wrongs need to be righted but I am more able to see the broader picture.

I hear the politicians squabble; they find fault and bicker; they denegrate the ideas and dreams of others. I think that I would like to change that sort of world. Why can't we accept that the opposing team has some good in their ideas; some good people amongst their group; achieved some positive outcomes. Why can't we work together for the best for those we work for?

I think that I am looking for a place to be accepted, for a community, for somewhere to share my thoughts, ideas, dreams and visions. I am looking for somewhere to just be. I might not be the best in the world at many things but I am happy to use what I have and know that I have done my best. I guess my priorities have changed once again looking at the world through the eyes of a child.

When I look at my grandson, he does not ask that I be perfect, just love him for the way he is. If only I could be like that for everyone.:)

How has being a parent or grandparent changed your priorities? dreams?

[Annie]

I am now a grandmother again and am looking forward to what this new little boy will help me see. I am sure that it won't be long before I begin my lessons.

I think that the Church has gone a long way from living as Jesus came to show us to becoming a member of an organisation that has complicated how we live and share with each other. I guess it needs to become a grandmother too and learn to see through the eyes of little children again. We learn a lot as we grow older but we forget the simple things too. I think I like relearning the simple things that are really important. One thing that I have learned is that quality time is so valuable. Today we need to be so competent and organised and not waste a minute. I have learned that sitting in the chook yard watching the chooks eat the seeds from water melon scraps, watching the ants run back and forth and watching the birds feed their young - sometimes watching in silence - but just taking time to sit and be available is vital in developing a relationship. I am sure that when we have more time in 'Church' for each other and just being able to accept each other for who we are we will become a more attractive community to those on the fringes.:)