Visiting Summer Festivals

Rachel was invited to speak at New Wine and led a seminar entitled ‘Unceasing Prayer’. Rachel writes,

“Prayer is the soul’s greatest adventure. We’re invited into a deep and loving encounter with our Creator, a wonderful and awesome prospect. This is what we were made for, this is what we long for, as St Augustine famously said, ‘Thou hast made us for thyself and our hearts are restless ‘til they find their rest in thee,’ yet prayer doesn’t always seem so exciting on a bog standard day with pressing needs and multiple distractions.

“Isn’t it curious how we resist the one thing we most need and most desire? Then St Paul calls us to ‘pray without ceasing’ …it’s a great aspiration, to live in an unbroken communion with God, in the flow of the Spirit, with all our words and actions arising out of prayer. As Spirit filled people, this is what we are promised, but many of us feel that we’re far from living out that reality, we grow frustrated with our efforts at prayer and get down on ourselves.

“In the seminar we looked at the biblical invitations to prayer and the Scriptural basis for Paul’s great affirmation that we really can ‘live, move and have our being’ in God. We ventured into the wisdom of the great mystics whose passion for prayer and practical wisdom can open up new vistas for us. Charismatics and contemplatives have so much in common, we believe that God wants to be known and can be known in human experience…the invitation is endlessly offered and ever full of new possibilities.”

‘There was a great deal of interest in the seminar and people were keen to ask questions afterwards. The hunger for prayer runs deep in us and I felt privileged to work with the questions and struggles in prayer that people shared during the seminar.’

Rachel and Alan visited the Walsingham Youth Pilgrimage and took part in the Vocations Carousel. Rachel is pictured here with the Shrine Priest, Father Andreas Wenzel.

Rachel writes, ‘We had some great conversations with young people exploring God’s call on their lives and enjoyed sharing our vision for the Community of the Tree of Life.’