Dive Deep. Feel Everything: The Delight of the Devoted Soul

by Vaike Neeme-Samson

The reciprocal dance between human inner and outer development re-cultures many relationships between individuals and institutions alike. It is astounding to contrast how a mere community member may have interacted with the seminary of The Christian Community in not so long-ago times gone by (I’m told) with now being able to communicate with the seminary directors through a comments feed on a mobile phone, in real time, complete with the occasional emoji! Even considering the limitations and risks of the yet-amazing digital medium, the immediacy and resultant intimacy that becomes possible births a different kind of relating. The same also becomes possible between the manifold newly found and far-flung siblings-in-Christ that congregate in such places. I have often heard remarked, as I have done myself, wonder at the authenticity of connection that has surprised many as being possible when participating in the digital offerings of the seminary. This is experienced through the Zoom-mediated Distance Learning Program, the profound sharing of the Living in Christ study group that appears even on YouTube, the recordings and comments of the Light in Every Thing podcast – and may even now be continuing as you read this blog.

Such was the very contemporary foundation for the Open Week in May where these various communities met and communed with those who were resident in Toronto. How these devoted souls were able to delight so quickly and so deeply with each other, though mostly never having met in person, speaks perhaps to the theme of joy and its fullness of warmth. Emphasised by Patrick as needed to remedy the danger of suffocation that a spiritual life without it would entail, this radiance of heart overcame any digital coolness in setting the scene for this sublime week.

Underneath and within the abundant offerings that unfolded this theme through sacraments, lectures, conversation, workshops and arts (including some raucous folk dancing one evening!) ran an underground river; a secret stream, no less joyful though sometimes varied in its experience. For me, this became apparent through a continued sensing of someone, just beyond my perception. Was someone just behind me, in the periphery of a group or moving out of the corner of my eye? My heart would leap, my breath inhale in readiness to speak and greet someone I sensed I must know. Eventually I settled on the gently astonishing fact that there was Someone Else Here (I’m smiling now at the memory!). At other times, some of them exquisitely painful in my own biographical setting, some more obviously incarnated people appeared alongside me, wordlessly bringing the loving solidity and intuitive compassion I needed in order to surrender and dissolve. This too brought another kind of delight.

Experiencing some presentations from the resident seminarians that week and over the next weekend was also profound. As I reflected on what I sensed there I realised that alongside the insightful content was a perception of light, playing around their form, like it can do on a pond in sunlight. And more than that, it was the sense of a being whom they were in conversation with as they spoke, delighting in each word that was birthed from the duet.

Indeed, as the week unfolded I began to notice how beautiful each person was, marveling at their countenances; a phenomenon that was happily found by others who shared the same discovery with me.

This beauty, unearned, sorely needed and gratefully received continued in the sanctuary of my host’s home, so generously opened to me. And when she brought me to her daughter’s home to share a meal with their family the wonder and profound conversation continued. A fellow DLP-er too was being hosted there and when we greeted each other with a bear hug, we were asked if we already knew each other. ‘No, that’s just the kind of relationships that form at the seminary!’ my host’s daughter replied.

Towards the end of the week, Patrick showed us a crab-apple blossom and asked, ‘What is it holding back?’ He then shared further the fact that it was actually in a process of dying. This brought to my mind the accompanying fact I have noticed before that the rich colours of the Autumn leaves similarly show their fullest hues in falling. Landing back in my Southern hemisphere home I learnt too that this same time of year, locally named the season of ‘Marrai’gang,’ is marked by the bursting and dropping to earth of the radiantly crimson lillipilli berries (and the mating season of the quoll, a creature reasonably similar to a rabbit!), and also the revelation of complex color landscapes on the trunks of trees that shed bark around now.

'Ascension light in Bondi Beach, Australia, near the author's home.'

The birth, death, resurrection and revelation of Christ is a whole-earth happening, though revealed in manifold specific ways. Asked to describe how this festival is experienced ‘down under’ I can say that Passiontide speaks into the exhausting end of Summer heat, aligning a burning that is both inside and out. Easter usually occurs within a still golden and resplendent sunlight but often, around Ascension, the depth drops out and the light appears more ethereal. I often find that with the glare gone, I can suddenly see more easily and evenly into the eyes of my companions, feeling kinship and community within the bereft aspect of Ascension. When Whitsun arrives, the colder weather has too, and experiencing that the outer sun has reemerged as an inner flame accompanies times of nestling around hearths.

Here, now, as I recollect that special week in May, I feel what the strains of ‘Christe Agsdga’ (‘Christ is Risen’ – the Georgian song shared with us) did to my soul; mixing beauty and pain into an immense joy that holds both, and more. I think of the altar picture in the Toronto chapel, with the wounded hand of Christ radiating the same mystery, so profound in Jonah’s sharing that brokenness and being made whole, coexist. I long for the intensity of that time and yet rest in the knowing shared by both Kate and Patrick that the breathing between emptiness and fulfillment is a gradual dynamic pulse of a joy that will one day be complete.

Yearning accompanies my cherishing the memory as I walk through my life back home, and I am becoming more awake to my prayer for Christ community being answered in unexpected moments and surprising locations. I’m learning to be present for them, and trust in their reemergence as they dissolve like Ascension clouds.

I’m attempting to be brave enough to turn, like Mary, away from the grave, and towards the Delightful One, He that was so playfully and tangibly present around, alongside and within us throughout our Open Week. As although the grave remains a newly essential part of the garden, He Is Not There.

I’m reminding myself, like the ‘Little Match Girl’ in Hans Christian Andersen’s story, to turn to the other, and give everything. As even though it appears to some as a tragic death in the cold, really, her giving away the last match sparks a flame that can shine a way across the threshold of separateness, finding reunion and joyful healing in what and who is beyond.

I’m remembering the potent advice given to me by a friend as I left to find you all in Canada: Dive deep. Feel everything.

Our Author:

Vaike Neeme-Samson has participated in the Presentation-only Distance Learning Program over the last two years. She first found the Christian Community in 2011 and is a member of the community in Sydney, Australia. Growing up in and working in theatre for the first half of her life, she then sought ways of bringing the same impulse of threshold, ritual and social forms beyond the stage to other areas such as education, social change, finance, aged care and end-of-life work. She is currently studying a Bachelor of Social Work, has spent time in the Australian Pro Seminar and continues to deepen her walk with Christ through the work of The Christian Community, which she is delighted to be devoted to.