New light from an unexpected source. Photo: Jacob Surland / flickr CC.
New light from an unexpected source
Claire Disbrey recalls her experience of a retreat in Italy
Last year I spent a week contemplating the life of saint Clare. You may think this is an unusual thing for a Quaker to be doing but we are encouraged to be ‘open to new light, from whatever source it may come’ (Advices & queries 7).
I stayed in the lovely surroundings of a retreat centre outside Assisi in the dramatic scenery of central Italy. We were an ecumenical lot led by an Anglican woman priest. We sang, prayed and shared silence together as we heard about the life of saint Clare and visited some of the places connected with her life.
Clare was born at the end of twelfth century into a rich, aristocratic family in Assisi and caused a scandal by escaping from her home, saying she wanted to live in poverty as the followers of saint Francis were doing. She saw it as way to get closer to God.
In spite of tremendous pressure from her family, the Church and society in general, Clare was eventually allowed to set up a community for women on the condition that she was under the authority of the local bishops and that the community was enclosed.
We visited the humble set of rooms with meagre furniture where Clare was confined with her band of followers for forty-three years. Dependent on charity and with the help and protection of the Franciscan brothers, she built a community that was ‘filled with divine love’.
Francis and his followers, priests, popes and princes visited to share her wisdom, insight and spirituality and through these visits and her letters she had a wide influence and became the founder of an international women’s movement, the Poor Clare’s, which exists to this day.
Back at our retreat house we talked about what seemed to us to be Clare’s unbearable restrictions, and were invited to consider the idea that every creator works within limitations, whether it is in the form of a symphony or a sonnet, the grain in the wood or the flatness of a canvas. The secret of successful art is in working with these limitations rather than fighting them.
I came away challenged by the thought that the transformation Quakers seek is to be found not in denying, regretting and fighting against our limitations – our situation and our responsibilities, what we have acquired through our birth, our upbringing, and our unwise choices, our weaknesses, faults and failures – but in accepting them, working with them and letting the Spirit create something beautiful.
