Invitations to Delight & Rest
Summer Soul Sessions and two wonderful gardens.
Hi I’m Debbie, a spiritual director, writer and mother based in Glasgow. I offer stories, ponderings and gentle invitations to share a moment with your soul.
Well hello!
Today I have two lovely invitations for you for Summer Soul Sessions, and some thoughts about delight.
At our Summer Soul Sessions we’ll be playing with ideas of delight and rest. We will will gently move through times of individual reflection and sharing together. There will be carefully chosen poems and thoughts, journalling and creative prompts on offer to prompt your own reflection, and the chance to pause and let yourself breathe. We’ll have circle sharing time at the start and at the end, but there is no pressure to share.
You are welcome to these events whatever your faith or beliefs are.
For our Online Gathering we’ll meet Zoom on Thursday 10th July from 8-9:30pm.
For our Glasgow Gathering we’ll meet at the Wash House Garden, 136 Tollcross Road, G31 4XA on Thursday 24th July from 8-9:30pm.
The Wash House Garden is a Community Garden oasis tucked away from the busy streets of Parkhead.
I shared this here after last year’s Wash House Gathering:
“Come on in. Look for the unambiguous wooden gate sandwiched between the sandstone Salvation Army building and the grey flats. Push the gate open, walk up the narrow path framed by wildflowers, then turn right and you’re here in a little slice of tranquility, ripe with flowers and veg.
Have a look around. It’s half an acre, overlooked by the residents of the flats; theres a wooden heron, there’s the wee pond, can I make you a cup of tea? Meander between the beds of vegetables, allow your eyes to delight in the textures and colours. Listen, you can hear the buses and the people of the city out on the main road. Listen, you can hear goldfinches, the bees buzzing around the nasturtiums. Listen long enough you might hear the whispers of your own soul.”
Now, come down the M74 and take a dander in another beautiful garden with me.
I found myself on a Retreat Day one ordinary Wednesday a few weeks ago. Wednesdays are usually spent with my youngest two, but on this particular week they were away on holiday with their grandparents. So I plotted a breather for myself, some space to be and pause and ponder and pray, it would be delightful.
Retreats are not new to me, but I often feel wary of them as they approach. I have to pry myself out of my usual life rhythms, and arrange the accompanying logistics to care for those at home. It feels like too much of a privilege to gift myself that time. A pre-retreat worry often haunts me: what if I get quiet and discover I’m empty? What if I set this time aside and find nothing? Perhaps I should have booked that haircut or caught up on the constant clothes sorting at home.
But I made it the 26 minutes out of Glasgow, listening to The Porter’s Gate ‘Psalm 5’ on the drive down. I arrived to a warm welcome at Braehead House and the sun firmly insisted that I simply sit still for a few hours. I paused in that glorious garden and I felt my heart returning to me. I’ve been too busy recently, and life has become surface level as I cast myself from one commitment to the next. I scribbled half a page of life questions, I doodled, I read, I wandered the garden, I prayed (mostly without words), I gazed at nothing in particular, I ate the food carefully prepared for me.
Listen, God! Please, pay attention!
Can you make sense of these ramblings, my groans and cries?
…And here I am, your invited guest
- it’s incredible!
…You are famous, God, for welcome God-seekers
For decking us out in delight.
Psalm 5 from the Message
When I read this the word delight sparkled for me. It invited me to return, to come back, to my own sense of delight.
I’ve written and shared about delight before but I forget so easily. I forget the joy of living slow enough to savour the simple beauties. I forget to pause, let my senses feast and allow my soul to catch up.
As I sat taking in the colours I read
’s post comparing the work of Spiritual Accompaniment to the role of a Gardener:What is the point of a garden? I might argue it is for delight, just like our very lives. We are meant to delight in who each of us is uniquely created to be, in all the ways we reflect the image of God in the world, and in all the ways we daily show up with courage and intention to the lives we have.
- Fiona Koefoed-Jesperson
Then I took time with Cole Arthur Riley’s exquisite book ‘This Here Flesh’ where her words about wonder velcroed alongside the thoughts of delight:
‘To reclaim the awe of our child-selves, to allow ourselves to be taken by the beauty of a thing allows goodness to take up the space it’s often denied in our interior worlds’
- Cole Arthur Riley
At the close of my Wednesday I sculpted a little breath prayer to tuck into my pocket and carry on with me:
Breathe In: Delight brings me here
Breathe out: Here with you.
And so;
May we pause in attentiveness
May we ‘allow ourselves to be taken by the beauty of a thing’
May we let our senses feast on simple delights
With love,
Debbie