Time to Reflect

Time to Reflect A space of beauty and stillness that encourages reflection on being and becoming you 🕊️

I have not yet discovered the secret of the serenity of sailing leaves~ Joyce RuppDraw an autumn tree. Imagine yourself ...
25/10/2025

I have not yet discovered the secret of the serenity of sailing leaves
~ Joyce Rupp

Draw an autumn tree. Imagine yourself as the tree: what and who keeps you rooted; what or who keeps your trunk strong; where and how did you blossom this spring/summer? What things might you let go off to allow new growth next spring?

Kick the autumn leaves, and enjoy the abundance of apples and pumpkins, literally and metaphorically. 🎃 🍎 ❤️

📸 autumn glow @ the embankment

Speech is a powerful gift. We can inspire, offer compassion, share wonder, encourage, express love. We can also wound, d...
19/10/2025

Speech is a powerful gift. We can inspire, offer compassion, share wonder, encourage, express love. We can also wound, demean, sow discord, spread negativity, or deceive. One of the problems we are facing in our time is that truth has become destabilized…Lies are repeated and made to sound like truth…The courage to speak honestly is rare. Our speech reveals who we are.
~ Srs of St Joseph

Reflect on your voice this week.
How do you nurture it? Who will silence you? What will give you the courage to bring clarity, compassion and care into your world, whether with family, work teams or in community programs?

I’m offering this reflection for all those who participated in ‘No King’s Day’ yesterday. From retired religious sisters to my outreach nurse friends, I was with you in spirit. May truthful words and actions bring peace and love to our beautiful planet.

📷 Maria Frances Fordham
A lake ripple reflection at Bedford Park: truth or distortion, cloudy or clear waters, shallow or deep waters.

When the night wind makes the pine trees creak And the pale clouds glide across the dark sky, Go out my child, go out an...
08/10/2025

When the night wind makes the pine trees creak And the pale clouds glide across the dark sky, Go out my child, go out and seek Your soul: The Eternal I.
~ Jane Goodall

May we remember the old ways of listening: to the stories of the land, to each other,
and to our deepest spirits.
Let gratitude be our compass, unity our path, and love our constant return.
~ Manchán Magan

Two inspirational people left our planet this week (as we know it). Choose any of their words above that particularly strike you to be your mantra for today. Mine will be ‘…love, our constant return’💞

Bedford Park
📷 Maria Frances Fordham

In the difficult current context that the world is experiencing, in which sadness and distress sometimes seem to have th...
17/09/2025

In the difficult current context that the world is experiencing, in which sadness and distress sometimes seem to have the upper hand… beauty is always a source of joy, putting us in touch with divine goodness.
~ Pope Francis

I don’t think of all the misery but of the beauty that still remains.
~ Anne Frank

There is just wonder right in front of us, and we don’t spend enough time thinking about it.
~ Michael Pollan

🌅 It is heartbreaking to dwell on the violence present in our world today, but it is right to do so, alongside making a choice to focus on the beauty in our world too. Our hearts are capable of carrying suffering and joy at the same time. Take time to reflect on how you are balancing both of them today.

September challenge
📸©️Maria Frances Fordham

Centering Prayer is simply sitting in silence, open to God's love and your love for God. This prayer is beyond thoughts,...
16/09/2025

Centering Prayer is simply sitting in silence, open to God's love and your love for God. This prayer is beyond thoughts, emotions, or sensations. Like being with a very close friend or lover, where words are not required, Centering Prayer brings your relationship with God to a level deeper than conversation, to pure communion.

Let go of all expectations or goals during this time. It is not about achieving anything, whether emptying your mind or finding peace or achieving a spiritual experience. There is no way to succeed at Centering Prayer, except to return again and again to love. Allow thoughts to come and go without latching onto them, without judgment and return to resting in Presence.
~Richard Rohr

Return to love… take time today to centre your heart on the love that is within you and around you. ❤️

📸©️Maria Frances Fordham
September challenge

15/09/2025

Hope
Our mission is to plant ourselves at the gates of hope, not the prudent gates of optimism which are somewhat narrower; nor the stalwart, boring gates of common sense; nor the strident gates of self-righteousness, which creak on shrill and angry hinges; nor the cheerful, flimsy garden gate of "Everything is gonna be all right,"
but a very different, sometimes very lonely place, the place of truth-telling about your own soul first of all and its condition, the place of resistance and defiance, the piece of ground from which you see the world both as it is and as it could be, as it might be, as it will be; the place from which you glimpse not only struggle, but joy in the struggle-and we stand there, beckoning and calling, telling people what we are seeing, asking people what they see.
~ Victoria Safford

One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between man and nature shall not be broken.
~ Leo Tolstoy

Take a moment to consider where you looked to find hope today.

The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had ...
11/09/2025

The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.
~ Galileo Galilei

How do we enter a space of reverence, where there are no walls and no ceilings and yet where we find a room we share with Creator Spirit?
~ Thomas Merton

Did you manage to find space in nature to meditate today? 🌹

📸©️Maria Frances Fordham
Cornwall 2025
September Challenge
Peace in creation

That tree and I are not separated from each other; I breathe the oxygen that the tree produces, and the tree in turn "br...
10/09/2025

That tree and I are not separated from each other; I breathe the oxygen that the tree produces, and the tree in turn "breathes" the carbon dioxide that I give off.

Once we realize that we are surrounded by fragments of the Divine, life becomes luminous.
~ Joan Chittister

Dialogue with the invisible can go on every minute, and with surprising joy, I am saying thank you as I remember who I am… learning to praise something as small as dandelion petals
-Jeanne Lohmann

Reflection: Think of yourself. How have you changed or are changing? Is it toward love or fear? Contemplate the love moments that you experienced today.

📸©️Maria Frances Fordham
September challenges
Peace in Creation by the Ouse.

09/09/2025

May the sun bring you new energy by day; may the moon softly restore you by night; may the rain wash away your worries; may the breeze blow new strength into your being.
~ Apache Blessing

Everything that is in the heavens, on earth, and under the earth is penetrated with connectedness, penetrated with relatedness.
~ Hildegard of Bingen

Was there something quite ordinary today that reminded you of your deep connection with our earth and blew new strength into your being?

Peace in creation
📸©️Maria Frances Fordham
September Challenge

People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.~ I...
08/09/2025

People from a planet without flowers
would think we must be mad with joy
the whole time
to have such things about us.
~ Iris Murdoch

Our heart was made to
respond to beauty,
to connection,
to astonishment…
a brush stroke,
or a poem's elucidating word,
or a grandchild's hand in the palm
(or)a sweep of sunset cloud.
~ Ana Lisa de Jong

Whoever loves and understands a garden will find contentment within.
~ Chinese Proverb

What made you stop and stare today?

Peace in creation September challenge
📸©️Maria Frances Fordham
Howbury Hall

All I did was to look at what the universe showed me, to let my brush bear witness to it.~ Claude MonetConsider the lili...
05/09/2025

All I did was to look at what the universe showed me, to let my brush bear witness to it.
~ Claude Monet

Consider the lilies of the field (🌺 or water 🌺), how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin
~ Matthew 6:28

What did you learn from our universe today?

📸©️Maria Frances Fordham
. Monet’s waterlily meditation (Musee de L’Orangerie, Paris)

The world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you, like the wild geese, harsh and exciting, over and over announ...
04/09/2025

The world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you, like the wild geese, harsh and exciting, over and over announcing your place in the family of things.
~ Mary Oliver

There’s a whole world out there, right outside your window. You’d be a fool to miss it.
~ Charlotte Eriksson

(Nature)… a place to fall more deeply in love with our God who caresses us with a leaf, a tree, a bird and a cloud, with a stone and a sunbeam.
~ Knock, Peace Garden

Consider a time when you felt caressed or called today.

📸©️Maria Frances Fordham
The Lake, Bedford Park

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