Drawing from the Well of Christ Contemplatively Actively

From Board Members and Program Graduates . . .

March 23, 2007

Gregory the Illuminator, Bishop & Missionary

Dear friends in the Spirit at Oasis Ministries,

May the grace of God and blessings of the Spirit be upon you through the abiding love of God, and the ministry you offer to so many spiritual seekers.

As I reflected this day on the life and ministry of Gregory the Illuminator, a 3^rd century bishop and missionary to the people of Armenia, my heart warmed in thankfulness for how the programs and people of Oasis Ministries have been such an “illuminating” part of my spiritual growth and continuing journey into the depths and heights of God’s calling.

I remember, with deep fondness, first meeting with the Reverend Kent Groff during the summer of 1998 at The Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York. I was serving as the Episcopal chaplain for the week, and Kent had been present at Sunday worship, and then each day at the early morning service of Holy Eucharist. After the service on Wednesday, Kent asked if we might talk over a cup of coffee at the Episcopal Cottage where I was staying. During our prayerful time together, Kent said that he saw the gift of becoming a spiritual companion to others within me, described the ministry and offerings of Oasis Ministries, and invited me to consider participating in the Spiritual Direction for Spiritual Guides (SDSG) program in the future. I remember smiling, thanking him for his careful noticing, and promptly put that thought out of my mind! Surviving three years of seminary education and becoming a priest of the church at age 42 had been enough of a daunting experience for me, let alone learning to be a spiritual director! Yet I also noticed the stirring warmth in my soul, just like the renewed sense of call into the life of ministry I had experienced some 15 years before our encounter on the porch of the Episcopal Cottage this day.

In God’s time and economy, Kent’s noticing and my soul’s stirring only grew in God moments of others noticing this gift as well. Early in 2001, after a conversation with the Rector of our parish that I serve and his “noticing” as well, I returned to my mail box only to find the SDSG brochure for the upcoming program! Needless to say, my “Jonah” approach with God was no longer working, and I began my formation in spiritual direction in 2001. This program, along with my continued affiliation with other Oasis offerings, such as Returning to the Well, the Merton Day retreat, and other events, has continued to feed and nurture my soul. These in turn provide spiritual nurture to our parish of 3000 members and many others outside of our community of faith, and only with God’s help always. I am now blessed to give back to Oasis Ministries in service as a member of the Board of Directors.

As we continue to journey in God’s way, seeking to provide spiritual nurture to other seekers, I pray that I may be the conduit through which others journey into Oasis Ministries as Kent Groff and others have been to me.

Richest blessings from my grateful heart,

The Reverend Paul W. Gennett, Jr.

Associate Rector

St. David’s Episcopal Church, Wayne PA

Oasis SDSG Class of 2003

Dear Oasis,

I write today with an attitude of deep gratitude for abundant blessings.

Oasis Ministries has offered to me a community of Christian belonging in a faith landscape that previously seemed arid and inhospitable. During a time when I was feeling increasingly alienated from the Christian tradition as it is practiced on the surface, Oasis invited me to plunge into its depths and there to find thirst-quenching, life-giving waters. There I discovered that I was not alone. There my experiences and understandings about God and self, about life and love, were welcomed and nourished as I was opened to my deeper Self. There this mystic’s heart at last found freedom and resonance and expression.

Coming to Oasis healed me on so many levels. When I first arrived, after wandering so long through the desert that had been my life, my wounds were festering and deep. The longing deep in my heart to believe in the goodness of life and of humanity was severely compromised by the trauma I had experienced here. Despite (or because of) the fact that I had moved into a deepened relationship with Love itself, in which I trusted that I was completely held and would be received, I found myself in a very dark place, despairing of this thing we call life, and struggling each day to stay here. I wanted only to leave this place and return to the arms of Love from which I had come. I had lost my sense of God within life, of Christ within humanity. It was buried beneath my pain.

The community that is Oasis received me as I was, allowing my pain to be, letting it come out to speak, and holding it in prayer and love. Its contemplative presence invited me to enter into my own deeper, quieter spaces where I could begin to heal. Gradually beneath my released pain, I rediscovered a profound love for life…..and for the presence of Love deep within it. Since then, my heart has been broken open again and again by the terrible beauty of it all, in which I now behold the face of my Beloved. It was in my fellow companions at Oasis that I began to see the light of Christ softly glowing.

Today, I walk much more gracefully and peacefully because of my experience with Oasis. Oasis has given me permission to live my life from my own contemplative, compassionate depths. To journey beneath the surface in order to love deeply what is. To live my life in Love. And to be grounded deeply in life and in God, trusting that where there is one there is the other.

I thank you for this gift.

All is well,

Vicki Kensinger,

Oasis SDSG class of 2003

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