I could hear a profound weariness in her voice and suggested she come and see the Loreto Spirituality Centre and me before deciding to stay at all. She came, an exhausted little figure, carrying the burdens of her life on tired shoulders. ‘You need eight days to sleep, whatever about a retreat’, was my suggestion. Three weeks later Dorothy arrived to rest and recuperate and recognise the face of God in fatigue.

On her second day she produced needles and wool to make a nativity set of knitted figures. She began to fashion the brown cloak of St Joseph. When we talked she said;

Attentiveness to St Joseph as she read about him in Matthew’s Gospel and watched his figure form in her hands lead Dorothy to identify with Joseph in his confusions that gave meaning and significance to her own as she recognised they had much in common.

Within the process of the retreat the pre-eminent place of Mary in Catholic spirituality caused initial discomfort for Dorothy as a Protestant. Subsequently, staying with the Infancy Narratives reminded her of the birth of her own children and made a meeting place for Dorothy and Our Lady. In Dorothy’s case, childbirth was surrounded by competence and efficiency. In the most important moments of her life she remembered being treated with excellent clinical care, in the spirit of an assembly line production, in a country hospital with overworked staff. Confused and anxious she had longed for sensitive, human compassion and warm, sincere congratulations. Out of her own memories, however different her circumstances, she could imagine the loneliness of Mary at the birth of Jesus, surrounded by strangers, longing for the comfort and security of family and friends.

As the days of retreat passed Dorothy’s story developed. The Scriptures she chose to read, meditate on and contemplate offered her a mirror to reflect upon her life which she realised was a Gospel too, Good News for Dorothy, the pattern of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection repeated in her own. Until three years before this time Dorothy and her husband, Brian had been farmers, imbued with a love of the land and a care for the earth. Dorothy delighted in her plantations of native trees and had grown over a thousand from seeds. When their personal recession loomed they sought advice and attempted to diversify. They planted almond trees. At night the foxes sucked water from the outlets of the irrigation system and pulled the hoses apart. When the almonds grew the foxes reached up to the low branches to feed on them.

Just when it seemed they might start to earn a living, accumulated debts forced Brian and Dorothy to sell out. The land and their home were sold first. Waiting for the clearing sale, they camped in a caravan in the yard while the new owners renovated the home, achieving improvements that Brian and Dorothy could never have afforded. At night, when the work-men went home, they peered through the windows to see the transformation.

By this time we were up to the seventh day. For night prayers that night we spent a simple hour in prayer. There was nothing else to do. Dorothy arranged candles connected with a thread of wool to symbolise the life and home she had lost. We read the Gospel account of Gethsemane and at intervals played the Taize chants, ‘Remember me when you come into your Kingdom’ and ‘ Stay here and watch with me.’ Gethsemane became the space in the Gospel which allowed Dorothy to be identified with Jesus in abandonment, disintegration and desolation. Afterwards Dorothy explained,

Dorothy’s story offers a gracious representation of the power of God to be present, active and healing in the very ordinary events of our lives so that each moment is made extraordinary. The patron of retreats, St Ignatius Loyola, drew attention to this amazing mystery in his classic retreat manual, ‘The Spiritual Exercises.’ His text identifies four essential movements of God in the spiritual life. These insights directly inform Dorothy’s experience.

Firstly the Holy Spirit uncovers what it is in our lives that is hurting us the most. A thread in the fabric of Dorothy’s life was to be left out, left behind, pushed to the margins of existence. The Christian word for this is ‘sin’ which in both Hebrew and Greek literally means ‘missing the mark’.

The initiative of grace is to unmask sin, disorder or dysfunction so that it and its effects may be healed and redeemed.

The second movement, in establishing us in grace is to throw fresh light on our lives. Primarily, for a Christian, this is through God’s revelation in Jesus and the community he created around him. In this retreat Dorothy met Our Lady in a new and illuminating way and was encouraged with the truth that the Gospel interacts and overlaps with our lives, filling them with meaning and direction. A telling line from an almost forgotten sermon comes to mind in this regard, ‘God has to come and meet me where I am ‘cos, sure as hell, I cannot go wherever it is he is.’

The third aspect of Ignatian spirituality is to be identified with Jesus in suffering, as Dorothy was, with and in Gethsemane. In experiencing at depth Jesus’ passion and death a realisation of God’s presence in her grief and losses emerged allowing her to enter into a detachment and freedom of spirit that cannot be constrained by any circumstances. Extreme suffering can easily cause despair. To face and move through it develops compassion, the capacity to be with others in all their experiences: sorrow or joy, anxiety or relief, success or failure.

In giving permission for her story to be told, Dorothy wrote,