GLP Testimonials Mimi Saayman

Mimi Saayman surrenders the anchors of control and efficiency to find a homecoming 'where I belonged and where I felt loved into being' during Shalem's Leading Contemplative Prayer Groups and Retreats Program.
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How I found myself at Shalem is a mystery. At a time when control and efficiency were my anchors, and mastery and achievement my motivators, I felt a strong pull to a strange and foreign landscape of surrendering skills and normal ways of knowing and trusting grace.
To register for the GLP is to answer a call to beauty and love. The course offers a radical hospitality - consistent with Henri Nouwen’s teachings. This is a hospitality which offers spacious emptiness which welcomes in strangers, allows them to remember who they are and how they belong, and is large and safe enough to encourage transformation. To me it was a homecoming to a community where I belonged and where I felt loved into being.
I emerged from the programme with a very strong call to develop a more intimate relationship with God through contemplative living, and to provide others with the opportunity to become more deeply aware of God’s presence through silence and solitude.
Although I am not currently actively involved in a contemplative ministry, this call runs like an underground river through my life and bubbles up at different times and places. For example, an invitation to lead a silent retreat for clergy, creating contemplative spaces in my church during Advent, collaborating on a spiritual deepening programme at a local university, or something as simple as the opportunity to light a candle as a wordless practice to express solidarity and caring in my corporate work environment.