In this exotic spiritual memoir, poet, artist, writer, lay missioner, and religious educator Edwina Gateley covers 40 years in her life as a Catholic layperson. Her journey began when she was 12 and sat in Lancaster Cathedral in England for many hours feeling like she was in "God's womb." By the next year, she was practicing contemplation — being enveloped by God — and felt called to a life in the Church.
Gateley made a promise to serve in Africa and from 1964 -1968 worked in Uganda as a teacher and lay missionary. Her legacy was establishing a successful school for Ugandan girls. From the Africans, she learned that "we walk in God and God gets bigger to the degree that we are open and expectant. It was the African people who introduced me to this notion of God because they embraced me with amazing hospitality."
Returning to England in 1969, she founded the Volunteer Missionary Movement to recruit, prepare, and send missionaries to work in countries of the developing world. A three-month retreat in the Sahara desert in Algeria, North Africa, led her to leave her work with VMM and to travel to America. God spoke to her about the imperatives and the importance of love. Gateley then attended the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago and earned a Masters in Theology.
After spending an evening in mystical dialogue with Teresa of Avila, she decided to spend nine months in prayer and solitude in a hermitage in Illinois to discern her next ministry. Her congregation would be on the streets of Chicago; winos, drug dealers, homeless, and prostitutes would be the members of her community. By 1983 God had provided Gateley with a place called the Genesis House which provided a new start for women involved in prostitution. It served these women until 2006. A final proof of the power of love manifested in her life with her adoption of an African American boy. This experience has deepened and intensified Gateley's appreciation for the Motherhood of God.
A dedicated and compassionate teacher and writer (Christ in the Margins and Soul Sisters: Women in Scripture Speak to Women Today), Gateley has led an extraordinary life. She admits that the Catholic Church has had trouble with the feminine and she has been cast by some as a heretic for her views on the Motherhood of God. Yet she continues to speak and to write about the Divine Lover who will not let her go.
