How do you describe time spent in the presence of God? First I want to thank many of you who held me in prayer when I went to the four-day silent retreat last week. I encourage you if you have never gone on retreat, whether a silent one or one filled with life-giving presentations, to try this spiritual practice. You will receive priceless nourishment for your journey in life.Even as a writer, I have difficulty finding the words to illustrate these precious quiet days with God. So I will borrow a phrase from Anthony de Mello:Look at God…looking at you… and smiling.I experienced being enfolded in the hands of God and beheld in His tender, loving, and unfailing gaze.I found this statuette and took multiple photos of this father and baby since they best represent how I felt.“You are precious in my eyes. I honor you and love you." Isaiah 43:4Often at the beginning of a retreat, the director will suggest some Bible verses that may guide us on our weekend. As soon as Susan mentioned Hagar, I … [Read more...]
Journaling our Journey
Patty Wysong has created a fun meme where once a week bloggers posted on the letter of the week. Check out the details here. It is called A2Z: Take 2. A2Z as she challenges bloggers to write a post each week going through the alphabet. Take 2 since this is the second time she has used this meme. Anyone can join in and you don’t have to always participate. This week’s letter is JJ = Journaling our JourneyTEN! I counted ten people continually carrying journals. More than one third of the people on the silent retreat with me last weekend carried some form of journalwith them. Blank notebooks, plain or with fancy covers, spiral notebooks, sheets of loose papers – many scribbling, capturing precious moments and lessons learned in sacred stillness of the retreat.I watch them. Prayfully they held their journals in the chapel. Slowly they recorded thoughts, prayers, verses, and experiences within these treasured pages in the reflection room. I am sure many of them wiped tears from those … [Read more...]
God’s Foolishness
For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. 1 Corinthians 1: 25Foolishness of God The foolishness of God? Lord what does that mean? Is it irreverent to think of You, as foolish?Yet the verse tells me Your foolishness is wiser than any human wisdom.How many times in my life have I asked You for answers? For guidance? For wisdom?I should have been asking You to shower me with Your foolishness!Pour out upon us Your upside-down view of how we should live.I marvel at the strange idea of God coming to earth as a baby, the lessons and messages Jesus, Your son, modeled for us with His life, and the incredible feat of Easter morning conquering death forever.Ages ago nothing existed until You exploded creation and set Your plan in motion. Did the angels dance with glee, celebrating Your foolishness that day, Lord? I know I am not strong enough, even on my best days, to follow You completely. I need You, Lord.Your foolishness … [Read more...]
Trust the Slow Work of God – Quote by Teilhard de Chardin
Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability— and that it may take a very long time.And so I think it is with you; your ideas mature gradually—let them grow; let them shape themselves, without undue haste. Don’t try to force them on, as though you could be today what time (that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will) will make of you tomorrow.Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be. Give Our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ … [Read more...]
Reading the Small Print – Perpetua and Felicity
Perpetua and Felicity (Photo credit: Nick in exsilio)Don’t forget to read the small print!My church has the Bible reading printed on a separate sheet of paper each week with the bulletin. At the bottom of the final page is a section titled “Preparing for Next Week,”listing the upcoming scripture readings and a commemoration of Christians remembered from our past.I like this section. Besides preparing my heart for the next week’s Word from God, I discover a stories about people from our collective Christian roots.This coming Sunday many churches will commemorate Perpetua and Felicity.Who? That was my reaction. I didn’t know anything about these two women!No saints were more honored in the early Christian era than Perpetua and Felicity. The two women were arrested and imprisoned Carthage in 203 A.D. Perpetua was 22-year-old noblewoman with a son a few months old; Felicity, a pregnant slave. Their crime was defying Emperor’s prohibition of conversions to Christianity.They were taken to … [Read more...]
Three Ways to Use Your Imagination Spiritually
I played in a spaceship when I was seven years old. I spent hours exploring new worlds found in my imagination while never really leaving my backyard. My spaceship? A stocky tree with great climbing branches planted next on the southeast corner of our house. Different limbs warped into sections of my spacecraft: the galley, the lookout, the bridge for guiding my rocket into the mysterious universe.Sigh. I loved that tree.Patty Wysong has created a fun meme where once a week bloggers posted on the letter of the week. Check out the details here. It is called A2Z: Take 2. A2Z as she challenges bloggers to write a post each week going through the alphabet. Take 2 since this is the second time she has used this meme. Anyone can join in and you don’t have to always participate. This week’s letter is I.Image via WikipediaI = ImaginationImagination can be a helpful tool, even for adults. We use our minds to dream up decorating ideas, plots for novels, and innovative approaches to problem … [Read more...]
Put a New Spirit Deep Inside Me, Lord – Lectio Divina
Purify me with hyssop and I will be clean; wash me and I will be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and celebration again; let the bones you crushed rejoice once more. Hide your face from my sins; wipe away all my guilty deeds! Create a clean heart for me, God; put a new, faithful spirit deep inside me!Psalm 51:7-10Common English BiblePut a new, faithful spirit deep inside me!My simple prayer this week, Lord:Put a new, faithful spirit deep inside me.I turn to greet You.You are the One to send Your Spirit to embrace my heart.I can’t do it on my own.My old spirit is broken, weak and mired in the mud of life.Your spirit is new, whole and sparkles in Your light.I am unfaithful and distracted by worldly and ego driven wants.But my true hunger is for Your gift of faithfulness, one that only You can give.Plant Your spirit deep inside me.With roots so deep, nothing can remove it.Your spirit is a wellspring of bottomless depth.A rich deposit of Love.Nothing can take You away from me, Lord.Your … [Read more...]
Lent quote by Joan Chittister
Lent is not a ritual. It is time given to think seriously about who Jesus is for us, to renew our faith from the inside out. It is the moment when, as the baptismal waters flow on every Easter Vigil altar, we return to the baptismal font of the heart to say yes once more to the call of Jesus to the disciples, “Come and see” ( John 1:39). It is the act of beginning our spiritual life all over again refreshed and reoriented.Joan Chittister … [Read more...]