Visio Divina deepened my time with the Lord at my recent silent retreat. This a slow contemplative prayer practice similar to Lectio Divina or sacred reading. Visio Divina is Latin for divine seeing and involves praying with art and allowing God to speak to us through the use of an image. Prayerful consideration of and interaction with a photograph in the magazine, icon, piece of art, or other visual representation invites us to experience the divine in a unique and powerful way. This is the statue from my recent retreat that brought me closer and loved deeply by God. This practice enhanced my time with the Lord as I listened with the eyes of my heart, soaking in his love and gazing at this art piece. Meeting God Through Art: Visio Divina Meeting God Through Art: Visio Divina. – A Guided Prayer Journal with Images from the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a new book by my friend. Therese Kay. This book accompanied me on my retreat and inspired me to explore various art and … [Read more...]
The Spiritual Practice of Rinse and Repeat
Rinse and Repeat. I am hearing this jargon in so many conversations lately. #rinserepeat. Trending slang. It is also called the shampoo algorithm. You know the instructions on the shampoo bottle label? The phrase is a funny reference taken from hair washing guidance and applied to any action that needs to be replicated many times in order to reach a goal or change a behavior. You could use these words for ordinary actions. Get up, go to work, come home, bed – rinse and repeat. When we face a habit, desire, or practice that is best implemented on a never-ending cycle. Or when we fight with an imperfect or resistant obstacle such a weight loss. To achieve something great, it often takes weeks, months, or years of planning and hard work. You go through phases of trial and error. You take two steps forward and one step back. You try this, you try that. You start again. You rinse and repeat. Basically, it means to do it again. Two words that also contain … [Read more...]
Summer Reading
What is on your summer reading pile? I like to periodically update you all on what I am currently reading. Here are three I have read lately that are lingering in my mind and heart: A Prayer Journal – Flannery O'Connor Interesting collection of journal entries of writer Flannery O'Connor written between 1946 and 1947. Most are her prayers/conversations with God and her discernment as she discovers herself as a writer. What a great writer even in her journal entries. Lovely words like this: "Dear God, I cannot love Thee the way I want to. You are the slim crescent of a moon that I see and my self is the earth's shadow that keeps me from seeing all the moon. The crescent is beautiful and perhaps that is all one like I am should or could see; but what I am afraid of, dear God, is that my self shadow will grow so large that it blocks the whole moon, and that I will judge myself by the shadow that is nothing. I do not know you God because I am in the way. Please help me to … [Read more...]
Breath Prayers – A Spiritual Practice
Hit the pause button! For just a minute in the midst of your hurry-scurry of reading blog posts, responding to emails and juggling your to-do list, stop. Take a deep breath. Breath in – feeling the external air enter your lungs. Breath out – exhaling the internal. Air inward. Air outward. Breathing is so intuitive and intimate. Both conscious and unconscious. Lifegiving and life transformational. Breathing and praying share many of the same characteristics. Breath God in. Breath ego, worry, fear out. God surrounds us like air – invisible, life-giving, all around and within. We are like fish in the sea wondering what water really is. This powerful force sustaining and nurturing us on our journey. Breath Prayers The Bibles teaches us to “Pray without ceasing.” (1 Thessalonians 5:17) How do we do this? One type of prayer that has helped Christians across the ages to fulfill this command is breath … [Read more...]
Creativity, Inspiration and Whimsey, Oh My!
Creativity. Ever enter a room radiating this essence? I visited a friend's pottery studio last week. Every cell in my body tingled as I breathed in her imagination on the workbenches. I felt like the first time I walked down Walt Disney World's Main Street - all my senses bursting with glorious inspiration. One room held mounds of grey clay waiting to be shaped. The primary studio presented a great array of partially completed animals – dogs, cats, armadillos, mice, birds, - wearing unique forms of transportation – wheels, skateboards, balls, wagons, boats, planes. Quirky, humorous animals with unusual moving parts – all being molded by my potter friend for a show in Florida this coming winter. What an imaginative combination. My world whirled with wonderful whimsey. Her originality and imagination reminded me of my visit to the Marietta Museum of Art and Whimsey in Sarasota, Florida. A must see for any of us who needs some joy. Visiting their displays comes with a … [Read more...]
Stillness – A Spiritual Practice to Refresh your Soul
Stillness is not one spiritual practice that comes easy for me. I fidget. My mind wanders into strange and curious excursions. My spirit hops around like water on a hot skillet. Then suddenly I realize I am off to Neverland, not being still with God. I thrive in getting things done. Is thrive the right word? Maybe addicted/obsessed/focused is more exact. I love being busy/productive. Always having more to do. Accomplishing something. Anything. To be still is not automatic for many of us. My “sit still” skillset slips and stumbles. Practicing stillness is hard for me. Anyone else relate to this? Through Lent, I did keep up most of the time the practice of 15-20 minutes of Centering Prayer with God each morning. Being still with our savior refreshed my soul in new ways. Quiet before God helped me hear him deeply and connected with myself too. I gained a new perspective to happenings internally and externally. Peace and tranquility bathed my spirit. The more I … [Read more...]
The Power of Remembering – A Spiritual Practice
Many of us watched in shock, sadness, and heartache as Notre Dame burned on April 15. Fixated on the scene, I couldn't imagine the horror, destruction, and grief from this tragedy. The years of worship and the deep identity of a symbol for the French blazing to its ruin. Remembering - The Cross Still Stands But Notre Dame wasn't completely destroyed as we learned the next day. I love this photo, showing the burned wooden beams from the collapsed roof crumbled at the foot of the golden cross. The headline in the secular papers read -The Cross Still Stands. Amen! No matter how our world is abolished around us, our lives in defeat or we are overcome with hopelessness, God remains. Then stories emerged. One report told of a human chain of firefighters and the firefighter chaplain risking their lives to enter the burning cathedral to find and rescue key artifacts and priceless treasures from the engulfed church. The human chain image reminded me of how we are all linked … [Read more...]
Discernment – The Next Right Thing
What is Discernment? Discernment, doing the next right thing, is making decisions while discovering and articulating how God is shaping our lives. Discernment is listening to God in faith to live fully in how he created us and called us to do in his work in the world. Discernment isn't easy. Sometimes life is confusing. The signs we see are real. Yet we still get lost in this world. Discernment I shared this road sign a number of years ago that was erected in a nearby city. Imagine you are driving north in traffic. You need to know if you should turn or keep going straight. Quickly what does this sign mean? I wrote on the blog post: "East is still east and west is still west in my county, Here Ohio 15 runs north and south for the last 80 years, but that is not what the sign signifies. In their wisdom of seeing the whole picture, the Ohio Department of Transportation replaced the road sign recently, striving for consistency throughout the state. State Route 15 is … [Read more...]