Finding Inspiration . . .
When we open ourselves to the present moment, everything becomes our teacher... because everything in life supports our presence and our growth.
from Wisdom of the Enneagram
Show my your ways, LORD, teach me your paths. Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long. Remember LORD, your great mercy and love, for they are from of old. Psalm 25:4-6
The Presence of God - As I sit here, God is present, breathing life into me and into everything around me. For a few moments, I sit silently, and become aware of God's loving presence.
from Wisdom of the Enneagram
Show my your ways, LORD, teach me your paths. Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long. Remember LORD, your great mercy and love, for they are from of old. Psalm 25:4-6
The Presence of God - As I sit here, God is present, breathing life into me and into everything around me. For a few moments, I sit silently, and become aware of God's loving presence.
WAYFARER
I don't know your wilderness;
I'm just getting my bearing in mine.
I don't know what it is like to try to live Christian faith as
an attorney, a mill worker, a peanut farmer, a teacher.
I know our different wildernesses share some common flora and fauna.
And I know the sky above is the same and the God around us is the same
And I expect our "unknowing" is similar
But you must discover the landscape you are walking through,
the peaks and valleys of your vocation.
You must fight your dragons and endure those who
will betray you. You will suffer.
But take heart, wayfarer!
There is a Call and a Cry and a promised land that
awaits your discovery --
A place worthy of your difficult journey and perseverance.
Someone has left trail markers for you.
I will pray for you and God will travel with you.
It will be enough.
Clyde Denny, NC UMC pastor
I don't know your wilderness;
I'm just getting my bearing in mine.
I don't know what it is like to try to live Christian faith as
an attorney, a mill worker, a peanut farmer, a teacher.
I know our different wildernesses share some common flora and fauna.
And I know the sky above is the same and the God around us is the same
And I expect our "unknowing" is similar
But you must discover the landscape you are walking through,
the peaks and valleys of your vocation.
You must fight your dragons and endure those who
will betray you. You will suffer.
But take heart, wayfarer!
There is a Call and a Cry and a promised land that
awaits your discovery --
A place worthy of your difficult journey and perseverance.
Someone has left trail markers for you.
I will pray for you and God will travel with you.
It will be enough.
Clyde Denny, NC UMC pastor
MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. Thomas Merton
Our Life in Solitude
To live a Christian life means to live in the world without being of it. It is in solitude that this inner freedom can grow. Jesus went to a lonely place to pray, that is, to grow in the awareness that all the power he had was given to him, that all the words he spoke came from his Father, and that all the works he did were not really his but the works of the One who sent him. In the onely place Jesus was made free to fail.
A life without a lonely place, that is, a life without a quiet center, easily becomes destructive. When we cling to the results of our actions as our own way of self-identification, then we become possessive and defensive and tend to look at our fellow human beings more as enemies to be kept at a distance than as friends with whom we share the gifts of life.
from Out of Solitude, Henri Nouwen
To live a Christian life means to live in the world without being of it. It is in solitude that this inner freedom can grow. Jesus went to a lonely place to pray, that is, to grow in the awareness that all the power he had was given to him, that all the words he spoke came from his Father, and that all the works he did were not really his but the works of the One who sent him. In the onely place Jesus was made free to fail.
A life without a lonely place, that is, a life without a quiet center, easily becomes destructive. When we cling to the results of our actions as our own way of self-identification, then we become possessive and defensive and tend to look at our fellow human beings more as enemies to be kept at a distance than as friends with whom we share the gifts of life.
from Out of Solitude, Henri Nouwen
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FOUR GUIDELINES TO GAUGE SPIRITUAL GROWTH
Deepen your compassion. Lessen your judgments. Increase your patience. Find your purpose and share it with the world. Lauren Artress |
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Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God's eyes.
from Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
MEDITATION of Simeon, the New Theologian
(11th Century)
We awaken in Christ's body as Christ awakens our bodies,
and my poor hand is Christ, He enters my foot, and is infinitely me.
I move my hand, and wonderfully my hand becomes Christ, becomes all of Him
(for God is indivisibly whole, seamless in His Godhood).
A move my foot, and at once He appears like a flash of lightning.
Do my words seem blasphemous? --Then open your heart to Him
and let yourself receive the one who is opening to you so deeply.
For if we genuinely love Him, we wake up inside Christ's body
where all our body, all over, every most hidden part of it,
is realized in joy as Him, and He makes us, utterly real,
and everything that is hurt, everything that seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful,
maimed, ugly, irreparably damaged, is in Him transformed
and recognized as whole, as lovely; and radiant in His light
we awaken as the beloved in every last part of our body.
Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God's eyes.
from Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
MEDITATION of Simeon, the New Theologian
(11th Century)
We awaken in Christ's body as Christ awakens our bodies,
and my poor hand is Christ, He enters my foot, and is infinitely me.
I move my hand, and wonderfully my hand becomes Christ, becomes all of Him
(for God is indivisibly whole, seamless in His Godhood).
A move my foot, and at once He appears like a flash of lightning.
Do my words seem blasphemous? --Then open your heart to Him
and let yourself receive the one who is opening to you so deeply.
For if we genuinely love Him, we wake up inside Christ's body
where all our body, all over, every most hidden part of it,
is realized in joy as Him, and He makes us, utterly real,
and everything that is hurt, everything that seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful,
maimed, ugly, irreparably damaged, is in Him transformed
and recognized as whole, as lovely; and radiant in His light
we awaken as the beloved in every last part of our body.
Our whole life is to be poised on a certain glad expectancy of God;
taking each moment, incident, choice and opportunity as material
placed in our hand by the Creator whose whole intricate and
mysterious process moves toward the triumph of Charity, and who
has given each living spirit a tiny part in this vast work of transformation.
Evelyn Underhill
O GOD,
I need thy sense of Order.
The confusion of the details of living
Is sometimes overwhelming.
The little things
keep getting in my way providing ready-made
excuses for failure to do and be
what I know I ought to do and be.
Much time is spent on things that are not very important
while significant things are put into an insignificant place
in my scheme of order.
I must unscramble my affairs
so that my life will become order.
O God, I need thy sense of order.
I need thy sense of the Future
Teach me to know that life is ever
on the side of the future.
Keep alive in me the forward look, the high hope,
the onward surge.
Let me now be frozen
either by the past of the present.
Grant me, O patient Father, thy sense of the future
without which all life would sicken and die.
From Deep is the Hunger, by Howard Thurman
Prayer for Inner Freedom
God of life-giving freedom, thank you for the privilege of being with people in such a vulnerable way as they share their brokenness as well as their giftedness, their darkness as well as their light.
I ask for the grace of awareness of my own brokenness and darkness. Give me a willing and courageous spirit to delve deeply into my own vulnerability so that I can be freely with others in their woundedness.
Help me to see my areas of darkness so that these can come out into the light, to explore my brokenness so that it can bask in your healing touch, to become aware of my resistances so that your loving Spirit can free them.
Create an open space within me so that I can receive others' brokenness and vulnerability with tenderness and love.
Help me to be a resting place where others can bring their struggles as well as their joys
Let me find a home in you so others can find a home in me.
Thank you, God, for the inner freedom growing within me that allows others to encounter your loving presence.
Amen.
From Looking Into the Well: Supervision of Spiritual Directors by Maureen Conroy, RSM
taking each moment, incident, choice and opportunity as material
placed in our hand by the Creator whose whole intricate and
mysterious process moves toward the triumph of Charity, and who
has given each living spirit a tiny part in this vast work of transformation.
Evelyn Underhill
O GOD,
I need thy sense of Order.
The confusion of the details of living
Is sometimes overwhelming.
The little things
keep getting in my way providing ready-made
excuses for failure to do and be
what I know I ought to do and be.
Much time is spent on things that are not very important
while significant things are put into an insignificant place
in my scheme of order.
I must unscramble my affairs
so that my life will become order.
O God, I need thy sense of order.
I need thy sense of the Future
Teach me to know that life is ever
on the side of the future.
Keep alive in me the forward look, the high hope,
the onward surge.
Let me now be frozen
either by the past of the present.
Grant me, O patient Father, thy sense of the future
without which all life would sicken and die.
From Deep is the Hunger, by Howard Thurman
Prayer for Inner Freedom
God of life-giving freedom, thank you for the privilege of being with people in such a vulnerable way as they share their brokenness as well as their giftedness, their darkness as well as their light.
I ask for the grace of awareness of my own brokenness and darkness. Give me a willing and courageous spirit to delve deeply into my own vulnerability so that I can be freely with others in their woundedness.
Help me to see my areas of darkness so that these can come out into the light, to explore my brokenness so that it can bask in your healing touch, to become aware of my resistances so that your loving Spirit can free them.
Create an open space within me so that I can receive others' brokenness and vulnerability with tenderness and love.
Help me to be a resting place where others can bring their struggles as well as their joys
Let me find a home in you so others can find a home in me.
Thank you, God, for the inner freedom growing within me that allows others to encounter your loving presence.
Amen.
From Looking Into the Well: Supervision of Spiritual Directors by Maureen Conroy, RSM
