I posted this last week. Found a way to let you subscribe if you like!
https://www.heartblessings.org/2018/08/15/spiritual-companion/
Aug23
Category Archives: spiritual direction
Aug1
Experiment
I started a new website using a WordPress template. I can take advantage of their ability while challenging myself to learn more about this technology.
https://www.heartblessings.org
Consider it a work in progress and do let me know what you think.
Why bother? I am a recent graduate of Formation in Direction, a program offered by the Episcopal Diocese of Texas to train people in spiritual formation and direction. Our class (the best one ever!) included clergy and lay people from a cross-section of theologies and life experiences. Now I’m interested in applying what I’ve learned with others. Individual spiritual direction provides a private space to listen to what’s in someone’s heart and help them apply that inner wisdom to daily life. Small groups have the same intention, and there’s a strong chance that collective wisdom will enhance all of our lives. Spirituality does not depend on your particular set of beliefs, but it thrives when you feel connected to the spirit within yourself.
How are your heart and soul today?
Mar1
Micro-theology
Reading, reading, and more reading is for me a time-tested source of reflection. This week it’s The Practice of Spiritual Direction, by William A. Barry & William J. Connolly. They ask, “Who is God for me, and who am I for God?”
Who is God for me? God is infinity, God is love. God is both remote and inaccessible and also fully present and personal. For me that means God transcends mystery, which can be microscopic or cosmic in nature. God is always present, but not in control.
Who am I for God? Wholly imperfect, fully human, worthy, and loved.
How do I feel about myself in relation to God? Inadequate, imperfect (based on deep-seated, internalized judgments from my father and other humans. Now I remember that they, too, were both inadequate and also imperfect.)
How do I feel about myself in relationship with God? I feel loved for who I am, mortal and limited. I feel challenged to be my best self, not anyone else.
How can I enter into (fuller) relationship with God?
- Stop and breathe.
- Confess my greatest hope and/or my greatest concern.
- Listen to inner wisdom and wisdom of the ages.
- Begin again in love.
Those four steps do not require a belief in a particular god/dess or deity. They require me to tap into the depths of my own knowledge and experience. They remind me to love to the best of my ability day by day. (Reading helps, too!)
How do you maintain a connection with your highest power? In relation to what? In relationship with whom? (Even tentative thoughts are fine!)
Feb15
Spiritual Friendship
Tilden Edwards wrote a book entitled Spiritual Friend: Reclaiming the Gift of Spiritual Direction. He is the founder of the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation, where many of my teachers studied.
Edwards spoke to my heart of a “calm trust in grace winding its opening way” through one’s life.
Grace has been winding its opening way through me. I stood in a small park last Spring and saw with fresh eyes each raindrop on the grass, the trees, and the lily pond as grace. A gift that was mine for the taking, created by unseen forces.
I walked around the pond and took pictures of water lilies and a small cottontail rabbit nibbling, undisturbed, on lush wet grass. It was an experience of grace.
This year I have visited monthly with a spiritual director in between classes to become a spiritual director myself. “Direction” is a bit misleading; it’s more like a conversation about one’s spiritual life. How does spirituality shape the way I live in the world? What’s the reason for prayer?
Since August I have been more faithful (again) about daily meditation / contemplation / prayer / what have you. I’ve increased the time gradually all the way up to 22 minutes in the morning and about 2 minutes at night as I settle into restful slumber.
In the evening I take a series of three breaths and repeat as long as needed while I focus on being grounded, on being full of gratitude, and on God as Love. The three Gs make it easy to remember:
1) Grounded. I belong here and I can rest now.
2) Gratitude. For grace that came my way this day, for friends, for opportunities and challenges, I give thanks.
3) God. Let all abide in love. Let love guide our lives.
Gratitude in the morning for having seen a new day, and gratitude for the day as I drift off to sleep, are now the bookends of my daily life. How does grace “wind its opening way” through your life?
Jun15
Prayerful Questions
I wrote this before the horrid news from Orlando. Mass shooting, chaos, emergency responders, blood donors, prayer vigils. Love is Love, I say, but sometimes it is hard to hold on to that.
For the following, I offer credit to Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki, In God’s Presence: Theological Reflections on Prayer (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 1996)
What is the purpose of prayer?
How could God pay attention to such insignificant creatures?
Are we just talking to ourselves, our inner wise spirit?
How do we know prayer is communication with God?
How do we know that it’s God?
Questions take us deeper into faith
. . . away from belief in our beliefs
. . . to believe in a God who is more than our beliefs can say.
It is possible for a good prayer not to address anyone by name. After yoga classes with Jogi Bhagat, he closes with prayers and we repeat each line after him.
May all be happy.
May all be healthy.
May there be no distress on earth.
May there be peace everywhere.
May all our actions lead us to make this happen.
May it be so.
May15
Ripples
Tapestry Singers, the Austin Women’s Chorus, will appear for our Spring Concert this beautiful Sunday afternoon at 4PM. One of our songs, “A Pebble in the Water,” reminds us how words and deeds impact others just as surely as a stone dropped into a pond. James W. Foley wrote the lines, set to music by Victor C. Johnson.
The first verse reminds us of ripples that spread across a pond after a single pebble lands in the water. Isn’t it a pretty sight? We can see circles of ripples that radiate along the surface all the way to the edge. As the pebble drops, unseen ripples push through deeper water until–ever so slightly–the stone alters the earth below.
Second and third verses turn our attention to words we say. An unkind word may soon be forgotten by the speaker even when it is hurtful to someone else. James Foley, who died in 1939, couldn’t know about social media and the unkind words that ripple, roil, and take on lives of their own. They can quickly bring out the most distasteful of human interactions.
By contrast, one kind word may produce ripples of comfort, generosity, or even inspiration. A kind deed such as letting a car merge in front of us has the effect of influencing others to show that same courtesy.
Simple kindness is a bit of heaven on earth. Let’s keep it circling on and on!
KaleidoscopE 