A weekly curated collection of essays, poetry, and reflections for your spiritual journey. From The Wisdom Years.
Holiness comes wrapped in the ordinary. There are burning bushes all around you. Every tree is full of angels. Hidden beauty is waiting in every crumb. Life wants to lead you from crumbs to angels, but this can happen only if you are willing to unwrap the ordinary by staying with it long enough to harvest its treasure.
-Macrina Wiederkehr, A Tree Full of Angels: Seeing the Holy in the Ordinary
From Well for the Journey
Sabbath Moments
Terry Hershey reminds us of an old story from Henri Nouwen about a handicapped person asking for a blessing. All of us need blessings. And all of us can bless others.
From Terry Hershey’s Sabbath Moments.
Crisis Contemplation
“It’s in the darkness, it’s in the moment of crisis when you have fallen through all of your own expectations that there is the opportunity for rebirthing,” says Barbara Holmes. Rather than rushing to solve the moment, slowing down and staying in place “bring us face to face with the invisible, the hidden, the unremarked, the yet-to-be-resolved.”
Live Life to the Full
There is a reason we are encouraged to adopt spiritual disciplines, says Dallas Willard. “One must intend to do it, and then one must sensibly implement the means. Appropriate action is the key.” The path of spiritual growth in the riches of Christ is not a passive one, says Willard. “Grace is not opposed to effort.”
From Renovare.
Hermann Hesse on Breaking the Trance of Busyness
The burden of busyness as a way of life is not a making of only today’s society. In a 1905 essay, the poet, writer, and artist Hermann Hesse, writes, “the idea of hurry-hurry as the most important objective of living, is unquestionably the most dangerous enemy of joy.”
From Daily Good.
House of Belonging
Poetry by David Whyte
This is the bright home
in which I live,
this is where
I ask
my friends
to come,
From David Whyte’s blog.
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