Category: gathered wisdom

Healing Power of Sanctuary

Terry Hershey quotes Joseph Campbell: we all must “have a room, or a certain hour (or so) a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you. If you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.”

From Sabbath Moment.

Remaining Grace

Abide has a “gutsy quality” to it, says Br. Luke Ditewig. “Abide also means to remain or to stick with through challenge. Jesus says: ‘the Father stuck with me. I’ll stick with you no matter what. Abide in my love,’ Jesus says. ‘Remain with me.’ ”

From Society of St. John the Evangelist.

Ultimate Consolation

Do we always have to open the door to let Christ in? Is the doorknob on the inside or on the outside? In John’s gospel, Christ goes to the huddled disciples after the resurrection and walks through the door. What does that teach us?

From Fr. Ron Rolheiser.

Gathered Wisdom is an offering of The Wisdom Years, a ministry devoted to the spiritual journey of the last third of our lives.

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Gathered Wisdom, Feb 20, 2024

February 20, 2024Marjorie George

A weekly curated collection of essays, poetry, and reflections for your spiritual journey. From The Wisdom Years.

This Lent, God’s invitation is to join in the great work of mending. That’s what redemption means: mending something that is torn or broken. Each one of us is called to share with God in mending that which is broken: our relationship with God, our relationship with one another, our relationship with our broken planet.

Br. Geoffrey Tristram, SSJE
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Reclaimed by Something Deeper

“Deep communion and dear compassion are formed much more by shared pain than by shared pleasure,” says Richard Rohr. Our wounds make sacred medicine. We must allow ourselves to be reclaimed by something deeper than the pain before us.

Permission to let go

For Lent, Terry Hershey plans to honor a soft heart and make choices that spill from a soft heart. As Etty Hillesum said, “Ultimately, we have just one moral duty. To reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it towards others.”

From Sabbath Moment.

Fear as an Invitation

The Sea of Galilee is a large fresh-water lake in northern Israel/Palestine that is prone to sudden and violent storms. This must be what happened to Jesus and the Disciples in the biblical story about Jesus calming the storm (Luke 8:22–25) We also are afraid for our lives, with good reason, but Jesus assures us not to fear.

From Society of St. John the Evangelist.

Effort Does Not Change The Person

“Holiness is not an achievement; it is a grace,” says Anthony De Mello. It is only our nonjudgmental awareness that heals and changes and makes us grow. But in its own way and at its own time.

From Awakin.

Lenten Ashes

What is the symbolism of the ashes put on our foreheads on Ash Wednesday? “Smudging oneself with ashes says that this is not a season of celebration for you, that some important work is going on inside you, and that you are, metaphorically and really, in the cinders of a dead fire, waiting for something fuller in your life,” says Fr. Ron Rolheiser.

From Ron Rolheiser’s blog.

Gathered Wisdom is an offering of The Wisdom Years, a ministry devoted to the spiritual journey of the last third of our lives.

If this post was forwarded to you, sign up to receive Gathered Wisdom in your email by subscribing at wisdomyears.org.

To learn more visit our website.

Gathered Wisdom, Feb 13, 2024

February 13, 2024Marjorie George

A weekly curated collection of essays, poetry, and reflections for your spiritual journey. From The Wisdom Years.

Let there be
an opening
into the quiet
that lies beneath
the chaos
where you find
the peace
you did not think possible
and see what shimmers
beneath the storm

-Jan Richardson, The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings

Watching, Waiting, Working for Jesus

As Bro. Curtis Almquist reminds us, “Lent is upon us.” Ash Wednesday is tomorrow. We remember the time Jesus spent in the wilderness before he began his public ministry. It was a time for Jesus “to re-align himself to why God had given him life: to claim the right purpose, the right power, the right voice God had given him.” The focus of Lent, says Bro. Almquist, “can create space anew for the light, and life, and love to Jesus to teem in us and through us to our desperately broken world. Lent is to help us.”

From Society of St. John the Evangelist.
Visit their website for their Lenten study offering.

Love: The Fire of Transformation

Ilia Delio sees love as a fire of transformation. God’s fire, she says, “is destructive because it can swiftly eliminate all self-illusions, grandiose ideas, ego-inflation, and self-centeredness.” God’s fire will forge us into an ever-radiant new presence of God because God is forever being born within us.

From Center for Action and Contemplation.
CAC will offer virtual sit meditations during Lent. Learn more here.

Our Struggle with Riches

God is not against people having wealth – of money or talent or strength. The problem is that our wealth makes us think that we are self-sufficient, that we don’t need God. Jesus told us to be like little children because they understand that they need help.

From Ron Rolheiser.

For the Love of God

Were the desert mothers and fathers just a set of cranky, people-hating monastics? Or did they really give up all they had and move into caves the better to love God?

Read the book excerpt.

From Renovare.

Benedictine Way Of Life

Benedict cautions us to “listen with the ear of your heart.” This is the call to the spiritual life, says Deacon Joanna Seibert. It is a way to live in the world still connected to God. “First, we are to listen and pay attention. We are to use the ear of our hearts. We are to connect to something outside ourselves, hearing and loving. We hear and learn about love in a community outside of ourselves.”

Read the delightful story.

From Joanna Seibert.

Gathered Wisdom is an offering of The Wisdom Years, a ministry devoted to the spiritual journey of the last third of our lives.

If this post was forwarded to you, sign up to receive Gathered Wisdom in your email by subscribing at wisdomyears.org.

To learn more visit our website.

Gathered Wisdom, Feb 6, 2024

February 6, 2024Marjorie George

A weekly curated collection of essays, poetry, and reflections for your spiritual journey. From The Wisdom Years.

And you? When will you begin that long journey into yourself?

-Rumi, Love’s Ripening
Found in Well for the Journey

The Light of Grace

His parents told him he could buy whatever he wanted with his newspaper income, but when he bought a conga drum for twenty dollars, his father made him take it back. It was a memory that never left him.

Read the story.

From Terry Hershey’s Sabbath Moment.

When My Father Faced An Emergency

What did her father do in an emergency, she was asked. You mean like the time the young man held them at knife-point while they were driving on the Big Sur coastline in California? That emergency? He was curious.

From Awakin.

The Story of Accumulation

“The more you think you need to accumulate, the bigger fence you need to build around yourself and the fewer people you will trust and let into your life,” says Gareth Higgins, writing in Center for Action and Contemplation. “It’s the inverse of what it means to live in true peace and security, which only comes in the context of relationship with people you can trust.”

A Lenten Fast to Live By

For what do you hunger? Can you even name it? Peace, yes, and freedom from fear. Safety for our children. A sense of spiritual well-being. And yet, our very daily practices undermine what we claim as our desires. Join the Wisdom Years community for a Lenten fast that invites us to lay down the old patterns and habits that deplete us and obstruct our full access to the divine image into which we were created.

Our study is from Feb 15 to March 21. We will meet weekly on Zoom for conversation, or you can use the material on you own.

To learn more

From The Wisdom Years.

The Dark Night as Impasse

Many good, healthy Christians speak of the “dark night of the soul,” a time when one feels completely bereft of God. It is a time when, as Fr. Ron Rolheiser puts it, “All the former ways you understood, imagined, and felt about things, especially as this relates to God, faith, and prayer, no longer work for you.”

More about Ron Rolheiser.

Gathered Wisdom is an offering of The Wisdom Years, a ministry devoted to the spiritual journey of the last third of our lives.

If this post was forwarded to you, sign up to receive Gathered Wisdom in your email by subscribing at wisdomyears.org.

To learn more visit our website.

Gathered Wisdom, Jan 30, 2024

January 31, 2024Marjorie George

A weekly curated collection of essays, poetry, and reflections for your spiritual journey. From The Wisdom Years.

May you arise each day with a voice of blessing whispering in your heart.

-John O’Donohue, “For Belonging,” To Bless the Space Between Us

A Lenten Fast to Live By

Our study is from Feb 15 to March 21. We will meet weekly on Zoom for conversation, or you can use the material on you own.

To learn more

From The Wisdom Years.

Vocation: The Call is Lifelong

Your vocation, your calling in life, what you are to be now, will come out of your greatest strength and your greatest need, says Brother Curtis Almquist in this reflection on vocation. “When we are younger,” says Bro. Almquist, “our vocation – our calling – is more about what we are to do. When we are older, our vocation – our calling – is more about what we are to be.”

From Society of St. John the Evangelist.

Prayers for Election Season

Like Christmas decor at Walmart, the U.S. presidential election season arrives earlier and louder every time around, says Brian Morykon, director of communications for Renovare. Unlike Christmas, the election season—and politics in general—seems to many of us to have little redeeming value. To help us bring the presence of God into our lives in this election season, Renovare offers this prayer for the election season.

Read the prayer.

From Renovare.

Grieving as a Spiritual Exercise

Henri Nouwen once wrote, “The great challenge is living your wounds through instead of thinking them through.” The choice we face in grieving, says Fr. Ron Rolheiser, is whether we are taking our hurts to our head or to our heart. “You need to let your wounds go down into your heart. Then you can live them through and discover that they will not destroy you.”

Watch and listen to this peaceful video.

From the blog of Ron Rolheiser.

Sanctuaries of Silence

No place on earth is silent any more, says acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton. And yet the silence of the natural world connects us back to the land in a way that nurtures and enchants us. Hempton says in silence he disappears.

Found at Karmatube.

Gathered Wisdom is an offering of The Wisdom Years, a ministry devoted to the spiritual journey of the last third of our lives.

If this post was forwarded to you, sign up to receive Gathered Wisdom in your email by subscribing at wisdomyears.org.

To learn more visit our website.

Gathered Wisdom, Jan 23, 2024

January 23, 2024Marjorie George

A weekly curated collection of essays, poetry, and reflections for your spiritual journey. From The Wisdom Years.

The crucial work of social peace must join an on-the-ground commitment to interior peace, the kind that changes lives from the inside out.

Br. Keith Nelson, SSJE
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As a Hen Gathers Her Brood

Like the hen who wanted to love and protect her chicks, says Barbara Brown Taylor in this classic essay, Jesus wanted to gather Jerusalem to himself (Matt 23:37). But they would not come. If you have ever loved someone you could not protect, you will understand.

Found in Renovare.

Ecumenism – The Path Forward

The path to Christian unity, says Fr. Ron Rolheiser, does not consist in proving only one denomination is correct and trying to convert others to that point of view. Rather, it lies in “each of us living the Gospel more faithfully so as to grow closer to each other in Christ.”

From the blog of Ron Rolheiser.

The Liberating Lessons of Imperfection

She thought it was going to be the best year of her life. Then she discovered how liberating life can actually be when we welcome its imperfections. Imperfection, she says, is not a goal; it’s more of a truth.

Read the short reflection.

From Grateful Living.

Nouwen: Zero-Sum

An attitude of scarcity says there is only just so much – food, money, power – to go around and when you win, I lose. An attitude of abundance says there is plenty for all when we share. When you win, I also win.

From Joanna Seibert.

Starlings In Winter

A poem by Mary Oliver

Chunky and noisy,
but with stars in their black feathers,
they spring from the telephone wire
and instantly

they are acrobats
in the freezing wind.
And now, in the theater of air,
they swing over buildings,

Read the rest of the poem.

Found in Awakin.

Gathered Wisdom is an offering of The Wisdom Years, a ministry devoted to the spiritual journey of the last third of our lives.

If this post was forwarded to you, sign up to receive Gathered Wisdom in your email by subscribing at wisdomyears.org.

To learn more visit our website.

Gathered Wisdom, Jan 16, 2024

January 16, 2024Marjorie George

A weekly curated collection of essays, poetry, and reflections for your spiritual journey. From The Wisdom Years.

Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible…Violence ends up defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.

-Martin Luther King, Jr., Nobel Peace Lecture, December 11, 1964
Found at Well for the Journey

Paradox Holds Us

Author Debie Thomas reminds us that even when evil is real and among us, like the weeds growing alongside the wheat in the field, our railing against it will not change it. Rather, God has a plan and is in charge.

Effort Does Not Change the Person

Anthony DeMello reminds us that our intervention alone does not change a person. It is not what we do that brings holiness, says DeMello. “Holiness is not an achievement; it is a grace.”

Read the reflection.

From Awakin.

Giving Ourselves a Better Story

“Whether we feel good or bad about ourselves,” says Fr. Ron Rolheiser, “is often predicated on what kind of story we understand ourselves as living within.” Christians recognize that we live within a bigger story than our own, and that gives meaning and dignity to our problems.

Read the rest of the offered prayers.

From the blog of Ron Rolheiser.

Prayer for the New Year

Courtney Martin prays for peace, “By which,” she says, “I mean both may we not murder other people’s children, and also may we apologize to our own when we lob empty threats their way because we still haven’t learned how to take the deep breaths we are constantly asking them to take.”

From The Examined Family.

The Precious Present

Living in our bodies not our heads, spending time with children, walking in nature are all ways to be present to the moment. “God is not in the past or the future, but is there to greet us in the present moment,” says Joanna Seibert.

Read the short reflection.

From Joanna Seiberts’ blog.

Gathered Wisdom is an offering of The Wisdom Years, a ministry devoted to the spiritual journey of the last third of our lives.

If this post was forwarded to you, sign up to receive Gathered Wisdom in your email by subscribing at wisdomyears.org.

To learn more visit our website.

Gathered Wisdom, Jan 9, 2024

January 9, 2024Marjorie George

A weekly curated collection of essays, poetry, and reflections for your spiritual journey. From The Wisdom Years.

To be available to the mystery means that you are open, expectant, waiting — continually poised on tiptoe, prepared to be illumined — not locked in your own expectations of how you think it should happen.

-Daphne Rose Kingma, The Book of Love
Found in Well for the Journey.

Epiphany: The Lighted Path

Fr. Ron Rolheiser looks at the difference between King Herod’s reaction at the news of the birth of Jesus and that of the Wise Men in the biblical story. One seeks to kill the new king, the others bring gifts. How do you react when your star is being eclipsed? This article and more are part of the Wisdom Years Epiphany study now on the Wisdom Years website. (Art by Helen Taylor.)

Find the material for the entire study here.

From The Wisdom Years.

An Awe Walk

Dacher Keltner describes awe as “the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your understanding of the world” – a magnificent sunset, a tiny baby’s finger. But participants in recent research reported finding awe in ordinary places. Keltner suggests taking an “awe walk.”

Read the article.

From Awakin.

Epiphany Wisdom from the Wise Men

Joanna Seibert tells the story from Tolstoy about the three old hermits who turned out to be wiser than the bishop. She recalls that in the many times when she has tried to share her wisdom in retreats and classes, she most often learns from those who have been down-and-out.

From Joanna Seibert.

Healing from grace

Terry Hershey recalls a story of how a poem brought healing to a group of young Kenyan women who were escaping from the horror of genital mutilation. Words of a poem have the power “to open doors, rather than shut them. To invite vulnerability, rather than disconnect us from our heart. To create space to give, rather than put up rigid boundaries that divide us from one another.”

From Terry Hershey’s Sabbath Moment.

The Dance of Hope

“The roots of fear run deep,” says Steven Charleston in his book about the survival of Native Americans. In today’s world, “the hope we embrace must run just as deep. No matter what happens we must keep dancing, hand in hand, joined in a circle of equality, constantly moving in the slow rotation of justice and prayer.”