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

To be a Christian in our culture is no easy thing, because it demands of us to live in faith, instead of fear; to live in hope, instead of despair; to live in love, instead of enmity. The narrow gate is difficult to pass through because it is so much easier to live in fear than faith. But that is not the invitation we have received, for the One who invites us to follow through the narrow gate is the same one who promises abundance of life to those who do follow.

-Br. James Koester
Society of Saint John the Evangelist

August 10, 2021

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

There is no telling where God may turn up next–around what sudden bend of the path if you happen to have your eyes and ears open. 

-Frederick Buechner, Eyes of the Heart

From Well for the journey

This Week:

• Bodies may give out, but souls don’t wrinkle
• Elders can bring a divided world together
• From the Olympics, keep running
• 70 as a welcome time
• The brain helps us age

Souls Don’t Wrinkle

Older women have the luxury of shedding excess baggage: pride of looks, what others think, looking foolish. But the biblical Sarah and Elizabeth show us that souls don’t wrinkle. Read more.

From Joanna Seibert in Daily Something.

Elders Are Bridges

The archetype of the elder – who stands with one foot on the ground of survival and the other in the realm of great imagination – is needed more than ever as the world becomes increasingly divided. Read the essay.

By Michael Meade in Mosaic Voices.

Get Up and Go On Together

The take-away from the Olympics for Diana Butler Bass was when Sifan Hassan fell, got up, kept running, and finished first in the qualifying heat of the women’s 1,500 meter race. Our communities need that kind of resilience, says Bass, if we are going to meet the crises of these days.  Read the essay.

From The Cottage. 

The Joy of Being a Woman in Her Seventies

When we say, “I’m not old,” we generally mean, “I don’t feel old, I don’t fit the stereotype of what it means to be an old woman.”  We hesitate to admit we are old in the ageism culture of our society.   Read the essay. 

By Mary Pipher found in Daily Good.

Keys to Aging Well

Aging does not have to be a period of decline and loss and irrelevance, says Daniel Levitin in a PBS interview. It can be “a period of potentially renewed engagement, energy and meaningful activities.” Levitin,  a neuroscientist, examines what happens in the brain as we age and finds good news. Watch the video or read the transcript.

Found in Daily Good.

Gathered Wisdom is an offering of The Wisdom Years, a ministry devoted to the spiritual journey of the last third of our lives. Sign up to subscribe to Gathered Wisdom and learn more about us at The Wisdom Years. Or send an email to Marjorie George at marjoriegeorge62@gmail.com.

Inspiration and resources for the journey, gathered from websites, books, and pass-alongs that have been shared with us. From The Wisdom Years – Spirituality for the Last Third of Our Lives.

Gathered Wisdom is taking a break for the next two weeks. We will be back on July 13 with more poetry, reflections, videos, and recommended online courses for you.

And if it’s true we are alone,
we are alone together
the way blades of grass
are alone, but exist as a field…
Alone as we are, our small voices
weave into the one big conversation.
Our actions are essential
to the one infinite story of what it is
to be alive.

-Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, ahundredfallingveils.com

Found in Well for the Journey, Daily Faith Reflection, June 29, 2021

Trusting Our Inner Authority

By Richard Rohr
From Center for Action and Contemplation

“Everyone has access to an inner experience of God, but we don’t always recognize those experiences for what they are,” says Richard Rohr. Scripture and tradition are usually our outer authority, but our experience leads to our inner authority. We need both, says Rohr, for true spiritual wisdom. 

Read the reflection.

More from Center for Action and Contemplation.

Speaking the Language of God 

By Br. James Koester
From Society of St John the Evangelist

Brother James confesses his inability to learn another language. In school, he recalls, every time he tried to learn French, or Greek, or Latin, he struggled all year to learn a few basics, scrape by with a pass at the end of the school year, and then forget everything over the summer. “I would start again from square one, once again, each Fall,” he says. So considering the Pentecost event, Brother James has realized the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost then, was not so much the gift of speaking foreign languages, but the gift of comprehension that resulted in unity and understanding.”

Read or listen to the sermon.

More from Society of St. John the Evangelist.

Loving-Kindness Meditation

From Joanna Seibert

Deacon Joanna Seibert offers a meditation that invites loving-kindness to ourselves and to others in our lives. The words are: “May I be peaceful. May I be happy. May I be safe.”  Notice reactions to this meditation, says Joanna. “Accept what you are noticing. Be aware of thoughts, emotions, or responses to this meditation or to people you directed your meditation.  This is the practice of mindfulness.”

Practice the meditation.

More from Joanna Seibert.

Revelations of 12 Living Artists

With Roger Housde
An e-course from Spirituality and Practice
Monday, July 12 – Friday, August 06

This one-month e-course from Spirituality and Practice  will look at the work of 12 artists of various ages from around the world who are blurring the boundaries between art and social cultural action, art and everyday materials, and traditional and experimental art forms. The course will focus on how an artist’s paintings speak to our perceptions of self, beauty, vision, and meaning.

For more information and to register.

Letting Go – 2021

Letting Go – 2021
An e-course from Spirituality and Practice
July 12 – August 1
with Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat

While our culture teaches us to acquire things, wisdom teachers emphasize letting go. By giving, releasing, and clearing out things, we open up new pathways for the Divine energies to enter and transform us. This e-course will include 21 daily emails with nuggets of spiritual wisdom and related exercises to help you practice letting go.

For more information and to register.

More from Spirituality and Practice.

Summer Online Retreats

From Trinity Church Wall Street

Retreats are free and open to all. There is no registration required.
Each retreat takes place over five half-hour sessions throughout the weekend on the Trinity Retreat Center Facebook page at these times EDT:
Friday: 8pm | Saturday: 10am, 2pm, 8pm | Sunday: 4pm

A Table in the Wilderness: Discovering God in Unexpected Places
with the Rev. Marcus George Halley, Episcopal Church of Connecticut
Friday, July 9–Sunday, July 11 

This retreat includes contemplative practices such as lectio divina, a modified Ignatian Examen, and journaling.

For more information.

REAL Retreat: Cultivating Respectful Relationships, Excellence, Authenticity, and Love
with Dr. Sandra Montes, Union Theological Seminary
Friday, July 23–Sunday, July 25 

Explore why respectful relationships, excellence, authenticity, and love are important for our spiritual growth and how they can help us live in community.

For more information.

Refuge and Resilience: An LGBTQ+ Retreat
with the Rev. Matt Welsch, Trinity Church Wall Street
Friday, August 6–Sunday, August 8 

In this retreat, we’ll reflect on the idea of refuge and how we might draw on places of sanctuary to find strength and resilience in our unique, God-given identities. 

For more information.

Returning To The World

The Being with the Divine Series 
An online conversation with Paula D’Arcy
From Eremos
Thursday, Aug. 12
7:00pm – 8:30pm CDT

Our world will never go back to the way it was in early 2020. Many are exhausted and grieving losses, wondering where God or the Divine is as we continue to grapple with tremendous change. Paula invites us forward with our heart as our guide – taking the gifts of wisdom we’ve gained these past 18 months and leaving behind what no longer serves us.

For more information and registration link.

More about Eremos.

If you have something to add to Gathered Wisdom, send it to Marjorie George at
marjoriegeorge62@gmail.com

Gathered Wisdom is from The Wisdom Years, a ministry that invites older adults to deepening spirituality in the last third of their lives.

If someone forwarded this to you, learn more about The Wisdom Years and subscribe to the site at wisdomyears.org.

Like us on Facebook – The Wisdom Years.

Inspiration and resources for the journey, gathered from websites, books, and pass-alongs that have been shared with us. From The Wisdom Years – Spirituality for the Last Third of Our Lives.

Collaborate

How do you want to end up? At the end of today? At the end of your life? This requires intention. We have in God both partnership and provision for the cultivation of our soul. God’s invitation is to collaborate – to co-labor – with God in the cultivation of our soul: in our growing whole, free, and real.

Read more.

-Br. Curtis Almquist
Society of Saint John the Evangelist

Either, Or, and Metaphors

“Our English language divides the world into nouns and verbs or ‘things’ and ‘actions.’ This structure makes us naturally start to compare, compete, and try to control our perceptions.” – Carol Folbre.

Read the rest of this reflection on our Facebook page. Find us at “The Wisdom Years.” Search for the page, not the group.

Practicing What We Preach and Fear

By Joanna Seibert

Are we living the gospel or just talking about it? As Christians, we say we respect the dignity of every human being, but our homes and our pews all look like us. Is fear of losing what we have fostering  a scarcity mentality? “Living out of gratitude rather than fear can help us practice what we preach,” says Joanna.

Read the reflection.

More from Joanna Seibert.

Fine art of Christian living

By Joan Chittister
From Vision and Viewpoint newsletter

It is what we do, how we live, where we invest our time in the ordinary days that are the foundation of our Christian lives.  The church is currently in the liturgical season of “Ordinary Time,” named for the ordinal numbers (first, second, third, etc.) used to name and count the Sundays – such as the Third Sunday after Pentecost. “But the truth is that there is nothing ordinary—if by ordinary we mean inferior or less important—about a period such as this at all,” says Sister Joan Chittister.  “This time is the extraordinary period of coming to see the world through the eyes of Jesus. It is the period when we determine how we ourselves will act from now on.”

Read the entire reflection.

More from Joan Chittister.

Listening to the Wisdom of Nature

By Jan Blencowe
From Kolbe Times newsletter

“Silent time in nature is a necessity for me,” says artist and writer Jan Blencowe. She adds that scripture reports stones speaking and listening, trees clapping their hands, and other acts of nature alive.  “Nature has been commissioned by her Creator to illuminate and instruct. I sit at her feet and eagerly listen.”

Read the reflection.

This issue of Kolbe Times focuses on wisdom. Read More.

Finding Holiness in the Sanctuary of Difference

By Br. Geoffrey Tristram
Society of St. John the Evangelist

How many of us think that our lives would be better if one particular person just went away? As Bishop Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury said, “A great deal of our politics, our ecclesiastical life, often our personal life as well, is dominated by the assumption that everything would be all right, if only some people would go away.” And too often we use our power to make that happen.

Read or listen to the reflection.

More from Society of St. John The Evangelist.

Streams of Living Water

A Renovare podcast with Richard Foster and James Catford

Richard Foster, author of the groundbreaking book Celebration of Discipline, calls them “streams of living water,” by which he means six great charisms of different church traditions. They are, says Nathan Foster, “treasures tucked away” in various denominations: the contemplative tradition, the holiness tradition, the charismatic tradition, the social justice tradition, the evangelical tradition, and the incarnational tradition. In this podcast, Richard Foster and James Catford discuss how the traditions weave together.

Listen to the podcast.

More from Renovare.

Beginning Again: Benedictine Wisdom for Living with Illness

An online course From Oblate Seminary
With Mary Earle and Ron Rolheiser

Tuesdays, Sept 14 – Nov 2, 9:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. (Central Time) 

“Particularly as we grow older, many of us discover that we live with ailments of some sort. These may be minor or they may be demanding chronic conditions or even terminal diagnoses. The challenge becomes, as one person put it, “to give the mess some meaning.” Using Beginning Again: Benedictine Wisdom for Living with Illness by Mary C. Earle, as our text, we will explore ways of crafting a rule of life informed by living with the illness. Class sessions will include prayer and meditation, teaching, journaling, and small group time.”

For more info and to register.

More events from Oblate Seminary.

If you have something to add to Gathered Wisdom, send it to Marjorie George at
marjoriegeorge62@gmail.com

Gathered Wisdom is from The Wisdom Years, a ministry that invites older adults to deepening spirituality in the last third of their lives.

If someone forwarded this to you, learn more about The Wisdom Years and subscribe to the site at wisdomyears.org.

Like us on Facebook – The Wisdom Years.

 

A weekly collection of inspiration and resources for the journey, gathered from websites, books, and pass-alongs that have been shared with us. From The Wisdom Years – Spirituality for the Last Third of Our Lives.

God’s Seedy People

By the Rev. Mike Marsh
From Interrupting the Silence

One of the things we learn in our wisdom years is that if we are growing we are changing. In his sermon on the parable of the farmer who sows seeds, Mike Marsh asks his listeners: “What seeds have germinated and taken root in you? What new sprouts are coming up in you? Where is growth taking place and what does that look like?” 

Read the sermon. 

More from Interrupting the Silence.

Overcoming Anxiety

A Renovare podcast with professor J. P. Moreland

When professor J. P. Moreland suffered a severe panic attack,  he turned to therapy, medicine, friends, Bible reading, and prayer, and he recovered. But when he suffered another attack ten years later, he devoured dozens of books on anxiety and spiritual formation, and prayerfully put into practice what he learned, including that it takes a long time to learn how to “cast all our anxiety on God” (1 Pet 5).

Listen to the podcast.

More from Renovare.

Authentic Living

A Green Renaissance film
Found on A Network for Grateful Living

“What are you here for? What are you living for? We’re here to do something, and it starts from being able to listen to that little voice inside,” says Nirmala Nair.  We are all here to do something, says Nirmala.  

Authenticity is being able to take the risk, “to follow one’s heart, and make mistakes and learn from that.”

Watch the video.

Green Renaissance produces short films that uplift the personal stories of ordinary people. Learn more about Green Renaissance. 

Learn more about A Network for Grateful Living.

Disciples with Many Faces

By Fr. Ron Rolheiser

In the gospel stories, we see that different individuals had different ways of connecting to Jesus, says Rolheiser. Not all were apostles or disciples.  Some who did not even follow him contributed to his cause.  “Each of us has his or her own history of being graced and wounded, formed and deformed, and so we all come to adulthood with very different capacities to see, understand, love, accept love, and give ourselves over to someone or something beyond us.”

Read the reflection.

More from Ron Rolheiser’s blog. 

Image Gently

By Joanna Seibert

Joanna writes of a friend, a pediatric radiologist, who heads an organization that works with physicians, parents, and medical organizations to  encourage using the least amount of radiation when performing tests on children. This effort, says Joanna, “is showing us how we can change the world by communicating and dialoguing with all people who share a special interest.” This concept is equally important in our spiritual lives. “We find more answers to our spiritual questions in community; whereas often we cannot understand our concerns by ourselves.”

Read the short reflection.

More from Joanna Seibert.

A weekly collection of inspiration and resources for the journey, gathered from websites, books, and pass-alongs that have been shared with us. From The Wisdom Years – Spirituality for the Last Third of Our Lives.

Explore

This challenging time we are living through now may actually be a spiritual gift for us. Maybe the invitation from the Spirit within us is to see this time as a precious opportunity to go deeper, to discover a rich and wondrous world within us to be explored, with the Spirit as our guide.

-Br. Geoffrey Tristram

Society of Saint John the Evangelist

Foundational Hope

By Richard Rohr
From Center for Action and Contemplation

Writing on hope, Fr. Rohr quotes  Indigenous Choctaw elder and Episcopal Bishop Steven Charleston: “The signs are all around us. We can see them springing up like wildflowers after the prairie rain. People who had fallen asleep are waking up. People who had been content to watch are wanting to join. People who never said a word are speaking out. The tipping point of faith is the threshold of spiritual energy, where what we believe becomes what we do.” (From Charleston’s book Ladder to the Light: An Indigenous Elder’s Meditations on Hope and Courage.

Read Rohr’s reflection.

More about Center for Action and Contemplation.

Welcomed Back By A Sacred Space

By Joanna Seibert

As she relaxes on a summer morning from her sacred space on the Gulf, Joanna Seibert reflects on the journey of deep-sea fishermen. They are, she says, “another metaphor for our spiritual journey where we search beneath the surface of our lives to a deeper place of memories, dreams, and reflections.  We go with spiritual guides who have been there before and know the territory. We share the joy of what we have found in community.”

Read Joanna’s reflection. 

More from Joanna Seibert.

What did you miss?

By The Rev. Jay Sidebotham
From RenewalWorks

Celebrating the Eucharist for the first time in many months, The Rev. Jay Sidebotham considers four important words from the liturgy: “taken, blessed, broken and given.” As we begin to come back into community from the pandemic, it is important to think about not only what has been lost but also what we have learned. “Those lessons,” says Sidebotham, “provide opportunity for hope, as we make our way back into community. It’s hope that this season of brokenness will lead to new life, that it will be blessed and shared.”

Read the essay. 

More from RenewalWorks.

The Wisdom of Forgetting Everything You Know

By Dr. Gail Brenner
Found in Daily Good

“There is no greater gift you can give yourself than the invitation to enter the world of not knowing,” says Gail Brenner in this provocative essay. Brenner calls us to forget what we know because by thinking we know what will happen, we close ourselves off to things beyond our imaginations. Our consistent efforts to control our lives prevent us from allowing our lives to just unfold. 

Read the essay.

More from Daily Good.

More from Dr. Gail Brenner.

Living Word, Living Way

An online course from The Shalem Institute
6 sessions beginning Sunday, June 13 through Sunday, July 25, 2021
Registration deadline: June 21, 2021
Materials available for two weeks after the course ends.

“Join Shalem adjunct staff member Patience Robbins as she guides you through the use of lectio divina, walking meditation, the practice of gratitude, and intercessory prayers. Whether you feel like a beginner or want to deepen a particular prayer practice; whether you want to explore new ways of praying or are seeking the support of like-spirited others in an online setting — this course offers something for you.”

This course is asynchronous.  You may access material at any time that fits in your schedule.  

For more information and to register.

More about Shalem Institute.

Rumi – Living a Spiritual Life – 2021

From Spirituality and Practice
By Kabir Helminski, Camille Helminski
Sunday, June 13 – Saturday, July 10

Poetry is the language of the soul, and for Jalaluddin Rumi it was his passion to share with us his realization: There is an unseen but immanent, majestic yet tender REALITY we cannot afford to live without. And there is some work we can do to remove what stands in the way of our perceiving this Truth/Beauty and our being transformed by it.

For details and to register.

More from Spirituality and Practice.

God must be allowed the right to speak unpredictably.

— Thomas Merton in The Thomas Merton Encyclopedia by William H. Shannon, Christine M. Bochen, Patrick F. O’Connell.

From Spirituality and Practice.

Path With Heart

By Jack Kornfield
From Awakin.org.

Is our spiritual path connected to our hearts? How do we know? By looking at where we put our time, our strength, our creativity, our love. “We must look at our life without sentimentality, exaggeration, or idealism,” says Kornfield. We must ask, “Does what we are choosing reflect what we most deeply value?’ ”

Read the essay.

More from Awakin.org.

Four Shapes of Transformation

By Richard Rohr
From Center for Action and Contemplation

Our faith, and our understanding of our faith, are always evolving.  As we live out our years, our experiences inform our comprehension. “An evolutionary faith,” says Richard Rohr, “understands that nothing is static. The universe unfolds, our understanding of God evolves and deepens, and our moral development surely evolves as well.”

Read Rohr’s reflection.

More from Center for Action and Contemplation.

70 Over 70 

A podcast from Pineapple Street Studios.

In 70 over 70, podcast host Max Linsky talks to 70 remarkable people, all over the age of 70, not just about their past but their lives right now. These are conversations about the big questions we all ask ourselves, no matter how old we are. What does it mean to live well? What are we still searching for? And how do we learn to let go?

Listen to the current episode.

More about Pineapple Street Studios.

Being Simply Beautiful

From A Network for Grateful Living
A video from Green Renaissance

Theo du Plessis, one of the “grateful changemakers” from A Network for Grateful Living, reflects on how losing everything brought him to realize what is really important: “I don’t have time for things which are not real. I don’t have enough time left. So, I want my life to feel authentic.”

Watch the video.

More from A Network for Grateful Living.

More about Green Renaissance.

Summer Resources for Spiritual Sustenance

From Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation.

As we move into the long days of summer, some of Shalem’s board and staff have put together a list of books, movies, poetry and other resources that are contemplatively grounding and inspirational. 

Investigate the list.

More about Shalem Institute.

A weekly collection of inspiration and resources for the journey, gathered from websites, books, and pass-alongs that have been shared with us. From The Wisdom Years – Spirituality for the Last Third of Our Lives.

Protest

We cannot love God if we do not love our brothers and sisters and recognize the love God has for them. We cannot adore the beauty of our diverse triune God if we do not seek it in the faces of the diverse community God has created. We cannot receive the assurance of God’s mercy, gracefully shown to us in Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, unless we are willing to be arbiters of that same mercy; a mercy that both takes a knee in peaceful protest and displaces the knee prohibiting another from breathing in the breath of life.

-Br. Jim Woodrum
Society of Saint John the Evangelist

The Blessed Confusion of Pentecost

By Ryan Kuratko
From Grow Christians

The human story is one of diversity, of wondrous and different cultures, says Ryan Kuratko in this reflection from Grow Christians. So when we choose only one way, one culture, one language, we are in danger of destroying everything that is our true identity. God’s intervention in that process happens at Babel. 

Read the reflection on why to get to Pentecost we have to go through Babel.

More from Grow Christians.

This is Me at 68

From Daily Good

What we know as we live into this last third of our lives is that everything softens. People and situations that used to raise all our hackles are now hardly worth a hand-wring. The writers of these short essays – ranging in age from 68 to upper-70s, echo that sentiment as they tell of the revelations that have surfaced by the pandemic. It’s not all bad out there. 

Read the essays.

More from Daily Good.

Our Faith is in Community

By Richard Rohr
From Center for Action and Contemplation

Again and again in the past 15 months, we have found the value of community by our absence from it. “In our corporate wholeness, are the glory of God, the goodness of God, the presence of God,” says Richard Rohr.  “As an individual, I participate in that wholeness, and that is holiness!  It’s not my private holiness; it’s our connectedness together.” It is our reliance upon each other, each doing his or her part, that witnesses to God’s manifestation among us.

Read Rohr’s reflection.

More from CAC.

The Wisdom Years is founded on community. We gather most Thursday afternoons to reflect and discuss together on the topic of the week, but mostly it’s about companionship.  If you want to know more, send an email to Marjorie George at marjoriegeorge62@gmail.com. Or visit wisdomyears.org.

Notes in the Margins

An online Series of Book Discussions with Parker J. Palmer
From The Center for Courage and Renewal

Session 1 
Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation
Thursday, May 27 
12 noon to 1:30pm EDT

Session 2
A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward An Undivided Life
Thursday, June 24 
7:00pm to 8:30pm EDT

Session 3
On the Brink of Everything: Grace Gravity & Getting Old
Thursday, July 22 
12 noon to 1:30pm EDT   

The Center for Courage and Renewal is offering a series of three online book discussions with Parker J. Palmer. Each conversation will focus on one of Parker’s most widely read books. He will share about writing the book and what he’s learned from readers about it over the years. Then he’ll invite questions and comments about how the issues in the books have played out in your life.

These conversations are free and open to anyone. Sign up for one, two, or all three.

Learn more and register

More from Center for Courage and Renewal

A weekly collection of inspiration and resources for the journey, gathered from websites, books, and pass-alongs that have been shared with us. From The Wisdom Years – Spirituality for the Last Third of Our Lives.

Unfolding

The spiritual path, it seems, appears as we travel the journey.  We make the road by walking it. Our part is to recognize the hand of God steadying us and beckoning us forward.

For this 4-week study, we will draw from the book Unfolding by Nancy J. Hill. We will read on our own, then gather weekly to reflect on and discuss how the readings resonate with our lives. We will acknowledge and learn to navigate the road that urges us on, though we may not always see the way ahead clearly.

For all the details and to save your space in the study, click here.

Wendell Berry reads Wendell Berry

Relax into nature as poet Wendell Berry reads his famous poem “The Peace of Wild Things” against the backdrop of a beautifully-animated video.  

Listen and watch.

More From Daily Good

A Fixed Place To Stand

By Richard Rohr

“Give me a place to stand, and a lever long enough,” said Archimedes,  “and I will move the world. ” Richard Rohr finds analogy in the contemplative life. “The fixed point is our place to stand,” says Rohr. “It is a contemplative stance: steady, centered, poised, and rooted.”

Read Rohr’s essay.

More from Awakin

Working Out Our Life

By the Rev. Mike Marsh

Reflecting on Jesus’ prayer on the night of the Last Supper (John 17:6-19), the Rev. Mike Marsh invites us to listen in. “One of the things I know about prayer is that we never simply offer our words. Instead, our words are an offering of ourselves and the circumstances of our lives. There’s always more going on than the words we say.” That is true of Jesus’ prayer on this night, says Marsh. 

Taken from a sermon preached at St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, Uvalde TX, May 16, 2021

Read it.

More from Interrupting the Silence

Synchronicity

By Joanna Seibert

Psychologist Patrick Murray calls them “moments of transformation, embracing us with a profound sense that life is ultimately purposeful.” We call them coincidences, serendipity, synchronicities. Or just “a God thing.” They are moments when we sense a holy connection, says Joanna Seibert. 

Read Joanna’s reflection.

More from Daily Something

Seeing in a Deeper Way

By Ron Rolheiser

In the account of Paul’s conversion (Acts 9:1-9), Fr. Ron Rolhesier thinks Paul may not have been struck physically blind, but rather “Paul got up off the ground with his eyes wide open, seeing nothing.” For us, it is a lesson in seeing more deeply. In this essay, Rolheiser offers some ways we can do that.

Read the essay.

More from his blog.

Talking to Elephants

By Fred Smith

Elephants need riders. In the metaphor, says Fred Smith, the elephant is “intuition or the hundreds of rapid, effortless moral judgements and decisions that we all make every day.” But intuition carries bias. That is why the elephant needs a rider – called reason. In arguments, we get nowhere talking to the elephant.

Read more of this insightful essay.

More about The Gathering

Gathered Wisdom is from The Wisdom Years, a ministry that invites older adults to deepening spirituality in the last third of their lives. If someone forwarded this to you, learn more about The Wisdom Years and subscribe to the site at
ww.wisdomyears.org.

An online offering
from
The Wisdom Years

Starting May 27, 2021

Every Thursday, 
4 to 5:15 p.m.
(Central time) 

for 4 weeks

In his poem “Santiago,” David Whyte describes the spiritual journey as “the road seen, then not seen” – sometimes revealing the way we should take, sometimes dropping away and leaving us to walk on thin air. 

Our path, it seems, appears as we travel the journey.  Our part is to recognize the hand of God steadying us and beckoning us forward. 

In our study of “unfolding,” we will acknowledge and learn to navigate the road that urges us on at this time of our lives, though we may not always see the way ahead clearly.

How it works:

•  Each week, we will read from Nancy J. Hill’s book Unfolding, then gather in community and in small groups by Zoom to offer our own thoughts on how Hill’s essays inform our unfolding lives. We will learn from our shared wisdom and from the revelations of our own souls as we listen for the wind of the Spirit.