Tag: christianity

Gathered Wisdom, May 7, 2024

Marjorie George

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

Prayer is a mystery that begins in God. Our prayer is always in response to God’s initiative. It is God who has caught our attention.

Br. Curtis Almquist, SSJE
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Space that can Heal

Stillness and silence can be a fullness, rather than a void, says Terry Hershey. Healing space, he adds, is “an invitation to the sacrament of the present moment. To be here now. Fully.”

Read the reflection.

From Sabbath Moment.

God Is Bringing Us Home

As we age, we face “uncreation,” says Richard Rohr. What we have created in our younger years is no longer important. “My self-created self gave me a nice trail to walk on, and something to do each day, but it isn’t really me. It might be my career or my vocation; yet as good as it is, it isn’t my True Self. ” 

Read the reflection.

From Center for Action and Contemplation.

Following Jesus – According to the Letter or the Spirit?

No matter how determined we are to right the wrongs of the Church, our bitterness, anger, judgmentalism, and mean spiritedness are not the way to do it, says Fr. Ron Rolheiser. Right truth and right morals don’t necessarily make us disciples of Jesus.

Read the reflection.

From Ron Rolheiser’s blog.

Luminous Darkness and Holding My Thumb

Lucy Grace grew up in a neighborhood where gangs ruled and initiation into them involved things like raping someone’s mother. But Lucy learned to hold her thumb as a symbol of how things would be better some day.

Read the reflection.

Found in Daily Good.

Love God and Do What You Want

It is always a shock to learn that St Augustine said, “Love God and do what you want.” The kicker is that if we love God, what we will want is to be like Jesus. To do that, we must learn to love as Jesus did. 

Read the sermon.

From Society of St. John the Evangelist.

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, Apr 2, 2024

Marjorie George

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

Behold my friends, the spring has come; the earth has gladly received the embraces of the sun, and we shall soon see the results of their love!

-Sitting Bull as quoted in Sitting Bull: The Collected Speeches by Mark Diedrich
From Well for the journey

Resurrection Fuels Action

If we don’t believe and live out Christ’s resurrection, how will we pray for God’s kingdom to come?  “How will we credibly usher in that kingdom in whatever small ways we can here and now, if we don’t believe in its ultimate fulfillment,” asks Debie Thomas, writing in CAC’s daily meditations.

Read the reflection.

From Center for Action and Contemplation.

The Resurrection Gives Hope

The good news of the resurrection is not simply a promise to you and to me. It is a promise to all creation, that all things will be made new.  “In a world that stinks, the resurrection of Jesus is good news to all,” says Br. James Koester, “because it is a promise of life that is mended, healed, cleansed, and restored.” 

Read or listen to the sermon.

From Society of St. John the Evangelist.

Nouwen: Easter Resurrection

There are many reasons we can lose our identity and our connection to God, says Joanna Seibert. Most of the reasons are based in fear.  It is in community that we are restored, with the help of others who tell their own stories.

Read the reflection.

From Joanna Seibert.

Music rejuvenates memories of dementia patients

“Music is the one thing that opens up people’s brains, and it helps fire off neurons on both hemispheres of the brain,” say scientists and doctors.  Children are often amazed when their parents who suffer from dementia come alive when they hear a familiar tune.

Read the article.

Found at public radio station WLRN in South Florida.

Spring

By Mary Oliver

Somewhere
a black bear
has just risen from sleep
and is staring
down the mountain

Read the rest of the poem.

Found at tumblr online.

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 20, 2024

Marjorie 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.

Read the reflection.

From Center for Action and Contemplation.

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.”

Read the reflection.

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.

Read the reflection.

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.

Read the reflection.

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.

Read the reflection.

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

Marjorie 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.”

Read the reflection.

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.

Read the reflection.

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.

Read the reflection.

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 reflection.

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, Jan 30, 2024

Marjorie 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

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.

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.”

Read the reflection.

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.”

Read the reflection.

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.

Watch and listen to this peaceful video.

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, Dec 12, 2023

Marjorie George

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

We are so often in too much of a hurry, expecting God, at our bidding, to work miracles overnight. And we often judge the progress of God’s Kingdom by what we can see. But so often the real growth happens unseen. 

Br. Geoffrey Tristram, SSJE
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Voluntary Simplicity

Voluntary simplicity is about doing one thing at a time and being present at the doing of it. It is taking a walk and noticing what there is to see and smell. It means “going fewer places in one day rather than more, seeing less so I can see more, doing less so I can do more, acquiring less so I can have more,” says Jon Kabat-Zinn.

Read the essay.

From Awakin.

The Constellation of Your Belonging

This brief meditation invites us to imagine the constellation of our life. Using guided visualization and reflective prompts, this simple practice invites us into the realization of our connectedness to ourselves and everything around us.

Engage with the practice/meditation.

From Grateful Living.

Telling our story this Advent

It is easy to give up as we get older. To think there is nothing new to learn. To believe we are no longer needed. But Joanna Seibert reminds us of the importance of telling our stories, especially to our families.

Read the reflection.

From Joanna Seibert.

Mary as a Model of Faith

Giving birth to Christ is something more than biological, says Fr. Ron Rolheiser. “Mary is the pre-eminent example of the one who hears the word of God and keeps it. For this reason, more than because of biological motherhood, Jesus claims her as his mother.”  And we, too, are asked to give birth to faith.

Read the essay.

From the blog of Ron Rolheiser.

The Spiritual Practice of Awe

What does it mean to experience awe? Is it sitting in your backyard listening to the songbirds? Or seeing a magnificent sunset? But can it also be seeing the scab that has grown over a cut on your arm or looking into the face of your neighbor?

Read the reflection.

From Center for Action and Contemplation.

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.