Tag: elders

Finding Connection

Nature is honest, says ecotherapist and guide Grant Hine.  Nature just accepts you for who you are. Trees don’t criticize each other for being too fat or too skinny. “Every tree is perfect. And if we can see people in that way as being, that’s how they’ve grown, that’s how they are. So there’s no pressure. It’s honest.”

Watch the video from Green Renaissance or read the reflection.

Found at A Network for Grateful Living.

Facing Up to the Chaos

It’s dangerous to face the darkness alone. “Today the idea is omnipresent that we must constantly forsake what is safe and move into the unknown, with all the chaos and demons we will meet there,” says Ron Rolhesier. But we should only do that if we are sure someone or something has its arms around us and is holding us.

Read the essay.

From the blog of Ron Rolheiser.

I Have Time

Perhaps the antidote to rushing about in our lives is to stop and say, “I have time.” That simple pause and simple phrase allows us to be present to the moment rather than race to do something without giving it thought. Stopping and saying, “I have time” gives your nervous system a beak. It offers a moment of choice as to how you will proceed.

Read the essay.

From Daily Good.

Between Good & Evil: The Practice of Spiritual Discernment

The third and fourth century desert mothers and fathers gave up all their material goods to go into the desert and experience only God. But the desert was also known as the habitat of demons, so the mothers and fathers also went to slay the evil within. What was required was acute spiritual discernment between the voice of God and the voice of evil. Today we still seek that discernment. 

Read the essay by Br. David Vryhof.

From Society of St. John the Evangelist.

The Most Important Thing

By Julia Fehrenbacker

I am making a home inside myself. A shelter
of kindness where everything
is forgiven, everything allowed—a quiet patch
of sunlight to stretch out without hurry,
where all that has been banished
and buried is welcomed, spoken, listened to—released.

Read the rest of the poem.

Found at A Network for Grateful Living.

Knowing and Loving Our Bodies

When we ache, when we are tired, even when we have a little itch, God incarnate also experienced that.  So when we think, “I’m so weary,” we can trust that Jesus knows something about that.

Read the reflection.

From Center for Action and Contemplation.

The Opponent Relationship Is Not A Contest

Every person we meet, every experience in our environment, is a relationship. In almost every situation we adjust our own response to the relationship based on what we are “reading” in the other. It is always a learning opportunity.

Read the reflection.

From Awakin.

If That’s What Faith Is Like

“There are events, times, and seasons in each of our lives when everything we thought we knew or believed is called into question,” reflects the Rev. Mike Marsh. As rector of an Episcopal church in Uvalde, Texas, Marsh understands when the narrative of our life has been ruptured. “We no longer know what we believe about God, life, or the world. We’re not sure where to place our trust or in what to hope.” Perhaps the faith that is called for in this time is God’s faith in us.

Read the sermon.

From Interrupting the Silence.

Healing Traumas of Omission

In a deeply personal essay, Brian Morykon, Director of Communications for Renovare, writes about recognizing what needs to be healed from childhood, even if it was not what we think of as “trauma.” Even when our parents did they best they could, there may still be things that need to be healed. 

Read the essay.

From Renovare.

Fever

Why is it that we come to wisdom and maturity only after painful experiences – like the fever of a severe illness? Why do we not learn from our positive experiences? Although we have no logical answer to the question, experience teaches us it is true.

Read the reflection.

From Fr. Ron Rolheiser.

Growing Old

What if we thought of aging as progressive enrichment, not merely diminishment, asks Milton Brasher-Cunningham in an essay pulled from nature. Reading about an overgrown pond in Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book Braiding Sweetgrass, Brasher-Cunningham concludes that “all of us are made of mud–the sacred, soggy stardust made to grow older and richer.”

Read the reflection.

From Don’t Eat Alone.

Living at the Speed of Jesus

Katelyn Dixon left her counseling job and waited for God to show her what was next. She waited, and she waited. With tears and impatience. Then she learned that learning to wait was actually learning to live – slowly, intentionally, creatively — at the pace God created us to live.

Read the reflection.

From Renovare.

Faith, Doubt, Dark Nights, and Maturity

When we feel bereft of God, maybe we are moving forward, not backward.  Maybe we are moving into a new stage of a mature faith. While that darkness can be confusing, says Fr. Ron Rolheiser, it can also be maturing: It can help move us from being arrogant, judgmental, religious neophytes to being humble, empathic men and women.

Read the reflection.

From the blog of Ron Rolheiser. 

Remain in Relationship

In a reflection on Jesus’ sermon about the vine and the branches, Richard Rohr reminds us that being connected – with God and with each other – is more important than being correct.

Listen to the podcast.

From Center for Action and Contemplation.

A Blessing for Learning to Delight Again

Blessed are you, the pragmatic,
You who have run the math and know what adds up—and what doesn’t.
You who have set it all down.
You who don’t hope or dream or plan anymore,
…because what’s the point?

Read the rest of the poem.

From Kate Bowler’s Summer Blessings series.

The Unworried Well

None of us who are relatively well can imagine what it is like to have a chronic illness. The pain of even those we love the very most . . . loses its “originality” for us. “Their suffering is an idea in our minds, not an endless punch in our guts,” says Courtney Martin, quoting from Alphonse Daudet’s, In the Land of Pain.

Read the reflection.

From The Examined Family.

Human World of Helping

When we try to distance ourselves from the pain of the world, says Terry Hershey, we miss the good stuff too.  “Even in cacophony, we are still connected to one another. We still make a difference. A human world of helping. No one of us is on this journey alone.”

Read the reflection.

From Sabbath Moments by Terry Hershey.

Ignatian Discernment

When he has to make an important decision, priest and writer Lowell Grisham turns to Ignatian discernment – a method of living with each choice for a day and considering the after-effects of each. Does the choice leave you feeling peaceful or with a sense of turbulence?

Read the reflection.

From Joanna Seibert’s Daily Something.

Obstacles to Prayer

Why do we find it hard to pray? We have so much else that tugs at us all day, every day, and, frankly, praying is hard. “Because prayer can seem unreal we often stop doing it,” says Fr. RonRolheiser.  “But it will only seem real if we persevere in it long enough and do it deeply enough. We often give up too soon. Prayer isn’t easy.”

Read the reflection.

From the blog of Ron Rolheiser.

David Whyte: Blessings

In this beautiful video, filmed in Ireland, poet David Whyte offers two of his blessing poems in the form of thankfulness to his surroundings.

Watch the video.

Found in Emergence Magazine.

Read the poems and find more at The Marginalian. 

Life after Death

In Frederick Buechner’s book A Crazy, Holy Grace, the author has a conversation with his dead grandmother. Death is like stepping off a trolley car, she tells him. Life doesn’t stop; it just gets deeper with God. Commenting, writer Larry Burton observes that the idea makes death less abstract.

Read the reflection.

Found in Joanna Seibert’s Daily Something. 

We Can Build Our Dreams at Any Age 

As Arianna Huffington reflects on her 71st birthday, she finds that at this age we actually have more time than we often think we do to realize our dreams and build the lives we truly want.

Read the reflection.

Found in Thrive.

Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience in a Secular Age

What we think we know about poverty, chastity, and obedience is undoubtedly wrong, says Fr. Ron Rolheiser.  “Poverty, chastity, and obedience are not a missing out on riches, sexuality, and freedom,” he cautions. “They are rather a genuine, rich, modality of riches, sexuality, and freedom.”

Read the reflection.

From the blog of Fr. Ron Rolheiser.

Watching My Friend Pretend Her Heart Isn’t Breaking

Poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer compares the weight of grief to a teaspoon of neutron star.

On Earth, just a teaspoon of neutron star
would weigh six billion tons. Six billion tons
equals the collective weight of every animal
on earth. Including the insects. Times three.

Read the rest of the poem.

Found in Daily Good.

Ready, Set . . . Wait?

Richard Foster reminds us that prior to giving the Great Commission, Jesus told his disciples to wait. We too must wait if we expect to go in power. “Anyone can go, “ says Foster, “but few there are that go in power.” Foster calls this a “Jerusalem wait,” and encourages us to wait and listen ourselves.

Read the article.

From Renovare.

Categorical Imperatives

Is that nagging obligation we feel inside God’s voice or our own conscience? A feeling of guilt does not necessarily indicate that we did something wrong, says Fr. Ron Rolheiser, “It only tells us how we feel about what we did, and that feeling can be healthy or unhealthy. Perhaps we didn’t do anything wrong at all, but are only wounded and neurotic.” 

Read the reflection.

Learn more about Ron Rolheiser.

Engaging with God in Challenge

Sometimes the path to God goes through hard struggles. Brother Jack Crowley of the Society of St. John the Evangelist writes about his struggle with stuttering as a child. “I can see how God has engaged with me through the challenges I faced,” he says. “I would not have the relationship I have with God if it were not for that challenge.”

Read or listen to the reflection.

From the Society of St. John the Evangelist.

Be Weird

Our society tends to separate love into earthly love and spiritual love, not understanding that earthiness is a form of spirituality. In older times those who were regarded as wise elders were said to have one foot in daily life and the other foot in the otherworld. We have to learn how to survive as earthbound creatures while feeding our spirituality.

Read the reflection.

From Medium.

Exploring Sophia/Seeking wisdom

Where will we find wisdom? In darkness and in light, in seeing beyond what is right before us, in accepting and in letting go. Using the book The Star in My Heart by Joyce Rupp, our seven-week study seeks wisdom in these experiences and more.  Use it for your personal study or with small groups.

Material for the study is on our website at https://wisdomyears.org/exploring-sophia-2/