Jesus . . . faced his death knowing that he was loved by others but also knowing that in the face of death he was entering a place where he was deeply and utterly alone. That will be our test too in the end. One day each of us will also have to “give over” his or her spirit. Inside of that unanimity-minus-one, will our hearts be warm or bitter?
Were you there when they crucified my Lord? asks an old gospel song. Joanne Seibert finds that she was. She has played each of the characters in the drama of Holy Week and invites us to walk with her again.
“A fisherman’s net is actually a set of holes kept together by ropes; it can only catch fishes, but not the water in which it is totally immersed,” says Mauro Bergonzi in an Awakin post. Likewise, reality is not a problem to be solved; it is a mystery.
No matter what is going on in our world at levels over which we have no control, it is in our power to hold on to the practices that nourish us, inform us, and give us courage, said Adam Bucko. There are always choices to be made.
“What would it look like in your life if you were to take forgiveness as seriously as Jesus took forgiveness?” asks Brother Jack Crowley. “Own your resentments and own up to your resentments. Don’t deny them, they are perfectly natural, but don’t let them fester. Bring your resentments out to the light for God to see.”
A collection of inspiration and resources for your spiritual journey, gathered from websites, blogs, and pass-alongs that have been shared with us.
We are pilgrims together on each day’s journey …. Why not make this pilgrimage with a heart for one another?
-Macrina Wiederkehr, Seven Sacred Pauses: Living Mindfully Through the Hours of the Day
Doing the Right Thing because It Is the Right Thing
In the gospel story of the sheep and the goats (Matt 25:31-46), Jesus praises those who feed the hungry, clothe the naked, care for the sick and visit those in prison, and chastises those who do not. But actually, neither group knew they were tending to God by their actions, or inactions. They did it because it was the right thing to do.
We are not the theologian or scholar that Aquinas was, but we bring something just as precious and just as needed to the world. We bring our wisdom wrought by experience. “Reflect on what you know for sure, child of God that you are,” says Br. Curtis Almquist of the Society of St. John the Evangelist. “That is your life’s wisdom that is greater than gold.”
There is nothing I can do to kill the God in me, said theologian Howard Thurman. “God is in me, and the ladder from the earth to sky is available,” he said. We don’t need a mediator, or an institution, or a ritual. We learn this when we love people.
Out of ideas for kind things you can do for your friends and neighbors? Here is a long list. Example: when you are headed to the grocery, check in with nearby neighbors to see if they need anything, especially neighbors who can’t get out.
Walking meditation is a powerful way to feel grounded and centered. Walking mindfully is about noticing your surroundings, forgetting about the stresses in your life, and not trying to accomplish anything.
Enliven Your Spirit Begins Feb. 24 From Grateful Living. A five-day self-paced course that comes in a series of emails provides guidance, inspiration, and practices. For information and to register
What Do I Do with My Anger? Online webinar March 14 10 to 11:30 PT Richard Rohr and Brian McLaren host a 90-minute webinar on the anger that continues to grow in our country and, hence, in our own lives. How does our anger fit into the contemplative Christian tradition? For information and to register.
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.
A collection of inspiration and resources for your spiritual journey, gathered from websites, blogs, and pass-alongs that have been shared with us. From The Wisdom Years.
At the heart of any effective practice, whether it is explicitly spiritual, inherently creative, or rigorously physical, is a structure that clears and holds open a space and time for slowing down and letting go.
With this edition, Gathered Wisdom expands its content and moves to monthly distribution. We hope something in this edition will spark an idea, bring you comfort, open a revelation, make you laugh, make you cry, or strengthen your resolve to be the best person you can be today, leaning on the grace of God.
Reflections
King Herod and the Wise Men
The Epiphany story we have been told since our earliest years is about three majestic “wise men,” three strangers from the East who bring gold and incense and myrrh to honor the child Jesus. What then happens to them we do not know, and that is the point. “The idea is that they now disappear because they can now disappear. They have placed their gifts at the feet of the young king and can now leave everything safely in his hands,” says Fr. Ron Rolheiser. Herod, on the other hand, wants to kill him.
Jesus calls us to be the salt of the world – “to give the world taste, meaning, purpose, direction, desire,” says Richard Rohr. As Christians, we are asked to become “a true alternative to the normal motivations and actions of society,” not in some grand and braggadocios manner, not even always in charge, but to offer that which the world doesn’t already have and sorely needs.
How can we say the world is a safe place and we are all in God’s hands when we see the atrocities that come upon so much of the world? “How can we prayerfully engage without completely losing our sense of sanity or peace?” asks Tiffany Clark in her essay on praying faithfully but realistically. Clark includes six practices for how to “remain fruitfully and sustainably engaged.”
From Grateful Living: In 2025, Grateful Living offers three new 5-Day Pathways, a brand new live online course, and an annual year-end online retreat. A new program, The Practitioner Circle, combines all the offerings for one price. Explore the 2025 Program Guidefor details on each program.
From Elders Action Network – The Power of Purpose The path of purposeful aging is accessible to all – and is fundamental to health, happiness, and longevity. With a focus on growing whole in later life, Richard Leider helps participants discover their purpose and create a legacy.
Online, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 10:00–11:30 am PT / 1:00–2:30 pm ET Register HERE
From the Library we recommend
Midwinter Light: Meditations for the Long Season, Marilyn McEntyre, Broadleaf Books. Winter is quieter than other seasons, sometimes lonelier, and it opens us to pay attention. We surrender to natural forces and rhythms; our lives may be changed utterly as we grow deeper, more patient, more attentive to what’s outside our doors, in the night sky, or hibernating deep within ourselves.
“The three were hermits on an island in the Black Sea, very pious and humble and loving to all men but terribly ignorant. A bishop goes in a steamer to see them and teach them a few prayers, but finds them too old and stupid to learn. At last, he gets—or thinks he has got—one very short and simple prayer into their heads, and leaves the island, feeling rather contemptuous.
Then, when night falls, he sees a bright light advancing swiftly over the sea behind the steamer. The old men have come, walking on the waves, begging him to be patient with their great stupidity and to teach them the prayer again.”—Tolstoy.
A weekly curated collection of essays, poetry, and reflections for your spiritual journey. From The Wisdom Years.
The Wisdom Years wishes you a blessed Christmas as we welcome the Holy One who comes to live among us.
Gathered Wisdom is taking a Christmas break. We will be back in January.
The Mystery of Bethlehem
With the birth of Jesus, new light comes into the world. Our ancestors in the faith knew that we needed this light particularly in winter time “when things seem most dark,” says Br. James Koester.
“Live as if you were going to die tomorrow,” say some. But can we really do that? It’s hard to be present to every moment, says Fr. Ron Rolheiser. Having rituals helps. Starting each day with prayer is essential.
For most of us, God will have the same characteristics as our mothers and fathers. If our father was stern, God will be stern. “Jesus inserted into the human imagination a radical new vision of God—non-dominating, nonviolent, supreme in service, and self-giving,” says Brian McLaren.
This practice guides you to take a good look at the things in your life that make you the most happy. At this resource, find more ways to bring gratitude into daily life.
The little boys wanted to talk to the ducklings, so of course they got into the pond. “Every day, we are bombarded with the same insistent injunction—the implication that life begins some place other than where we are, right now,” says Terry Hershey. “And we too easily miss the ‘duckling moments.’”
A weekly curated collection of essays, poetry, and reflections for your spiritual journey. From The Wisdom Years.
I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars.
-Og Mandino, quoted in A Better Way to Live by Craig Lock
Joseph and the Christmas Story
Like Joseph, stepfather of Jesus, sometimes we need to be willing to live righteously and follow the rules but be open to mystery. “What does one do when God breaks into one’s life in new, previously unimaginable ways?” asks Fr. Ron Rolheiser.
When have you put yourself in danger to save another person’s life? When has someone done that for you? In World War II a Polish man purposely contracted a disease so he could share his medicine with a Jewish woman in a concentration camp.
Explaining God is impossible and unnecessary. “If God is always Mystery, then God is always in some way the unfamiliar, beyond what we’re used to, beyond our comfort zone, beyond what we can explain or understand,” says Richard Rohr.
A kindness from a total stranger reminded Joyce Rupp of how often one kindness brings forth others. Like watermelons whose seeds produce more watermelons.
We all have times when we think changing one thing would change everything. If only my boss would give me a chance, we say. If only the children would behave. If only we had more money. If only Messiah would come, thought the Hebrews of Palestine. And he did. And it was they who needed to change.
A weekly curated collection of essays, poetry, and reflections for your spiritual journey. From The Wisdom Years.
Whatever we are waiting for – peace of mind, contentment, grace, the inner awareness of simple abundance – it will surely come to us, but only when we are ready to receive it with an open and grateful heart.
“Christ did not just come as a moral tune-up, self-improvement guru, or spiritual teacher,” writes Deacon Joanna Seibert, quoting from an Advent yearly favorite Watch for the Light. Jesus brings the presence of God within us, which can break through and be born in our hearts today. Watch for the Light is a collection of short essays from some of the best spiritual wisdom over the centuries.
We focus on repentance during Advent, but Br. Jim Woodrum calls us also, maybe even more, to the redemption that Christ’s coming offers us. This Advent, “let us heed the call of the prophets,” says Br. Woodrum, “turning towards the suffering of this world, resolving to accept the call to communicate the light, life, and love of our Creator.”
We have something to offer as we age – our stories. “Our years give us perspective and experience, and we have an essential role to offer as storycatchers and storytellers committed to peace- making, reconciliation, and community repair,” says Christina Baldwin.
“If to be alive today is to breathe the air of an anxious world, to be a Christian today is to subvert that anxiety with hope,” says Michaela O’Donnell. That is our job this Advent – to bring hope into a hopeless world.
Life is messy. But our God promises to stand with us in the midst of it. That is the message of Advent, says writer and podcaster Kate Bowler. This Advent, the Wisdom Years community will connect with the Advent message using Kate’s offering The Weary World Rejoices. We will read daily devotionals on our own, then come together on Thursdays, Dec. 5, 12 and 19 for an hour of online conversation.
A weekly curated collection of essays, poetry, and reflections for your spiritual journey. From The Wisdom Years.
The root of joy is gratefulness…It is not joy that makes us grateful; It is gratitude that makes us joyful. -Brother David Steidl-Rast, Gratefulness, The Heart of Prayer
The Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address
The Thanksgiving Address (the Ohen:ton Karihwatehkwen) is the central prayer and invocation for the Haudenosaunee (also known as the Iroquois Confederacy or Six Nations.) The Address is recited in thanksgiving for the diversity that, like all wonders of Nature, is truly a gift.
In this week of Thanksgiving when many of us will enjoy plentiful food at family tables, we recall that Jesus used banquets to speak of God’s generosity. “God is clearly into abundance and excess,” says Richard Rohr, “and God’s genuine followers share in that largesse: first in receiving it and resting in it, then in allowing it to flow through them toward the world.
It is true that as we age we lose some abilities. It takes us a little longer to accomplish some tasks, we have to think a little harder to come to a decision, we can’t do the heavy lifting any more. What we must do now is determine how to use the gifts and abilities we do have.
What do an 82-year-old and a teenager have in common? They are both big basketball fans. That is just one of the things that cements an unlikely friendship fostered by an organization that pairs elders and teens for the benefit of both.
Advent begins this Sunday, December 1. In this season of expecting God to fulfill God’s promise of joy and peace, we wait in hope. We are reminded that hope, as Ron Rolheiser says to us, is a vision of life that guides itself by God’s promise, irrespective of whether the situation looks optimistic or pessimistic at any given time.
A weekly curated collection of essays, poetry, and reflections for your spiritual journey. From The Wisdom Years.
When people enter into difficult conversations with honest love – able to deeply disagree and be disagreed with, without questioning the human dignity of the other – they have chosen to what they belong: love, reconciliation, and God.
Life is messy. But our God promises to stand with us in the midst of it. That is the message of Advent, says writer and podcaster Kate Bowler. This Advent, the Wisdom Years community will connect with the Advent message using Kate’s offering The Weary World Rejoices. We will read daily devotionals on our own, then come together on Thursdays, Dec. 5, 12 and 19 for an hour of online conversation.
“For a path to be a path, you have to be able to see it, more or less, or at least catch glimpses of it, every so often,” says Br. James Koester. “And for that to happen, somebody needs to have walked it ahead of you.” Are you leaving a path for those coming behind you?
We belong to each other; we are created in part by our relationships with each other. The African word for it is ubuntu. “A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished.”
It was at the building of the tower of Babel when suddenly people began to speak in many different languages such that they could no longer understand each other. We no longer speak the same language in this country, says Fr. Ron Rolheiser. “We can no longer understand each other on virtually every key issue. We no longer share any common truths. Rather, we all have our own truth, our own individual language.” (Painting by Pieter Brueghel the Elder created in 1563. Public domain.)
A weekly curated collection of essays, poetry, and reflections for your spiritual journey. From The Wisdom Years.
At the deepest levels of our hearts we are all aching, for each other and for the same eternally Loving One who calls us. It would be well, I think, if we could acknowledge this more often to one another. -Gerald May, Will and Spirit Found in Well for the Journey
Advent Rejoicing
Life is messy. But our God promises to stand with us in the midst of it. That is the message of Advent, says writer and podcaster Kate Bowler. This Advent, the Wisdom Years community will connect with the Advent message using Kate’s offering The Weary World Rejoices. We will read daily devotionals on our own, then come together on Thursdays, Dec. 5, 12 and 19 for an hour of online conversation.
St. Paul thought that the second coming of Christ would happen in Paul’s lifetime. Clearly it did not. How are we to live, then, in this secular world until we come to eternal life?
We are living in love if we can maintain a daily yes, says Richard Rohr. “That doesn’t mean we don’t recognize injustice and stand against it, but we don’t let our hearts become hardened and our minds become rigid in its judgments.”
“Choosing kindness isn’t about avoiding our differences but navigating them with respect and compassion,” says a campaign that seeks to navigate faith and politics in a congregation with divided political views.
A weekly curated collection of essays, poetry, and reflections for your spiritual journey. From The Wisdom Years.
In chaos, I choose love. In conflict, I choose love. Even to the end, I will choose love. I will not save the world, but I will help the world; I will be a force for good.
Life is messy. But our God promises to stand with us in the midst of it. That is the message of Advent, says writer and podcaster Kate Bowler. This Advent, the Wisdom Years community will connect with the Advent message using Kate’s offering The Weary World Rejoices. We will read daily devotionals on our own, then come together on Thursdays, Dec. 5, 12 and 19 for an hour of online conversation.
We need a little good news. Like hearing that however bad the storms of life become, Christ is there to calm the waters and bring peace. “Peace” and “be still” can be our watchwords also, says Bishop Barbara Harris.
What is the difference between being smart and being wise? “Wisdom is intelligence that’s colored by understanding,” says Fr. Ron Rolheiser. “When intelligence is not informed by empathy, what it produces will generally not contribute to the common good.”
How do we stay hopeful in the face of despair and disillusionment—especially when politics threaten to tear us in two? In this podcast, Kate Bowler speaks with Parker Palmer, a writer, teacher, and activist. Palmer brings wisdom from the years of living in this world without letting the bad in it overcome the good.
Getting older is about learning how to let go, says Bishop Steven Charleston – even letting go of names and memories we can no longer recall. He places memories with the Holy Spirit, to be recalled on the other side.
The Wisdom Years 