Gathered Wisdom, Oct 8, 2024

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

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When the eyes and ears are open, even the leaves on the trees teach like pages from the Scriptures.

-Kabir, as quoted in Legacy of the Heart by Wayne Muller
From Well for th
e Journey

It’s autumn – a time for slowing down and pondering.  The days are shorter – what is one activity that you want to stop doing? Courtney Martin offers 10 provocative questions for the season. 

Engage with the questions.

From The Examined Family.

They met the small little man in a migrant shelter where he had stopped for a warm bowl of soup before crossing the border into the United States.  He would have to cross the desert, and his feet were filthy and sore inside his thin sneakers.

Read the story.

From Center for Action and Contemplation.

The recommendation said that the man could sleep in a storm. His employer found out what that meant when the bad weather hit. In the midst of a storm, “we survive by affirming who we are,” says Terry Hershey.

Read the reflection.

From Terry Hershey’s Sabbath Moment.

Joanna Seibert introduces us to Parker Palmer’s wisdom on growing older in his book On the Brink of Everything. “Palmer takes us to the brink of an alternative life,”.  Says Seibert “It is a slower life where we observe and become aware of so much we missed in this world while living at a frantic pace.”

Read the reflection.

From Joanna Seibert.

Faith is not something you achieve, says Fr. Ron Rolheiser. “Faith is a journey, with constant ups and downs, with alternating periods of fervor and dryness, with consolation giving way to desolation, and with graced moments where God feels tangibly present eclipsed by dark nights where God feels absent.”

Read the reflection.

From 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, Sept 24, 2024

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

May I be open to the teachings of this season of autumn, and turn, as autumn does, toward opportunities for my spiritual transformation.

Joyce Rupp, Out of the Ordinary
Found in Well for the Journey

We don’t like the hard sayings of Jesus. We want to hear words of comfort and forgiveness and acceptance. But sometimes we need to heed Jesus’ condemnation and call to repentance.

Read the reflection.

From Society of St. John the Evangelist.

Why are we so hard on ourselves? We expect ourselves to be perfect, but being “perfectly human” means we will make mistakes, and when we do, we can admit them and learn from them. 

Read the reflection.

From Awakin.

We may be able to articulate what we believe as Christians, but do we put it into action? “We are called to study God and the Spirit,” says Deacon Joanna Seibert, “but we are also compelled to find the God within ourselves, leading us to discover and connect to the God in others.”

Read the reflection.

From the blog of Joanna Seibert.

The seasons of spring and summer, with their long days, are all about play and pleasure, notes Julie Peters writing in Spirituality and Health. During fall and winter, we have more hours of darkness than of light, more time for rest, solitude, and reflection.

Read the article.

From Spirituality and Health.

Even while we watch our society fall apart, a single episode with nature can bolster hope.  For this poet it was the starlings. This short video sets Maria Popova’s poem “But We Had Music” to captivating visuals. 

Watch and listen.

From 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.

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.