Subscribe to continue reading
Subscribe to get access to the rest of this post and other subscriber-only content.
Tag: spiritual practices
Gathered Wisdom, May 23, 2023
A weekly curated collection of essays, poetry, and reflections for your spiritual journey. From The Wisdom Years.
During Ascensiontide, we behold the glory and grandeur of God – not by gazing at feet dangling out of clouds, but by pondering the very heart of mystery. We too are clothed in glory, even now.
Br. James Koester, SSJE
SAVE THE DATE
For “CLAIMING MY NOW”
A workshop for older adults.
From The Wisdom Years
July 15, 9 am To 12:30 pm
$20
A morning for digging into the joys and challenges of the later years.
In-person at the Bishop Jones Center in San Antonio
And hybrid by Zoom
To indicate interest, email to marjoriegeorge62@gmail.com.
Registration opens in early June.
The Divine Dimension of Life
James Finley, Center for Action and Contemplation teacher and psychotherapist, provides a helpful image about how our lives and struggles intersect with the ever-present love of God. The image help us remember we are not alone. Finley uses the technique with his patients, but we need not be clinically depressed to appreciate the image.
Graphic from Center for Action and Contemplation.
I Will Not Leave You Orphaned
The night before he was crucified, Jesus gave a comforting message to his friends. “I will not leave you orphaned,” he said to the gathered disciples. He was telling them that Holy Spirit would walk with them. This Sunday, May 28, we celebrate Pentecost – the day of the coming of the Holy Spirit – not just to the first disciples but to all of us.
Cataclysms of the Heart
When our world falls apart, when we enter that “dark night of the soul,” we must remember that God does not desert us. Why does this “dark night” happen? It is like a honeymoon, says Fr. Ron Rolheiser. Honeymoons are wonderful, but, on a honeymoon, generally we are more in love with being in love and all the wonderful energy this creates than we are in love with the person behind all those feelings.
From the blog of Ron Rolheiser.
Earth Turns to Gold
In this short film from Green Renaissance, Shalav Israel says that “When we begin to share our stories, our experiences, then we are slowly peeling away on these ideas that separate us and create more pain and suffering. More and more, people are beginning to realize that it is not my skin color that defines me, it’s the concern that I have for the next person.”
Posted on the Grateful Living Network.
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, May 16, 2023
A weekly curated collection of essays, poetry, and reflections for your spiritual journey. From The Wisdom Years.
In prayer today, we might ask God to reveal to us the opportunities that are before us at this moment. Perhaps there is a window of opportunity in which we can express our love and gratitude to someone. Perhaps the soil is just right for planting some new seeds. Do not delay. Do not lose this opportunity. Take full advantage of this moment in your life’s history.
Br. David Vryhof, SSJE
A Lesson in Aging
Aging is a gift, even if unwanted, says Fr. Ron Rolheiser. Aging, he says, “forces us, mostly against our will, to listen to our soul more deeply and more honestly so as to draw from its deeper wells and begin to make peace with its complexity, its shadow, and its deepest proclivities.”
rom the blog of Ron Rolheiser.
An Open Empty Space
Richard Foster, author of Celebration of Discipline, insists that regularly-scheduled private retreats are essential for spiritual growth. In this, we follow our leader, Jesus, who often went away to a lonely place for prayer and refreshment.
From Renovare.
Making It Real
We are limited, fallible, frail creatures, says Br. Lain Wilson of the Society of St. John the Evangelist. So when Jesus says to us, “Do not let your hearts be troubled” (Jn 14:1). Do we believe him? God is always speaking to us—in word and image, relationship and experience, memory and imagination. God is always speaking to us, and it’s up to us to learn how to listen.
From SSJE.
See The Universe In A Sunflower
Just because we can’t see something right now doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It’s just a matter of time and latent conditions says Thich Nhat Hanh.
From Awakin.
Trusting God
Even when we feel out of control, the psalmist teaches us to recall God’s past faithfulness and look toward to the future with trust.
Find the materials for week 5 of The Wisdom Years psalms study, “God’s People Speak to God.”
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, May 9, 2023
A weekly curated collection of essays, poetry, and reflections for your spiritual journey. From The Wisdom Years.
There is a journey you must take. It is a journey without a destination. There is no map. Your soul will lead you.
-Meister Eckhart, Meister Eckhart’s Book of the Heart by Jon Sweeny and Mark Burrows
From Well for the Journey
Peace I leave with You
Holy Week and the events of Easter gave us a definite timeline and focus for our spiritual journey. But now the timeline seems a little harder to track. What keeps us coming back?
Fly Loose
If the airplane pilot grips the yoke too tightly during turbulence, it actually makes the plane less steady. When the going gets tough, we need to remember to fly loose.
Thirsty for Wonder
If you live as a contemplative person, you are likely to see God in unexpected moments. “The more you intentionally turn inward, the more available the sacred becomes,” says Mirabai Starr.”
From Daily Good.
End Of the World
If the world as we know it is ending, it is up to us now to give it a good send off – “To let it hand on its gifts and teach the lessons that may only become apparent as the end approaches,” says Douglad Hine.
From Awakin.
A Love So Wide and Deep
As we engage the psalms this week, we learn a new word: hesed. The word tries to capture what is unexplainable – God’s love. In week 4 of “God’s People Speak to God,” we look at the psalms of penitence and apply hesed.
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, May 2, 2023
A weekly curated collection of essays, poetry, and reflections for your spiritual journey. From The Wisdom Years.
Some beautiful paths can’t be discovered without getting lost.
-Erol Ozan, Talus
Found at Well for the Journey
In the Shelter of Each Other
What do Mr. Rogers and Willie Nelson have in common? They are what Terry Hershey calls church.
Embracing Change
Esther de Waal finds that the Christian journey – like the journey of the Hebrews across the desert – is full of uncertainties. Christ, she says, “challenges people to leave their nets, or to leave a nice safe booth, and follow him.”
Loss Gave Life to My Empathy
He was expecting a day full of fun with his family, then unexpected death abruptly overcame their plans. He now knows that episode shaped his life and his career.
From Grateful Living.
The Journey of Healing and Faith
“We may feel tempted to hide beneath our scars thinking they are still wounds,” says Br. Jack Crowley from the Society of St. John the Evangelist. Or we can look at the scars as reminders that we have been healed. “We can smile with the wrinkles around our eyes.”
The History of the Journey
The Israelites remembered their salvation journey in the history psalms. These they told to their children as they recalled and celebrated how God formed them as a people. We too can tell the stories of our journey.
Find the material for week 3, the storytelling psalms, of our “God’s People Speak to God” study here.
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 April 25
A weekly curated collection of essays, poetry, and reflections for your spiritual journey. From The Wisdom Years.
Be outrageous in forgiving. Be dramatic in reconciling. Mistakes? Back up and make them as right as you can, then move on.
New Mercies, Measured Out with Coffee Spoons
(with apologies to T.S. Eliot)
The writer of Lamentations was hopeful because “he remembers the unchanging love of God. But he also hopes because he knows that God’s mercies are new every morning. This is the twofold nature of hope: it is rooted in God’s character and work, and it renews with the sunrise.”
Read the reflection from Molly Harnish.
From Kolbe Times.
Lessons For The Great Fifty Days Of Easter
Drawing from Bishop Steven Charleston’s Easter reflection, Joanna Seibert reminds us of the hope Easter brings and urges us to apply ourselves to the healing of society.
From Joanna Seibert.
Our Utterly Unique Experience of God
The apostle Thomas gets a bad rap for being a doubter. But Brother Curtis Almquist sees it as Thomas needing to experience it for himself. We all have our own experiences of God, says Br. Almquist. “There is also a chamber in God, into which none other may enter excerpt you, the peculiarly unique person you are,” he says.
Instructions For Living An Easter Life
The Rev. Mike Marsh gleans three instructions for living Easter from the Gospel of Luke. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.
Read more at Interrupting the Silence.
God’s People Speak to God
What hill are you climbing just now? The ancient Hebrews traveled uphill to the sacred city of Jerusalem in their quest for God. But they sang as they went. We hear their voices in the “psalms of ascent.”
Join us for our six-week study of the psalms. We gather by Zoom on Thursdays at 4 p.m. (Central time). Or use the study materials on your own.
Find it at
https://wisdomyears.org/gods-people-speak-to-god-introduction/
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, April 18, 2023
A weekly curated collection of essays, poetry, and reflections for your spiritual journey. From The Wisdom Years.
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other”
doesn’t make any sense.
Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi – 13th century Persian poet
The Invitation of Grace
We each have a song, says writer Terry Hershey. “It is the song that reminds us we are beautiful, when we feel ugly. It is the song that tells us we are whole, when we feel broken.”
Resurrection Words
The Jesus story wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. He was supposed to conquer all the enemies of the Jews. Instead he died a horrible, cruel death. But then something strange happened – the resurrection!
Mighty in Contradiction: Love Powerfully
The opposite of love is not hate, says Patty De Llosa. It is power. Power seeks dominion, she says. love is about caring, taking in the message, finding what’s needed, seeing what wishes to appear and helping it to flower. Unfortunately, both of them operate in us.
From Awakin.
Watchful for Resurrections
Death is inevitable, but so is resurrection. We remember that as our world emerges from winter into new life. Our own little resurrections come every time we choose to die to fear and egocentricity.
God’s People Speak to God – a study of the psalms
The psalms of creation reveal God’s majesty and power and remind us that our God is a God of abundance, not scarcity. And yet, God has made man a little lower than the angels (Psalm 8).
Our study of the psalms starts this week. Engage it on your own, with your small group, or join us on Zoom on Thursdays from 4 to 5:15 pm (Central time). If you are interested in joining the Zoom group, send an email to Marjorie George at marjoriegeorge62@gmail.com.
The six-week study will be posted on the Wisdom Years website at
https://wisdomyears.org/gods-people-speak-to-god-introduction/
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.
God’s People Speak to God
A new study from The Wisdom Years
A six-week study of the psalms
April 20 to May 25, 2023
With online conversation Thursdays, 4 to 5:15 p.m. (Central time)
We gaze adoringly at the new baby and immediately place him or her into the family legacy.
“He has your eyes,” we say to the dad.
“I see Aunt Ruth in her smile.”
“He is going to be just like his grandfather.”
This new life is shaped in great part by those in the lineage who came before.
So it is with our ancient ancestors in the faith – the journey of the Old Testament Israelites becoming a people of God is our journey too. The joy and sorrow and tribulation we encounter along the way is the very same our ancestors knew.
For the Israelites, one expression of their relationship with God spilled out in the psalms they prayed and sang. In the psalms, the people praised God and argued with God and thanked God and got angry with God. All emotions we know today.
In this six-week study, we will be invited to make the psalms our own prayers and songs as we apply them to our lives. We will
- look at the variety of psalms our ancestors relied on as they lived out their relationship with God
- through reading the psalms and group discussion, identify our own desire to connect with God through the psalms
- experience a community that provides a safe space, honesty, and acceptance
Each week we will post on our website a brief teaching, questions for reflection, and suggestions for bringing the psalms into our daily lives.
On Thursday afternoons, Apr 20 through May 25 (Apr 20 and 27, May 4, 11, 18, and 25) we will gather by Zoom from 4 to 5:15 p.m. (Central time) for full-group and small-group conversation.
To register for this study, or if you want to know more, please email Marjorie George at Marjoriegeorge62@gmail.com.
You are also welcome to use the material on your own or in congregational small group settings.
_____________________________________
This study is an offering from The Wisdom Years, a ministry of spiritual formation for those in the last third of their lives. Find us at www.wisdomyears.org.
Gathered Wisdom, April 4, 2023
A weekly curated collection of essays, poetry, and reflections for your spiritual journey. From The Wisdom Years.
This issue of Gathered Wisdom is devoted to Holy Week – for Christians the holiest week of the year culminating in the glorious Day of Resurrection, Easter.
GW will take an Easter break next week and return on April 18.
Spring teaches me to look more carefully for the green stems of possibility: for the intuitive hunch that may turn into a larger insight, for the glance or touch that may thaw a frozen relationship, for the stranger’s act of kindness that makes the world seem hospitable again.
-Parker Palmer, There is a Season
Found in Well for the Journey
Holy Week: The Big Event
“Unless we walk through the darkness of Holy Week and Good Friday, unless we recognize the horror of sin and its consequence of Jesus dying on the cross, unless we experience the despair the disciples felt on Holy Saturday, we can’t fully understand the light and hope of Sunday morning.” – Kathleen Stephens
From The Upper Room.
The Sign of Jonah
Richard Rohr recalls Jesus saying the only sign he would give is the “sign of Jonah” (Matt 16:4) What does that mean for Holy Week?
From the Center for Action and Contemplation.
Lent for Everyone
N. T. Wright wonders in this video if Jesus experienced doubt about who he was when the crowd taunted , “If you are the son of God . . . ”
Prayers, Poems, and Meditations
The days of Holy Week are “pregnant with the immanence of God,” says The Rev. Dr. Paul Hooker of Austin Presbyterian Seminary. In this online booklet, prayers, poems, and meditations draw us in to connect with God’s closeness in Holy Week.
Easter Light
The earth was dark twice, says Fr. Ron Rolheiser. Once at the original creation and again on Good Friday afternoon. In the second, “God created the most staggering light of all – the resurrection.”
From the blog of 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.
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 and The Wisdom Years ministry wish you a blessed Holy Week and joyous Easter.
Gathered Wisdom, Mar 28, 2023
A weekly curated collection of essays, poetry, and reflections for your spiritual journey. From The Wisdom Years.
What if becoming who and what we truly are happens not through striving and trying but by recognizing and receiving the people and places and practices that offer us the warmth of encouragement when we need to unfold.
-Oriah Mountain Dreamer, The Dance
From Well for the Journey
Community
Being in community has much to teach us, says Joanna Seibert. In community we learn, among other things, how our gifts are needed in the world – and that we don’t have all the gifts, and that’s OK.
From Joanna Seibert.
We Learn by Doing It Wrong
We tend to think that we learn by getting good at something. But Richard Rohr teaches that we learn best by our mistakes. “The only way we stay on the path with any authenticity is to constantly experience our incapacity to do it, our failure at doing it,” says Rohr.
There are angels
To access our lightness, sometimes we have to see through the darkness. But always there are angels along the way. Enjoy this short video from Karma Tube, an all-volunteer organization dedicated to contributing to the world in a meaningful way.
More about Karma Tube.
Ask, Search, Knock
“Ask and it will be given to you,” said Jesus. (Matt 7:7). But what if it’s not? What if I search and find nothing? Asking and searching takes an initiative and a willingness to expose our hearts, says Br Keith Nelson of the Society of John the Evangelist. Do we trust God’s generosity enough to name our need?
From SSJE
Faith through Mysticism
Being born into a Christian family and worshipping within a Christian church can give us a relationship to a religion, to an ideology, to a truth, and to a community of worship, says Fr. Ron Rolheiser. But that is not the same as an actual faith in God .
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.
The Wisdom Years 