20 Minutes Twice a Day Listening to sacred stillness each day I follow guidelines for a contemplative practice of centering prayer. Centering prayer is a way of praying and listening beyond thoughts, words, and feelings. We practice giving our consent to the presence and action of spiritual life within us. One of the standard suggestions about centering prayer is to practice for 20 minutes twice a day. We pause in the morning and in the afternoon or evening for 20... Read more
When the Ground Shifts Under Us I live in a place where we experience earthquakes, particularly in the last couple of days. It can be disconcerting when the ground shifts under our feet. My wife was born and raised here and I was not. She is more familiar with the qualities of various kinds of earthquakes and remembers some famous ones. The last eighteen or nineteen years, while I have lived here, have been relatively quiet ones seismically. It can... Read more
Celebrating Our Independence Today is the anniversary of the day 234 years ago when the nation where I was born got started. This nation began with a revolution. There was a war, but the revolution came first and it is what we celebrate. Our nation began because of a revolution in how we see ourselves. Many of us will spend our day today grilling and eating, then blowing things up in the evening. Across the country most of us will celebrate our... Read more
Resting in Warm Summer Stillness How is summer going for us so far? Are we settling into warm summer stillness? Kids are out of school and we can spend more time together. Summer may feel a little calmer or more deliberate than the rest of the year. We have more time for picnics, corn on the cob, and fireworks. For some of us, summer feels just as frenetic as every other part of the year. Work does not slow down and there seem... Read more
Opening Windows and Doors I know people who expect other people to open windows and doors for them. There always seems to be someone else there to get them where they need to go. They are confident someone will be there with an umbrella when it is raining. It is as if they trust someone else has made arrangements for them. Apparently they believe they have people to take care of them. The people who inspire me help open windows... Read more
The Stillness of Empty Screens One of the contemplative practices with which I have struggled the most is the practice of writing. It was years before I could say the sentence, “I am a writer.” out loud. The part of writing I enjoyed the most was finishing something, not needing to write any more. I saw myself as more of a reader than a writer, giving voice to other people’s words. Now I am becoming a writer. I practice sitting... Read more
What is Our Path Toward God? Many of us see ourselves on a spiritual journey, a path toward God. It is easy for us to believe we start far from God and are following a path which takes us closer. We are told God loves us but it is a challenge for us to experience that love. Some of us have learned we need to follow certain rules or hold certain ideas to become close to God. We might believe... Read more
What Does a Spiritual Director Do? It is not unusual, when some asks me what I do, for their next question to be What is a spiritual director? or What does a spiritual director do? Not many kids decide they want to be a spiritual director when they grow up. Most of us have never heard of someone being a spiritual director and we do not know what it means. When I explain spiritual direction to people it tends to... Read more
Taking Delight in Our Stillness Many of us find stillness a challenge in our peripatetic, distracting, demanding culture. We grow accustomed to living in a world where change is happening 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Some of us seem to believe the speed at which we live is normal. Some of us feel we do not have time to listen to sacred stillness. The idea of spending time in stillness may intimidate us make us nervous. We... Read more
How Do We Live in Times Like These? Some of us have had enough. Every morning we wake up to something more frightening and harder to believe than yesterday. How do we find spiritual life in times like these? We believe spiritual life is about finding wholeness and restoration. Spiritual life, we have been told, transforms our sin and brokenness into new life. We read our story to be one of progress and growth, one step after another. Some of... Read more
Strategic Monk
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