Archive for October, 2007

Let Us Pray

October 22, 2007

Yesterday we talked about what it means to be a temple of the Holy Spirit. A temple is where worship happens, where sacrifice happens, and where the presence of God is mediated to the world. St. Teresa wrote a prayer that expresses that third aspect. May it describe how we live our lives this week:
CHRIST HAS NO [...]

The Wild-erness

October 17, 2007

Daniel de Roulet, in his book, Finding Your Plot in a Plotless World, talks about his family’s moving from surburban New Jersey to a small desert town in California after his father’s death. A sign near the highway exit read, “Welcome to Ridgecrest, Gateway to Death Valley.” Every year bored high school seniors would remove [...]

Post-Worship Musings

October 15, 2007

Yesterday I took a walk at Plotterkill Nature Preserve. The wind was cool and bracing. Trees, clothed in their early autumn hues, close-danced with one another.  The sky was a cloud-mottled blue. The pine needles that blanketed the forest floor filled the air and my nostrils with their pungent scent. With my trifocals I gingerly navigated the [...]

More on Open-heartedness

October 5, 2007

One big enemy of open-heartedness is anxiety. An undercurrent of worry will carry significant amounts of attention and energy away from the enterprise of real living. (Open-heartedness is real living.) For those of us who are doggedly conscientious, carrying on while feeling chronically overwhelmed can become a way of life — but it’s not usually an open-hearted way of life.

Open-heartedness

October 1, 2007

One day this past week while I was asking God to give me the wherewithal to do a hard, semi-heroic thing I thought might be a good thing me to do, it seemed that He interrupted me and said, “Today just work on being open-hearted.” Well, I was relieved. That sounded much easier.