Life changing spaces

This past two weeks I have been taking you on a journey of listening to life. It’s been about finding the spaces, the stillness and the silence, the spirit within us longs for and taking a journey deep within to find and reconnect with true self.

My desire is not to take you on a touchy feely, feel good journey of narcissistic self satisfaction, in fact my own practices of this are anything but. It is a journey towards the heart of the soul where we discover what we have neglected or hidden away hoping to ignore. In many cases it is the voice/call of God, and/or the yearning of our vocation, that being which is truly who we are.

The challenge is to emerge with a sense of truly engaging that which we have encountered and allowing it to change us and form us into the true sense of who God has called us to be. It is never an easy journey but it is the most rewarding. It is the journey we must take to truly have an impact on the world around us as a disciple of Jesus called to serve and to be in community with the other and one another. Beginning with this regular practise in life is the best thing we have to offer of ourselves in our mission and ministry as people of Christ.

I could not resist sharing this reflection below with you:

‘One must do it (pray) for God’s sake; but one will not get any satisfaction out of it, in the sense of feeling “I am good at prayer. I have an infallible method.” That would be disastrous, since what we want to learn is precisely our own weakness, powerlessness, unworthiness. Nor ought one to expect a sense of the reality of the supernatural of which I speak. And one should wish for no prayer except precisely the prayer that God gives us – probably very distracted and unsatisfactory in every way.
On the other hand the only way to pray is to pray.
And the only way to pray well is to pray much.
If one has no time for this, then one must at least pray regularly. But the less one prays, the worse it goes. And if circumstances do not permit even regularity, then one must put up with the fact that when one does try to pray, one can’t pray – and our prayer will probably consist of telling this to God.
As to beginning afresh, or where you left off, I don’t think you have any choice. You simply have to begin wherever you find yourself. Make any acts you want to make and feel ought to make, but do not force yourself into feelings of any kind.
You say very naturally that you do not know what to do if you have a quarter of an hour alone. Yet I suspect the only thing to do is to shut out everything and just give yourself to God and beg for God’s mercy and offer God all your distractions.’
From The Spiritual Letters of Dom John Chapman OSB

Shalom
Mark