Advent Pilgrimage

“The ancient practice of pilgrimage beckons us to find the places of connection between the terrain inside us and the topography around us, whether it’s the landscape of the natural world, or of a story, or of a season. Pilgrimage calls us to give ourselves to the terrain that we may find foreign or unsettling and to open ourselves to the sacred and surprising places that it holds. Altered by our engagement with these places, we are able to reenter the familiar territory of our lives and see it with different and deeper vision.”
 ~ Jan L. Richardson (Through the Advent Door: Entering a Contemplative Christmas, “Door 10: The Pilgrim’s Coat”)

Advent & Being Present

“Waiting for the Lord does not bring us out of history; it involves us with it since we are hoping for the God who has come and is in our midst. Such hope is ambitious but it is worthwhile. It will help us see what is inconsistent in our behavior, what is deceptive and underhanded in out personal lives but also what is hopeful in our efforts to defend life and justice.”
~ Gustavo Guitiérrez, Sharing the Word through the Liturgical Year  

“…Advent is a threshold season, a liminal place in the calendar, an in between time of preparation and expectation. Thresholds offer a heady mix of possibility and peril. They are wildly unpredictable, they stir up questions, they cause us to live with uncertainty, they compel us to develop the ability to attend to the present even as we discern the future. Ultimately, they are places of initiation, taking us deeper into God and into the person God has created us to be…To follow God does not mean traveling with certainty about where God will lead us. Rather, following God propels us to be present in the place where we are, for this is the very place where God shows up.”
~ Jan L. Richardson (Through the Advent Door: Entering a Contemplative Christmas, “Door Seven: A Way in the Wilderness”)

On Compassion...Gregory Boyle

My latest read is Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion by Gregory Boyle. I am loving it! It definitely will make my list of favorite books of 2013. I recommend you get yourself a copy and read it. If you want to learn a little more about Father Greg, you can check out some of his latest reflection films on At the Work of the People, HERE.

Here is just a taste of the book from the chapter on "Compassion"...

“Here is what we seek: a compassion that can stand in awe at what the poor have to carry rather than stand in judgment at how they carry it.” (67)

"The strategy of Jesus is not centered in taking the right stand on issues, but rather in standing in the right place – with the outcast and those relegated to the margins.” (72)

“The Beatitudes is not a spirituality, after all. It’s a geography. It tells us where to stand.” (75)

“Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a covenant between equals. Al Sharpton always says, ‘We’re all created equal, but we don’t al end up equal.’” (77)

“There is a brand-new, palpable sense of solidarity among equals, a beloved community. This is always the fruit of true compassion.” (80)

Pay Attention :: Frederick Buechner

"From the simplest lyric to the most complex novel and densest drama, literature is asking us to pay attention. Pay attention to the frog. Pay attention to the west wind. Pay attention to the boy on the raft, the lady in the tower, the old man on the train. In sum, pay attention to the world and all that dwells therein and thereby learn at last to pay attention to yourself and all that dwells therein. . .

"Literature, painting, music — the most basic lesson that all art teaches us is to stop, look, and listen to life on this planet, including our own lives, as a vastly richer, deeper, more mysterious business than most of the time it ever occurs to us to suspect as we bumble along from day to day on automatic pilot. In a world that for the most part steers clear of the whole idea of holiness, art is one of the few places left where we can speak to each other of holy things. . .

"And when Jesus comes along saying that the greatest command of all is to love God and to love our neighbor, he too is asking us to pay attention. If we are to love God, we must first stop, look, and listen for him in what is happening around us and inside us. If we are to love our neighbors, before doing anything else we must see our neighbors. With our imagination as well as our eyes, that is to say like artists, we must see not just their faces, but the life behind and within their faces. Here it is love that is the frame we see them in."

~ Frederick Buechner, Listening to Your Life: Daily Meditations 
(Art, February 20)
(Originally published in: Beyond Words: Daily Readings in The ABC's of Faith)

Fire

What makes a fire burn

is space between the logs,

a breathing space.

Too much of a good thing,

too many logs

packed in too tight

can douse the flames

almost as surely

as a pail of water would.

So building fires

requires attention

to the spaces in between,

as much as to the wood.

When we are able to build

open spaces

in the same way

we have learned

to pile on the logs,

then we can come to see how

it is fuel, and absence of the fuel

together, that make fire possible.

We only need to lay a log

lightly from time to time.

A fire

grows

simply because the space is there,

with openings

in which the flame

that knows just how it wants to burn

can find its way.

~Judy Sorum Brown
(Leader’s Guide to Reflective Practice by Judy Brown)

On Exploring and Change...

“Exploring” by Wendell Berry
Always in the (wilderness) when you leave familiar ground
and step off alone into a new place,
 there will be, along with the feelings of curiosity and excitement,
a little nagging of dread.
It is the ancient fear of the Unknown,
and it is your first bond with the wilderness you are going into.
What you are doing is exploring.
You are undertaking the first experience,
not of the place, but of yourself in that place.
It is an experience of our essential loneliness;
for nobody can discover the world for anybody else.
It is only after we have discovered it for ourselves
that it becomes a common ground and a common bond,
and we cease to be alone.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
THIS IS AN HOUR of change.
Within it we stand uncertain on the border of light.
Shall we draw back or cross over?
Where shall our hearts turn?
Shall we draw back, my brother, my sister,
or cross over?
This is the hour of change, and within it,
we stand quietly
on the border of light.
What lies before us?
Shall we draw back, my brother, my sister,
or cross over?

By Leah Goldberg, adapted; 
Mishkan T’Filah for Travelers: A Reform Siddur 
Central Conference of American Rabbis, 2009

good words for the new year...

"And now let us welcome the New Year full of things that have never been." 

~ Rainer Maria Rilke  

"… every moment is a new beginning, every handshake a promise. I know that every quest implicates the other, just as every word can become prayer. If life is not a celebration, why remember it? If life — mine or that of my fellow man — is not an offering to the other, what are we doing on this earth?"

~ Elie Wiesel from “Open Heart”

"A new beginning! We must learn to live each day, each hour, yes, each minute as a new beginning, as a unique opportunity to make everything new. Imagine that we could live each moment as a moment pregnant with new life. Imagine that we could live each day as a day full of promises. Imagine that we could walk through the new year always listening to a voice saying to us: “I have a gift for you and can’t wait for you to see it! Imagine!"

~ Henri Nouwen

"Teach me God not to wait for the sound of the arrow, but to listen for the creak of the bow. Tune my heart to your future for me."

~ Twitturgies by Gerard Kelly

The Advent Desert

"The desert is not a place of isolation, but one of encounter."

~ Andre Neher, 1988

As my calendar year of Patient Trust draws to a close, it is appropriate to also begin the new liturgical year with a posture of patient waiting during Advent. The below Advent reflection speaks to the posture and attitude (and work) of the Advent desert we may experience. Personally, I’d mush rather experience a warm and fuzzy Advent season. But, it is in the hard desert places where our hearts are open to prepare the way of the Lord to enter more fully into our lives in deeper ways. This is the patient trust I hope to be attentive and open to this Advent season.

“…From John the Baptist we learn the desert is a place for cleansing, for conversion, for fasting, for silence, for self-discovery, and ultimately for healing. It is a place to let go of our multiple earthly attachments, making room for the Lord by allowing God to enter fully into the innermost of our lives, yes, of our broken lives in utter need of his compassion and healing. 

The desert is also the place for pursuing the ‘patient waiting’ attitude that God demands from each of us. This patient waiting attitude is similar in many ways to that of ‘patient endurance’ counseled by the Apostle Paul. It demands true patience, and it also means hard work. This patient waiting attitude is inspired by deep faith and trust in God, and is the work of constant prayer under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. During this time of patiently waiting for the Lord’s arrival, he asks from each of us complete trust and openness to his particular designs for our lives, complete and total cooperation with that which he wishes to accomplish in us. When Christmas, the Lord’s day, arrives, we shall then discover the truth of God’s prophetic words: ‘The wilderness and the parched land (of our hearts) will exult; the Arabah (desert) will rejoice and bloom.’”

Taken from: Monastery Journey to Christmas
By Brother Victor-Antoine D’Avila-Latourrette

Advent: Dream Big and Imagine Wildly

“The hard work of Advent reflection and waiting is mingled with the gift of time and space to dream new dreams, to bathe in pools of hope, and to stretch the canvas of our imagination wide enough for God to paint God’s own visions for our lives. Advent is a season for our imagination to run wild as we contemplate a God who becomes human. We are given a wider glimpse of God when we allow Advent to be an invitation to dream beyond our comfort zones of what we think can happen in our lives and what God can do. In Advent we receive four weeks to dwell on what God’s vision might be for us and for those we touch. Four weeks to dwell on how the courage of expanding our imagination might feed into the growing kingdom of God. Four weeks to gather our wits about us for another year; preparing our bodies, minds and spirits to receive the Christ child and take him out into the world for others to see and praise, worship and obey; the Christ with whom we dream big and imagine wildly.”

Taken from the Preface of Silence and Other Surprising Invitations of Advent
By Enuma Okoro

Advent: A Brief History

This Advent I am once again using a book of meditations and reflections titled, Monastery Journey to Christmas. by Brother Victor-Antoine D’Avila-Latourrette. The book begins with a very helpful history of Advent in the Christian East and West from as early as 330 AD. The author says, “In appearance, the Advent liturgical traditions from the East and the West may seem to differ in certain aspects and practices, but deep down I find they complement and complete each other in the one and common celebration of the Nativity and Theophany of our Lord and Savior.”

To read this entire history of Advent, click here…
Advent: A Brief History

Love and Live the Questions

Be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart

And try to love the questions themselves

Like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue

Do not seek for the answers that cannot be given

For you would not be able to live them

And the point is to live everything

Live the questions now

And perhaps without knowing it

You will live along some day into the answers

~ Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), Letters to a Young Poet

Christ Has No Body – St. Teresa of Avila

Christ has no body but yours,

No hands, no feet on earth but yours,

Yours are the eyes with which he looks

compassion on this world,

Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,

Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.

Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,

Yours are the eyes, you are his body.

Christ has no body now but yours,

No hands, no feet on earth but yours,

Yours are the eyes with which he looks

compassion on this world.

Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

Saint Teresa of Avila (1515–1582)

The Violence of Love

“We have never preached violence, except the violence of love, which left Christ nailed to a cross, the violence that we must each do to ourselves to overcome our selfishness and such cruel inequalities among us. The violence we preach is not the violence of the sword, the violence of hatred. It is the violence of love, of brotherhood, the violence that wills to beat weapons into sickles for work.”
~ Oscar A. Romero, The Violence of Love 
(Free eBook version...HERE)

Patient Trust

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
     to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
     unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
     that it is made by passing through
     some stages of instability—
     and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;
     your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
     let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
     as though you could be today what time
     (that is to say, grace and circumstances
     acting on your own good will)
     will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
     gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
     that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
     in suspense and incomplete.
~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ

Taken from: dotMagis: the blog of Ignatian Spirituality.com
http://ignatianspirituality.com/8078/prayer-of-theilhard-de-chardin/

Raw Material for Discernment

 I continue to go through the Ignatian Lenten Retreat that I shared about in my previous post below. If nothing else, you might like to check out Week Two of the retreat that serves as an excellent foundation for the Examen. Here is the link: Week Two.

My retreat reflection this morning included this quote, which was a good reminder for me today.

Ignatius’s Great Discovery
The point has often been made that the Christian Gospel is a story of strength and triumph arising from weakness and defeat. The Savior is a poor man in a provincial, backwater land. Salvation comes about through suffering and death. In the words of Mary’s Magnificat prayer: “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”

We’re afflicted with divided hearts that cause us to be burdened by angst, uncertainty, and fear when making important decisions. But this very confusion of thoughts and feelings is the place where we find God’s footprints. It’s the raw material for discernment.

This was Ignatius’s great discovery.

— J. Michael Sparough, SJ; Jim Manney; Tim Hipskind, SJ,
What’s Your Decision?

Advent: A Brief History

This Advent I am using a new book of meditations and reflections titled, “Monastery Journey to Christmas.” Over the past few years I have enjoyed other prayer and meditation books from the author, Brother Victor-Antoine D’Avila-Latourrette.

The book begins with a very helpful history of Advent in the Christian East and West from as early as 330 AD. The author says, “In appearance, the Advent liturgical traditions from the East and the West may seem to differ in certain aspects and practices, but deep down I find they complement and complete each other in the one and common celebration of the Nativity and Theophany of our Lord and Savior.”

Instead of posting the few paragraph history from Brother Victor-Antoine here, I have posted it on a new supplement blog I recently created, “Quotations & Stuff.” I will use this blog to post lengthier quotes, liturgies and writings that might bog down this blog. This supplementary blog is a work in progress, so bear with me.

To read this history of Advent, click here…
Advent: A Brief History

some favorite quotes on gratitude....

I've posted some of these quotes before, but thought they were worth resharing this Thanksgiving week.

“Gratitude…is a response to grace. The compassionate life is a grateful life, and actions born out of gratefulness are not compulsive but free, not somber but joyful, not fanatical but liberating. When gratitude is the source of our actions, our giving becomes receiving and those to whom we minister become our ministers." 

(Henri Nouwen in Compassion)

“To be grateful is to recognize the love of God in everything He has given us – and He has given us everything. Every breath we draw is a gift of His love, every moment of existence is a grace, for it brings with it immense graces from Him. Gratitude therefore takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to a new wonder and to praise of the goodness of God. For the grateful person knows that God is good, not be hearsay but by experience. And that is what makes all the difference…Gratitude is therefore the heart of the solitary life, as it is the heart of the Christian life.”

(Thomas Merton in Thoughts in Solitude)

“Gratitude takes nothing for granted. It acknowledges each favor, each gift – both big and small. It also recognizes the giver…Gratitude recognizes that a gift has been given, a favor has been done by someone. There is a gift and a giver. But there is more. Gratitude also calls for a response to that gift. We thank the giver with an expression of appreciation – a handshake, a hug, a note. A gesture of gratitude completes the exchange, closes the circle, let’s the love flow back to the giver.”

“God is the giver. We are the thanks-givers…As gestures of gratitude unite us on a human level, they also unite us with the divine Giver. God offers gracious gifts, covenantal blessings, summarized in ‘You Belong.’ In response we say, ‘Thanks! I am grateful!’ We embrace God’s acceptance of us and in turn are embraced…Our social gestures of thanks, like a handshake or a letter, correspond to our religious gestures, like sacrifice, worship, obedience. Religious gestures are our way of saying to God, ‘Thank you for all the good things that come from you, the Source of all life.’”

“Gratitude as recognition, receptivity, and response is a basic attitude and action of the Christian life. We not only recognize and are aware of God’s gifts to us, but we also continually find ways of saying thanks to God in worship, prayer, and ‘whatever we say or do.’ Our aim is to live our whole life as a sacred gesture of thanksgiving, a deep bow of gratitude, solidifying our relationship with God.”

(Don Postema in Space for God)

Simplicity & the Present Moment

“Simplicity, letting go of opinions and cravings, is an act of compassion for ourselves. When we let go of yearnings for the future, preoccupations with the past, and strategies to protect the present, there is nowhere left to go but where we are. To connect with the present moment is to begin to appreciate the beauty of simplicity.” ~Jack Kornfield & Christiana Feldman

 Taken from: Blessing of the Daily: A Monastic Prayer Book by Brother Victor-Antoine d’Avila-Latourette (October 20 entry)

Living in the Present Moment

“Let us strive to make the present moment beautiful.” 

~ Saint Francis de Sales

“In the past, we would speak of ‘centering’ as the ‘sacrament of the present moment.’ In truth, we know that that we only have today, the present moment, the now; yesterday is gone, and tomorrow is not yet here. The exact moment is holy and uniquely beautiful. Keeping alive the awareness and wonder of the present moment in the continuous flow of time, and throughout all its cycles, enhances our daily lives. We know that the moment will never be recaptured again, but we will keep within us its lovely memory. To live fully and deeply each day is to participate consciously in the mystery and succession of each present moment. The end result will be a positive one, shaped by the wonder, the beauty, and the holiness of each part of the day.”

Taken from: Blessing of the Daily: A Monastic Prayer Book by Brother Victor-Antoine d’Avila-Latourette (September 7 entry)

"Christ is risen, my joy"

"It is said of Saint Seraphim of Sarov that he addressed each person he met with the salutation, 'Christ is risen my joy.' He called each and everyone 'my joy' because he saw in them the work of God, the image of the invisible God. This is another saint who has much to teach us."

 Taken from: Blessings of the Daily: A Monastic Book of Days by Brother Victor-Antoine d' Avila-Latourette (September 2 entry)