Photo: Within these walls

 

Prayer: Benedict XVI

Our lives do not exist by accident. It is not an accident. My life is willed by God from eternity. I am loved. I am necessary. God has a plan specifically for me. Eternal love has created me in profundity and awaits me.

Photo: Entrance to the Abbey Retreat House

 

Spirituality: Lectio and Other Divinas

 Before every prayer, I petition that God behold me. I pray, "that you, O God, see me, feel me, hear me, and know what I am feeling." or "You, O Lord, know what is going on with me. I'm in your presence. Know what has happened with me today." I let God gaze upon me - in wonder and honor.

 

We are familiar with Lectio Divina, the study of sacred texts. We limit ourselves to silence and headwork. We are not monks. We live in contemporary circumstances. Divina requires intention and attention. Get your whole self involved.  

 

The Power of the Gaze: Eye contact: Adoration: Bonding, eyes and touch.

We cannot look at God without being transformed. We become what we behold. The soul needs to be free to follow the Sermon on the Mount. The free soul seeks the Kingdom of God.

 

Imagination and desires: We are cautious, but… we have been told desire is bad.

Nothing that happens in prayer will contradict what we learn from Scripture.

Tradition, the authority of the church, The Spirit will be your guide.

Our gift of reason aids discernment. We discern as part of a community.

God is not going to turn you into a fortune teller.

 

Various Divinas

 

Lectio Divina: deep listening to the words of Scripture

            Quiet, attentive, reverent listening – to the still, small voice

            Some commit Scriptures to memory; let a phrase, a word take deep root.

            Prayer: we talk to God about whatever is in our hearts; dialogue. Open ourselves.

            Contemplation: we cease all activity and simply rest in God’s presence.

 

Visio Divina: Imagine. Picture the Sermon on the Mount or any other biblical scene.

Pilgrimage: Being in a physical location, you make the life of Jesus or a saint real. 

            Films and theater: Can you see the movements of The Spiritual Exercises in them?

            Guided meditations

 

Camino Divina: walk, run, paddle a kayak, sit on a beach, visit a garden, making pastry

            Gazing with the Body

 

Dance Divina: Sometimes we need drums, rhythm, and energy; other times we need 

Smooth, slow, and flowing. How do you offer to God through movement? This relationship is tangible.

 

Audio Divina: Music touches the soul uniquely and powerfully.

It focuses our attention and drives away distractions. We live in the present moment. Songs are designed to move us. Songs mark particular times and events: a wedding song, our first dance, our third grandchild.

I'm singing this note 'cause it fits in well with the way I'm feeling
There's a symphony that I hear in my heart, sets my head a reeling

Do you have an earworm? Does some message need you to look at it?

            What is your theme song or a song that animates your life story?

            Baldovin: The Congregation doesn’t go home humming the homily.

            What is your prayer playlist? What lifts my spirits?

 

Setting the Scene: Be like a film producer. Does Christ have a face? Can you see it?

Where would you like to meet today? A favorite place, a beach, a garden? In a pew at St. Ignatius church?

            Be where you are. You do not have to go back to Biblical Palestine.

If you are sick in bed, have Jesus meet you there. Jesus does not have to dress in robes and sandals.

 

The Healing Gaze        

            The responses of Jesus to you: Feel his warmth, solidarity, and affection for you

            You are invited into your own transfiguration; transformation

 

Other ways: Icons, Crucifixes, Holy Cards, gardens, gazing at the faces of the people 

around us, visits to cemeteries.

 

 

 

 

• The more we are transformed by the Spirit of Love, the more we will be ourselves.
• God is committed to my healing and freedom. Continue the process of becoming and evolving.
• Love begins with right seeing. Continues through right analysis and takes us to right action.
• We are called to live in right relations with others.

 

 

• We seek intimacy and meaning. We want to be meaningful to someone.
• Be Yourself. Live authentically. Live from the authentic self.
• To love God is to love what God loves.
• Radiating light and warmth to a world that needs them in order to survive.

Photo: Joseph and his son

 

Spirituality: The Divine Milieu, Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.

We must try to penetrate our most secret self, and examine our being from all sides. Let us try, patiently, to perceive the ocean of forces to which we are subjected and in which our growth is, as it were, steeped ... And so, for the first time in my life perhaps (although I am supposed to meditate every day!), I took the lamp and, leaving the zone of everyday occupations and relationships where everything seems clear, I went down into my inmost self, to the deep abyss whence I feel dimly that my power of action emanates. But as I moved further and further away from the conventual, I became aware that I was losing contact with myself. At each step of the descent, a new person was disclosed within me of whose name I was no longer sure, and who no longer obeyed me. And when I had to stop my exploration because the path faded from beneath my steps, I found a bottomless abyss at my feet ... and, if someone saved me, it was hearing the voice of the Gospel speaking to me from the depth of the night: ego sum, noli timere ... It is I, be not afraid!

Spirituality: Madeleine L’Engle in Glimpses of Grace

We have to say "Thank you” whenever possible even if we are not able to reconcile the human creatures’ free will with the Maker’s working out of a pattern. Thanks and Praise are, I believe, some of the threads with which the pattern is woven.

Photo: Pray for peace

 

Poem: ~ Jan Richardson in Circle of Grace

 Blessed are you who bear the light

 

Blessed are you
who bear the light
in unbearable times,
who testify
to its endurance
amid the unendurable,
who bear witness
to its persistence
when everything seems
in shadow
and grief.
Blessed are you
in whom
the light lives,
in whom
the brightness blazes—
your heart
a chapel,
an altar where
in the deepest night
can be seen
the fire that
shines forth in you
in unaccountable faith
in stubborn hope
in love that illumines
every broken thing
it finds.

Photo: They Abbey Church