Lately I’ve been seeing how narrow the space is between some of my thoughts. How quickly hope can turn to despair, gratitude to ingratitude, patience to impatience. A simple critical thought or a moment without love, mercy, and compassion can turn hope into hopelessness. It is a very fine line.
Continue reading “Week Nineteen. Hopelessness. Fine Lines.”How well do I listen? As I grow more aware, I see the subtlety between the two voices that play out in my head. The distinction is sometimes minuscule between the two yet can have very different trajectories.
Continue reading “Week Nineteen. Hopelessness. Two Voices”Looking for God’s Goodness in contemplation and prayer. Our society shows all the signs of classic addiction, and it is helpful to think about this as a metaphor for what the biblical tradition called “sin.” In Breathing Under Water, Richard Rohr draws the connection between the Gospel and the Twelve Step Program. It is helpful to see sin, like addiction, as a disease, a very destructive disease, instead of merely something that was culpable, punishable, or “that makes God unhappy.” If sin indeed made God unhappy, it was because God desires nothing more than our happiness and wills the healing of our disease. The healing ministry of Jesus should have made that crystal clear; healing was about all that He did, with much of His teaching illustrating the healings—and vice versa. It is rather amazing that this did not remain at the top of all church agendas.
Continue reading “Week Eighteen. Fortitude to Love. Looking for God’s Goodness and Weekly Reflection Summary.”My Lord, My God.
These are four of the most powerful words I can say. In our throwaway culture and a culture of lies, it’s easy for me to get paralyzed and overwhelmed by fear. This is exactly where Satan, the father of all lies, wants me. Evil constantly whispers the lie that things are hopeless.
Continue reading “Week Eighteen. Fortitude to Love. Knowing I’m not God”Sometimes I wonder if I’m afraid to forgive myself for being human. I’ve been contemplating lately my resistance to living in radical trust and forgiveness and truly loving myself. As I live in a space within me that accepts me as I am, where I am fully known and loved, the pretenses that diminish my genuineness dissolve. I am emptied of the masks and facades that blind me to who I am that keep me deceiving myself and others.
Continue reading “Week Eighteen. Fortitude to Love. Peace of Forgiveness”As I contemplate God’s boundless mercy and integrate this divine love throughout my body, mind, and soul, I’m brought to my knees with gratitude and joy. Allowing this mercy to shower over me, I’m cleansed from the thoughts and behaviors that hold me hostage within my own heart. These are the moments I accept that God is God, and that I am His beautiful creature.
Continue reading “Week Eighteen. Fortitude to Love. Keys to My Heart”How many times do I place obstacles within my heart as a barrier to God‘s mercy? God‘s love and mercy so desperately want to work in my heart but I must first open the door. How do I close the door to this love and mercy? By thinking I don’t need God, thinking it’s all up to me to change others or situation, being unaware that God is ever present. Even my pain and suffering can blind me to trusting in God‘s mercy.
Continue reading “Week Eighteen. Fortitude to Love. Foundation of Trust”Let us ask for the grace to feel that we need mercy. This is the only way that the salvation of God acts within us. Pope Francis.
Continue reading “Week Eighteen. Fortitude to Love. Mercy and Kindness”It takes a lot of fortitude to love myself the way God loves me. As humans, we are filled with irrationality and contradiction and are never predictable. Our past behavior tells us more than anything about how we may behave in the future, but we are prone to self-defeating patterns of behavior rather than remembering and dealing with the underlying conflict associated with them. We are victims of self-deception. We sacrifice our health to make money, then sacrifice money to recuperate our health. We are anxious about the future so that we don’t live in the present. We live as if we aren’t going to die and then we die not having fully lived. All this is to say, as humans we are a mystery.
Continue reading “Week Eighteen. Fortitude to Love. Mystery”
Looking for God’s Goodness in contemplation and prayer. For a Type-A overachiever like me, patience doesn’t come without a lot of deep breathing, yoga, meditation, and instrumental new-age music. I have to actively remind myself to practice patience. When I feel myself getting impatient, I first ask myself, Is this situation within my control? If the answer is yes, then I actively try to change the situation, so it is less stressful for me.
If the answer is no, and I can’t seem to let the stress go, I move on to a breathing meditation like the following Breath of Patience.
Continue reading “Week Seventeen. Patience. Looking for God’s Goodness and Weekly Reflection Summary”
Smitten With Goodness 