Category Archives: Spiritual Direction

A Welcome Prayer

Poetry, Spiritual Direction, Uncategorized

A welcome prayer,
I’ve never heard.
How do you welcome
a mystery?
Something
all muddled
and hidden?

Why open the door
at the ground floor?
If it rains, it will flood
and someone may come
and find it unclosed.
SomeOne may come
and find me exposed

Why do we start here,
at this new prayer?
To help me heal,
to see and to feel?
To let go
To let go
To let go
of what I hold so near.
I’d rather start by a different track.

The why seems unimportant
It is the sinking I find hard,
but I open a crack…
and find the flood.
I knew it had rained.
So there’s no going back.

So unbolt,
uncover,
unfold,
breathe,
stretch,
reach.
SomeOne will come.
SomeOne is here.

Forgiveness

Poetry, Spiritual Direction, Uncategorized

Step over it.
Step across.
Find a rock,
a bridge,
a log
on which to balance,
but step over
untouched.

Traverse the fault
without a fall,
without sinking low.
Find the bridge,
find the rope.

But, step over it.
Step over yourself,
don’t fall.
Step over
the fault.

We are invited to dance across the river that would sweep us away when we are rejected, disrespected or hurt.  We are invited to forgive and find stones on which to stand as we traverse the fault.

They say, Come and See

Poetry, Spiritual Direction, Uncategorized

What are you looking for?
A place
A space
A Life with
seeing  and
hearing,
feeling.
A place that is
not forever far away,
Not distant or gone,
Not just beyond
but here and near.

A Way
to notice and listen
to be aware,
With something to share
with something to give.

Have you ever felt as though you’ve spent a major portion of your life looking for something in the wrong corner? Listening to the wrong whisper, or asking the wrong questions?  Then suddenly someone asks you a really good question! “What are you looking for?”

So, what are you looking for?

What Does That Even Mean?

Spiritual Direction, Uncategorized

I have a quote that whispers in my ear every couple of months and has done so for the past 5 years. It isn’t that it inspires me or reassures me, but that it always ALWAYS challenges me to scrutinize my core beliefs. Do you know how irritating that is? I want to know what I believe, I want to be firm in my beliefs, I want to understand. But, the more I think about these words descriptions of what I want, the less I think they apply to my faith.

I think there are very few things that are extremely rock solid when it comes to the Christian faith. 1: God is love. 2: God is extremely complicated. 3: God is unlike anything that I can describe. And if you look at a majority of the denominations within this belief system, I think those are pretty common themes that aren’t spoken of very often. Why? Part of me thinks it reminds us of just how little control we actually have, but another part says it is because we have hard time accepting that which we cannot define. Both are probably applicable.

So when it comes to my faith, I want to be like a tree, planted by the stream, a reference to Psalms 1:3 that has always provided a beautiful picture of  what I thought I was called to be. A tree. Firm. Solid. Strong. But the more I gaze at this portrait, the less I look at the tree and the more my eyes turn to the moving water. Each time I step into the Mississippi, it is always the same river… but the water is new each time.

And this, this is where listening is so vital to faith. God is never changing, but never ending. We assume that he reveals himself the same way to the same person without changing, but would it really be changing if he simply showed another facet of his divine nature? Have we figured it out? Have we limited God? Or are we willing to sit and listen. If I plant myself by that moving stream, will I learn more about myself or about the water that tickles my toes? The answer? I think probably both.

Oh! What was the quote?

“The glory of God is man fully alive.” ~St. Irenaeus

Honestly, what does that even mean?