Month: June 2011 (Page 3 of 3)

Devotions based on article in Conversations by Ruth Barton

As we care for our bodies it is like a spiritual practice that strengthens us in our spiritual journey as well. We are embodied human beings and our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Our body is sacred and it is the place God’s Spirit has chosen to dwell.  We are told to glorify God in our bodies and how do we honor our bodies and glorify Him?  David talks about his body and that it is fearfully and wonderfully made. We need to care for it more intentionally. When we walk around tired, overworked and depressed, we are not listening to what our body has to say to us. It is the first to know if we are stressed, over committed, uneasy etc. We may need to begin by eating better, drinking more water, getting more rest rather than using caffeine to perk us up etc. Even times of our exercising can be moments of significant connection with God. Ruth used her time of running and walking to pray and to engage in the examen. She reflected on her day and noticed the times when the Spirit was at work in her and the times when she had fallen short of love.  Maybe we think of prayer only on the soul level and not including our bodies. But we are to come to Him with all of who we are: our physicality, our emotions, our minds, our imaginations, our intuitions and all of our experiences. Sometimes our words seem inadequate when we pray and we pray with our bodies by lifting up our hands, moving, walking etc. Many of our retreatants mediate when they walk and are rejuvenated just being out in the beauty of creation with Him. Just knowing that God has chosen to make our bodies His dwelling place opens us up to be more aware of His presence so we can respond whole heartedly to Him!

Devotions from Conversations Magazine based on Christian George’s article

I wanted to write about the labyrinth as it is now warm enough to walk the one my cousin has just down the road. There is also one in a  Lutheran church in Prior Lake right in the floor of the church. Labyrinth walking is also known as prayer in motion. It is a physical discipline that reflects the spiritual desire to get at the heart of God. It is not like a maze that has dead ends and turnarounds, but it is a continuous path leading into and away from the center. The earliest known Christian one was found in Algeria around A.D. 325 but they belonged to every major civilization in history. We walk labyrinths to experience God in a physical and spiritual way. Some people recite a prayer as they walk, some listen to music, and others remain quiet.  Three stages for labyrinth walking are mentioned: purgation, illumination, and communion. Purgation is a stage of surrender— We give up our worries, frustrations, fears doubts etc. At each turn in the path, we lay down our individual sins and burdens before God. In illumination stage we may center our thoughts on scripture or an attribute of God and ask God to expand our understanding of it and increase our awareness. Each step is like a miniature meditation and when we get to the center many remain there for a while. The center of the labyrinth is where the doing of prayer becomes a being of prayer, much like Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus. Communion is the final stage and as we begin our journey out of the labyrinth we tune our hearts to worship. We praise God for who He is and acknowledge that we are not the center of the universe, He is!  When we leave the labyrinth we ask God to prepare us to reengage with the world and live out the gospel. Labyrinth walking is “a discipline for the sole and the soul’, and we can be confident that He who went on before us on the journey is traveling behind us and beside us as He draws us to Himself.

Devotions from an article by Robert Morris in Conversations

“My soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you.”  Ps 63:1  Our heart’s desires and our mind’s intentions are not separate from our body.  Our whole self, body and soul must be engaged. Our body, our God-given wonder, supports, and expresses our relationship with the Giver of all. We are told to present our bodies as living sacrifices. ( Rom. 12:1)  Our body is not just physical. It is not separate from our spiritual practice or from anything we do or say. Our heart’s intentions speak through our flesh. This is so evident in hospice volunteers who express compassion and care by their touch. The love flows from their hearts into their hands and to the person they are ministering to. The body has always been part of worship too…in dance, bowing our heads, kneeling, placing our hand on our heart, or maybe just opening our palms as a gesture of our openness to Him. Our body has a chance to speak itself to God. When our body is aligned with God and His purposes, “all its occasions dance for joy”.  God not only desire to live among us but within us completely, soul and body alike.  Let us reclaim our body in prayer. Maybe just a new way of gesturing can change the quality of our prayer and give us a deeper sense of our relationship with God. I remember when Al was preaching he had us all just place our hands on our hearts as a gesture of our love for God and His love for us. Sometimes when I go on my prayer walk I do the same and He seems so close.

Devotions based on an article in Conversations magazine by Phileena Heurtz

The spiritual journey is one that invites us to understand and accept in a fuller way our own belovedness so that we can love others as well. Surrender and letting go are the surest ways to find out who we truly are, who God is, and who our neighbor is. Thomas Merton said, “In order to find God, Whom we can only find in and through the depths of our own soul, we must therefore first find ourselves. “  In order for this to happen and for transformation to take place in us, we need a life of contemplation and action. We give ourselves through our vocations in acts of service and love. Our way is unique to our nature, personality, gifts and strengths. But action without contemplation can lead us off course and sometimes do more harm than good. Contemplation means “creating sacred space to be still, to rest in God, to reflect, to look inward, to attend to the inner life and simply to be with God in solitude, silence, and stillness.” As we do this we will find interior freedom instead of trying to control, His love instead of trying to win the love of others, His presence and peace rather than false security. God speaks to each of us, “You are my Beloved; on you my favor rests.”

 Devotions based on  David Benner’s book, Soulful Spirituality

As we journey to become fully alive, it is a journey to become all that we can be. As we consent to the Spirit and are attentive to our own personal journey of becoming, we will find ourselves being transformed.  This journey moves us from isolation to a deeper communion and union, from fragmentation to integration, from alienation to alignment, from part to whole. We journey toward being at one within our selves and at one with all that is. This happens only after we have raised the flag of surrender and stop demanding that life come to us on our terms. Becoming one within ourselves requires our attention and our participation. It needs our consent and involves the letting go of everything that keeps us apart from love. It is our relationship with Him that allows us to be fully alive in the present, and fully present to our selves and to others. Peace within our selves is a precondition to peace with others and with life. Let us open the gifts and invitations of life that call us to our true self, our self-in-God!

 For devotions today I would like to share about our Bible School reunion over the weekend. What a rich time together with about 30 others that graduated from CLBS. Although we didn’t receive college credit at the time, I think our 2 years of Bible school had a profound influence on the rest of our lives, laying a wonderful foundation. The son of the founder was there and much tribute was given to his father, who was a humble spiritual mentor to us all. Al did the first hour sharing about The Lazarus Life and leading us to face things in our lives that we need to be freed from. Also, discussion on receiving God’s love in the ways He comes to us individually. The next sharing was on the End Times by a missionary to Brazil for 35 years. His wife died recently of cancer and her home coming was so beautiful. She had been in a coma and come out of it long enough to share  how she had seen Jesus, her newly born grandchild who had lived only 24 hours, her parents etc. She was so ready to leave this earthly tent and go to her heavenly dwelling. Others shared of their experiences and also asked for prayers for their loved ones who need healing etc. One missionary was committed to share Christ with at least one person a day, after much prayer to know whose heart God had prepared. She said it was like jiggling the fruit on the tree that was ripe and ready. God has led us all on His individual paths for our lives, but our deep connection is in Him and knowing His love. Some day we will all be reunited in heaven and what a glorious time awaits us. In the meantime, let us use the opportunities to share Him with those He sends our way.

Devotions based on David Benner’s book, Soulful Spirituality

Welcoming Prayer is a way to respond to emotional upsets with a spirit of surrender. It involves the process of: focus, welcome, and letting go. We can’t welcome an emotion until we first acknowledge it and bring it to the center of our consciousness. Like the emotion of anger. We can focus on the sensation in our body that we feel when another driver cuts us off. The next step is to welcome that emotion as a guest in the home of ourselves.. As we do this something gets released inside of us. Then we can go on to let go of the negative feelings and also the assumptions that lie behind them. As humans we may feel we need control, approval, and security to be happy but this is a lie. What we really need is to release our desire for these things and for the need to change the circumstances. There are 2 spiritual paths and one is ascent and the other descent. The way of ascent is control, willfulness, grasping and clutching. The way of descent is the way of surrender, willingness and letting go. When we surrender “we give up that which we think we already have, only to discover that for which we most deeply long.”  May we recognize we don’t control life and we can only say yes to it for in surrender it leads us to fullness of life.

Devotions based on David Benner’s book, Soulful Spirituality

“Surrender is the dispensable gateway to life, genuine freedom, and deep humanity.”  It does not come easy as for men it usually feels like defeat and failure. For women it implies powerlessness that could leave them vulnerable to mistreatment. We usually react to unwelcome events over which we have no control and resent their disruption to our lives. But these times can be full of promise and help us to grow.  By nature we want to control and we are addicted to the illusion of control. But at the deep level of our spirit we know we are meant to live in alignment with the transcendent.  We long to put our trust in someone greater than ourselves. We must all surrender to something or someone. As we surrender to the Lord our spirit soars and our soul sends down roots into a grounded life. A life of surrender leads to willingness, openness, flexibility, and freedom. Surrender is an inner acceptance of what is. Resignation differs in that it is an outer posture of giving up rather than accepting. If we live a life of resistance, we become hardened, resentful and more willful. But if we welcome what comes to us in life, we will often notice that the greatest blessings are hidden in the midst of what may be painful. Sometimes we can’t label what is good or bad in our experiences until a long time after. Let us yield and then notice the new dimensions that open up in our lives.

Devotions based on David Benner’s book, Soulful Spirituality

Meditation can help us be more present to ourselves and to others. It can lead us into a place of inner stillness, solitude, and silence. Meditation can help us focus our mind and help us settle into a mode of open receptivity to God. And in prayer we can wait on Him, listen, and be drawn into His loving presence. But we must let go of our preoccupations and distractions and our self-importance. Often we are too full of ourselves to be available for others. Some people hang on so tightly to their persona that they have cultivated, that there is no room to be present to any one else. We all have some sort of presence or soul influence on others. Some may want to either draw closer to us or move away, depending on the whole atmosphere that moves with us. Knowing something of our own presence is essential if we wish to be present to others in a way that invites them to be present to themselves. Let us live our lives passionately and remember that presence is a gift that we can only give to others when we have first given it to ourselves.