A Prayer of the Heart

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harmony, healing, heart, hurt, impatience, Joyce Rupp, kindness, openness, Prayer Seeds, rigidity, strife, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

As I ponder this season of Advent which is different from any other in any year that I have ever known, a familiar quote by Henry Van Dyke comes to me that begins: “Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear…” It reminds me that time is a construct that we cannot control or manage. We have to take it as it comes and live it. How to do that is the challenge of the day for me. Looking for some help in meeting it, I open Joyce Rupp’s Prayer Seeds and find a prayer that is reminiscent of the Prayer of St. Francis but with a bit of a different slant…It suffices for me today.

All Encompassing Heart, where there is impatience, let me bring kindness. Where there is strife, let me bring harmony. Where there is hurt, let me bring healing. Where there is rigidity, let me bring openness. Where there is judgment, let me bring understanding.

O Wide and Spacious Love, turn me toward your unconditional acceptance. I seek to be a vessel of your great love. Let me carry your love into all parts of my life and pour it forth willingly and generously.

Purpose and Meaning

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affected, care, forgotten, global results, goals, hurt, Joan Chittister, meaning, productive, profit, purpose, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, touched, why, Wisdom Distilled Daily, wise woman

Joan Chittister  gave me a paragraph to ponder this morning from her book, Wisdom Distilled from the Daily. I thought it was worth sharing, not necessarily for others to agree but simply to measure the reflections of this wise woman against my own to see if there is resonance there. I offer it today in that spirit.

Purpose has something to do with being productive and setting goals and knowing what needs to be done and doing it. It is easy to have purpose. To write seven letters today, to wax that floor, to finish this legal brief, to make out those reports, to complete this degree, that’s purpose. Meaning, on the other hand, depends on my asking myself who will care and who will profit and who will be touched and who will be forgotten or hurt or affected by my doing those things. Purpose determines what I will do with this part of my life. Meaning demands to know why I’m doing it and with what global results. (p. 102)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Judgment

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humility, hurt, Jesus, judge, judging, Matthew, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

There’s no doubt about the meaning of today’s gospel (MT 7:1-5). Jesus begins with “STOP JUDGING!” (Emphasis mine). Those words are enough for me as my judgmental mind knows the strength of my tendency to judge everything – and everyone – by appearance. This is my most consistent spiritual practice: to let go of judging others and myself by the measure of perfection that I appropriated in childhood or along the way from culture or image of God or the opinions of others. Our voyeuristic culture loves to sneak into the lives of the rich and famous and find their flaws. Our economic culture tells us what is “in” to wear and drive and eat and do for recreation. Our religious upbringing sometimes still sends echoes of “not good enough” into our minds while God withholds nothing from us if we look to our hearts.

Judging is sometimes an automatic function of our make-up but is not always a bad thing. We must be discriminative in our choices in life and so the ability to judge between goods, or between what would be good for us and what would not, is crucial. I know that isn’t what Jesus is talking about this morning, however, because he goes on to say, “Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye?” That sentence always stops me cold as I think of how even the smallest foreign object in my eye hurts. Humility quickly follows as I ponder my judgmental self. Then I take a breath, try to let go of what I’m thinking (even though I’d rather share my opinion!) and start again to walk the better path where I know God waits with a smile of understanding.