Personal Prayer

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centering prayer, daily practice, intentions, new year's resolutions, Peace, personal betterment, prayer, shortcomings, spiritual practice, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

I was just looking at some intercessory prayers for liturgies and was reminded of a common practices in our local Catholic Church (and many others, I’m sure). After the formally written intentions are spoken at Sunday liturgy the reader always asks, For what else shall we pray? and individuals in the congregation shout out their needs.

It occurred to me recently that while I daily ask God to be present to me and me to be present to God in my practice of centering prayer, I don’t intentionally pray otherwise for myself with any regularity. It was an interesting realization as I certainly think there are ways in which I benefit from the prayer of others. Moreover, I could quickly make a list of shortcomings in my life that I would happily live without and virtues that I would dearly love to cultivate. It strikes me that this could be a good spiritual practice – to consciously ask for specifics of my personal betterment along with my pleas for peace in the world, for those devastated by weather events and health for those who have asked our prayers.

A little late to the game of New Year’s resolutions, I think this practice of humility might be just the ticket to get me on the bus toward renewal and transformation! We shall see…

The Last Day

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anointed, Christ, Happy New Year, John, love, new year's resolutions, practice, spiritual life, St. Paul, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, truth

I presume it is intentional on the part of those charged with the choice of liturgical texts to have the first reading today (1 JN 2:18-21) begin with the words, “Children, it is the last hour…” Scholars have said that the author was writing to the Christian community to strengthen them against those (“antichrists”) who were spreading untruths about the Christ and about what faithful disciples believed to be imminent, i.e. the fact that Christ would be returning soon to the benefit of “the anointed ones.” It sounds like a serious moment of choice about belief and how to live it. In a way, we might see an analogy in the situation of Americans today. Clearly we are on the cusp of great – one might even say stunning – changes in our country, and it is becoming clearer that similar scenarios are being played out in other parts of the world as well.

It is not my intention this morning to reflect on such weighty topics as are before us all, but it is, in fact, the last day of the year (my reason for commenting on the intentionality of liturgical scholars). My thoughts today are clearly personal – and actually contrived in a way. Regular readers may have noticed that there was no blog post yesterday. Circumstances were some of the reason but there was a small part of me that wanted to postpone until this day – the cusp of a new year. You see, this post, as incredible as it seems to me, is the 1,000th almost-daily “word” that has appeared here. I have thought on occasion of giving up the practice, but since our readership has remained somewhat steady, with incremental increases on occasion (561 at this point), and since it is now, in fact, a practice for me, I see it as a benefit in my own spiritual life. Since this is the moment for resolutions about personal betterment in the coming year I suppose I should do my best to re-energize my commitment to deepening the totality of all things spiritual in my life and let the postings take shape from that place.

Because I have come to believe, as St. Paul clearly stated, that none of us lives as our own master, concluding that we are all one in Christ (and I would venture in our day to add “in humanity”), my strongest desire for this daily work is for us all to grow together. To that purpose I will continue to search for deeper expressions of truth and the love upon which I base all my beliefs. May all of our resolutions lead us day by day to the unity and peace that is surely possible if we move toward it together. And tomorrow may we awaken with a willingness to commit to that future as we wish those we meet a Happy New Year.

Looking Back and Forward

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2016, assessment, deepening, global community, God's wonders, Helen Daly, New Year's, new year's resolutions, proclaim, psalm 96, sing out, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, understanding, Wisdom School

Today’s title for this blog post should surprise nobody. Today is, after all, the last day of the year, a day on which we regularly review the year just ending, perhaps with an eye toward things we want to remember and what we would like to forget. Making an honest assessment is not always the easiest activity of the year but is a good way to spend at least a little time before moving on to what we hope to accomplish or become in 2016.

The first lines of Psalm 96 became my impetus for reflection: Come, sing to God, O earth, sing out this song anew, and bless God’s holy name in praise, for day to day we are renewed, restored, refreshed again by glory’s light. Proclaim good news among the nations of the earth, tell all the peoples everywhere God’s work, God’s ways, the wonders that God does. (vs. 1-3) I can’t help but be amazed every day, not only by the number of people who have visited and read these blog posts (I have access to a statistics page) but also the places from which the visitors come. This year alone we’ve had 7,699 views (or more while I’ve been writing now!) by people from 77 countries all around the world! This is such a miracle to me and I am grateful for the privilege of this connection. I also feel responsible for this and all the activities that we offer at The Sophia Center for Spirituality in Binghamton and Endicott, New York, hoping that those who visit us (either in person or virtually through technology) are nourished in their spiritual life by their contact with us. I have met amazing people through this work as well as in our Wisdom Schools (see http://www.wisdomswork.com for explanation and information) and have grown immensely myself in these encounters.

My gratitude for the work I do now is in large part due to the generous grant from the estate of my dear friend, Helen Daly, who grasped the potential of the study of the Wisdom tradition of Christianity in which we had been engaged for seven years at the time of her death. My sense of responsibility to that gift now calls me to extend the opportunity to join the work we are doing to all who have benefited from it thus far. You may have noted the addition of a “Donate” button on this blog page. There is also now a donations page on our website, http://www.thesophiacenterforspirituality.org where you will find a more detailed explanation of our reasoning and our hopes for the coming year. If you have never visited our website, today might be a good day to see a more global (or in one way a more local) sense of who we are. All that we do and hope that people support harks back to those words of the psalm, for it is truly God’s work, God’s ways, the wonders that God does that is my purpose in writing.

May 2016 see a deepening of understanding for each of us so that God’s ways become more and more the ways of the world and may our appreciation of the wonders that God does guide us in all that we do and become in this new year.

Living in the Light

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embrace the light, hate, Jesus walked, John, live in the light, love, love our brother, new year's resolutions, South Pacific, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

The first letter of John has some strong words for us this morning which we might want to consider, especially if we are in the habit of making New Year’s resolutions. John says (1 JN 2:3-11) that whoever claims to be abiding in God “ought to walk just as Jesus walked.” That’s a pretty tall order – but it is our call if we want to “live in the light.” John talks about the fact that it is impossible to live in the light if we do not love our “brother” (and he’s not just talking about our immediate family – although they are surely included). Those who “hate” (John’s word – used surely to shock us into recognition) others walk in darkness and have no idea where they’re going because darkness has blinded them. We often use the words hate and love rather frivolously, as in I hate peanut butter but I love jelly. Certainly John is more serious than that. There is too much hatred in our world, whether for the person down the street or a whole race or tribe of people in a foreign country. How is it that we can decide who to hate without ever having had a conversation or looked into the other person’s eyes? To whom are we blinded without personal experience? Why? Where did our information come from? This all reminds me of a song from the musical South Pacific, which I have, perhaps, quoted here before. It says, in part: We have to be taught to be afraid of people whose eyes are oddly made and people whose skin in a different shade; we have to be carefully taught…

Today my prayer is for more light, in me and in all the world, that we might come to give up our self-imposed darkness and embrace the light that is available to us, if we will only resolve to let in more light, more love.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Baptism

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baptism, beliefs, Christ, John the Baptist, new year's resolutions, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Today we celebrate the Baptism of the Lord, that cinematic event of Jesus humbling himself to be baptized by John and the Spirit coming to rest on Jesus, the Beloved Son. I was three weeks old when I was baptized so the ritual of initiation into the Christian family is powerful to me only by hearsay. I have been blessed, however, to have participated in many rituals of baptism for people of all ages and it is always meaningful to hear parents and godparents speak their willingness to pass on the faith to those too young to speak for themselves. My parents and godparents certainly took that responsibility seriously. More meaningful to me as I grow older, however, is the conviction of people being baptized as adults, stating for themselves and all who hear their beliefs and their willingness to live a life congruent with those beliefs. That is an  admirable and sometimes difficult task in this changing, complex world. It takes great reflection and courage to know ourselves and what we say “yes” to each day. Having a faith community in which we can wrestle with the difficult issues and reaffirm our faith is a great advantage. Today is a good day for all of us to review what we are committed to by our faith and, in the spirit of “New Year’s Resolutions”, to resolve anew to live honestly and seriously our commitment to the God who calls us beloved children.