Our Journey Through Health and Knowledge
enhancing, exploring and expanding our health and lifestyle togetherArchive for July, 2009
Daily Meditation: Pleading mouths, questioning hearts
One of the comments that I hear all the time with people who do not celebrate the same faith as I is “Do you really believe that there is some guy in the sky who really cares about each insignificant person in this world?” Well, no. 1.) I don’t see God as “some guy.” God cannot be quantified in that way. God is the great I Am. God is Truth. God is Love. Therefore, 2.) In just looking at the very small, yet significant definition of God to which I cling–God is Love–I can very easily accept the immense complexity and profundity of Love, which can account for and validate the people, and subsequently, the petitions of every single human being. As a trinitarian influencing my reason, it is very easy for me to understand and accept Jesus as the great reconciler and savior, as God made flesh, and the Holy Spirit as the Divine who dwells within us. How can we say Namaste, and deny the presence of the Holy Spirit? Isn’t she the light that we recognize in each other?
Even those friends of mine who would never worship God in even the privacy of their homes call upon that name in times of great stress and need. We look to God in our darkest hours and times of trial. I petition the presence of the Holy Spirit when I remember that I cannot do it alone, or when my unruly nature preceeds my patience. In those moments when we send those petitions and prayers, each of us has felt at least once that they have gone unanswered. My question is, do the petitions from the mouth match the desire of the heart? Is there something greater going on that will manifest itself later as an answer to that prayer? Perhaps, in letting the heart speak, stripped of ego and the walls that can entomb it, we will be open to receive the desires thereof.
Mark 2:1-12. Why do you raise such questions in your hearts?
A paralytic has his sins forgiven. Jesus sees into the hearts of the scribes who are critical of his forgiving the sins of a paralytic. Then the paralytic receives the gift of being able to walk.
One might assume that the paralytic’s friends brought him to Jesus to have his legs healed. But I think that just as he did with the scribes, Jesus saw into the heart of the man and knew it was forgiveness he sought, not walking. The miracle of walking was a bonus gift.
I can compile a list of the things I want God to do for me, my family, and my friends. He hears my petitions throughout each day. I imagine he has my prayers and supplications memorized.
He also peers into my heart to thoughts and feelings I may not acknowledge. It occurs to me that my family and friends have long held me up and carried me spiritually, often with diligence and creativity, toward our Lord when I could not do so alone.
I must examine my heart to find what God already knows. Asking forgiveness will be my first request. Then I will be more capable of carrying others to him.
I thank You for listening to the petitions of my heart even when I haven’t the words to speak them, nor ears to listen.
Daily Meditation: A discipline in response to desire
A part of being involved in any commissioned ministry typically involves the adoption of a Rule of Life. An effort to do as our early monastic and desert fathers and mothers did, a Rule of Life was described by one author as ” simply a structure in which spiritual formation is facilitated.” He continues, “The point of a Rule of Life, for communities or individuals, is that life should be lived in balance, with God as the focal point. A Rule of Life can provide us with the information and guidelines we need to get on the path of intentional practice of our Faith, and the loving accountability we need to keep us there.” For me, a Rule of Life is very simply planned time to spend in communication with God, the source, Love.
Just as children and job stress and ’stuff’ can get in the way of our interpersonal relationships, they, too, get in the way of our spiritual development. When one realizes that communing (or lack thereof) with the Divine is what informs the other relationships in one’s life, one yearns for the discipline to plug into that source of Love. I have that desire.
I’ve mentioned before that oftentimes there is a distance between wanting and doing. There are so many examples of this in my life, it’s almost funny. And yet, I still yearn.
My Rule of Life has been to meditate for any amount of time in the morning; it is to say the prayers that will follow today’s excerpt; it is to sit with my Spiritual Director regularly to help me live those prayers . Sometimes this rule is fulfilled in bed or in the car, on the phone, or in a waiting room. I invite you to offer what your Rule of Life has been, whether it’s been in the path of spiritual development, or rather in an attempt to just keep up with life.
Psalm 119:145-176. Early in the morning I cry out to you.On the first day of the week I had set aside to begin writing these meditations, I was up at 5:30 a.m. My plan was to do chores, get cleaned up, attend Morning Prayer at my church in town, then return to the country for a full day of silent meditation and inspired writing.But about fifteen minutes short of town, I had to stop on a dark, two-lane country road after a tire blew. Help came in the form of my husband, and another thirty minutes had me on the road–not to Morning Prayer but to the tire store.As I meandered the winding road toward town, I pondered how the morning schedule had similarly turned, first this way then that. One unfamiliar with our country road might anxiously anticipate what unknown events and places lie ahead. But today’s psalm also reassures, “You, O Lord, are near at hand.”The nearness of the Lord for me today would be the waiting room at the tire shop where I could read the scriptures away from distractions at home and meditate on what words would follow this month. “Great is your compassion, O Lord.” (forward movement)
