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This Thanksgiving
This Thanksgiving, I’m reflecting on gratitude, as I’m prone to do. In fact, gratitude is at the forefront of my little brain a lot of the time. During my two-month deep illness and spiritual crisis this summer, my gratitude practice was one of the primary things that saved me … when you’re really sick, it’s easy to downward spiral. Instead of allowing myself to do that, I reflected on all the things I was grateful for, while being stuck in a place I really didn’t want to be. It takes conscious effort but is soooo worth it. Gratitude, to me, is directly from God; numerous bible verses have contributed to this belief … ‘give thanks in all circumstances …,’ ‘giving thanks always and for everything to God …,’ ‘overflowing in many expressions of thanks …,’ ‘thank God for this gift too wonderful for words…
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All God
God is not a concept, idea, law, ideology or deity in the clouds, distant from us. God is beyond what you can think, has human qualities but is not human, is always happening, always now, is always with us — nearer to us than we are to ourselves. God is love personified, and yet God cannot be explained. God is. (Yes, that’s a full sentence.) God IS. But the problem is that we can’t wrap our heads around that. Creation wasn’t a one time event. It is always happening, because God is always happening. This is hard for us to grasp too, because we live in a culture of deadlines, goals and finishing. Who of us doesn’t imagine ourselves ‘arriving’ somewhere in the future … the perfect job, car, partner, house, vacation, the ‘perfect life?’ We’re wired to constantly work toward an end, and…
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Signs of Growth on the Spiritual Path
As I near the end of my Spiritual Direction training, I was asked to reflect on the ‘birth-quakes’ of my journey. Below is the Reflective Expression I completed for this module: This module gave me a lot to ponder, but sometimes when I find myself thinking too much, especially deep topics like the meaning of life or philosophy, I must temper it with embodiment and nature. I’ve learned along the way that I’m an over-thinker by nature. Practices that keep me in my body and time spent in nature both seem to be balancing agents when mind activity becomes too much. In yogic philosophy, this is called svadhyaya (self study), knowing thyself. In my opinion, it’s an important practice for growth along the spiritual path. If we don’t know ourselves, how can we properly apply the things we’re learning, and determine whether or not…
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My Spiritual Companion, James Finley
Throughout my time training as a Spiritual Director, I was asked to choose a spiritual companion for the journey. Actually, we were asked to let our companion choose us, and I was lucky enough to be chosen by my beloved teacher, James Finley. Below is the reflection I wrote for this assignment: See that guy to the right? He’s very important to me. He and his words have been a lifeline in some of my hardest days. He is the reason I consider myself a Contemplative Christian (though I fall short so often). Look at that smile. It’s infectious. It reminds me of the Buddha … sincere, unpretentious, serene. And while he’s a serious guy, he smiles and laughs a lot, especially at himself. I love his sense of humor. And his humility. When we were first asked to ‘walk’ with a spiritual teacher…
