Focussing Our Minds and Hearts

How can we stay in solitude when we feel that deep urge to be distracted by people and events? The most simple way is to focus our minds and hearts on a word or picture that reminds us of God. By repeating quietly: "The Lord is my shepherd, there is nothing I shall want," or by gazing lovingly at an icon of Jesus, we can bring our restless minds to some rest and experience a gentle divine presence.
This doesn't happen overnight. It asks a faithful practice. But when we spend a few moments every day just being with God, our endless distractions will gradually disappear.

- Henri Nouwen

On The Journey Toward Right Use of Power

The man in front of me was six feet tall and in his late twenties - much younger than I am - and the gleam in his eye said, "I'm going to hit you." Then he bowed, never taking his eyes from mine. As I bowed back, I glanced at the black belt around his waist and thought of my own recently earned yellow belt. I had been proud of that achievement, but now I wanted to run as fast as I could. What was I thinking? A middle-aged woman should not be wearing boxing gloves and facing off with a young man, protective gear notwithstanding. It isn't dignified. It isn't age-appropriate. It isn't safe. I thought I heard amusement in my teacher's voice when he hit the bell and yelled "Fight!" After the longest two minutes in the world, the bell rang again. We bowed to each other again, and the black belt smiled at me. "You did great. Next time, keep your hands up, and throw more."
I was alive! As I walked home, I realized that I had truly expected to be badly hurt in my first fight. After all, my sparring partner had age, power, and skill to his advantage. I had assumed he would use all of that to its maximum because he could, and because doing so would make him look great in front of the teacher. But instead he challenged me just enough - the punches really landed, and they really hurt, but they were gauged to make me respond, to fight back, to defend myself and learn in the process. There were many other opponents of his skill level, whom he would be glad to fight with all he had, but with me he knew his role was to use his power judiciously to empower me to believe in myself. It was an astounding revelation.
Now, three years later, I am preparing for my own black belt promotion. Now there are many yellow belts who, facing off with me, feel that same fear. Will I hurt them? Will I use my power to make myself look good or to humiliate them? But I have learned at the hands of the best teachers - power is to be used to lead others to new levels of accomplishment and insight. This use of power makes me understand better the power of God, whose "might" is beyond measure but who chooses to be incarnate among us and to share our weakness. God's power is "power-with" and not "power-over," the kind of power that challenges us to respond, to grow into our best selves, and to create with God a world where all are empowered to love, to grow, and to be whole.

by Lisa Cataldo

Let The Light Shine

"For it is the God who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness', who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."
- 2 Corinthians 4:6 -

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

- C. S. Lewis in "Is Theology Poetry?"

The First Hour of Your Morning

The duties and cares of the day crowd about us when we awake each day - if they have not already dispelled our night's rest. How can everything be accommodated in one day? When will I do this, when that? How will it all be accomplished? Thus agitated, we are tempted to run and rush. And so we must take the reins in hand and remind ourselves, "Let go of your plans. The first hour of your morning belongs to God. Tackle the day's work that he charges you with, and he will give you the power to accomplish it."

- Edith Stein

The Cushioned Life

Our technological civilisation has cushioned life on all sides, yet more than ever before, people helplessly succumb to the blows of life. This is very simply because a merely technological culture cannot give any help in the face of life’s eternal tragedy; here only an inward foundation can help. Externalised as they are, too many people today have no ideas, no strength, nothing that might enable them to master their restlessness and dividedness. They do not know what to make of trials, obstacles, or suffering—how to make something constructive of them—and perceive them only as things that oppress and irritate them and interfere with life.

- Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster

Do You Know An Angel?

Angels don't submit to the litmus tests, testify in court, or slide under a microscope for explanation. Thus, their existence cannot be "proved" by the guidelines we humans usually use. To know one, perhaps, requires a willingness to suspend judgment, to open ourselves to possibilities we've only dreamed about.

- Joan Wester Anderson in "Where Angels Walk"

Coming up for Air

Now at last perhaps I am coming up for air after nearly being lost in a sea of despair, too heavy for me to move or breathe. What finally raised me was a sudden knowing that my own despair and my own feelings really were completely insignificant and didn't matter at all. God is the important fact, and Christ the moving force, and I had been wallowing in my own misery out of my egocentricity and sin. So I asked for strength and forgiveness and the air began to clear, and I could act again, but not in my own strength.

- Jane Tyson Clement

Clinging to God in Solitude

When we enter into solitude to be with God alone, we quickly discover how dependent we are. Without the many distractions of our daily lives, we feel anxious and tense. When nobody speaks to us, calls on us, or needs our help, we start feeling like nobodies. Then we begin wondering whether we are useful, valuable, and significant. Our tendency is to leave this fearful solitude quickly and get busy again to reassure ourselves that we are "somebodies." But that is a temptation, because what makes us somebodies is not other people's responses to us but God's eternal love for us.
To claim the truth of ourselves we have to cling to our God in solitude as to the One who makes us who we are.

- Henri Nouwen

Slaying Evil

Annihilation itself is no death to evil. Only good where evil was, is evil dead. An evil thing must live with its evil until it chooses to be good. That alone is the slaying of evil.

- George Macdonald

Productive Small Groups

"Christianity is as much caught as it is taught." ...The importance of solid teaching about the basics of the faith cannot be denied. But... some of the most significant spiritual lessons I have learned through the years have been "picked up" observing others share real life experiences in a small Bible study or prayer group, a Sunday school class, or in one-on-one conversation. "If that's occurring in someone else's life... then, it could happen in my life too!" is a frequent thought pattern I experience in such situations. Spending time with other believers in formal and informal settings has "spurred me on toward love and good deeds," to borrow a phrase from Hebrews 10:24. Because of this I want to enthusiastically echo the verse that follows, "Let us not give up meeting together... but let us encourage one another..." (Hebrews 10:25). I believe this encouragement or prodding process is usually more productive in smaller (instead of larger) groups... Make certain you're a part of one!

- Steve Bell in "The Chapel Newsletter"

Protecting Our Hiddenness

If indeed the spiritual life is essentially a hidden life, how do we protect this hiddenness in the midst of a very public life? The two most important ways to protect our hiddenness are solitude and poverty. Solitude allows us to be alone with God. There we experience that we belong not to people, not even to those who love us and care for us, but to God and God alone. Poverty is where we experience our own and other people's weakness, limitations, and need for support. To be poor is to be without success, without fame, and without power. But there God chooses to show us God's love.
Both solitude and poverty protect the hiddenness of our lives.

- Henri Nouwen

Hiddenness, a Place of Purification

One of the reasons that hiddenness is such an important aspect of the spiritual life is that it keeps us focused on God. In hiddenness we do not receive human acclamation, admiration, support, or encouragement. In hiddenness we have to go to God with our sorrows and joys and trust that God will give us what we most need.
In our society we are inclined to avoid hiddenness. We want to be seen and acknowledged. We want to be useful to others and influence the course of events. But as we become visible and popular, we quickly grow dependent on people and their responses and easily lose touch with God, the true source of our being. Hiddenness is the place of purification. In hiddenness we find our true selves.

- Henri Nouwen

Hiddenness, a Place of Intimacy

Hiddenness is an essential quality of the spiritual life. Solitude, silence, quiet, ordinary tasks, being with people without great agendas, sleeping, eating, working, playing - all of that without being different from others, that is the life that Jesus lived and the life he asks us to live. It is in hiddenness that we, like Jesus, can increase "in wisdom, in stature, and in favour with God and with people" (Luke 2:51). It is in hiddenness that we can find a true intimacy with God and a true love for people.
Even during his active ministry, Jesus continued to return to hidden places to be with God alone. If we don't have a hidden life with God, our public life for God cannot bear fruit.

- Henri Nouwen

The Unity Of The Church

"Homesickness for the [One True Church]" is genuine and legitimate only in so far as it is a disquietude at the fact that we have lost and forgotten Christ, and with Him have lost the unity of the Church. Thus we must be on our guard, all along the line, lest the motives which stir us today lead us to a quest that looks past Him. Indeed, however rightful and urgent those motives are, we could well leave them out of our reckoning. We shall do well to realize that in themselves they are well-meaning but merely human desires, and that we can have no final certainty that they are rightful, no unanswerable claim for their fulfillment. Unless we regard them with a measure of holy indifference, we are ill placed for a quest after the unity of the Church.

- Karl Barth in "The Church and the Churches"

All We Know

No one can know what goes on in the soul of an afflicted person. No one can know what secret inner ripening can come from suffering and sorrow. All we know is that every individual’s life is priceless - that each is dear to God.

- Christoph Probst

The Hidden Life of Jesus

The largest part of Jesus' life was hidden. Jesus lived with his parents in Nazareth, "under their authority" (Luke 2:51), and there "increased in wisdom, in stature, and in favour with God and with people" (Luke 2:52). When we think about Jesus we mostly think about his words and miracles, his passion, death, and resurrection, but we should never forget that before all of that Jesus lived a simple, hidden life in a small town, far away from all the great people, great cities, and great events. Jesus' hidden life is very important for our own spiritual journeys. If we want to follow Jesus by words and deeds in the service of his Kingdom, we must first of all strive to follow Jesus in his simple, unspectacular, and very ordinary hidden life.

- Henri Nouwen

Do We Need Jesus?

I am frightened by our ability in [the West] to convince ourselves that we don't need Jesus. We can amass fortunes, we can get degrees, we can own our house all on our own. And yet, there's a certain affluence that we can attain when we become poverty-stricken - a certain humility that comes with trials, that brings us face to face with the Saviour.

- Max Lucado

Trusting in the Fruits

We belong to a generation that wants to see the results of our work. We want to be productive and see with our own eyes what we have made. But that is not the way of God's Kingdom. Often our witness for God does not lead to tangible results. Jesus himself died as a failure on a cross. There was no success there to be proud of. Still, the fruitfulness of Jesus' life is beyond any human measure. As faithful witnesses of Jesus we have to trust that our lives too will be fruitful, even though we cannot see their fruit. The fruit of our lives may be visible only to those who live after us.
What is important is how well we love. God will make our love fruitful, whether we see that fruitfulness or not.

- Henri Nouwen

Burning With Love

Often we are preoccupied with the question "How can we be witnesses in the Name of Jesus? What are we supposed to say or do to make people accept the love that God offers them?" These questions are expressions more of our fear than of our love. Jesus shows us the way of being witnesses. He was so full of God's love, so connected with God's will, so burning with zeal for God's Kingdom, that he couldn't do other than witness. Wherever he went and whomever he met, a power went out from him that healed everyone who touched him. (See Luke 6:19.)
If we want to be witnesses like Jesus, our only concern should be to be as alive with the love of God as Jesus was.

- Henri Nouwen

A Circle of Compassion

A human being is a part of the whole that we call the universe, a part limited in time and space. And yet we experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical illusion of our consciousness. This illusion is a prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for only the few people nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living beings and all of nature.

- Albert Einstein

On The Journey Toward Right Use of Power

"Please, you must come inside," she begged. I refused, for the third time. Some people had gathered to watch. It was becoming uncomfortable. I turned away and joined the line of people waiting for their servings of food from the huge, communal pots.
I was attending a local man's ordination into the priesthood at an outdoor Mass in a township of Bulawayo, the city in Zimbabwe where I lived and worked for three years. The woman had invited me to join the young man's close friends and family, as well as local dignitaries, inside the Parish Hall. There they were enjoying (relatively) rich food and the use of tables, chairs, and cutlery. Outside, people took their food in bowls, used fingers to eat, and sat in clusters on the ground.
When I lived in Zimbabwe, I often found myself in situations like this, where my status as a well-educated white woman from a wealthy nation was all too evident. Why should I be invited inside? I did not know the man. I had attended this celebration only because a friend thought all Catholics in the city should be part of this great day. I turned away from the invitation knowing that my decision was hurtful, yet it was the one that resonated most deeply in my heart. I, a stranger, could not join this man's closest circle while others who knew him better remained outside.
While I felt certain of my response, my reflections on it since have not been without questions. This journey towards the right use of power, I now realize, is often marked by a sense of incompleteness, of questions not fully answered and dynamics not fully understood. Were the questions to stop, I would begin to be concerned. And while all our decisions must be informed by the truth that we are all created equally as God's children, it would be naïve to assume that the politics of power are not at play, even in our most basic everyday encounters.
I think of this often, many years later, as I raise my three young boys. Although my life certainly seems simpler now, the journey towards the right use of power carries on. As I try, sometimes ungracefully, to work out with my sons the best way to live this day, I search for the resonance of power used well.

by Madeline Burghart

The Omni-Perspective Of God

The truth is we compare God to ourselves. We measure divine actions against our own. We think we know what we would do, what we would enact or change if we were omni-everything... It's hard for us to believe that our measures of what is just, what is merciful and what is best are not in sync with the mind of God. They seem good to us. But we are not omni... We have some perspective, but not the omni-perspective of God, who knows the movement of all history towards all futures, who knows our place among those billions of galaxies.

- Rev. Mary W. Anderson

Fellowship Of The Weak

As we seek to become more and more economically independent, as we become more and more secure, we remove ourselves from our need to be "helped." We separate ourselves from the possibility of community and miss the opportunity to experience the richness of loving relationships. Henri Nouwen once wrote, "...every time I am willing to break out of my false need for self-sufficiency and dare to ask for help, a new community emerges - a fellowship of the weak - strong in the trust that together we can be a people of hope for a broken world."

Being Living Signs of Love

Jesus' whole life was a witness to his Father's love, and Jesus calls his followers to carry on that witness in his Name. We, as followers of Jesus, are sent into this world to be visible signs of God's unconditional love. Thus we are not first of all judged by what we say but by what we live. When people say of us: "See how they love one another," they catch a glimpse of the Kingdom of God that Jesus announced and are drawn to it as by a magnet.
In a world so torn apart by rivalry, anger, and hatred, we have the privileged vocation to be living signs of a love that can bridge all divisions and heal all wounds.

- Henri Nouwen

Even with a Crust

We cannot love God unless we love each other. We know him in the breaking of bread, and we know each other in the breaking of bread, and we are not alone anymore. Heaven is a banquet, and life is a banquet too - even with a crust - where there is companionship. We have all known loneliness, and we have learned that the only solution is love, and that love comes with community.

- Dorothy Day

Einstein's Formula For Success

Albert Einstein had a formula for success. Can you believe that? One of the greatest minds of all time developed a math formula for success! I suggest you read this carefully -- this may be the most important math equation that you will ever see.
Einstein said, "If A equals success, then the formula is: A=X+Y+Z.
X is work.
Y is play.
Z is keep your mouth shut."
Einstein no doubt had an excellent sense of humour. Let's look at the 3 variables in this equation. They are:
1. Work
2. Play
3. Keeping your mouth shut!
1. Work: Albert Einstein had a tremendous work ethic and because of that gave more to society and modern science than any person in recent times
2. Play: Einstein, however, did not work 24 hours a day and made time for fun and relaxation. His idea of fun may have been different than yours, but that doesn't mean it still wasn't play.
3. Keeping your mouth shut: Finally, my favorite part of his success formal is to keep your mouth shut. I genuinely believe that the person who talks the least says the most. A friend of mine complains that the woman he is dating talks too much. I don't know how to break the news to him; however, the problem is not that she talks too much. It simply is the fact that he is irritated that he isn't able to talk. Now, let me just say this is not a generic man and woman statement. I am speaking about a specific person that I know. His desire is to constantly talk and because he likes to talk so much, he will talk in circles. If you let him talk long enough he will repeat the same thing three times and then contradict himself. His desire is not to hear but to be heard.
Albert Einstein, on the other hand had nothing to prove. He felt no need to be the "Chatty Cathy" he could have been with his knowledge. It wasn't important to him to talk to everyone he met and talk over their heads to demonstrate his IQ. Instead, he learned the value of quietness and solitude.
Shift your mind set from being a talker to a listener. It has been said that you can make more friends in 5 minutes by becoming interested in others than you can make in 5 years of trying to get others interested in you! How do you become interested in others? You ask questions and then keep your mouth shut!
Dale Carnegie wrote a best-selling book entitled, 'How to Win Friends and Influence People.' One of the key premises of this book was that everyone's favorite subject is actually themselves and that the sweetest sound to their ears is the sound of their own name. Einstein knew this and realized he could influence others by choosing his spots to speak and validating others by extending them the courtesy of listening.

by Ron White

The Bottom Line Of Life

Whatever else may be said about home, it is the bottom line of life, the anvil upon which attitudes and convictions are hammered out. It is the place where life's bills come due, the single most influential force in our earthly existence. No price tag can adequately reflect its value. No gauge can measure its ultimate influence... for good or ill. It is at home, among family members, that we come to terms with circumstances. It is here life makes up its mind.
Although stripped of stained glass, soothing organ preludes, and the King's English, home is a sacred place. It's a place where milk is spilled, where toes are stubbed, and where people see you in your underwear.
It's real life... where real people rub up against real challenges. And how those people meet those challenges determines whether the faith of the family flourishes or flounders.

- Charles R. Swindoll in "The Practical Life of Faith"

Being Unconditional Witnesses

Good news becomes bad news when it is announced without peace and joy. Anyone who proclaims the forgiving and healing love of Jesus with a bitter heart is a false witness. Jesus is the saviour of the world. We are not. We are called to witness, always with our lives and sometimes with our words, to the great things God has done for us. But this witness must come from a heart that is willing to give without getting anything in return.
The more we trust in God's unconditional love for us, the more able we will be to proclaim the love of Jesus without any inner or outer conditions.

- Henri Nouwen

Keeping the Peace in Our Hearts

Whatever we do in the Name of Jesus, we must always keep the peace of Jesus in our hearts. When Jesus sends his disciples out to preach the Gospel, he says: "Whatever town or village you go into, seek out someone worthy and stay with him until you leave. As you enter his house, salute it, and if the house deserves it, may your peace come upon it; if it does not, may your peace come back to you" (Matthew 10:11-13).
The great temptation is to let people take our peace away. This happens whenever we become angry, hostile, bitter, spiteful, manipulative, or vengeful when others do not respond favourably to the good news we bring to them.

- Henri Nouwen

Being Joyful Witnesses

To speak about Jesus and his divine work of salvation shouldn't be a burden or a heavy obligation. When we go to people feeling that unless they accept our way of knowing Jesus, they are lost and we are failures, it is hardly possible to be true witnesses.
It is a great joy when people recognise through our witness that Jesus is the divine redeemer who opened for them the way to God. It is a true cause for gratitude and celebration. But we should also be able to live joyful and grateful lives when our witness with deeds and words does not lead people to accept Jesus in the way we do.

- Henri Nouwen