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