For the New Year

New Year’s Day

RESOLVE TO LIVE AUTHENTICALLY IN 2012

 ¢â‚¬Å“Turn around and believe the good news! ¢â‚¬ 

 ¢â‚¬“ Jesus ¢â‚¬â„¢ first preached words, Mark 1:15

The Christian life is a matter of becoming who we already are, and all that we truly are! Can you imagine that? Is the seed already within you ¢â‚¬”of all that God wants you to be? Do you already know at some level who you authentically are? Are you willing to pay the price? Even the mistrust of others? Could that be what we mean by having a unique  ¢â‚¬Å“soul ¢â‚¬ ? Most saints thus described the path as much more unlearning than learning. There are so many illusions and lies that we must all unlearn. And one of the last illusions to die is that we are that different or that separate, and finally we are all one and amazingly the same. Differentiation seems to precede union and communion, for some strange reason.

This growing illumination is not just one  ¢â‚¬Å“decision for Jesus. ¢â‚¬  It is a whole journey of letting go and developing an ongoing practice of letting go, and turning around one more time, until it becomes a way of life. As the old Shakers used to sing and dance,  ¢â‚¬Å“Turn, turn wherever you may be, and the turning never stops. ¢â‚¬  To be authentically human is to be willing to turn ¢â‚¬”and to be a saint is to have turned/changed many times. Away from my smallness and toward an Unspeakable Greatness ¢â‚¬”which is itself never fully attained.

 ¢â‚¬“ Richard Rohr, New Year ¢â‚¬â„¢s Day 2012

Starter Prayer:

Help me begin again.

~~

RESOLUTIONS

RESOLVE TO LIVE A CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE

Prayer is not about changing God, but being willing to let God change us, or as Step 11 of the Big Book says,  ¢â‚¬Å“praying only for the knowledge of Gods ¢â‚¬â„¢ will. ¢â‚¬  Jesus goes so far as to say that true prayer is always answered (Matthew 7:7-11). Now we all know that is not factually true, unless he is talking about prayer in the sense that I am trying to describe it.If you are able to switch minds to the mind of Christ, your prayer has already been answered! The new mind knows, understands, accepts, and sees correctly, widely, and wisely. Its prayers are always answered because they are, in fact, the prayers of God, too.

Most practices of meditation and contemplation have to do with some concrete practices to recognize and to relativize the obsessive nature of our human mind. The small mind cannot deal with Bigness and Newness, which God always is!

From Breathing under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps, pp. 96-97

Starter Prayer:

Give me the mind of Christ.

~~

RESOLUTIONS

RESOLVE TO LIVE A LIFE OF GREAT LOVE

We must learn to be able to think and behave like Jesus, who is the archetypal human. This becomes the journey of great love and great suffering. This journey leads us to a universal love where we just don ¢â‚¬â„¢t love those who love us. We must learn to participate in a larger love ¢â‚¬”divine love.

If we remain autonomous, independent, self-sufficient, we cannot know God nor can we love God. St. John of the Cross says:  ¢â‚¬Å“God refuses to be known; God can only be loved. ¢â‚¬ 

Any journey of great love or great suffering make us go deeper into our faith and eventually into what can only be called universal truth. Love and suffering are finally the same, because those who love deeply are committing themselves to eventual suffering. Those who suffer often become the greatest lovers.

Adapted from Experiencing the Naked Now webcast (CD/DVD/MP3)

Starter Prayer:

Guide me in the ways of love and suffering.

~~

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Feast of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

RESOLVE TO LIVE SIMPLY

Living in the second half of life, I no longer have to prove that I or my group is the best, that my ethnicity is superior, that my religion is the only one that God loves, or that my role and place in society deserve superior treatment. I am not preoccupied with collecting more goods and services; quite simply, my desire and effort ¢â‚¬”every day ¢â‚¬”is to pay back, to give back to the world a bit of what I have received. I now realize that I have been gratuitously given to ¢â‚¬“from the universe, from society, and from God. I try now, as Elizabeth Seton said,  ¢â‚¬Å“to live simply so that others can simply live. ¢â‚¬ 

From Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, p. 121

Starter Prayer:

Teach me to live simply.

~~

RESOLVE TO SEEK WHOLENESS

Unless you let the truth of life teach you on its own terms, unless you develop some concrete practices for recognizing and overcoming your dualistic mind, you will remain in the first half of life forever ¢â‚¬”as most humanity has up to now. In the first half of life, you cannot work with the imperfect, nor can you accept the magic sense of life, which finally means that you cannot love anything or anyone at any depth. Nothing is going to change in history as long as most people are merely dualistic, either-or thinkers. Such splitting and denying leaves us at the level of mere information.

Whole people see and create wholeness wherever they go; split people see and create splits in everything and everybody. We are meant to see in wholes and no longer just in parts. Yet we get to the whole by falling down into the messy parts ¢â‚¬”so many times, in fact, that we long and thirst for the wholeness and fullness of all things, including ourselves. I promise you this unified field is the only and lasting meaning of up.

Adapted from Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life,

pp. 150-151

Starter Prayer:

Let me fall into the Whole of life.

~~

RESOLVE TO RECOGNIZE MY ADDICTIONS

We are all addicts. Human beings are addictive by nature. Addiction is a modern name and description for what the biblical tradition calls  ¢â‚¬Å“sin ¢â‚¬  and the medieval Christians called  ¢â‚¬Å“passions ¢â‚¬  or  ¢â‚¬Å“attachments. ¢â‚¬  They both recognized that serious measures, or practices, were needed to break us out of these illusions and entrapments; in fact, the New Testament calls them in some cases  ¢â‚¬Å“exorcisms! ¢â‚¬  They knew they were dealing with non-rational evil or  ¢â‚¬Å“demons. ¢â‚¬ 

Substance additions are merely the most visible form of addiction, but actually we are all addicted to our own habitual way of doing anything, our own defenses, and most especially our patterned way of thinking, or how we process our reality. By definition you can never see or handle what you are addicted to. It is always  ¢â‚¬Å“hidden ¢â‚¬  and disguised as something else. As Jesus did with the demon at Gerasa, someone must say,  ¢â‚¬Å“What is your name? ¢â‚¬  (Luke 8:30). You cannot heal what you do not first acknowledge.

From Richard Rohr: Breathing under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps, pp. xxii-xxiii

Starter Prayer:

Open my eyes to my attachments and addictions.

~~

RESOLVE TO TAKE OUR PLACE IN CREATION

Two thousand years ago was the human incarnation of God in Jesus, but before that there was the first and original incarnation through light, water, land, sun, moon, stars, plants, trees, fruit, birds, serpents, cattle, fish, and  ¢â‚¬Å“every kind of wild beast ¢â‚¬  according to our own creation story (Genesis 1:3-25). This was the  ¢â‚¬Å“Cosmic Christ ¢â‚¬  through which God has  ¢â‚¬Å“let us know the mystery of his purpose, the hidden plan he so kindly made from the beginning in Christ ¢â‚¬  (Ephesians 1:9). Christ is not Jesus ¢â‚¬â„¢ last name, but the title for his life ¢â‚¬â„¢s purpose.

All of creation, it seems, has been obedient to its destiny,  ¢â‚¬Å“each mortal thing does one thing and the same . . . myself it speaks and spells, crying,  ¢â‚¬ËœWhat I do is me, for that I came ¢â‚¬â„¢ ¢â‚¬  (Gerard Manley Hopkins,  ¢â‚¬ËœAs Kingfishers Catch Fire ¢â‚¬â„¢). Wouldn ¢â‚¬â„¢t it be our last and greatest humiliation, if we one day realized that all other creatures have obeyed their destiny with a kind of humility and with trustful surrender? All except us.

It is only humans who have resisted  ¢â‚¬Å“the one great act of giving birth ¢â‚¬  (Romans 8:22), and in fact have frequently chosen death for ourselves and for so many others. We have resisted and denied our own incarnation as one representation, just one, of the living and dying of God. We do not need to be everything to be one good and true thing! That is more than enough.

Adapted from Richard Rohr, Radical Grace, Vol. 23, No 2, p. 3

Starter Prayer:

Let me care for the Christ in all things.