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Welcome to OneLife Ministries. This site is designed to lead you prayerfully into a heart experience of Divine Presence, Who is Love. While it focuses on Christian teaching, I hope persons of varied faiths will find inspiration here. Indeed, "God" can be whatever image helps us trust in the Sacred, by whatever means Grace touches us each. Please share this ministry with others, and please return soon. There is a new offering daily. And to be placed on the daily OneLife email list, to request notifications of new writings or submit prayer requests, write to briankwilcox@yahoo.com .
Blessings,
Brian Kenneth Wilcox MDiv, MFT, PhD
Interspiritual Pastor-Teacher, Author, Workshop Leader, Spiritual Counselor, and Chaplain.
You are invited to join Brian at his fellowship group on Facebook. The group is called OneLife Ministries – An Interspiritual Contemplative Fellowship. Hope to see you there. Blessings.
SCRIPTURE
Keep your life free from love of money and be content [Greek, arkeō, "to suffice"] with what you have, for the Divine One has said, "I will never leave you or forsake you."
*Hebrews 13.5
SPIRITUAL TEACHING
The Book of Hebrews is written with a strong emphasis on the spiritual path as a Journey. We are on the move; yet, we are to be content while on move, in process inwardly and outwardly, individually and in relationships. Many social and personal ills arise from discontent. And the free market is driven by aiding you to be discontent – to be unfree, consumed by consumerism. How many advertisements do you hear like this – This product will make you a more whole person inwardly and outwardly, enrich your familial and friendship relationships, …? The messages we receive daily, unless we find some way to ignore them, is, “You are not enough, you need something else to be okay. You do not have enough, you need something more.”
Even institutional religion is often driven by this same discontented gluttony, tainting religion with a consumerist message of never enough. This is one reason I am no longer a pastor. Systems that are to lead us to spiritual fulness and contentment, keep demanding more and more, seeking to self-validate their right to be, and projecting this image of a “god” who demands more and more to be satisfied by “his” slaves. When I began the pastorate over thirty years ago, the focus was on spiritual care; now, it has become often little more than “building” a church, building more buildings, managing a system to produce numbers that prove the leader is a worthy leader. Gluttony often guides policy - subtle, and ruining of spiritual vitality, wholeness, health of community, and vibrancy of family.
My last bishop admitted about his own Conference of churches in Florida, that they focused on efficiency and rapid productivity. This, he recognized, conflicted with my pastoral style – nurturing of a deeper spiritual life, and focusing on intimate care of souls. He noted these two did not fit. He described his church culture as having a way of life like, to use his words, a strip mall. Yet, we cannot nurture the slow but sure processes of spiritual growth if we do not provide space and pace that encourages contentment and fullness of gratitude for what is now in the moment, and apart from the constant push onward for more and better in an environment where acquisitiveness reigns.
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A hungry fox came to a vineyard surrounded by a fence. He saw a narrow gap near one fence post. The fox tried to squeeze through but discovered he was too fat. The fox, not wanting the fence to get the better of him, fasted many days until he was lean and slender. Then, he had no difficulty getting through the gap. In the vineyard he ate a fill of grapes for many days.. When trying to exit, the fox had grown too fat to pass through the gap. Once more, he fasted many days until lean and slender. Immediately, upon being back outside the vineyard, the fox realized he was hungry once more. He looked back at the vineyard, and he thought, “Yes, the vineyard is full of good fruit. But what advantage can I derive from it? If I enter it to consume the good, I must deprive myself of the same good?”
The means by which we seek what we call good can lead us to the loss of the good we already can enjoy. However, as the old aphorism has it—The grass is always greener on the other side. We can fail to see that the sacrifices we go through to achieve something is at the expense of the good we could already enjoy, here and now.
I had an acquaintance, I will call Marsha, who sacrificed much to work full-time in a career that would keep her moving from place to place constantly. She had to move to another state, far away from her residence. Yet, in doing this, she left her young daughter, an early adolescent. The daughter was left without a mother or father.
Yes, Marsha chose an outstanding job. But what would be the lasting cost to the daughter and Marsha? Would the child come to be better off financially, but miss the importance of the companionship with her mother in intensely formative, confusing years? Would Marsha live to regret missing being there for her daughter, seeing later her daughter grown up and on her own, for good? Does this exemplify how often in our society the good of family together is lost to many other “goods”?
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Likewise, we can be too reticent to change, for something better. For years I remained in the pastorate, enjoying much of the pastoral work, but detesting the over-all direction of the denomination to which I belonged, its priorities, its treatment of its clerics, its lack of commitment to truth and spirituality, … Finally, this hanging on to the good I had took its toll on my health and relationships. There was a good this good was keeping me from; now, I am enjoying a new life outside the pastorate, and enjoy relationships and freedoms that would never have been in the setting in which I was trying to serve for twelve years.
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So, we are faced with choices about the good we seek. We need to practice a contentment and gratitude for what we have now. If we do, we are less prone to think the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. Yet, also, we are not to have a mindless allegiance to the other aphorism – Bloom where you are planted. Why? Sometimes, our need is to move to the other side of the fence. Sometimes, we need to bloom elsewhere.
How do we decide? This writing is not about spiritual discernment in these matters. Rather, we accent one key point. Knowing when or when not to engage in life transition changes for the good is to arise out of a gratitude and contentment where we already are. Then, in quiet and calm, we can more easily listen to the Inner Voice. We, from this inner peace, will more likely make the better decisions in important transitional choices along the Way.
What in your life has the Spirit given you here and now, which you tend to miss enjoying here and now? How can you enjoy the moment but, like the fox, discern the ramifications of it for the future? Does planning for the future necessarily take one out of the here and now? How might not envisioning the future be clothed in the excuse of needing to be in the moment? How do you nurture inward contentment and peace of spirit to better navigate through major life choices?
© OneLife Ministries. Jan 10, 2010.
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*OneLife Ministries is a ministry of Brian Kenneth Wilcox, SW Florida. Brian lives a vowed life and with his two dogs, Bandit Ty and St. Francis. While within the Christian path, he is an ecumenical-interspiritual teacher, author, and chaplain. He is Senior Chaplain for the Charlotte County Jail, Punta Gorda, FL.
*Brian welcomes responses to his writings at briankwilcox@yahoo.com . Also, Brian is on Facebook: search Brian Kenneth Wilcox.
*You can order his book An Ache for Union from major booksellers.
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