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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. I hope persons of varied faith paths will find inspiration here. 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.
WISDOM SAYING
Coming to grips with my reality-(as if this were not going on all the time) coordinating, incorporating in a living regime all that I can reach to make relevant my presence here, on its way to the ending.
*Thomas Merton. A Year with Thomas Merton. Ed. Jonathan Montaldo. Feb 23: A Life of Clashes and Discoveries. Merton on his 50th birthday.
WISDOM STORY
There was a man in Turkey traveling with his favorite donkey, a faithful companion for years and an animal very close to his heart. At the end of a hard day, he came to an inn and decided to rest there for the night. No sooner than he had taken off the saddlebags, a youth working for the inn came to greet him.
“Peace to you, sir, welcome to our humble shelter! Please, come inside and get some warm soup and sit beside the fire.”
“Of course, I’d love to, but first I must make sure my donkey is well cared for,” the man said, patting his donkey on the back. The youth smiled generously, saying, “Please, sir, allow me to attend to such details, you are an honored guest here.”
“But it’s just that he’s an old donkey and needs a nice bed of hay to lie in.” “Sir, we guarantee you the best care possible.”
“But you will sweep the floor first to make sure there are no stones? He gets in a terrible mood if he doesn’t sleep well.” “Please, sir, just trust me, we are professionals here.”
“But you will add some water to his straw–his teeth are getting shaky, and he likes just a little fresh grass to begin with.” “Sir, you are embarrassing me!”
“And you will give him a little rubdown along the spine–he goes crazy for that!” “Sir, please just leave everything to me.”
So, finally, the man gave in and entered the establishment to enjoy a fine dinner by the fire and a comfortable bed. Meanwhile, the youth rolled his eyes and, then, went out to play cards in a nearby den. The man could not sleep, despite the silk sheets, for he kept having nightmares of his donkey chained up without water or food, lying on the cold stone. The vision wouldn’t leave him. Therefore, he got up in his dressing gown and walked down the steps to the stable. His donkey was in exactly the condition he’d imagined–cold, hungry, and dying of thirst.
Rumi then sums up by saying: the world is full of those who say whatever is necessary to get their way. When it comes to looking after the heart donkey, it’s entirely up to us. We are the only real keepers of our feelings, and no one knows better than us what we really need, hence the value of trusting our intuition and taking care of our hearts as though it really were an old, faithful companion.
*Rumi
REFLECTIONS
Community is a potential blessing and a potential curse. Often, community expects compliance, a conformity that suppresses the individuality of persons that does not fit the “norm.” Guilt is the primary community-mechanism to keep persons in conformity. The blessing arises when community provides a sacred, safe space for persons to become more of their true selves, persons of freedom, dignity, and integrity, partly resultant of other persons doing the same.
Our spiritual evolution occurs only, as Merton reminds us, in our working with the reality of our personal life and in intimacy with ourselves in God. The spiritual journey, then, is radically personal, though not individualistic in the sense of being separate from community. We could say that this Journey is radically personal and radically communal.
To take care of our heart donkey is to know that we are the ones, each of us, that must place priority on our spiritual unfolding and fidelity. Each person is a Self connected integrally to the earth, other creatures and history; yet, the person as Person is open to transcendence. The person, then, to be spiritual honors both the immanent and transcendent intersecting in harmony, even if with tensions, within himself or herself. And regardless of the communal nature of the human journey, no one can take responsibility like you are meant to for the care of your heart and the bringing together of all you are into harmony, which is Love.
Understand and appreciate that the spiritual Journey is one in community. Never forget, however, that you must not forsake, through chosen or enforced agreement, your essence and its innate seed of Potential. Indeed, the voice of the soul is the voice of God.
True Love will always honor the experience of another of the Sacred, and such Grace will always give room for the individual, particular way a soul seeks to express and develop in the world. Cherish your essence and its path like an old, dearly loved donkey. Seek to honor the same unfolding in the other.
SPIRITUAL EXERCISE
1) How are you taking responsibility for the alignment of your soul and the personality?
2) How is community helping in this process? How might community be hindering in this process?
3) In what particular ways do you see your soul evidencing its path in life? Are any of those ways not supported by most in your religious community? Family? Workplace? … Explain.
4) Whom do you know who has modeled for you faithfulness to his or her soul, even amidst resistance or unpopularity and its social consequences? Write or call him or her, expressing thanks for the example.
*Rumi story from www.tomthumb.org, with slight adaptation for English readers by me.
© OneLife Ministries. Jan 21, 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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