|
Being edited, please return soon.
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 Teacher, Author, and Chaplain
You are invited to join Brian at his fellowship group on Facebook. The group is called OneLife Ministries – A Contemplative Interspiritual Fellowship. Hope to see you there. Blessings.
QUOTE
God was not for me a working hypothesis, to fill in gaps left open by a scientific world-view. Nor was He a God enthroned somewhere in outer space. Nor did I ever “feel” any particular “need” for superficial religious routines merely to keep myself happy. I would say that, like most modern men, I have not been much moved by the concept of “getting into heaven” after muddling through this present life.
On the contrary, my conversion … began with the realization of the presence of God in this present life, in the world and in myself, and that my task as a Christian is to live in full and vital awareness of this ground of my being and of the world's being.
Acts and forms of worship help one to do this, and the Church, with her liturgy and sacraments, give us the essential means of grace. Yet God can work without these means if He so wills.
When I entered the Church I came seeking God, the living God, and not just “the consolations of religion.”
*Thomas Merton. Ed. Eileen Taylor. The Modern Spirituality Series. “My conversion.”
SPIRITUAL TEACHING
Spread-out-like-tent Sky,
Sun adorned, a shining, smiling bride,
Galilee tints, blue and soft too,
arms-open-wide with welcome air,
hospitality immaculate, spectacular,
room to move, space to hear,
ripples of water washing over the feet,
while sounds whirling round celebrate its
center of Love, afire,
orchestrating this dance of deathless Life,
a Resurrection, grand display I often miss
in cramped places,
among filled up spaces,
while Glory is moved into a corner or basement,
maybe just walked around, or on, or over.
To do as Jesus, walking beside
Galilee Sea, a favored place. Why?
To breathe, to be,
close to You.
*Brian Kenneth Wilcox, Jan 22, 2004. Revised Feb 9, 2010.
Too much religion is stuffy, insular, cramped. Spirit creates spaciousness within the self, and in openness to others. Inner Solitude is not a shutting out of the world, it entails a new relationship with the world. Spirit is Liberality, Generosity, Hospitality.
Spaciousness is room for exploration, investigation, and the excitement of new ventures. The Spiritual journey is not about chiefly preservation of the old, or protection of the has been, but creation in consort with Love of the never has been.
Spaciousness, ironically, while more expansive, constellates a more intimate Intimacy. Spaciousness provides the terrain for the next welcome of Closeness more close.
Many Christians have practiced lifting the hands to the sky, signifying openness to God, but they have closed the arms away from Nature and the World. The Christian posture is the posture of the Cross – a wide openness to all directions, all experience, and in Love. When I open in all directions, abandoning myself in Love, I find a freedom from the cramped, stuffy closet of self-constriction. The True Self is already in Love, for the True Self is one with Love.
Spaciousness is one way of saying “Love.” When I am in Love with someone, I say, “Welcome. Come in.” When I am in Love with the world, I say, “Welcome. I have room for you.” The life of Jesus outdoors, then, mirrors His message: “Come to me all you …,” as seen in the Gospel of Matthew.
© OneLife Ministries. Feb 9, 2010.
* * *
*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.
|
