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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 wisdom paths will find inspiration here.
Blessings,
Brian Kenneth Wilcox
MDiv, MFT, PhD
Interspiritual Teacher, Author
You are invited to join Brian at his fellowship group on Facebook. The group is called OneLife Ministries – A Contemplative Interspiritual Fellowship.
QUOTE
Suffering and good fortune equally provide opportunity to grow more deeply in Christlikeness, to fall more deeply in Love with the Wonderful Presence. All we need to do is offer our reality to Christ, to the Holy Spirit, and this is a most unselfish act when in true humility and willingness to rejoice and hurt like all other persons – fully in Love, fully willing to accept our life as a gift to be given back to the One who gave it to us.
*Brian Kenneth Wilcox
SPIRITUAL TEACHING
A woman in great distress over the death of her son came to the Master for comfort. He listened to her patiently while she poured out her tale of woe.
Then he said softly: “I can not wipe away your tears, my dear. I can only teach you how to make them holy.”
*Anthony de Mello
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This week I spoke with a father and mother who had their 17-year-old son to die just before this past Christmas. There were no symptoms that he was sick. He died in his sleep, apparently never waking up. The parents are struggling to deal with this great loss.
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We cannot protect ourselves or our loved ones, anyone, from all possible tragedy. Persons religiously and spiritually arrive at neat explanations for tragedy and positive experiences; these become fashionable cliches. Some speak of “God's will.” Others speak of “karma.” Another will refer to a lesson to learn in the school of life. These persons fail to look at reality and say, “These things just happen. They are part of being alive.”
Tragedy and good fortune are simply part of life. We do not need to find an over-all “spiritual” theory. Such reasoning becomes circular: “Well, God had a purpose,” “Well, that's due to bad karma.” Why all these metaphysical explanations? Good fortune happens to everyone; everyone, sooner or later, undergoes some tragedy. We were born, we will die.
I choose rather to make holy all my experience. This means to devote it as consecrated, made holy, or sacred, to the Divine One. This, to me, is much better than declaring some simplistic answer for everything that happens.
Yes, tears are tears. We will have some tears of sadness. We will have some tears of joy. Sometimes, our tears will be a mix of both. If we hallow our tears, no tears will be wasted, but each tear will serve the purposes of Grace and in union with the Wonderful Presence.
© OneLife Ministries. Feb 16, 2010.
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*The de Mello story derives from www.soulwise.net .
*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.
*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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