|
Lenten Devotionals 2009
Welcome to OneLife Ministries. This site is designed to lead you prayerfully into a heart experience of the Presence of God, Who is Love. While it focuses on Christian teaching, the writer hopes persons of other faiths will find inspiration here, also. Indeed, "God" can be whatever image helps you trust in the Sacred, by whatever means that touches you. Please share this ministry with others, and I hope you return soon. There is a new offering daily.
Blessings,
Rev Dr Brian K Wilcox
Pastor-Teacher, Author, Workshop Leader,
Spiritual Counselor, Chaplain
PRAYERFUL ENTERING
Let the following affirmation be preparation for entering into the Inner Sanctuary of the Heart of Hearts...
Christ within me
Christ around me
Christ above me
Christ below me
Christ through me
Your body, I am
Your voice, I am
Your hands, I am
Your feet, I am
Your mind, I am
Your heart, I am
To give
To receive
To love
To be loved
Always, everywhere
We are One, In Love
*Brian K. Wilcox
LISTENING TO THE SCRIPTURES
5You, LOVE, are all I want!
You are my choice,
and you keep me safe.
6You make my life pleasant,
and my future is bright.
7I praise you, LOVE,
for being my guide.
Even in the darkest night,
your teachings fill my mind.
*Psalm 16.5-7 (CEV), Italics Adapted
RECEIVING SACRED TEACHING
A David McCasland tells of a woman with a stalled car. The hood was up. She flagged McCasland down. "I can't get it started," she spoke, "but if you jiggle the wire on the battery, I think it will work."
McCasland grabbed the positive battery cable. It came off in his hand. The cable was too loose. "The terminal needs to be tightened up," he informed her. "I can fix it if you have some tools."
"My husband says to just jiggle the wire," she said. "It always works. Why don't you just try that?" McCasland paused, wondering why her husband did not ride around town with her, so he would be available when the wire needed jiggling.
He spoke, "Ma'am, if I jiggle the wire, you're going to need someone else to do it every time you shut the engine off. If you'll give me two minutes and a wrench, we can solve the problem, and you can forget about it."
Reluctantly, she fumbled under the front seat. Then, she handed McCasland a crescent wrench through the window. As he tightened the battery terminal, it occurred to McCasland how many times he had tried to get a "quick fix" from God. "I have this problem, Lord, and if You'll just jiggle the wire, things will be OK. I'm in a hurry, so let's just get me going again the quickest way possible."
As the lady drove away with her tightened terminal, McCasland stopped. He asked God to say "No!" the next time he would ask God just to jiggle a wire.
*"Available Power," www.holwick.com. "One To Grow On." Power For Living. Contributed by Rev. Wayne Rouse.
* * *
Searching for many sources of support is a sign of our growth, a sign that we are continuing on our journey. ... Open your heart to the living universe. Open your heart to Divine love. ... Know that if you can't get what you need from one person or place, it is because the universe has something or someone better for your needs and your growth.
*Melody Beattie. Journey to the Heart. May 28,
"Let the Universe Support You."
* * *
What we call a problem is often a divine opportunity, a God-Invitation, to a deeper, more meaningful life. We have clung to an old way of being, a limiting pattern, a space of action and serving too small for our soul, our Purpose.
Our heritage becomes too small for what our soul is yearning to be and do - and being and doing always go together. The heritage once fit well. No more. All our experience has led to a moment of letting go and moving on. We can honor those persons and events of the past - even persons we thought enemies and events we felt unfair - that the Universe used to prepare us for this present sacral transition.
As soul capacity expands, as consciousness emerges, we may be led to a larger venue of living and work. This larger venue may be a move physically, or simply in a direction of service.
This is to state a truth of Spiritual Life. The truth is: When we evolve within our selves, necessarily this shifts all our other relationships to person and place, thought and action.
Yet, if we resist the move, we incur suffering. Imagine your essence pressing against a wall, a boundary. We feel the pain of compressing our soul in its previous space.
* * *
The King James Version ends Psalm 16.6, "I have a goodly heritage." The Hebrew shaphar, for "goodly," is "to be fair, beautiful, good."
The heritage, a place, or space, of living, is spiritual, not just a physical location. Surrendering to the inner and outer place the Divine wills for us, our place in the Universe, and its ongoing changes over time, we will experience our life as a gift: and a beautiful one. If you are not enjoying the giftedness of your life, could it be you are cramping Life in too small a place? The choice is to stay, or not, in a lesser life, a less mature consciousness, a place too little for what Divinity wants for you.
* * *
Sometimes, to move on into a larger heritage, we need to do some clean up. This means releasing the past. The releasing means releasing our mistakes, how we have hurt others, how we have compromised, the hurt we have known from others, ...
In our quick-fix, no delayed-gratification society, we are prone to try to move on without cleaning up. After all, "Why clean up a mess, when we can just leave it behind?" Well, we cannot just leave the mess behind. We cannot just give it to God and go on, either. This I tried, but realized only too late, after a divorce. When such a sacred contract is broken, regardless of who did what, there is always cleaning up work to do, and this can take months to years.
Actually, we need rituals of moving on. We need sacred rites, either with others are alone, to honor an ending and welcome in the freshness of a new beginning. After all, the two are one: ending, beginning.
Several years ago, a brief relationship ended in my life. I struggled to let it go. I, with a close friend, went to a creek of flowing, fresh water. I had an object representing the person. I took it, and with prayer, put it into the creek, letting it sink. I did it to honor her, my self, and to release her and invite the new life without her.
Think of this like a dark dungeon, tucked away below the light of your awareness. There are many cells, with bars. You walk into the dungeon, and you see, for example, persons and events from your past. Each is held in your dungeon, and each has a cell. We need to free each one, letting each go, so we, too, can go on. In freeing them, we free our selves.
* * *
What does the not letting go show? Well, it may show that you are trying to punish the past or a person from it. So, someone hurt you, and you want your pound of flesh. No, you would not admit this - you may think other persons have malice, but certainly not you - , but that image in the dungeon cell witnesses otherwise.
I woke up long before daylight, weeks after my divorce was final. I had been working alone to clean up that past and invite fresh beginnings. Also, I had been in counseling before and after the divorce. I had, however, stopped praying for my ex-wife, after praying for her daily for some time. I did this to detach emotionally. Yet, that morning, while in deep meditation, words of release arose for my ex-wife. I prayed for her children and her. In prayer for her, an energy exploded in my mind - that is the best I can do to intimate what occurred. This erupted blissfully in my mind. There was no personal boundary, indeed, no boundary, in my consciousness - though there was an "I" witnessing this.
See, we can use deep relaxation and meditation to work with words and images, and prayers, for releasing the past and inviting a new beginning. Indeed, often we can work with this at a level of the subliminal or suprasensual consciousness, before we can do so at the level of everyday ego consciousness.
* * *
Likewise, we may hold to the past hurt like memory trophies. We can come to have faith in loss. We can come to have no faith in freedom and gain. We believe everything we touch must become ashes. This faith in loss was affirmed as a truth in the following by Melody Beattie, but as an illusion we need to let go of in Love:
Stop believing in loss. Start believing in life.
Let the past slip away. Come gently into now.
*Journey to the Heart. May 29, "Let the Past Slip Away."
See, we will act out what we most believe in. And we can let the past slip away. We do not have to dishonor it, we do not have to push it away. We can simply, lovingly cherish its lessons and good times, and sense gently into the present. Then, we are here. And to clean up the past, we may have to make this gentle return into the present many times. Yet, with faith in life, we can grow to live in the present fully aware of life as gift we neither deserve nor un-deserve. Life becomes gift to us, purely gift. We neither have to say "I deserve this" nor "I don't deserve this."
* * *
This means releasing the beautiful of the life we have lived up to this point, also. We must let go of both the good and bad of the past, to move into the newness waiting us. Letting go of the good and its blessings may be as hard for us as letting go of the bad and its hurtfulness.
What is the good we may have to let go of? The enjoyment of a job we have had for a long time. A relationship with someone whom we have cherished: this can occur through a simple parting of ways, for our souls may lead us in different directions; through divorce, by death, ... Relationships that once urged our growth can come to hold us back. A way of thinking that once worked, we may come to see is incongruent with what we truly believe to be truth. Reliance on family: often an adult child must break a dependent relationship on the parental system or one parent to let go of the past. Attachment to a home and place we have been living in. A church we have attended for many years: I left, many years ago, the small pool of the sect I was born and educated in - I longed for and needed deeper, broader waters - my body and mind were showing it through illness. A sizable income - yes, that is right - Spirit may lead you to a more meaningful work, but one with a lesser, possibly much lesser, income.
Yet, we know what happens when we cling to such goods. These goods constrict us, limit our service, and, finally, the very things that brought blessing to us begin to block the flow of blessing into and through us. We close off to the blessing and resources of the Universe. We can live in poverty, right where we stubbornly stay, while we could shift a little and enjoy the wealth of Abundant Life.
I have witnessed in my life an odd point of Grace. This is that time when the Spirit wrenches my hands from what I have been clinging to. Yes, this happens after I have received several, or many, opportunities to let go and move on. Often physical and emotional symptoms have been the way the Universe spoke - or yelled "Let go!" Likewise, I have had relationship problems arise from my being stuck in the past.
Jesus speaks, in Luke 9.62, to the need, yes, the necessity, of our moving on, if we are to keep walking in Love: "Jesus said, 'No procrastination. No backward looks. You can't put God's kingdom off till tomorrow. Seize the day.'" (MSG).
QUIETLY RESPONDING
1) Look back over your life. Locate one time the Spirit led you from a smaller to a larger heritage. What was that like for you? How may that inform your journey now?
2) Is Spirit leading you to a new heritage? What is that? Is it a larger life within? A change outwardly? Both?
3) Is some fear holding you back from making a change to a new heritage? Name it. Pray about it, offering it to God. Pray to God for courage to do what you are being called to do.
4) Is there some clean up work you need to do about your past? How can you proceed to do that? Are you willing to do it?
* * *
*OneLife Ministries is a ministry of Brian K. Wilcox, of SW Florida. Brian is pastor at Christ Community United Methodist Church, Harbour Heights, FL, and Senior Chaplain for the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office, Punta Gorda, FL.
*Brian welcomes responses to his writings or submission of prayer requests at barukhattah@embarqmail.com .
*Contact the above email to book Brian for Spiritual Direction, retreats, or workshops. You can order his book An Ache for Union at major book dealers.
|
