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Lenten Devotionals 2009
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, the writer hopes persons of other faiths find inspiration here. Indeed, "God" can be whatever image helps you trust in the Sacred, by whatever means Grace 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...
I am One with all others
I am a channel of Grace
I am surrounded by God
I am filled with Christ
I am touched by the Holy Spirit
I am a Light to the world
I receive Love, Joy, and Peace
I am given Guidance, just when I need it
I walk confidently in this world
I share faith in Good by my way of being among others
Whatever I need, is coming to me
I do not have to strive, but can relax and wait patiently
The persons meant to be in my life, are coming to me
I do not have to compromise my calling or values for anyone
The teachings I need, are coming to me
The inner Teacher is teaching me
She will teach me in the ways She decides best for me
No loss from my past can hold me back
All I need say, when I do not know the next step, is "Help"
God will use me, in such surrender,
in ways I never dreamed possible
Others feel this when around me,
So, they know God can so use them, too
The whole world is a sanctuary
I can stop anywhere, breathe mindfully, and say,
"Hello, Christ, good to be with you"
Amen.
*Brian K. Wilcox
LISTENING TO THE SCRIPTURES
That's why we live with such good cheer. You won't see us drooping our heads or dragging our feet! Cramped conditions here don't get us down. They only remind us of the spacious living conditions ahead. It's what we trust in but don't yet see that keeps us going. Do you suppose a few ruts in the road or rocks in the path are going to stop us? When the time comes, we'll be plenty ready to exchange exile for homecoming.
*2 Corinthians 5.6-8 (MSG)
RECEIVING SACRED TEACHING
Let us seek to fathom those things that are fathomable and reserve those things which are unfathomable for reverence in quietude."
*Goethe. In Leslie D. Weatherhead. The Christian Agnostic.
Would you like to tell an ant of the ways of the human world, and the galaxies that adorn this universe? How much capacity would the ant have to know such? Are you and I not the ant before the Immensity of God?
Could it be that Lent is a season to question our certainties? No, not to live in helpless cynicism, to bow before a refusal to have faith. Rather, to be cleansed, in preparation for Easter, to celebrate a Life that releases us to hold to Hope without the burden of needing to argue with others and defend what are, after all, mysteries within the being of God Godself.
Possibly, Lent is calling you from your grasp of pious certainties to relax into a creaturely embrace of holy ignorance. Possibly, you are not ready for Easter, or Holy Week, until you surrender your felt-right to know more than you need and have a right to know of God.
Oh Freedom!
I do not know!
I do not know!
What bliss
In this I know
In this I know I am known
Release, blessed release!
To know, by faith, I do not have to know
Release into a Love to give the world
To Give, To Give, to Give myself
*Brian K. Wilcox
* * *
From beginning to end, all between, and endlessly, the spiritual Walk is by faith, not by sight. By trust, we are confident the Walk will continue beyond demise of the physical body.
All in Nature has cycles fitting its created being, and so do we. There are transformations, never endings of divine Process.
This principle of faithing presents a transcending guide to the spiritual Life: we cannot walk by sight. A literal reading of II Corinthians 5.7 is: "For we are always walking by faith, never by sight."
* * *
"God must have a reason for everything," said a woman, at a workshop, to Caroline Myss. Myss replied, "Really? Why?" The woman was confused; Myss' response scared her. She decided Myss was teasing her.
"Oh, come on, you know God does everything for a reason. I mean, how else could he run this universe? Nothing would make sense otherwise. We just have to have enough faith to figure out what those reasons are."
Myss looked at her. Myss writes: I ... realized she was under a spell, the enchantment of reason, and the God of reason. She relies on a God who orders this universe according to a map of very specific plans for every single person. Her adoration of reason was her means of counteracting the forces of random chaos or a more mechanical view of the universe and its natural systems."
Myss provided an apt reference to words of Dante in the Paradiso:
The senses [the mind] only can apprehend,
what then becomes fit for intellect.
And this is why the Bible condescends,
to human powers, assigning feet and hands
to God, but meaning something else instead.
*Entering the Castle.
* * *
Ironically, the early desert monks spoke little of God. They spoke of matters spiritual, but not with reference to God.
To many Jews, speaking the name of YHWH - often rendered LORD in English renditions - is not proper. They esteem too highly the mystery and greatness the name signifies.
"God" and mysteries of the Sacred have been so used, or over-used, that, today, these vital Realities have been transmuted into mute ideologies, staid dogmas, trifling pieties, churchy sermons, arty emails, and silly bumper stickers.
* * *
"No" to the claim of the woman above, and all who affirm her confession that we must understand what God is doing. We do not understand; we cannot understand. Even more, we have no need to know. Even more than that, we have no right to know.
Humbleness, indeed, rejoices not to know. Humbleness wishes not to eat at the banquet of the claimers to know. Humbleness would rather, truly, feel and live what he or she cannot know, and if he or she did know, would not dare tell.
Indeed, beware of the wolves walking about in the sheep garb of certainty. Those who easily and lightly speak of God and the mysteries of Sacredness. Those who too readily want to be the guide of God-things to others.
Rather, be drawn to those who have a humble mind and lowly heart. Their heart adores and loves their Love. Their mind dares not enter where only a loving faith can prostrate in surrender of mind, and all, to Grace.
* * *
Is God, for example, a Trinity? Yes. Yet, God is, also, Infinity. That we know God as Three does that exclude God being more - Four, Five, Six, ..., does it? Do you have the humbleness to admit even what is true of God is, nevertheless, possibly true for being part of a more whole Truth? Would you, then, be careful not to make as the fullness of Truth what is wholly truth in part only?
Do you have the lowliness to hush at the boundaries of where all thought leads - the Mystery? Do you have the humbleness to cease speaking so confidently of God, and dare, rather, to speak as much of being Grace for others, and to welcome that Love more fully into your life - even though it baffles you more than consoles you? Or is it that the instruction of Wisdom is to descend from the mind into the heart, and not a heart of feely affections, but a heart of reaching out to give God, and learn more to be silent about God?
* * *
I wonder what Jesus must think of us his preachers and teachers. We who so eloquently and readily speak of His Father, as though we know so much. Possibly, we should rather speak more like many holy men and women long ago - about how to love God and others, and know God in our unknowing, not our sacral and traditional certainties.
Yes, one ounce of honest bafflement before Mystery is worth more than an ocean of consoling certainties that have no touch of the humility of the mind and the adoring of the heart that is in essence the walk of faith in this world.
* * *
Yet, this leads us to the crux of those who refuse to trust what they cannot prove empirically about faith. Yet, these same persons use gadgets daily, trusting them, never knowing how or why they work. Many of these persons are not seeking faith; they, rather, use "proof" to escape faith. They are inimical to faith. Yet, ironically, their faith is in reason, nothing more. These persons are proud, trusting intellect, and human at that, as the ultimate arbiter of truth; yet, they have never proven that reason itself is the final arbiter of truth.
* * *
Last, truth cannot be interpreted as only that which we find edifying or consoling to us. Indeed, truth may be much harder, often, on us and our lives than untruth. That which we claim to know of God can never be our servant, we must be subject to the claims of truth upon us, whatever the cost. So, holy ignorance is not an out to close our eyes to that which challenges us to embrace a truth that might appear to be painful to accept and other than consoling to our desires.
QUIETLY RESPONDING
What does it mean to know by unknowing? Have you ever had a sense of inner certainty about Spiritual Reality that you could not experience as reasonable in the usual sense of that word?
* * *
*OneLife Ministries is a ministry of Brian K. Wilcox, of SW Florida. Brian lives a vowed life and with his two dogs, Bandit Ty and St. Francis. Brian is an ecumenical spiritual leader, open to how Christ manifests in the diversity of Christian denominations and varied religious-spiritual traditions. He is 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.
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