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Easter 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
Ecumenical Pastor-Teacher, Author, Workshop Leader,
Spiritual Counselor, Chaplain
OPENING PRAYER
Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labor to admit you, but O, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
but is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy.
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again;
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor even chaste, expect you ravish me.
*John Donne. "Holy Sonnet XIV."
LISTENING TO THE SCRIPTURES
7Right away they saw what they had done, and they realized they were naked. Then they sewed fig leaves together to make something to cover themselves. 8Late in the afternoon a breeze began to blow, and the man and woman heard the LORD God walking in the garden. They were frightened and hid behind some trees. 9The LORD called out to the man and asked, "Where are you?"
*Genesis 3.7-9 (CEV)
RECEIVING SACRED TEACHING
The danger in not having the proper interiority (intimacy with God) and the personal moral fidelity ... is to end up turning Christianity into a philosophy, an ideology, and a moral code, but ultimately missing what Christianity is all about, a relationship with a real person.
*Ronald Rolheiser. The Holy Longing.
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When we speak of closeness to and with God, even in God, the Trinity provides a model. Knowing we are within God, we can appreciate the naturalness of intimacy with the Divine. This means it is un-natural to live outside experienced-intimacy with the Grace of Love:
The model of true intimacy is the Trinity. God is a Trinity of persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Therefore, our intimacy with God (and with each other) is ultimately a reflection of God's intimacy within the members of the Godhead. This means that intimacy is an essential part of the very nature of God and because we are made in His image, it is natural to us as well. This is why we are capable of intimacy with others and with God. It is in our nature.
*www.carm.org . Writers Matt Slick et al.
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Our Genesis passage shows us a Personal Presence, One who seeks us out. This One longs for us to be reconciled to Grace.
So, our personality comes from the Divine. Within personality is the capacity for the personality of God, and our personality is a mirror of God. Look in the eyes of anyone, you look into God.
Why would this One long for reconciliation with us? Feel such as our separation from Love? For our separation is within God, and our reconciliation is within God.
Such is our intimacy with the Divine that nothing we experience can be outside God. All in us, is in God. Yet, not all within God is within us. For God is the Whole, we are the part.
Our urge for Union is evidence that we are longed for, for our longing springs from the Presence yearning for us to be in the oneness that God is in God.
"Where are you?" - words still addressed to us, to the extent that we are not in Union with God. "Where are you?" arises as an ache to return to the Harmony from which we all were born to return to our Home.
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There is a peace that passeth understanding;
There is a joy the world can never know;
There is a light~you will not find it burning
On any land or sea where'er you go.
This joy of mine is not of earthly making,
Though you might find it in the sunset's blush;
Above the noise and din of human striving
There is a Presence and holy hush!
*Ralph Spalding Cushman. "The Presence." A Pocket Prayer and Devotional Guide.
Blessings!
Rev Dr Brian K. Wilcox
Monday the First, Easter Season
April 13, 2009
QUIETLY RESPONDING
1) Do you tend to view closeness with God natural to you or not? Explain.
2) Do you have times when you sense you have lost felt-connection with the Spirit? What is that like for you? What might be causes of such loss of felt-connection? How might such times of spiritual aridity draw you closer to Grace?
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*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.
*The Donne poem is from www.poetseers.com .
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