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Easter Season 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
LISTENING TO THE SCRIPTURES
"Love will never become obsolete."
*I Corinthians 13.8a (VNT)
RECEIVING SACRED TEACHING
A Dr. Albert Palmer was minister of Central Union Church, Honolulu, Hawaii. While serving there he oversaw a massive building project for their church. Just before completion the architect asked Palmer to provide him an inscription to be put high above the pulpit and communion table.
"I want you to give me a text of no more than sixteen letters or spaces to fit in that particular space," he said. Palmer pondered on what would have the right number of letters and be appropriate for all occasions. The inscription would have to be apply at weddings and funerals, worship services and baptisms, and for every season of the year. And since Hawaii is a place where many races meet, it would have to speak to people of all backgrounds - Hawaiian, Korean, Portuguese, Filipino, Chinese, Japanese, American.... Palmer chose these sixteen letters and spaces; Love Never Fails.
*Contributed by Jeremy Houck. www.sermoncentral.com .
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Many persons would recall our Scripture from the reading, "Love never fails" (KJV). Other readings are: "[L]ove will last forever!" (NLT), "Love never ends" (NCV), "Love never comes to an end" (NJB), "Charity falleth never down" (Wycliffe), "Love never dies" (MSG), and "Charity never falleth away" (DAR).
The Wycliffe rendition is a literal rendering, as the verb is used for falling downward from a higher place, and for falling down to worship. The intent of the verb in the text is Love - from agape, Divine Love - will never become obsolete, never cease. Love is death-less; full of Life. Love is Life-ing every creature, every moment.
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There are three traits to mystical faith in Christ Jesus, that validate such as truly spiritual and purely Christian. I will share these, and relate them to the Divine Love.
These traits differentiate from impostors of true in-Christ spiritual Prayer, impostors to mystical Prayer, given by the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing.
And now we come to the difference between the contemplative work and its counterfeits such as daydreaming, fantasizing, or subtle reasoning. These originate in a conceited, curious, or romantic mind whereas the blind stirring of love springs from a sincere and humble heart. Pride, curiosity, and daydreaming must be sternly checked if the contemplative work is to be authentically conceived in singleness of heart.
*Edited by William Johnston.
So, let us show three traits marking mystical prayer - or Pure Prayer - in the Logos, or Christ, from other non-prayer and prayer.
1) Blind.
In Pure Prayer the self does not know how to pray - he or she has been drawn beyond all methods of praying, into Being. Be-ing with Be-ing becomes prayer. So, while a method may assist toward Pure Prayer, contemplation is not a method or the result or reward of a method - a how.
"Blind" means you do not - cannot - see. You do not see the way - or the why - in this Prayer. The darkness is Divine Darkness, so full of the Knowledge of God the mind, depending on thought, and emotion, relying on feelings, cannot "see."
What keeps one facing to this darkness, in Pure Prayer? The will. You lightly, gently place will in attentive surrender.
2) Stirring.
There is in the Quiet a stirring that leads one to Peace, and arises at varying intensity within Quiet. This stirring comes from the Spirit in union with the soul - though you cannot see - fathom - the how or why: from God within the essence of self.
A mark of Pure Prayer is it arises from God. Such comes from the soul. This does not arise from mind, or from affections.
Pure Prayer is the stirring of Grace in the soul, from God and to God. The offering of God of Godself and the self-giving of self are in union - in expressible oneness of Loving.
Indeed, you might begin to seek Pure Prayer by the unrest of a stirring. You seek beyond conventional, devotional faith. A stirring arises for more, something you have not found in the forms of conventional religious faith and its groups.
God offers you something they are not offering you. God is offering you Pure Prayer - more of Godself, for God wills to give all of God to you. And, being in the image of God, you will not be content with less than more and more of God - that is, unless you are narcotized by conventional faith or pure rebellion against God-giving-Godself in Love.
God keeps giving, even where forms of conventional faith say "No more." God never lives only within the boundaries of a faith, a way, or a conception of any kind, religious or otherwise.
3) Love.
What stirs to the deeper experience of God, of Life, in Pure Be-ing with Be-ing? Love. This is the Love never ending. This is the Love personal, not only an attribute of God, but God.
Therefore, since Love is the singular Be-ing behind all various creations, in Love is unification with Unity. And this is part of the healing of this Prayer: for in God our dispersed parts, energies, are reconciled gently and kindly.
It is the knowledge of the All of God that makes cherubim and seraphim to be flames of divine love. For where this All of God is truly known and felt in any creature, there its whole breath and spirit is a fire of love, nothing but a pure disinterested love can arise in it or come from it, a love that begins and ends in God. And where this love is born in any creature, there a seraphic life is born along with it. For this pure love introduces the creature into the All of God; all that is in God is opened in the creature, it is united with God and has the life of God manifested in it.
*William Law. The Spirit of Prayer. In Stephen Hobhouse. Selected Mystical Writings of William Law.
NOTE: See, there is a "feeling" with this Pure Prayer. Yet, the feeling is not of the typical: the feeling is a feeling of the spiritual Life - a spiritualized feeling -, with its Qualities, arising from what Law terms All of God.
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Therefore, the one confessing Christ need not fear Pure Prayer, need not fear passing into the brightness of this experience of Christ, an experience beyond human capacities.
So, we can apply the above traits to the question - Is Pure Prayer for me, a follower of Jesus Christ? To answer this we can ask three questions deriving directly from our three points above, and a final one.
1) Does this Praying lead me to what thought and emotions cannot know of God - seeing God is the creator of and, so, beyond both?
2) Does this Quiet Be-ing with God arise from the Grace of God stirring me to unrest and longing for more of God than I have known and experienced of God?
3) Is God-as-Love, moving me to love God more, and others more, through a deeper experience of the Presence of God, as met in Jesus Christ?
4) Is this urge to Pure Prayer an expression of my desire to know Christ more, so as to share that experience of the Love of Christ in more gracious, loving service to others?
If the above conditions are met, then Prayer is Christian. We have no fear of entering the Divine Darkness to know the Love of Christ more.
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This Life for the true, spiritual Christian is literally the life of Christ born in the heart now and, thus, is experience of the graces of Heaven, for Jesus Christ is Heaven spiritually to the follower of Jesus in this life:
[B]e of good cheer, for the meekness, the love, the heart, the Lamb of God is become man [and woman], has set Himself in the birth of thy own life, that in Him and with him and by a birth from Him Heaven and Paradise may be again opened both within thee and without thee, not for a time but to all eternity.
*William Law. The Spirit of Prayer. In Stephen Hobhouse. Selected Mystical Writings of William Law.
QUIETLY RESPONDING
1) In what ways in the past have you discerned a "stirring" to a deeper life in Christ? Deeper prayer life? Deeper way of praying? What has been your response(s)?
2) Have you ever yearned for something more in your following Christ, something you could not name but your heart ached to receive? Have you sought this in other relationships, to be left disappointed that he or she, or they, did not - or could not - give it?
3) Is the faith community you belong to aptly leading persons to a deeper experience of God in Christ? Explain how, if so? If not, how might it do this better?
4) Have you had any experience of God that passed quickly, and mystified you? Left you afraid? Left you saddened it passed so quickly?
5) How does the opening story relate to Pure Prayer?
Blessings!
Rev Dr Brian K. Wilcox
Tuesday the Second, Easter Season
April 21, 2009
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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.
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