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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. While it focuses on Christian teaching, I pray persons of varied faiths will find inspiration here. Indeed, "God" can be whatever image helps us trust in the Sacred, by whatever means Grace touches us each. Please share this ministry with others, and I hope you return soon. There is a new offering daily. And to be placed on the daily OneLife email list, to request notifications of new writings or submit prayer requests, write to barukhattah@embarqmail.com .
Blessings,
Rev Dr Brian K Wilcox, MDiv, MFT, PhD
Pastor-Teacher, Author, Workshop Leader, Spiritual Counselor, Chaplain
Brian encourages support of the 4-Star Christian organization Compassion, which supports children worldwide; for more see www.compassion.com .
OPENING PRAYER
I will not die an unlived life.
I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible,
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance;
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit.
*Dawna Markova. "Fully Alive." See www.worldprayers.org .
LISTENING TO THE SCRIPTURE
11Never give up. Eagerly follow the Holy Spirit and serve the Lord. 12Let your hope make you glad. Be patient in time of trouble and never stop praying. 13Take care of God's needy people and welcome strangers into your home.
*Romans 12.11-13(CEV)
RECEIVING SACRED TEACHING
Meditation is almost all contained in this one idea: the idea of awakening our interior self and attuning ourselves inwardly to the Holy Spirit, so that we will be able to respond to His grace. In mental prayer, over the years, we must allow our interior perceptivity to be refined and purified. We must attune ourselves to unexpected movements of grace, which do not fit our preconceived ideas of the spiritual life at all, and which in no way flatter our own ambitious aspirations.
Note: Mental Prayer is an interior praying midway between vocal prayer and contemplation. We can call Mental Prayer by Meditative Prayer.
*Thomas Merton. Spiritual Direction and Meditation.
Science is showing that you and I are crafted with astonishing precision so that we can, on occasion, peer into a spiritual world and know God. The language of our genes, the chemistry of our bodies, and the wiring of our brains - these are the handiwork of One who longs to be known. And rather than dispel the spiritual, science is cracking it open for all to see. ... We have all about us the fingerprints of God.
*Barbara Bradley Hagerty. Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality.
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In Fingerprints of God, Barbara Bradley Hagerty, tells of a prayer experiment, one among others. A Scott McDermott prayed in a brain scanner, as others did, to test the behavior of the brain during prayer.
A scientist, Andy Newberg, found the results undramatic. But, he found them a little surprising. McDermott's frontal lobes decreased in activity, and the parietal lobes increased. This means the brain acted, in the context of the other experiments, more like a Pentecostal than a Contemplative.
Hagerty says she was not surprised by this. For McDermott had described his prayer as "dialogical." That is, prayer for him was more a conversation, not a sinking into mystical Silence.
McDermott described his praying. He said, "When I'm praying for people, I'm just trying to hear God, and flow with God's heart toward that person. I don't feel a loss of myself at all."
Two matters of import here. First, McDermott is describing a specific form of prayer: intercessory. Second, the brain acts differently during different ways of prayer.
* * *
In the study there was an asymmetrical shift in the thalamus. The thalamus - really, there are two of them - is a tiny part that takes in sights, sounds, and other sensory information - except for smell - and directs the data to other parts of the brain. This asymmetry is rare, and it occurred in each of the test subjects - each deeply committed to prayer. The only like cases have been in persons with neurological damage caused by seizures or tumors.
Newberg does not know if the asymmetry in the thalamus leads to persons being spiritually inclined more than other persons, or spiritual practice shapes the asymmetry - Could it be both?-. Hagerty comes to her firm conclusion, that the finding offers additional proof that spiritual brains are special.
Hagerty offers hope for all persons to shape the brain into a more spiritual functioning. She writes:
But wait - good news is at hand for [persons] who are not graced with naturally mystical brains. If we are willing to pay the price of admission, we, too, can tune up our brains and go to spiritual destinations we never imagined. Why? Because our brains are plastic [that is, shape-able].
* * *
Science is showing, in my estimation, our brains are designed for us to experience God through prayer. We may interpret God differently, and the brain itself does not care; still, we are experiencing Something we can call the Sacred, or God.
Whatever way we pray, we will find that in true, spiritual Prayer we sense a shift in consciousness. This is rooted in, or comes through, the brain. I see this in persons who take my prayer classes. After only two to three weeks of twice-daily meditation - of a particular form and time period-, persons start telling about positive changes in them, and positive changes others around them see in them.
If you want to shape your physiology to a deeper experience of the Sacred - allowing Spirit to more fully penetrate, or grace, consciousness -, then, there is one thing you must do. You must make prayer a consistent, daily priority.
St. Paul encouraged the Church. He spoke: "Be patient in time of trouble and never stop praying." Could it be that part of the wisdom of our needing times of trouble is that during such times we move to a deeper experience of prayer - and this is a spiritual communion with the Divine Presence?
QUIETLY RESPONDING
Define what you mean by prayer? On a scale one to ten, ten being highest in dedication, what might be your commitment to daily prayer? Does your commitment to prayer reflect well what you say is the importance of prayer?
Blessings!
Rev Dr Brian K Wilcox
May 27, 2009
barukhattah@embarqmail.com
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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 . Also, Brian is on Facebook: search Brian Kenneth Wilcox.
*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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