|
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 hope 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 please 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 briankwilcox@yahoo.com .
Blessings,
Brian Kenneth Wilcox MDiv, MFT, PhD
Interspiritual Pastor-Teacher, Author, Workshop Leader,
Spiritual Counselor, and Chaplain.
Brian encourages support of the 4-Star Christian organization Compassion, which supports children worldwide; see www.compassion.com .
Prayer
Help me to be silent, Blessed Holy Spirit, so I can hear the Word addressed to me, from the depths of my soul. I am willing to set aside regular times for this Quietude. Teach me, My Love, to listen more, and speak less. Amen.
Quote
The religious life exists and thrives not in buildings or dead things or flowers or beasts but in the soul. And there it exists not as a "good feeling" but as a constant purpose, an unending love that expresses itself now as patience, now as humility, now as courage, now as self-denial, now as justice, but always in a strong knot of faith and hope, and all of these are nothing but aspects of one constant deep desire, charity, love.
*The Secular Journal. April 8, 1941. 190.
Song
Michael W. Smith. "My Place In This World"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dzst4XavuQ&feature=related
Spiritual Teaching
A legend may never have been, if the Trappist, Thomas Merton had not suffered rejection in his first attempt to join a religious order. Merton appealed to join the Franciscans. He was rejected. Why? Among possibilities: he had fathered a child, his recent conversion, perhaps what one of Merton's biographers terms his sense of his own unfittness . Regardless, Merton, upset, sought comfort in a Capuchin church in Manhattan (Daniel Mott. The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton).
Merton's confessor was harsh on him. Merton spoke, "The priest, probably judging that I was some emotional and unstable and stupid character, began to tell me in very strong terms that I certainly did not belong in the monastery, still less in the priesthood and, in fact, gave me to understand that I was simply wasting his time and insulting the Sacrament of Penance by indulging my self-pity in his confessional." Merton emerged from this in tears.
Still, with calm and freedom, Merton accepted the decision and returned to work with friars at St. Bonaventure. He started teaching and, despite the Franciscan rejection, he increasingly continued to be drawn to living as if he were in a religious order.
Months later, Merton recalled a friend mentioning a monastery, of the Trappist order, in the Kentucky hills, Our Lady of Gethsemane.
Merton arrived at the monastery late one night. He was greeted by the porter, or doorkeeper. He got a blunt query: "Have you come here to stay?"
Merton was terrified at the question. He wrote: "It sounded too much like the voice of my own conscience."
The porter replied, "What's the matter? Why can't you stay? Are you married or something?"
"No," said Merton, "I have a job."
Yet, as soon as Merton stepped into the halls of the monastery it was clear where he had arrived. He penned: "I felt a deep, deep silence in the night, and of peace, and of holiness enfold me like love, like safety."
The embrace of it, the silence! I had entered into solitude that was an impregnable fortress. And the silence that enfolded me, spoke to me, and spoke louder and more eloquently than any voice, and in the middle of the quiet, clean-smelling room, with the moon pouring out its peacefulness in through the open window, with the warm night air, I realized truly whose house that was, O glorious Mother of God!
* * *
More than once, I have been judged un-fit by major Christian groups. I left the Southern Baptist in the mid-90s, but not before the fundamentalist were pressuring the college leadership to rid themselves of this, in their estimation, too open-minded young professor.
Just months ago, after serving The United Methodist Church, the same thing happened. A committee withdrew my license, saying they affirmed my calling and gifts, but did not feel I fit in the pastorate of The United Methodist Church.
* * *
Sometimes we would fit, but the systems are already so calcified in their own and old ways. God may use a person or group to say we need to find where we do fit. Sometimes the one who rejects you is giving you a blessing.
* * *
If you are seeking a place in this world to use your passion and gifts, and have been rejected, that may well be God nudging you in another direction. I truly believe we each have a place to use the graces God has given us, and sometimes it might simply take a little time for events to converge to get us to that new place.
Life Merton, we can rightly grieve rejection. We can be frustrated in our waiting for the place our heart longs for. Yet, like Merton, we can find ourselves, sooner or later, in a place that matches our soul. In the waiting, like Merton, we can intensify our devotions and spiritual practices, being faithful while we wait for all the things that must converge to bring us to our place to serve, the place we truly fit. Amen.
Responding
1) Have you been rejected in your attempt to offer service to a group? What was that like? How did it turn out for you?
2) Are you confident you fit where you are? Or are you trying to make it fit, rather than seek where you do fit? What would be your motives for staying where you do not fit to express your gifts and personality?
3) How does the song "My Place In This World" resonate with your experience?
Link - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dzst4XavuQ&feature=related
4) Do you know someone who is struggling to find the place to fit? How might you encourage him or her?
5) Merton refused to allow the priest to diverge him from his calling. Have you ever had to believe in your calling, when another or others pressed you to abandon it, thinking you unfit for it? If so, what was that like for you?
* * *
*OneLife Ministries is a ministry of Brian Kenneth Wilcox, SW Florida. Brian lives a vowed life and with his two dogs, Bandit Ty and St. Francis, with friends and under a vow of simplicity. Brian is an ecumenical-interspiritual leader, who chooses not to identify with any group, and renounces all titles of sacredness that some would apply to him, but seeks to be open to how Christ manifests in the diversity of Christian denominations and varied religious-spiritual traditions. He affirms that all spiritual paths lead ultimately back to Jesus Christ. 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 briankwilcox@yahoo.com . Also, Brian is on Facebook: search Brian Kenneth Wilcox.
*Contact the above email to book Brian for preaching, Spiritual Direction, retreats, workshops, animal blessing services, house blessings, or other spiritual requests. You can order his book An Ache for Union from major booksellers.
|
