|
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.
You are invited to join Brian at his fellowship group on Facebook. The group is called OneLife Ministries – An Interspiritual Contemplative Fellowship. Hope to see you there. Blessings.
Scripture
1What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Don’t they come from the evil desires at war within you? 2 You want what you don’t have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can’t get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them. Yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it. 3 And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure.
*James 3.1-3, NLT
Spiritual Teaching
Mulla Nasrudin saw a crowd gathered around a pond. A Moslem priest, with a huge turban on his head, had fallen into the water and was calling out, "Help! Help!" People were leaning over, calling, "Give me your hand, Reverend! Give me your hand!" But the priest didn't pay attention; he kept wrestling with the water and shouting for help.
Mulla Nasrudin stepped forward: "Let me handle this." He stretched out his hand to the priest and shouted, "Take my hand!" The priest grabbed the hand of Mulla and was hoisted out of the pond. People, surprised, asked Mulla for the secret of his strategy. "It's very simple," he replied. "I know this miser wouldn't give anything to anyone. So, instead of saying, 'Give me your hand,' I said, 'Take my hand,' and sure enough he took it."
*Story told by Massud Farzan; www.spiritual-short-stories.com .
* * *
Greed is a ruthless dark passion that can talk hold of you with the force of a tsunami. It is a dark passion that every person has to confront, and it has many forms, ... Some people are greedy for money, but then there is power, fame, authority, attention - ... Greed is a form of insanity. There is never "enough" for the greedy, because greed is not logical.
*Caryline Myss. Defy Gravity.
* * *
We do not overcome greed; we transform greed. We convert greed with generosity, for greed is the dark side of generosity. Greed is an absence, like evil generally, not a positive reality. Greed is the absence of generosity - which is an expression of Love. Finally, then, greed is an absence of Love. With even one act of generosity - be it a thought or deed -, we are transforming greed into generosity, we are being and becoming more Loving.
Responding
Is there an area in your life in which you are clinging and need to let go and practice generosity? What are different ways you can practice generosity, other than giving money?
* * *
*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.
|
