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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 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.
Today's Scripture
O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
*Psalm 63.1, ESV
Spiritual Teaching
The whole being of the Psalmist was consumed with yearning for God. He sings “my soul thirsts...” and “my flesh faints...”. Such was his immense love for the Divine Presence. He knew this God on personal terms: “my God,” “I seek you,” and “for you” twice.
This is no vague spirituality, no imprecise, esoteric metaphysics: both of which we can easily hide our hearts behind and from the invasion of Personal Grace. This is devotion, a devotion of intense Love and intimacy.
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Jesus personalizes this intimacy, likewise, and the longing for it. In the Gospel of John, Jesus speaks to our innate spiritual ache: “On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, 'If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink'” (John 7.37, ESV). This book and passage arises from a community that had enjoyed the spiritual satisfaction of Christ as living water for many years after the life of Jesus on earth. So, this is personal testimony to Grace found in an intimate knowledge of Christ, through the Holy Spirit in the individual Christian and faith community. Again, we are not allowed a vague out, one that we can intellectualize. The Infinite takes form before us, in Person.
This intimacy is so intimate, the unknown author of the English mystical classic The Cloud of Unknowing could write of contemplative prayer: “And thus you will bind everything together, and in a wonderful way, worship God with Godself because that which you are you have from God and it is God, Godself.” (Ed., William Johnston. Adapted for Modern Readers.) In God, nothing of God is apart from God, and, so, yearning returned to God is returning God to God, even as the yearning is God giving God.
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February 12, 1944, Anne Frank, then age 13, wrote the following words. This is now part of her famous diary, The Diary of Anne Frank (Pan, 1968):
Today the sun is shining, the sky is a deep blue, there is a lovely breeze and I am longing – so longing – for everything. To talk, for freedom, for friends, to be alone.
And I do so long … to cry! I feel as if I am going to burst, and I know that it would get better with crying; but I can't, I'm restless, I go from room to room, breathe through the crack of a closed window, feel my heart beating, as if it is saying, “can't you satisfy my longing at last?”
I believe that it is spring within me, I feel that spring is awakening. I feel it in my whole body and soul. It is an effort to behave normally, I feel utterly confused. I don't know what to read, what to write, what to do, only know that I am longing.
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Catholic spiritual theologian Ronald Rolheiser, in his Forgotten among the Lillies, speaks to the longing Frank refers to. He writes: “There is in all of us, at the very center of our lives, a tension, an aching, a burning in the heart that is insatiable, nonquietable and very deep.” Rolheiser titled the chapter in which this is found: “Longing Is Our Spiritual Lot.”
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Longing is our spiritual destiny. This longing we seek to fulfill in many ways. Yet, finally, the longing, by spiritual law, can only be met with its likeness, its source. This is to say we trace the longing back to the One who Created it. Indeed, the longing is a reflection and witness to the Source of us all.
This longing is itself the Voice of God. Do you wish to hear God? Listen to your insatiable inner longing, listen to that ache nothing has satisfied, and nothing on earth can satisfy. Stop seeking to fill that voice for a little, be silent, and feel the longing.
Our longing is, likewise, our prayer. The longing in us for Spiritual Fulfillment is both the Voice of God and our return voice. Stop, be quiet, and let your longing itself be the inarticulate reply to God.
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This longing in my life was a factor that lead me to publish An Ache for Union: Oneness with God through Love. In this book, through the prayer poem “Always Yearned,” I say:
I've always yearned for You,
even when a little child;
I seem to have been born
with this ache for Union.
Do You remember when, a seeking teenager, alone,
I went into the woods, among a sanctuary of pines,
a longing face prostrated to the bare ground,
ardently seeking to be lost in Your Presence.
Later in the poem, I refer to the metaphor of nakedness as complete openness to the Spirit of the Beloved:
I have only, always, from all time and before,
longed to know You, naked,
unclothed of all this surrounding beauty
and what I have been taught is true.
Our longing is honest baring of our total selves to the Divine Love. This matches the honest openness of the Spirit to us. In this absolute trust, is Love. We long to be free, free to say, “God, here I am, as I am, fully loved as I am, and in You.” Jesus models this intimacy with the Abba, with the Father, for His followers. Amen.
Responding
1)Sit in silence. Feel your spiritual yearning. Recognize it as the Voice of God to you. Recognize it as your reply to God.
2)Write a poem to the Divine Presence, expressing your longing to know God more deeply, more fully. Or, write a Love letter to God, expressing the same desire.
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*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.
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