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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
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
1 How beautiful you are, my love, how very beautiful! 3 Your lips are like a crimson thread, and your mouth is lovely. Your cheeks are like halves of a pomegranate behind your veil. 7 You are altogether beautiful, my love. 9 You have ravished my heart, you have ravished my heart with a glance of your eyes, with one jewel of your necklace. 10 How sweet is your love! how much better is your love than wine, and the fragrance of your oils than any spice! 11 Your lips distill nectar, honey is under your tongue.
16 Awake, O north wind, and come, O south wind! Blow upon my garden that its fragrance may be wafted abroad. Let my beloved come to his garden, and eat its choicest fruits.
*Song of Songs 4, NRSV
Spiritual Teaching
An outline of a Face
Traced in the dark
An astronomer cannot track that line
From star to star
All I can do is keep falling
And fall some more
The Moon keeps calling me to Herself
And night shrouds the gate to Paradise
With this bliss of Unknowing
This does not make sense:
“What a relief!”
God, you are so funny!
“Brian, thanks for noticing.”
—Brian K. Wilcox
Cynthia Bourgeault, in Love is Stronger than Death, shares on her soulmate relationship with a monk Rafe:
At any rate, this is the path I am walking, and the road map insofar as I am able to understand it. But I am reminded of Rafe’s words, in one of those times of forgiveness after the storm, “I tried to give it a shape, but it has no shape. All I can do is open my heart more and more deeply."
There is a shapeless mystery
That dances between two souls
Who resonate with the heavenly spheres,
While they walk together on the earth, angels to each other;
Sadly most never hear the beautiful music, the
Song of God; but those who do hold hands
With Love, everywhere.
—Brian K. Wilcox
Some persons are wounded by love, and their heart contracts; other persons are wounded by love, and their heart expands more.
The heart is formed for Infinite Expansion; but the mind has to choose to let it be so.
Responding
Often, spiritual teachers and leaders have taught a disembodied form of spirituality. Yet, this is not integrative of the whole person. Spirit includes all aspects of the self: therefore, all aspects are to honored and integrated in spiritual practice. In what ways do you integrate all aspects of your self in spiritual practice? What is the role of affections in your prayer and meditation, and relationships with others?
Do you - or have you had - a spiritual companionship with another person, one in which you experienced the bliss of union in Spirit? - This could be a romantic relationship, a friendship - yet, it will always be centered in each other's relationship with God. God will mediate presence through the vessel of the spiritual union. - What is - was - that intimate union like for you?
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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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