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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.
I dedicate this writing to a dear Friend, Luis Faustino, a faithful servant of Christ, and a man with love in his heart, showing it in the kind acts of Christian grace to persons who are the least of these among us. Today, I offer gratitude for Luis. Thank you, Louie, for all you let Love do through you to touch the lives of others, for Christ. Amen.
MY Confession of Faith
A LOVE RELATIONSHIP WITH JESUS CHRIST
and through JESUS CHRIST
for ALL.
TODAY'S SCRIPTURE
Devote yourselves to consistent prayer and with alert mind and thankful heart.
*Colossians 4.2
SPIRITUAL TEACHING
St. Paul speaks of prayer accompanied by alertness and thankfulness. The Greek word for “devote” was used for a person persevering with patience and determination toward any intent. So, the passage speaks of a consistent, hopeful devotion to prayer. Prayer is like planting positive mind-heart seeds. This is not magic, rather the way we have communion with Grace. We find joy and pleasure in sharing our wants, needs, thoughts, and feelings with our love or beloved, do we not? We do not dread that, for that is part of the loving, the sharing, the connection. We look forward to this, and it nurtures the relationship, and each person. So, this is the same way with God. If we are in Love with the Trinity, we will look forward to praying, we will enjoy sharing, and we will find ourselves praying through the different seasons of life and journey with Christ and each other.
The Greek word for “alert” can be rendered “watch.” The word refers in the Greek to alertness, wakefulness, and vigilance. This is why the deepest meditation is very alert. Contemplation is a vigilant alertness, very wakeful, much open. If we are praying and in mental dullness, there are ways to awaken the mind. This article is not about such technique, though I teach how to do this to my meditation students. In prayer, however, we aim for a middle way between mental dullness and mental agitation. Agitation can arise from trying too hard, while dullness can arise from lack of focus. Still, the scripture refers to a broader practice of alertness in life generally, not just in prayer. This is to live mindfulness, to practice the presence of God.
Our Scripture speaks of being “thankful.” The Greek is eucharistia; this is of the same root as Eucharist. Prayer is to be eucharistic, never fully divorced from gratitude. Gratitude is a positive planting of the seed of unselfishness; true thanksgiving is one of the most unselfish things we can do. Just try it now. Close your eyes. Reflect on persons you are grateful for being in your life. If you do this, opening the heart to the sensation of thankfulness for each one, you will feel spacious, light energy – the opposite of the contraction and density of self-focus. Practically every emotional struggle we face arises from too much self-focus, and many of our physical health issues do. Gratitude is an antidote to the selfishness of useless worry, complaining, and bitterness of attitude.
* * *
A hungry fox happened upon a vineyard surrounded by a fence. There was a narrow gap near one fence post. The fox tried to squeeze through. He discovered he was too fat. The fox, not wanting the fence to get the better of him, fasted three days until he was lean and slender. Then he had no difficulty getting through the gap. In the vineyard he ate his fill of grapes. When trying to exit, he had grown too fat to pass through the gap. Once more he fasted three days until he was lean and slender. Immediately upon being back outside the vineyard, the fox realized he was hungry again. He looked back at the vineyard, and he thought to himself, “Yes, the vineyard is full of good fruit. But what advantage can I derive from it? If I enter it to consume the good, I must deprive myself of the same good?”
* * *
The above story relates several lessons. One lesson is that the means by which we seek what we call good can lead us to the loss of the good we already can enjoy. However, as the old aphorism has it — the grass is always greener on the other side — , we can fail to see that the great sacrifices we go through to achieve something is at the expense of the good we could already enjoy, here and now. Therefore, a daily practice of thanksgiving is a way of staying in appreciation for what we have before us, and it might keep us from being greedy for something we do not have.
RESPONDING
What in your life has God placed for you here and now, which you tend to miss enjoying? Why? How can you enjoy the moment but, like the fox, discern the ramifications of it for the future? Does planning for the future necessarily take one out of the here and now?
* * *
*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. While within the Christian path, he is an ecumenical-interspiritual teacher, author, and chaplain. He is Senior Chaplain for the Charlotte County Jail, Punta Gorda, FL.
*Brian welcomes responses to his writings at briankwilcox@yahoo.com . Also, Brian is on Facebook: search Brian Kenneth Wilcox.
*You can order his book An Ache for Union from major booksellers.
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