the sensation of life
How’s it going in surrendering yourself to the Mystery that has intimately accessed your heart and has brought you to this place that it might translate you into itself?James Finley If you ask me just precisely how one is to go about doing the contemplative work of love, I am at a complete loss. All … Continue reading 8 ways to be with thoughts in prayer
(Once in a while, as I am writing my morning pages, along come thoughts that emerge fully formed. Here is this morning's gift.) Yesterday evening, coming home on the tube, I tried to practise kindness towards the other commuters. In the midst of all our jostling for position and selfish desire to claim a space … Continue reading Kindness is Your presence
I had a salutary experience yesterday evening. I was leading Open Soul Space, a facilitated gathering for meditation, contemplative prayer, sharing and teaching that is offered monthly at the London Centre for Spiritual Direction. We had all just settled down for 20 minutes’ silence when a man started talking on his phone in the street … Continue reading Practising kindness
Sartre defined not potential but finitude as the essence of freedom: ‘To be finite … is to choose oneself . . . to make known to oneself what one is by projecting oneself toward one possible to the exclusion of others. The very act of freedom is therefore the assumption and creation of finitude.’ Jean-Paul … Continue reading The feeling of being yourself, part 1
May all beings be at ease. Whatever living beings there may be; Whether they are weak or strong, omitting none, The great or the mighty, medium, short or small, The seen and the unseen, Those living near and far away, Those born and to-be-born — May all beings be at ease! Let none deceive another, … Continue reading The Buddha’s Words on Loving-Kindness
[You may wish to read Part I first.] Self-compassion A few weeks ago, a friend wrote: "I find it so hard to let the past be the past. It can churn away at my heart." I wondered what he meant but we didn't have a chance to talk about it. I sent him a piece … Continue reading A few thoughts on how to release regret and learn to live (II)
What's the one thing? After 24 years of coaching individuals and groups from nearly every walk of life, I can say with confidence that the people who do really well over time are often not the smartest, or most well-read. They can be introvert or extrovert; seemingly self-assured or apparently neurotic and insecure. What they … Continue reading How to find your inner wisdom
You are part of something unimaginably bigger than you. You can have little or no idea what that is about. It is above your pay-grade. You are a single letter in the book of God's story. Each particle of this world is your sister or brother because we are all born of the same star; … Continue reading How to find God in the humblest of things (IV)
The universe was not designed with the comfort of human beings in mind. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Flow p.8 I notice two themes in my writing: God and this body – which is not other than God's body – are to be trusted. I enjoin you to relax, to trust, to attend to them, and to live … Continue reading This and that