Clarifying Peace
  • The Facts
  • Calling Mother
  • Spiritual Direction
  • Blog
  • poetry, story telling, and prayers
  • Essays and Papers
  • Contact

Christian Spirituality

7/23/2011

0 Comments

 
My understanding of Christian spirituality begins with an encounter with God’s love and a commitment to walk with the Risen Lord, in the power of the Holy Spirit. This may not sound possible, given our fickle human nature and God’s perfection. Yet, I agree with Karl Rahner, a well-known twentieth century Jesuit theologian, said, “If there is any path at all on which I can approach You, it must lead through the very middle of my ordinary daily life.”

I believe that as we become conscious of ourselves as persons in an actual relationship with God, we will pay more attention to our subjective experiences using both our left and right brain. We may even expand the ways we pray. 

In Reading the Sacred Text: An Introduction to Biblical Studies, V. George Shillington quotes Bernard Lonergan, a Catholic theologian said this about subjectivity.  “Objectivity is not achieved by flight from subjectivity . . . but by an intense and persevering effort to exercise subjectivity attentively, intelligently, reasonably, and responsibly” (page 18). As we give our attention to what we see of the world, question what is perceived, make judgments and continue asking questions, we become equipped to choose our action. In short we choose our actions out of careful naming of what is.

To accurately name what is, we might as well use both our left and our right brain, for both bring specific data our way. Our culture relies on left-brain functions -- rational, linear steps. We spend our days being efficient, and productive. We go the gas station, swipe our debit card, and fill up the tank with gasoline. We got what we intended to get.

God has also given us a right brain, which behaves more like a small child. Can we learn to pay attention to the data the right brain is eager to bring to us? Some refer to the differences of the left-brain and right brain as the realms of our intellect and imagination. We know the value of a good intellect, but do we know the value and role of a healthy imagination? In "Poets, Imagination, the Mother Tongue, and Religious Language--Paschal Imagination" in Against an Infinite Horizon by Ronald Rolheiser on page 150,
Ronald Rohlheiser says that “we have healthy imaginations when we can stand before any reality and have a sense of what God is asking of us. A healthy imagination is the opposite of resignation, abdication, naive optimism or despair.”

When our imaginations are open, we can read the text of our lives clearly. A familiar teaching in spiritual formation is that we are to notice, name and change. When we accurately name what is going on, we are empowered to make healthy changes, sometimes deeply dramatic changes that are as good for us and our relationships as opening a window in a house full of mold and tearing out the rotten wall boards.

Prayer can be dominated by intellectual, left-brain activity, times in which we do all of the talking. If we give ourselves to a wordless, silent practice of prayer we at first we may feel like we are having a cross-cultural immersion experience, but with repetition, we are likely to feel more comfortable in our own skin as we learn to depend more equally on our intellect and our imagination. We will never stop using our left-brain, but we will use it more effectively.

Finally, I believe that in the center of our beings, there is God. God has promised never to leave us nor forsake us. God is with each one of us. Jan Van Ruusbroec, a Flemish mystic, wrote about God coming to us from within and from without. We can trust in that still, small voice within us just as we may have learned to trust in the testimony of so many around us.
0 Comments

CITY OF LOST MITTENS

7/6/2011

0 Comments

 
Picture
Here I am with Julian of Broadway, the Keeper of the CITY OF LOST MITTENS. All winter she stoops to pick up and press to her heart stray gloves and mittens from the streets of New York City.

Today she strings two sections of yarn to trees in the plaza near 65th and Broadway. Each mitten is pinned onto the line. She has cut red letters out of construction paper, large and simple.

Those letters are pinned onto the line right on top of the mittens, spelling out CITY OF LOST MITTENS.

This is the second Saturday she has set up her shelter, calling out for the mamas and the papas who may yet have the twins of these little things, reminding us that NOTHING GOOD IS EVER LOST.

The telephone rings. It is my sister Cynthia interrupting this writing to tell me that when I called her this morning, one minute before her alarm went off, she could not answer because she was finishing a dream in which she is looking for a lost glove. It is cobalt blue, cashmere, and brand new.

She is distraught. It was the best pair she had ever had.

Do you see my face? My eyes? I am showing you this woman, our modern-day mystic, who is telling you that NOTHING IS LOST. NOTHING IS LOST. NOTHING.

Look at her. I am her witness.
0 Comments

    Archives

    October 2016
    September 2015
    August 2015
    June 2014
    October 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    May 2012
    March 2012
    August 2011
    July 2011
    March 2011
    January 2011
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    June 2010
    April 2010
    March 2010
    January 2010
    December 2009

    Picture

    Categories

    All
    Altar
    Broken
    Centering Prayer
    Christmas Image
    Discernment
    Epiphany
    Hide And Seek
    Imagination
    Jan Van Ruusbroec
    Left And Right Brain
    Nothing Is Lost
    Opportunity Recovered
    Parish Support For Spiritual Formation
    Theatrical/dramatic Speech
    What I Do Is Enough

    RSS Feed