Showing posts with label meditation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label meditation. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 1, 2016
Journey Into The Realm Of Parables Of Mercy
On Tuesdays I usually have a few hours set aside for the purpose of meditating, writing, translating various texts and preparing upcoming events, homilies, retreats, seminars. It is no exception today as well. Enjoying a quiet morning working on the meditation on the Parable of Mercy - Merciful Father. On days and times like these I choose (if any) accompanying music carefully. On this occasion I have selected German Baroque Cantatas sung beautifully by my favorite Andreas Scholl. Such a perfection combination of music and his delicate voice. Two wings that carry me in tranquility into the Realm of Parables of Mercy. Come, Holy Spirit, lead me in this breathtaking spiritual journey...
Saturday, February 20, 2016
Enoughness Instead Of Never Enough
Most of us have grown up with a capitalist worldview, which makes a virtue and goal out of accumulation, consumption, and collecting. Normally we cannot see this as an unsustainable and unhappy trap because all of our rooms are decorated with this same color. It is the only obvious story line that our children see. "I produce therefore I am" and "I consume therefore I am" might be our answer to Descartes' "I think therefore I am." They are all terribly mistaken.
This foundational way of seeing has blinded us, so that we now tend to falsely assume more is better. The course we are on assures us of a predictable future of strained individualism, severe competition as the resources dwindle for a growing population, and surely perpetual war. Our culture ingrains in us the belief that there isn't enough to go around. This determines much if not most of our politics. In the USA there is never enough for health care, for education, for the arts, for basic infrastructure. The only budget that is never questioned is for war and armaments and military gadgets.
Anything you need more and more of is not working--as the people in addiction recovery love to say. That's exactly why we always need more of it. The fact that we need more and more, and better and better--of almost everything except love--tells us that we are in a finally unworkable situation. But there is an alternative worldview, one that has been deemed necessary and important by most spiritual masters. It isn't a win/lose worldview where only a few win and most lose. It's a win/win worldview, which alone makes community, justice, and peace possible.
E. F. Schumacher said years ago, "Small is beautiful," and many other wise people have come to know that less stuff invariably leaves room for more soul. In fact, possessions and soul seem to operate in inverse proportion to one another. Only through simplicity can we find deep contentment instead of perpetually striving and living unsatisfied. Simple living is the foundational social justice teaching of Jesus, Francis, Gandhi, and all hermits, mystics, prophets, and seers since time immemorial.
The Franciscan alternative orthodoxy asks us to let go, to recognize that there is enough to go around and meet everyone's need but not everyone's greed. A worldview of enoughness will predictably emerge in a person as they move to the level of naked being instead of thinking that more of anything or more frenetic doing can fill up our basic restlessness. Francis did not just tolerate or endure such simplicity, he actually loved it and called it poverty--a word which we often view as a bad thing. Francis dove into poverty and found his freedom there. This is hard for most of us to even comprehend. Thank God, people like Dorothy Day and Wendell Berry have illustrated how this is still possible even in our modern world.
Francis was known in his lifetime as the joyful beggar. He communicated happiness, freedom, humor, and joy to everyone around him. Francis and his followers wore ropes for belts to indicate they had no money (at the time, leather belts were used to carry money). Francis wanted people to see that humans could be happy even without money. I have met some poor people and some homeless people who prove to me that this can still be true, although I don't think we need to make it our goal as Francis and Clare did. But we can indeed be happy in mutual interdependence with nature, with the kindness of others, and with our own hard work and creativity, while living in the natural rhythms of life.
Francis knew that just climbing ladders to nowhere would never make us happy nor create peace and justice on this earth. Too many have to stay at the bottom of the ladder so I can be at the top. It is a zero sum victory. I suspect simplicity and a worldview of enoughness will forever be an alternative orthodoxy, if not downright heretical, in most of the "developing" world.
This foundational way of seeing has blinded us, so that we now tend to falsely assume more is better. The course we are on assures us of a predictable future of strained individualism, severe competition as the resources dwindle for a growing population, and surely perpetual war. Our culture ingrains in us the belief that there isn't enough to go around. This determines much if not most of our politics. In the USA there is never enough for health care, for education, for the arts, for basic infrastructure. The only budget that is never questioned is for war and armaments and military gadgets.
Anything you need more and more of is not working--as the people in addiction recovery love to say. That's exactly why we always need more of it. The fact that we need more and more, and better and better--of almost everything except love--tells us that we are in a finally unworkable situation. But there is an alternative worldview, one that has been deemed necessary and important by most spiritual masters. It isn't a win/lose worldview where only a few win and most lose. It's a win/win worldview, which alone makes community, justice, and peace possible.
E. F. Schumacher said years ago, "Small is beautiful," and many other wise people have come to know that less stuff invariably leaves room for more soul. In fact, possessions and soul seem to operate in inverse proportion to one another. Only through simplicity can we find deep contentment instead of perpetually striving and living unsatisfied. Simple living is the foundational social justice teaching of Jesus, Francis, Gandhi, and all hermits, mystics, prophets, and seers since time immemorial.
The Franciscan alternative orthodoxy asks us to let go, to recognize that there is enough to go around and meet everyone's need but not everyone's greed. A worldview of enoughness will predictably emerge in a person as they move to the level of naked being instead of thinking that more of anything or more frenetic doing can fill up our basic restlessness. Francis did not just tolerate or endure such simplicity, he actually loved it and called it poverty--a word which we often view as a bad thing. Francis dove into poverty and found his freedom there. This is hard for most of us to even comprehend. Thank God, people like Dorothy Day and Wendell Berry have illustrated how this is still possible even in our modern world.
Francis was known in his lifetime as the joyful beggar. He communicated happiness, freedom, humor, and joy to everyone around him. Francis and his followers wore ropes for belts to indicate they had no money (at the time, leather belts were used to carry money). Francis wanted people to see that humans could be happy even without money. I have met some poor people and some homeless people who prove to me that this can still be true, although I don't think we need to make it our goal as Francis and Clare did. But we can indeed be happy in mutual interdependence with nature, with the kindness of others, and with our own hard work and creativity, while living in the natural rhythms of life.
Francis knew that just climbing ladders to nowhere would never make us happy nor create peace and justice on this earth. Too many have to stay at the bottom of the ladder so I can be at the top. It is a zero sum victory. I suspect simplicity and a worldview of enoughness will forever be an alternative orthodoxy, if not downright heretical, in most of the "developing" world.
Fr. Richard Rohr
Sunday, December 27, 2015
God IS Love
"All I can do is remind you of what you already know deep within your True Self and invite you to live connected to this Source. John the Evangelist writes, "God is love, and whoever remains in love, remains in God and God in him [and her]" (1 John 4:16). The Judeo-Christian creation story says that we were created in the very "image and likeness" of God--who is love (Genesis 1:26; see also Genesis 9:6). Out of the Trinity's generative, loving relationship, creation takes form, mirroring its Creator.
We have heard this phrase so often that we don't get the existential shock of what "created in the image and likeness of God" is saying about us. If we could believe it, we would save ourselves ten thousand dollars in therapy! If this is true--and I believe it is--our family of origin is divine. It is saying that we were created by a loving God to be love in the world. Our core is original blessing, not original sin. Our starting point is positive and, as it is written in the first chapter of the Bible, it is "very good" (Genesis 1:31). We do have a good place to go home. If the beginning is right, the rest is made considerably easier, because we know and can trust the clear direction of our life's tangent.
The great illusion we must all overcome is the illusion of separateness. It is the primary task of religion to communicate not worthiness but union, to reconnect people to their original identity "hidden with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:3). The Bible calls this state of separateness "sin." God's job description is to draw us back into this primal and intimate relationship. "My dear people, we are already children of God; what we will be in the future has not yet been fully revealed, and all I do know is that we shall be like God" (1 John 3:2)."
We have heard this phrase so often that we don't get the existential shock of what "created in the image and likeness of God" is saying about us. If we could believe it, we would save ourselves ten thousand dollars in therapy! If this is true--and I believe it is--our family of origin is divine. It is saying that we were created by a loving God to be love in the world. Our core is original blessing, not original sin. Our starting point is positive and, as it is written in the first chapter of the Bible, it is "very good" (Genesis 1:31). We do have a good place to go home. If the beginning is right, the rest is made considerably easier, because we know and can trust the clear direction of our life's tangent.
The great illusion we must all overcome is the illusion of separateness. It is the primary task of religion to communicate not worthiness but union, to reconnect people to their original identity "hidden with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:3). The Bible calls this state of separateness "sin." God's job description is to draw us back into this primal and intimate relationship. "My dear people, we are already children of God; what we will be in the future has not yet been fully revealed, and all I do know is that we shall be like God" (1 John 3:2)."
Fr. Richard Rohr, Gateway to Silence
Sunday, March 17, 2013
Wrapping Up The Retreat
As I waved my farewell to Fr. Alphonce vanishing in his pickup driving down the hill on his way to Mwanza, I felt overwhelmed by the goodness of the Lord who gave us these past four days of intense preaching, prayer, Eucharist and detachment from daily worries. I am deeply grateful to God for sending Fr. Alphonce to us. He was instrumental in bringing the message from God to us and I am happy that many of our parishioners showed up and participated. I pray now for his safe return to Mwanza and God's reward for his sacrifice for our sake. And I pray for ourselves, for abundant fruit of our inner conversion, our living faith which express itself in good deeds and staying away from the Evil One and his kingdom on earth. I pray for all of you, my friends and readers. God bless, protect and lead us all!
Friday, March 9, 2012
Proper Perspective
Being in the middle of the hive of activities in my mission, surprisingly, the Friday privilege to restore the dignity of the Children of God in the Sacrament of Reconciliation preceding the Via Crucis for the parochial community in the shrine, then leading the meditations of the Stations of the Way of the Cross and the Holy Mass that follows the Stations immediately - gives me a huge relief inspite of this intense feelings and spiritual work. This Friday meditation of the Christ's Passion gives my whole life and what I do a proper perspective, it gives simply a right meaning to my struggle, hardships and fight for the vision which drives me since 1991 here in Kiabakari. I am so happy that today, as much as I am tired and worn out by numerous things that go on in the mission on various fronts and levels, I can detach myself again from all this, and look on myself, the reality, life and everything from a distance, in the divine light that radiates from the meditation of the Passion of Christ. I cannot simply get how anyone can claim that she or he participated well in Lent season without participation and meditation of the Stations of the Way of the Cross. Incomprehensible to me.
Friday, July 1, 2011
House Of Wonders
The Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus is an open invitation day for all to enter the House of Wonders - the Human Heart of Jesus, True God and True Man. On the second day of the peregrination of the Jubilee Cross in our parish, we will spend the whole day at the feet of the Cross, meditating on the Wonders of the Sacred Heart of the Lord...
Saturday, March 26, 2011
At The Break Of The New Day
At the break of the new day. Sipping freshly brewed morning coffee. Reading bits and pieces of news on internet, yet focusing rather on things in my mind and heart. I wish the whole day stayed that calm and quiet... Unfortunately, in a moment the Saturday buzz will break out - the church, the office, Musoma unplanned trip, preparations for Sunday liturgy, finalizing construction work and payments, plus myriads of other tiny agendas here and there... Thank God for this morning hour of calmness, serenity and mood of prayer and mediation which gives me spiritual and mental strength to cope with onslaught of incoming responsibilities of the day...
Friday, March 18, 2011
Stations
Fridays of Lent. Happy are those who understand that Lent without participation in the Stations of the Way of the Cross loses a lot of its meaning and power. Happy are those who in the hectic schedules of their daily lives cut out a sufficient chunk of time for active participation and meditation of the Stations and the Passion of Christ. Nothing helps us grow faster and mature in the spiritual life and union with Living God than meditation on the Passion of Our Lord which has its summit in the Sacrifice of Eucharist. Every Saint throughout the ages will attest to this...
Friday, October 8, 2010
You Take Care Of It
For the last two days I have been away from my hosts' laptop, thus unable to publish new posts...This, though, does not mean that nothing special happened or my mind went AWOL. Nope! I have continued to see wonderful people, share with them our sorrows and joys, talk and reflect upon our struggles, victories and lost battles, hopes and dreams, shattered confidence, day-to-day worries and having snippets of speechless beauty of Canada, visiting some spectacular places and sharing passion of Canadians for their national sport - ice hockey...I am deeply grateful to all families and individuals who invited me into their lives and spiritual worlds and made me so happy and enriched with their faith, love of the country, both Poland and Canada, passion for art, culture, life, people...
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