Ouch.

What a humbling new slant on this parable!  I admit to siding with the tax collector against the Pharisee, which means, then, that I am saying, “Thank God I am not like this Pharisee – judgmental, self-righteous, proud.”  It has never occurred to me that this is choosing sides, excluding one and labeling it unworthy of God’s love.

I once read something by Sister Simone Campbell who wrote that when she prays for those who are marginalized or discriminated against, she also must pray for those who commit the marginalization or discrimination.  If she doesn’t, she is no different from them.  Both sides are loved by a God whose love is deeper than I can fathom.

Again I say – ouch.  This touched me deeply.

Blessings to all.

Jeannie

Hello friends.  I admit this parable has always baffled me.  But I found a lot of food for thought in the quote from Father Thomas:

“God gives us plenty of chances to let go of our vision, and more than that, often takes our vision and shatters it … It is the willingness to allow one’s vision to be shattered … that is necessary and liberating … Giving up one’s vision is not the end of the journey, but the beginning.”

There are many parables or other texts in scripture (or in life, for that matter…) that I don’t understand.  I’m learning to set aside old interpretations, old understandings (or lack thereof) and let my old ‘vision’ be shattered in favor of something new.

Blessings

Jeannie

“…we lay aside the attractive expectation that God might take away our difficulties. With our hearts turned contemplatively “God does something much more wonderful which is to join us in [our difficulties, with love].”  What a beautiful thought.  It seems a natural inclination to ask God to remove my difficulties, whereas the truth is that difficulties can be my best teachers.  And so God does something more wonderful which is to be with me in the midst of them rather than take them away.

Blessings

Jeannie

The meditation on ‘praying hard’ touched me.  Yes, I have done that: and yes, it becomes all about my effort, about my trying to control an outcome. Less ‘praying hard’, more silence, approaching everything in my life from a contemplative stance – that is the gift of Centering Prayer for me.  I learn to trust that God is already at work: my job, if you will, is to ask, seek, knock, and surrender.

“This ‘praying hard’ is exhausting. After a while on the spiritual journey most of us discover that our way of praying changes, that there is less ‘praying hard’ and more silence. [Praying this way] simply becomes a way of being, a way of seeing in the ordinary events of our lives, practicing a contemplative presence whereby we approach every encounter, every activity, every meeting from a contemplative stance, trusting that God is already at work in people’s lives…”

Wow! The prayer by David Hawkins was beautiful.  A good prayer to begin and end my Centering Prayer with.

I also loved the quote from Father Keating: <i>The thing to rejoice in is that you are chosen to become divine and to join me in raising the consciousness of the world.</i>  It’s not casting out demons or calling down thunder or healing the sick that is most important, it’s letting myself be transformed by God.

Blessings

Jeannie

The CAC meditation’s line, “Jesus didn’t go anywhere” shows me how childish (not childlike) my understandings can still be.  The reminder that the God of my understanding is here, that the universe isn’t divided into separate levels of ‘heaven and earth’ but, rather, is one, is precious.  Rather than gazing up into the sky at some imaginary place where I will be transported someday, I will find God by looking all around me – into the eyes of the clerk at the grocery store, my next-door neighbor, the hummingbird outside my living room window, and even somehow within the tragedies in the world this past week.  This Divine presence is always always here.

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