Author Archives: Bill Britton

Daily Riches: Just Do What You Can (Kathleen Norris)

Posted on by under Ego Issues, Embracing Losses and Limits, Humility, Loving Well, Patience with Yourself

“The verse [Mark 14:8] portrays Jesus defending a nameless woman against his outraged disciples; she has made an extravagant gesture, anointing him with expensive oil, and they feel that the money could have been better spent. When my brother’s church in Honolulu was celebrating the 101st birthday of one of its members, he asked the woman if she would care to name a favorite Bible verse. She cited the verse from Mark and said that it was one she had chosen to memorize as a child in Sunday school, and that all her life it had provided her with a word to live by. Jesus himself had given it, allowing her to hope that her faith, and whatever service she rendered the church, would not be in vain. When asked what it was about the verse that had so captured her attention as to hold it for over ninety years, she replied, ‘She did what she could.’” Kathleen Norris

While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head. Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, ‘Why this waste of perfume? It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages and the money given to the poor.’ And they rebuked her harshly. ‘Leave her alone,’ said Jesus. ‘Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial.'” Mark 14:3-8

Moving From Head to Heart

  • Have you wondered whether, in the end, your life will have been wasted or well-spent? …whether you could have done more?
  • Obviously, doing “what she could” was the most this woman could do, and Jesus heartily accepted that. Do you ever do less than you could because it doesn’t seem like much?
  • Do you ever do less than you could because it’s not as much as someone else can do?

Abba, may neither dreams of glory or comparison to others keep me from doing what I can.

For More: Amazing Grace by Kathleen Norris

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek after God and he seeks after you. I hope you’ll follow my blog, and share it. My goal is to share something of unique value with you daily in 400 words or less. I appreciate your interest!  –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

“I practice daily what I believe; everything else is religious talk.”

Daily Riches: Your Heart Is Always Revealing Itself (Anthony de Mello, Kathleen Norris and Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

Posted on by under Change Yourself First, Forgiveness, God's Grace, Learning Your Proper Place, Loving Well

Sa’di of Shiraz tells this story about himself: ‘When  I was a child I was a pious boy, fervent in prayer and devotion. One night I was keeping vigil with my father, the Holy Koran on my lap. Everyone else in the room began to slumber and soon was sound asleep, so I said to my father, “None of these sleepers opens his eyes or raises his heart to say his prayers. You would think that there were all dead.” My father replied, “My beloved son, I would rather you too were asleep like them than slandering.” Anthony de Mello

“Every time you find yourself irritated or angry with someone, the one to look at is not that person but yourself. The question to ask is not, ‘What’s wrong with this person?’ but ‘What does this irritation tell me about myself?’” Anthony de Mello

“Many desert stories speak of judgment as the worst obstacle for a monk. ‘Abba Joseph said to Abba Pastor: “Tell me how I can become a monk.” The elder replied: ”If you want to have rest here in this life and also in the next, in every conflict with another say, ‘Who am I?’ and judge no one.” Kathleen Norris

“By judging others, we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.”  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“A good person produces good things
from the treasury of a good heart,
and an evil person produces evil things
from the treasury of an evil heart.
What you say flows
from what is in your heart.”
Jesus in Luke 6:45

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • What is your response to the story about the Muslim father and son? Are you more like the father or the son?
  • What can you do to become more like the father? Can you learn to stop and ask “What does this irritation tell me about myself?”
  • If you’re more like the “slandering son”, are you aware of your “own evil?” Have you been “forgiven much?” Can you extend that grace to others like yourself who, like you, don’t deserve it?

Abba, teach me to judge no one. May my irritations with others lead me into regular self-examination, and to better self awareness.

For More: The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek after God and he seeks after you. I hope you’ll follow my blog, and share it. My goal is to share something of unique value with you daily in 400 words or less. I appreciate your interest!  –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

“I practice daily what I believe; everything else is religious talk.”

Daily Riches: Loneliness As a Navigational Aid to God (Thomas Merton)

Posted on by under Desolation's Gift, Downward Mobility, Embracing Losses and Limits, Emotions and Spirituality, Suffering and Grace

“If [as the Burt Bacharach song says] Loneliness Remembers (what happiness forgets) then the emptiness of loneliness reminds me of what happiness does not remind me of. That God is more, is greater, fuller – limitless, even. When I am spent He is still full and longing for me to turn, in my vulnerability and scatteredness, to His vast heart of loving provision for my soul. When I feel forsaken and alone – in those moments – I am gifted with an innate holy prodding to submit to no other substitute for satisfaction or comfort. So as great as happiness is in its moment, loneliness by contrast, is not a dead end. It is a navigational aid.”  Jennifer @ blogspot

“Paradoxically, I have found peace because I have always been dissatisfied. My moments of depression and despair turn out to be renewals, new beginnings. If I were once to settle down and be satisfied with the surface of life, with its divisions and its clichés, it would be time to call in the undertaker…. So, then, this dissatisfaction which sometimes used to worry me and has certainly, I know, worried others, has helped me in fact to move freely and even gaily with the stream of life.”  … “Only the man who has had to face despair is really convinced that he needs mercy. Those who do not want mercy never seek it. It is better to find God on the threshold of despair than to risk our lives in a complacency that has never felt the need of forgiveness. A life that is without problems may literally be more hopeless than one that always verges on despair.”  Thomas Merton

“If only one person would show some pity;
if only one would turn and comfort me.”
Psalm 69:20

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Many people run from problems like loneliness, depression and despair. Do you? If so, what does your answer say about you?
  • Have you ever allowed loneliness, depression or despair to be a “navigational aid” to lead you to God? If not, why not? How would one do that?
  • Can you see “downward mobility” in all of this – that what seems painful and frustrating might actually be a gift? …that “downward mobility” might be far superior to “upward mobility?”

Abba, remind me when this happens to me.

For More: No Man Is an Island by Thomas Merton

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek after God and he seeks after you. I hope you’ll follow my blog, and share it. My goal is to share something of unique value with you daily in 400 words or less. I appreciate your interest!  –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

“I practice daily what I believe; everything else is religious talk.”

Daily Riches: The Priority of Presence, The Necessity of Revelation (Aidan Kavanagh, Kathleen Norris, Mark Buchanan)

Posted on by under "Being" with Jesus, Being and Doing, Jesus the Savior, Silence, Solitude, Spiritual Formation, Striving and drivenness, thirsting and longing for God

“Some knowing is never pursued, only received. And for that, you need to be still.” Mark Buchanan

“It was a presence, not faith, which drew Moses to the burning bush. And what happened there was a revelation, not a seminar. It was a presence, not faith, which drew the disciples to Jesus, and what happened then was not an educational program but his revelation to them of himself as the long-promised Anointed One…. Their lives, like that of Moses, were changed radically by that encounter with a Presence which upended all their ordinary expectations. Their descendants in faith have been adjusting to that change ever since, drawn into assembly by that same Presence, finding there always the troublesome upset of change in their lives of faith to which they must adjust still. Here is where their lives are regularly being constituted and reconstituted under grace.” Aidan Kavanagh

“We make such a fuss about ‘seeking God.’ We’re anxious about so many things, and faith, prayer, and searching for God are not excepted. Are you doing it right? Will a retreat teach us a better way? Which method of prayer will be most effective for us? What church congregation will best ‘feed us spiritually’? Probably the best thing we can do is to relax, take a deep breath, stop thinking about what we want or need, and forget about it. Seeking God, that is. Instead we might wait, and begin to silently ponder the ways in which God may already have been seeking us, all along, in the faulty, scary stuff of our ordinary lives.” Kathleen Norris

“I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me;
I was found by those who did not seek me.
To a nation that did not call on my name, I said,
‘Here am I, here am I.’”
Isaiah 65:1

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Are you focused on diligently “pursuing” rather than humbly “receiving” from God?
  • Are you trusting educational programs, oblivious to God’s revelatory program – where ongoing encounters with his Presence are the key to transformation?
  • Have you made sanctification or spiritual formation into one more  project, when instead you should “wait, and … silently ponder” how God may have been coming to you? …how God is coming to you now?

Abba, help me learn to see what I routinely miss from you.

For More: On Liturgical Theology by Aidan Kavanagh

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek after God and he seeks after you. I hope you’ll follow my blog, and share it. My goal is to share something of unique value with you daily in 400 words or less. I appreciate your interest!  –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

“I practice daily what I believe; everything else is religious talk.”

 

Daily Riches: Statio …Do Consciously What You Would Do Mechanically (Joan Chittister)

Posted on by under Hurry Sickness, Loving Union with God, Mindfulness, The Sacrament of the Present Moment

Statio is “the practice of stopping one thing before we begin another. …the time between times. …In monastic spirituality it is common for the community to gather … for a few minutes together in the chapel itself before intoning the opening hymn of the office. My novice mistress, in fact, insisted that we all be in chapel five minutes before the bell rang for prayer, an expectation the logic of which managed to elude me for years. After all, ‘an idle mind is the devil’s workshop,’ the Puritan in me knew well. ‘Every minute counts,’ I’d learned somewhere along the way. …Think of all the things that could have been done in that additional five minutes a day or thirty-five minutes a week or two hours and twenty minutes a month or twenty-eight hours a year…. Work, valuable work, could have been done and I could still have made it on time for prayer. It took years to realize that [it was] … highly unlikely, though, that my mind would have been there too. The practice of statio is meant to center us and make us conscious of what we’re about to do and make us present to the God who is present to us. Statio is the desire to do consciously what I might otherwise do mechanically. Statio is the virtue of presence. If I am present to this child before I dress her, then the dressing becomes an act of creation. …If I am present to the flower before I cut it, then life becomes precious. If I am present to the time of prayer before I pray, then prayer becomes the juncture of the human with the Divine. We have learned well in our time to go through life nonstop. Now it is time to learn to collect ourselves from time to time so that God can touch us in the most hectic of moments. Statio is the monastic practice that sets out to get our attention before life goes by in one great blur and God becomes an idea out there somewhere rather than an ever present reality here.” Joan Chittister

“You …set me in your presence forever.” Psalm 41:12

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Imagine pausing to commit the last thing to God before beginning the next thing.
  • Imagine lifting up the next thing to God before you begin it.
  • Imagine the sanity, clarity and sense of God’s presence that could come from this practice.

Abba, help me to regularly come to a full stop, recalibrating, increasingly present to you.

For More: Wisdom Distilled From the Daily by Joan Chittister

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In “Daily Riches” my goal is to share something of unique value with you daily in 400 words or less. I appreciate your interest!  –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

Daily Riches: You Ain’t Nothin’ Without Love (Larry Norman, Katherine Ann Porter)

Posted on by under Loving Well, Success, True Greatness

“You can be a Righteous Rocker or a Holy Roller
You can be most anything.
You can be a Child of the Son or a Skid Row Bum or
You can be an Earthly King.
But without love, you ain’t nothing, without love.

“You can be a Leon Russell
Or a super muscle
You can be a corporate king.
You can be a wealthy man from Texas
Or a witch with heavy hexes,
But without love, you ain’t nothing, without love.

“You  can be a brilliant surgeon
Or a sweet young virgin
Or a harlot out to sell.
You could learn to play the blues
Or be Howard Hughes
Or the Scarlet Pimpernel.
Or you could be a French provincial midwife
Or go from door to door with a death-knife,
But without love you ain’t nothing, without love. [selah]

“You can be a woman feeler
Or a baby stealer,
You can drink your life away.
You  can be a holy prophet
Get a blessing off it,
You can fast for fifty days.
You can shake hands with the devil
Or give your life to God on the level,
But without love you ain’t nothing, without love.
Without love you ain’t nothing, without love.”

Larry Norman, “Righteous Rocker” (#1 & 3)

“Love must be learned and learned again and again; there is no end to it. Hate needs no instruction, but waits only to be provoked.”  Katherine Anne Porter

“A new command I give you: Love one another.
As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”
Jesus in John 13:34

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Isn’t it amazing, the bad things we settle for (like in the song), preferring them to giving and receiving love?
  • Isn’t it amazing, the good things we rely upon, thinking they will compensate for our not investing ourselves in love?
  • Love might seem like the easiest thing – but no, that’s hate. In reality love is hard. It must “be learned and learned again and again: there is no end to it.” (to the learning) What are you doing to improve at loving?

Abba, love my enemies? I don’t even love my friends as I should. I don’t even love my family as I should. Father, as your love seeks me, as you draw near, as I draw near to you, may I learn again and again to love.

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek after God and he seeks after you. I hope you’ll follow my blog, and share it. My goal is to share something of unique value with you daily in 400 words or less. I appreciate your interest!  –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

“I practice daily what I believe; everything else is religious talk.”

Daily Riches: Threatened by Toxic Media (Jayson Bradley, Mike Wallace, Eugene Peterson)

Posted on by under Awareness, Mindfulness, Self-care, Silence, Solitude, truth and illusion

“I found an incredible interview from the late 50’s with Mike Wallace. It came from a series called The Mike Wallace Interview that ran from 1957–1960. I was blown away that

  1. A show could exist in such a simple format
  2. There was a time when people used television as a vehicle to think about metaphysical questions
  3. People cared about thoughtful dialogue enough to keep this show on the air for three years
  4. It was publically acceptable for people to smoke that much

I fell into an entranced spiral watching video after video of Mr. Wallace interviewing interesting personalities like The Twilight Zone’s Rod Serling, Brave New World author Aldous Huxley, artist Salvador Dali, and German social psychologist Erich Fromm. …What does an interview program look like now? We barely have the attention span to sit through a 15 minute interview with Barbara Walters, and her celebrity interviews have neither the depth or substance of these powerful discussions. Can you imagine a program like this running on prime-time today? Nope, we’re creating lowest-common-denominator television now. We have the world at our fingers, and we’re perfectly content with Honey Boo Boo, Jersey Shore, The Bachelor, and Dancing with the Stars. After watching these videos for hours, I walked away sad that we’ve slipped into an intellectual entropy. Who’s going to save us from this cultural ghetto!?”  Jayson Bradley

“Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking.
Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. …
Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity,
God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.”
Romans 12:2 (Eugene Peterson, the Message)

Moving From Head to Heart

  • Do you abstain from from media often enough to be able to see through its ubiquitous nonsense? to recognize its dangers? to escape the grip of its propaganda?
  • Is your media consumption intentional, so that you protect your mind and heart?
  • Do you “fix your attention on God” in times of solitude and silence to center, ground and protect yourself?
  • Are you becoming insensitive to the sexual images? the ads? the profaneness? the inanity? oblivious to the time spent?

Abba, help me whether with media or otherwise, to recognize nonsense and illusion, and protect my heart, the source of all I am.

For More:  Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek after God and he seeks after you. I hope you’ll follow my blog, and share it. My goal is to share something of unique value with you daily in 400 words or less. I appreciate your interest!  –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

“I practice daily what I believe; everything else is religious talk.”

Daily Riches: The Soul-wrenching Work of Letting Jesus Deal with Our Stuff (Jayson Bradley, Neil Postman, Matt Groening, Louise C.K)

Posted on by under Busyness, Emotions and Spirituality, Jesus the Savior, Silence, Solitude, Stillness

“One way of looking at the history of the human group is that it has been a continuing struggle against the veneration of ‘crap.’” Neil Postman

“For most of recorded history, you couldn’t get away from it. The farmer, monk, chef, and seamstress all worked in relative silence within the rhythms of the day, month, and year. Gradually, technology intruded upon those rhythms and upset that silence. Electric light extended the evening and absconded with our rest. Radio introduced constant chatter, and television doubled down on that chatter requesting our total attention. …When I was a teen, I was excited for the ability to listen to a portable cassette; now I carry thousands of albums around with me. …Do you know those people who seem to carry with them an inner stillness? …Most people I know (myself included) are overstimulated and overwhelmed…. We scroll through a vast network of news stories, updates, and information responding in ways that seem more conditioned than reflective, our minds abuzz with constant distracted activity. …Louis C.K. nails the problem here.

…In the most profound way, Louise C.K. is totally right. [We think] ‘…It’s that God-shaped vacuum. He just needs Jesus to fill it up.’ But Christianity alone doesn’t just fill up that emptiness. Christians are as guilty as anyone else of looking for a shortcut to fill that hole …and, despite what we say, we fill it with the same exact things as everyone else. We may be able to curb that hollowness for a while, but eventually it catches up to us…. We run headlong into that void without the discipline to navigate it, and it consumes us. …It’s like the whole of our psyche has followed Marge Simpson’s advice to Lisa, ‘Take all your bad feelings and push them down, all the way down past your knees, until you’re almost walking on them. And then you’ll fit in, and you’ll be invited to parties, and boys will like you. And happiness will follow.’ Silence is the tool that brings to the surface all that stuff we’ve buried or lies hidden from us. The silence we need is more than an absence of sound; it’s a break from constant stimulus and activity. It’s about allowing the tangled cords in our spirit and mind to unravel and be stilled. It’s about stopping the constant need to control our surroundings with our actions and words in a never-ending quest to drown out the unrest in our hearts. It’s about facing the dragon of emptiness, loneliness, frustration, anger, hurt, and need head on . . . and doing the soul-wrenching work of letting Jesus deal with it.” Jayson Bradley

  • Do you still yourself to let difficult emotions surface?
  • Are you willing to do “soul-wrenching work?”

Abba, still my soul.

Daily Riches: Catastrophic Loss and the Growth of the Soul (Jerry Sittser and Pete Scazzero)

Posted on by under "Being" with Jesus, Desolation's Gift, Embracing Losses and Limits, Faith and Doubt, Suffering and Grace, Wholeness and Brokenness

“If normal, natural, reversible loss is like a broken limb, then catastrophic loss is like an amputation. …Catastrophic loss by definition precludes recovery. It will transform us or destroy us, but it will never leave us the same. There is no going back to the past, which is gone forever, only going ahead to the future, which has yet to be discovered. Whatever that future is, it will, and must, include the pain of the past with it. Sorrow never entirely leaves the soul of those who have suffered a severe loss. If anything, it may keep going deeper. But this depth of sorrow in the sign of a healthy soul, not a sick soul. It does not have to be morbid and fatalistic. It is not something to escape but something to embrace. Jesus said, ‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.’ Sorrow indicates that people who have suffered loss are living authentically in a world of misery, and it expresses the emotional anguish of people who feel pain for themselves and others. Sorrow is noble and gracious. It enlarges the soul until the soul is capable of mourning and rejoicing simultaneously [just like God] of feeling the world’s pain and hoping for the world’s healing at the same time [just like God]. However painful, sorrow is good for the soul. …No matter how deep the pit into which I descend, I keep finding God there. He is not aloof from my suffering but draws near to me when I suffer.” Jerry Sittser [bracketed phrases by Pete Scazzero]

“In this world you will have trouble.
But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
Jesus in John 16:33

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Is your sorrow ever-present? Is it destroying you or transforming you?
  • Have you “embraced” your loss and sorrow as “a grace disguised?” Is it helping you to live more “authentically in a world of misery?”
  • Has your soul been “enlarged?” Are you more capable of mourning and rejoicing simultaneously [just like God], of feeling the world’s pain and hoping for the world’s healing at the same time [just like God]?”

Abba, thank you for your sometimes exceedingly painful gifts. I depend on your drawing near in the pit. Help me to live and love authentically in a world of misery.

For More: A Grace Disguised by Jerry Sittser

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek after God and he seeks after you. I hope you’ll follow my blog, and share it. My goal is to share something of unique value with you daily in 400 words or less. I appreciate your interest!  –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

“I practice daily what I believe; everything else is religious talk.”

Daily Riches: The Tragic and Ludicrous Brokenness of the Church (Frederick Buechner)

Posted on by under Community & the Church, Humility, Learning Your Proper Place, truth and illusion

There are Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians. There are Presbyterians, Lutherans, Congregationalists. There are Disciples of Christ. There are Seventh-day Adventists and … Moravians. There are Quakers. And that’s only for starters. New denominations spring up. Old denominations split up and form new branches. The question is not, Are you a Baptist? but, What kind of a Baptist? It is not, Are you a member of the Presbyterian church? but Which Presbyterian church? A town with a population of less than five hundred may have churches of three or four denominations and none of them more than a quarter full on a good Sunday. There are some genuine differences between them, of course. The methods of church government differ. They tend to worship in different forms all the way from chanting, incense, and saints’ days to a service that is virtually indistinguishable from a New England town meeting with musical interludes. Some read the Bible more literally than others. If you examine the fine print, you may even come across some relatively minor theological differences among them, some stressing one aspect of the faith, some stressing others. But if you were to ask the average member of any congregation to explain those differences, you would be apt to be met with a long, unpregnant silence. By and large they all believe pretty much the same things and are confused about the same things and keep their fingers crossed during the same parts of the Nicene Creed. …Then add to that picture the Roman Catholic Church, still more divided from the Protestant denominations than they are from each other [and the Orthodox church], and by the time you’re through, you don’t know whether to burst into laughter or into tears. …When Jesus took the bread and said, ‘This is my body which is broken for you’ (1 Corinthians 11:24), it’s hard to believe that even in his wildest dreams he foresaw the tragic and ludicrous brokenness of the Church as his body. There’s no reason why everyone should be Christian in the same way and every reason to leave room for differences, but if all the competing factions of Christendom were to give as much of themselves to the high calling and holy hope that unites them as they do now to the relative inconsequentialities that divide them, the Church would look more like the Kingdom of God for a change and less like an ungodly mess.” Frederick Buechner

“so that they may be one as we are one.”
Jesus in John 17:11

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • By some estimates there are 41,000 denominations. Could your group really have cornered the truth?
  • Pick a group that differs from yours (evangelical, Catholic, Episcopal, Quaker). Can you list weak points in your group and strong points in the other one? Are you open to learning from others who identify as Christians but have views different from yours?
  • Jesus spoke of a unified church. What can you do to practice this “oneness?”

Abba, help us!

For More: Whistling in the Dark by Frederick Buechner

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek after God and he seeks after you.  –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

Daily Riches: The Only Safe Foundation for Spiritual Work (Evelyn Underhill)

Posted on by under "Being" with Jesus, awe and wonder, Being and Doing, Contemplation and Activism, Loving Union with God

“The beginning, then, of a strong and fruitful inner life … requires, not merely the acceptance but the full first-hand apprehension, of the ruling truth of the richly living spaceless and unchanging God; blazing in the spiritual sky, yet intimately present within the world of events, moulding and conditioning every phase of life. The religion of the priest, if it is to give power and convey certitude, must be from first to last a theocentric religion; and it must be fed by a devotional practice based upon that objective Power and Presence, and neither on your own subjective feelings, cravings, and needs, nor on the feelings, cravings, and needs of those among whom you work. … only a spirituality which thus puts the whole emphasis on the Reality of God, perpetually turning to Him, losing itself in Him, refusing to allow even the most pressing work or practical problems, even sin and failure, to distract from God, only this is a safe foundation for spiritual work. …The inner life means an ever-deepening awareness of all this: the slowly growing and concrete realization of a Life and a Spirit within us immeasurably exceeding our own, and absorbing, transmuting, supernaturalizing our lives by all ways and at all times. It means the loving sense of God, as so immeasurably beyond us as to keep us in a constant attitude of humblest awe and yet so deeply and closely with us, as to invite our clinging trust and loyal love.”

“apart from me you can do nothing”
Jesus in John 15:5
 .

Moving From the Head to the Heart

Here are the questions that this reading forced me to ask:

  • Am I perpetually turning to God, losing myself in Him?”
  • Will I refuse to allow either pressing work or sinful failure to move my attention from God himself as my only “safe foundation for spiritual work?”
  • Is the life that I offer to others that which immeasurably exceeds my own? Is my life and ministry supernaturalized “by all ways and at all times?”
  • And then – Have I structured my days so that I “recollect myself” (Merton) or “recenter myself” on this God who must be my all in all if I am to keep from living “apart from” him?

Abba, may my faith be theocentric, my life supernaturalized, my heart perpetually turning to you.

For More: Concerning the Inner Life by Evelyn Underhill

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek after God and he seeks after you. I hope you’ll follow my blog, and share it. My goal is to share something of unique value with you daily in 400 words or less. I appreciate your interest!  –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

“I practice daily what I believe; everything else is religious talk.”

Daily Riches: The Fast that Pleases God (Larry Norman)

Posted on by under Fasting, Loving Well, Social Justice, The Poor and Disenfranchised

“You kill a black man at midnight just for talking to your daughter
then you make his wife your mistress and you leave her without water,
and the sheet you wear upon your face is the sheet your children sleep on
at every meal you say a prayer you don’t believe but still you keep on. …

You are far across the ocean in a war that’s not your own
and while you’re winning theirs you’re gonna lose the one at home.
do you really think the only way to bring about the peace
is to sacrifice your children and kill all your enemies?…

Well, my phone is tapped and my lips are chapped from whispering through the fence.
You know every move I make or is that just coincidence?
Will you try to make my way of life a little less like jail,
if I promise to make tapes and slides and send them through the mail? …

You say all men are equal, all men are brothers, then why are the rich more equal than others?
Don’t ask me for answers I’ve only got one
that a man leaves his darkness when he follows the Son.”
Larry Norman, “The Great American Novel” in Only Visiting this Planet (1972)

 “I will tell you the kind of fast I want:
Free the people you have put in prison unfairly and undo their chains.
Free those to whom you are unfair and stop their hard labor.
Share your food with the hungry and bring poor, homeless people into your own homes.
When you see someone who has no clothes, give him yours, and don’t refuse to help your own relatives.
Then your light will shine like the dawn … Your God will walk before you …
You will cry out, and [Yahweh] will say, ‘Here I am.’”
Isaiah 58:6-9

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Do you see yourself in any of the sins mentioned by Norman? by Isaiah?
  • How could God’s people really be so oblivious to their sin – fasting and oppressing others simultaneously? Does this happen today?
  • Notice how central caring for the powerless is for God. Is that central for you? If not, why not?

Abba, may caring for the powerless be at the heart of my following of the Son.

For More: for they shall be fed, ed. Ronald J. Sider

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek after God and he seeks after you. I hope you’ll follow my blog, and share it. My goal is to share something of unique value with you daily in 400 words or less. I appreciate your interest!  –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

“I practice daily what I believe; everything else is religious talk.”

Daily Riches: Uncomprehended Mystery and Unquenchable Light (Thomas Merton, Robert Russell, David Augsburger, Martin Buber, Walter Chalmers Smith)

Posted on by under Embracing Losses and Limits, Faith and Doubt, Humility, Mystery

“The division between Believer and Unbeliever ceases to be so crystal clear. It is not that some are all right and others are all wrong: all are bound to seek in honest perplexity. Everybody is an Unbeliever more or less! Only when this fact is fully experienced, accepted and lived with, does one become fit to hear the simple message of the Gospel – or any other religious teaching. The religious problem of the twentieth century is not understandable if we regard it only as a problem of Unbelievers and of atheists. It is also and perhaps chiefly a problem of Believers. The faith that has grown cold is not only the faith that the Unbeliever has lost but the faith that the Believer has kept. This faith has too often become rigid, or complex, sentimental, foolish, or impertinent. It has lost itself in imaginings and unrealities, dispersed itself in pontifical and organization routines, or evaporated in activism and loose talk.” Thomas Merton

“I am … reminded of the humility of those early theologians who knew that when we seek to speak of God we do so only out of the glimmers of understanding that sparkle amid the vast background of uncomprehended mystery, a mystery that nevertheless shines in nature and in the human spirit with unquenchable light.” Robert J. Russell

“Since nothing we intend is ever faultless, and nothing we attempt ever without error, and nothing we achieve without some measure of finitude and fallibility we call humanness, we are saved by forgiveness.” David Augsburger

“The atheist staring from his attic window is often nearer to God than the believer caught up in his own false image of God.”  Martin Buber

“Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
In light inaccessible hid from our eyes”
Walter Chalmers Smith

“We all stumble in many ways.” James 3:2

Moving From Head to Heart

  • Do you have the humility that comes with knowing how much about God is “hid from your eyes?” That in some ways you’re an “unbeliever” too?
  • Has your faith become “rigid, or complex, sentimental, foolish, or impertinent? Has it “dispersed itself in … organization routines, or evaporated in activism and loose talk?” Has it become cold? Could you be suffering from your “own false image of God?”
  • In spite of it all, can you be “saved by forgiveness?”

Abba, thank you for your constant forgiveness.

For More: Faith and Violence by Thomas Merton

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek after God and he seeks after you. I hope you’ll follow my blog, and share it. My goal is to share something of unique value with you daily in 400 words or less. I appreciate your interest!  –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

“I practice daily what I believe; everything else is religious talk.”

Daily Riches: Living Out Wholeness (Parker Palmer, Florida Scott-Maxwell, J. I. Packer, Julian of Norwich)

Posted on by under God's Grace, Humility, Wholeness and Brokenness

“I am that to which I gave short shrift and that to which I attended. I am my descent into darkness and my arising into light, my betrayals and my fidelities, my failures and my successes. I am my ignorance and my insight, my doubts and my convictions, my fears and my hopes. … Wholeness does not mean perfection: It means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life.” Parker Palmer

“You need only claim the events of your life to make yourself yours. When you truly possess all you have been and done … you are fierce with reality.” Florida Scott-Maxwell

“Having made us, he knows our weaknesses – our fear, our self-pity, our self-regarding anger, our moral paralysis, our randomness, our indiscipline, our suicidal self-loathing. As gently as a shepherd taking up a lamb out of the brambles or a mother taking her infant to her breast, he will take us up and work with us – not to indulge our egoism, however, but to cure it. We must realize that we are in the hands of the Great Physcian, who goal it is, not to make us comfortable invalids, but to restore us to moral health and wholeness. And we must understand that his principal method of treating us, his petulant patients, is hard and constant exercise in a world which under his providence becomes a moral and spiritual gymnasium for us.”  J. I. Packer

“The weakness which is serviceable is the weakness which seeks the aid of a physician.” Bernard of Clairvaux

“until we all reach unity in the faith
and in the knowledge of the Son of God
and become mature,
attaining to the whole measure
of the fullness of Christ.”
Ephesians 4:13
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Moving From Head to Heart

  • Do you think of yourself as a person of wholeness and integrity?
  • Either way, are you measuring by “perfection” or by “embracing [the] brokenness” that is integral to your life?
  • Can you “claim the [good and bad] events of your life”, and be a person who is “fierce with reality?” If not, what does that say about you?
  • Does your “weakness” cause you to “seek the aid of a physician” (the Great Physician)? Can you be glad for it then?

Abba, take all that I am, all I have done. Make me real, whole, and useful to you and others.

For More: “On the Brink of Everything” by Parker Palmer

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek after God and he seeks after you. I hope you’ll follow my blog, and share it. My goal is to share something of unique value with you daily in 400 words or less. I appreciate your interest!  –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

“I practice daily what I believe; everything else is religious talk.”

 

Daily Riches: Radically Trusting God, Truly Helping Others (Nikos Kazantzakis, Parker Palmer)

Posted on by under Change Yourself First, Detachment and Attachment, Hurry Sickness, Jesus the Savior, Learning Your Proper Place, Loving Listening, Loving Well, Waiting on God
“I remember one morning when I discovered a cocoon in the bark of a tree just as a butterfly was making a hole in its case and preparing to come out. I waited awhile, but it was too long appearing and I was impatient. I bent over it and breathed on it to warm it. I warmed it as quickly as I could and the miracle began to happen before my eyes, faster than life. The case opened; the butterfly started slowly crawling out, and I shall never forget my horror when I saw how its wings were foldedhatching back and crumpled; the wretched butterfly tried with its whole trembling body to unfold them. Bending over it, I tried to help it with my breath, in vain. It needed to be hatched out patiently and the unfolding of the wings should be a gradual process in the sun. Now it was too late. My breath had forced the butterfly to appear all crumpled, before its time. It struggled desperately and, a few seconds later, died in the palm of my hand. That little body is, I do believe, the greatest weight I have on my conscience. For I realize today that it is a mortal sin to violate the great laws of nature. We should not hurry, we should not be impatient, but we should confidently obey the external rhythm.”  Nikos Kazantzakis
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“…most people can and must come to life in their own way and time, and if we try to help them by hastening the process, we end up doing harm. …[but] when we understand that our efforts to help other people can be unhelpful, or worse, we may start to avert our eyes from their struggles and pains, not knowing what to do and embarrassed by our own ineptitude. … [but] Instead of fixing up, or letting down, people who have a problem, we [can] stand with simple attentiveness at the borders of their solitude – trusting that they have within themselves whatever resources they need and that our attentiveness can help bring those resources into play. …We stay present to each other without wavering, while stifling any impulse to fix each other up. We offer each other support in going where each needs to go, and learning what each needs to learn, at each one’s pace….” Parker Palmer
 
“Everyone should be … slow to speak”
James 1:19
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Moving From Head to Heart

  • Can you resist the urge to “fix” someone in need?
  • Can you simply be “present” to them in love rather than averting your eyes?
  • Will you trust them to do for themselves what only they can do, and God to do for them what only God can do – and will do in God’s time?

Abba, help.

For More: A Hidden Wholeness by Parker Palmer

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek after God and he seeks after you. –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)