Author Archives: Bill Britton

Daily Riches: The Furious Love of God (Brennan Manning, John Chrysostom and Edwina Gateley)

Posted on by under "Being" with Jesus, Being the Beloved, The Love of God

“Many Christians have never have grabbed ahold of God. They do not know, really know, that God dearly and passionately loves them. Many accept it theoretically; others in a shadowy sort of way. While their belief system is invulnerable, their faith in God’s love for them is remote and abstract. They would be hard-pressed to say that the essence of their faith-commitment is a love affair between God and themselves. Not just a simple love affair but a furious love affair. How do we grab ahold of God? How do we overcome our sadness and isolation?  …How, how, how? The answer comes irresistibly and unmistakably: prayer. …The task of contemplative prayer is to help me achieve the conscious awareness of the unconditionally loving God dwelling within me.” Brennan Manning

“God loves us more than a father, mother, friend, or any else could love, and even more than we’re able to love ourselves.” John Chrysostom

Be silent.
Be still.
Alone.
Empty
Before your God.
Say nothing.
Ask nothing.
Be silent.
Be still.
Let your God look upon you.
That is all.
God knows.
God understands.
God loves you
With an enormous love,
And only wants
To look upon you
With that love.
Quiet.
Still.
Be.”
“Let Your God Love You” by Edwina Gateley

“I have loved you even as the Father has loved me.”
Jesus, to his disciples in John 15:9

  • Year’s ago a Christian friend embarrassed me by asking, “So, do you love the Lord?” I wanted to talk about my “invulnerable belief system.” Is your relationship with God “a furious love affair?”
  • Manning makes it clear that many of us struggle with this. We know God’s love for us in a “shadowy way” or “theoretically.” It’s difficult for us to overcome “our sadness and isolation” from God. Are you able to be still and quiet, just “letting God look upon you” with the same love he has for Jesus his son – soaking in it, soaking it in? Why not do that now?
  • Is the way you practice prayer likely to lead you into a growing sense of God’s love for you? If not, what needs to change?

Abba, help me want you and seek you as much as you want and seek me. Dissatisfy me with theory. Move me past theology. Unnerve me with your furious unfailing love for me.

For More: The Signature of Jesus by Brennan Manning

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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: Thy Will Be … Changed! (Abraham Heschel, Philip Yancey)

Posted on by under Emotions and Spirituality, Faith and Doubt, Learning Your Proper Place, Prayer

“The refusal to accept the harshness of God’s ways in the name of his love was an authentic form of prayer. Indeed, the ancient Prophets of Israel were not in the habit of consenting to God’s harsh judgment and did not simply nod, saying, ‘Thy will be done.’ They often challenged him, as if to say, ‘Thy will be changed.’ They had often countered and even annulled divine decrees.’ … A man who lived by honesty could not be expected to suppress his anxiety when tormented by profound perplexity… There are some forms of suffering that a man must accept with love and bear in silence. There are other agonies to which he must say no.” Abraham Heschel

“Like Abraham, I approach God at first in fear and trembling, only to learn that God wants me to stop groveling and start arguing. I dare not meekly accept the state of the world, with all its injustice and unfairness. I must call God to account for God’s own promises, God’s own character. Robert Duvall’s movie The Apostle includes a scene in which Sonny, a preacher with a hot temper and a criminal record, stomps around in an upstairs room kicking furniture and yelling. A neighbor calls to complain about the noise: ‘Sounds like you have a madman over there.’ Sonny’s mom smiles and explains that’s just Sonny. ‘Ever since he’s been little-bitty boy my son’s been talking to the Lord. Sometimes he talks to the Lord and sometimes he yells at the Lord, and tonight he just happens to be yelling at the Lord.” Philip Yancey

“Alas, Sovereign Lord!
How completely you have deceived this people and Jerusalem
by saying, ‘You will have peace,’
when the sword is at our throats!”
Jeremiah 4:10

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Have you ever “meekly accepted the state of the world” because you thought it was what God wanted of you (“Thy will be done.”)?
  • Have you ever asked God hard questions about “the state of the world, with all its injustice and unfairness?”
  • Can you imagine yourself “yelling at the Lord” like Sonny? …”calling God to account?” …that at times the Lord might want you “to start arguing” with him?

Abba, give me courage within, and trust in you, to argue instead of nodding assent when things don’t seem right.

For More: The Prophetic Imagination by Walter Brueggemann

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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 Prayer of Consent (Francis Fenelon and Thomas Keating)

Posted on by under "Being" with Jesus, Contemplative Prayer, Prayer, thirsting and longing for God

“What God asks of us is a will which is no longer divided between Him and any creature. It is a will pliant in His hands which neither seeks nor rejects anything, which wants without reserve whatever He wants and which never wants under any pretext anything that He does not want. …Happy are those who give themselves to God! …placing our will entirely in the hands of God, we want only what God wants, and thus we find His consolation in faith and consequently hope in the midst of all suffering. …Happy are those who throw themselves with bowed heads into the arms of the ‘Father of mercies’ and the ‘God of all consolation’.” Francis Fenelon

“Contemplative prayer is a deepening of faith that moves beyond thoughts and concepts. One just listens to God, open and receptive to the divine presence in one’s inmost being as its source. One listens not with a view to hearing something, but with a view to becoming aware of the obstacles to one’s friendship with God. …In contemplative prayer the Spirit places us in a position where we are at rest and disinclined to fight. …Little by little, we enter into prayer without intentionality except to consent… and consent becomes surrender … and surrender becomes total receptivity… and, as the process continues, total receptivity becomes effortless, peaceful.… It is free and has nothing to attain, to get, or desire … So, no thinking, no reflection, no desire, no words, no thing … just receptivity and consent.” Thomas Keating

“Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices
as much as in obeying the Lord?
To obey is better than sacrifice,
and to heed is better than the fat of rams.”
1 Samuel 15:22

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Can you imagine being “pliant” in God’s hands, never wanting “anything that He does not want?”
  • Are you willing to listen in prayer “with a view to becoming aware of the obstacles to [your] friendship with God?” …becoming “disinclined to fight?”
  • Are you willing to enter into a kind of prayer that is permeated by only “receptivity and consent?” Imagine what that would look like.

Abba, draw me to you, so that I throw myself with a bowed head into your arms, surrendering to you–the God who loves me and desires only good for me–the God of all mercy and consolation.

For More: Devotional Classics by Richard Foster and James Bryan Smith

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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)

Daily Riches: An Hour Well Employed (Allen Verhey, Pete Scazzero, and Francis de Sales)

Posted on by under "Being" with Jesus, Contemplative Prayer, devotions, Meditation, Patience with Yourself, Silence

“Prayer is focused attention to God.” Peter Scazzero

“In learning to pray, Christians learn …a practice–and the good intrinsic to that practice. They learn, that is, to attend to God, to look to God. And they learn that not just intellectually, not just as an idea. In learning to pray, they learn a human activity that engages their bodies as well as their minds, their affections and passions and loyalties as well as their rationality, and that focuses their lives and their common life upon God. To attend to God is not easy to learn–or painless. And given our inveterate attention to ourselves and to our own needs and wants, we frequently corrupt it. …In learning to pray, Christians learn to look to God and, after the blinding vision, to begin to look at all else in a new light. In prayer they do not attend to something beyond God that God–or  prayer–might be used in order to reach; they attend to God. That is the good intrinsic to prayer, the good ‘internal to that form of activity,’ simple attention to God.” Allen Verhey

“How to meditate? Bring yourself back to the point quite gently. And even if you do nothing during the whole of your hour but bring your heart back a thousand times, though it went away every time you brought it back, your hour would be very well employed.” Francis de Sales

“Lord, teach us to pray.”  Luke 11:1

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Is your prayer aimed at “focused attention to God” or are you often easily distracted by your “inveterate attention” to yourself and your own needs and wants? If you’re easily distracted, can you forgive yourself, admitting you’re like everyone else?
  • When worries, fantasies, noises, sinful thoughts and the making of plans disrupt your attention to God, are you able to “bring yourself back to the point quite gently” – with no self recrimination, self-defense or further distraction?
  • Can you bring your heart back to attentiveness to God, even if in one session it’s “a thousand times?”

Abba, I’m encouraged that with each distraction, I have the opportunity to turn to you and attend to you again. I’m content to do this over and over as long as I must, and I know you’ll ever be lovingingly waiting for my return.

For More: The Art of Loving God by Francis de Sales

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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: Holding Your Breath to Listen (James Emery White, Henri Nouwen and David Whyte)

Posted on by under "Being" with Jesus, Prayer, Silence, Solitude, Spiritual Formation, Stillness

“We don’t often speak of silence, much less solitude [but]… the power of silence and solitude has been recognized throughout the history of spiritual formation. It is the purposeful separation of ourselves from the world in order to place ourselves with God. The great advantage of the evil one is his ability to assault our senses with the material world in which we live as if to drown out the distant chords from eternity’s symphony. One can only surmise that it was for this reason that Lewis’ Screwtape announces to his nephew Wormwood that one of hell’s goals is to ‘make the whole universe a noise in the end.’ Only in silence can we move past the deafening roar of the world and hear the music of God. Here it is important to remember the difference between spiritual quietness, and the mere absence of sound that creates silence. ‘Silence is the absence of sound and quiet the stilling of sound,’ writes Frederick Buechner. ‘Quiet chooses to be silent. It holds its breath to listen.’ The Rule of St. Benedict speaks of cultivating silence in our lives, with an entire chapter devoted to its pursuit. ‘Unless I am silent I shall not hear God,’ Esther de Waal writes in her reflections on Benedict’s Rule, ‘and until I hear him I shall not come to know him.’ James Emery White

“The silence of solitude is nothing but dead silence when it does not make us alert for a new voice sounding from beyond all human chatter.” Henri Nouwen

“Guard your steps as you go to the house of God
and draw near to listen
rather than to offer
the sacrifice of fools”
Ecclesiastes 5:1

“fools multiply words”
Ecclesiastes 10:14

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Is your world “a universe of noise?”
  • Is your religious experience mostly about the power of words? (preaching, teaching, evangelizing, praying, singing, sharing, testifying)
  • Do you know what it is to “hold your breath and listen” to hear “a new voice sounding from beyond all human chatter?”
  • Are you making space for the practice of silence and solitude in your daily and weekly schedule?

“Enough. These few words are enough.
If not these words, this breath.
If not this breath, this sitting here.
This opening to the life
we have refused
again an again
until now.
Until now.”
David Whyte

For More:  Serious Times by James Emery White

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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 Mob of Men as a ‘Mob of Kings’ (G. K. Chesterton, Frederick Buechner and Richard Rohr)

Posted on by under Awareness, Loving Well

“You shall love your crooked neighbour, with your crooked heart.” W. H. Auden

Saint Francis “… honored all men; that is, he not only loved but respected them all. What gave him extraordinary personal power was this: that from the Pope to the beggar, from the sultan of Syria in his pavilion to the ragged robbers crawling out of the wood, there was never a man who looked into those brown burning eyes without being certain Francis Bernardone was really interested in him, in his own inner individual life from cradle to grave; that he himself was being valued and taken seriously… He treated the whole mob of men as a mob of kings.” G. K. Chesterton

“If we are to love our neighbors,
before doing anything else
we must see our neighbors.
With our imagination as well as our eyes,
that is to say like artists,
we must see not just their faces
but the life behind and within their faces.
Here it is love that is the frame we see them in.”
Frederick Buechner

“The first gaze is seldom compassionate. It is too busy weighing and feeling itself: ‘How will this affect me?’  …This leads us to an implosion, a self-preoccupation that cannot enter into communion with the other or the moment. In other words, we first feel our feelings before we can relate to the situation and emotion of the other. Only after God has taught us how to live ‘undefended’, can we immediately stand with and for the other, and in the present moment. It takes a lot of practice.” Richard Rohr

“When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd [a mob of men],
he had compassion on them,
because they were like sheep without a shepherd.”
Mark 6:34

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Does the fact of your “own crooked heart” inform your loving?
  • Who is “the other” for you?  neighbor, spouse, family member, stranger, competitor, anyone who is not you?
  • Are you aware of the problem of “feeling your feelings” before you relate to the situation of the Other?
  • How can you practice a “first gaze” where “love is the frame” in which you see anyone who is the Other?

Abba, help me learn a compassionate first gaze so that I honor, love and respect others. Disarm me, undefend me, unpreoccupy me with myself.

For More: Saint Francis of Assisi by G. K. Chesterton

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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: Working with God’s Slowness (Tertullian, Pete Scazzero, Pope Francis and Dan Allender)

Posted on by under Hurry Sickness, Striving and drivenness, Waiting on God

“Impatience is, as it were, the original sin in the eyes of the Lord. For, to put it in a nutshell, every sin is to be traced back to impatience. I find the origin of impatience in the Devil himself. …When the Spirit of God descends, patience is His inseparable companion. If we fail to welcome it along with the Spirit, will the latter remain within us at all times? As a matter of fact, I rather think the Spirit would not remain at all.” Tertullian

“Tertullian expounds on a truth we rarely talk about – i.e. God’s nature to be patient. …Tertullian’s exhortation on patience keeps me anchored in peace and joy since the realization of goals almost always take much longer than I expect.” Pete Scazzero

“I am always wary of decisions made hastily. I am always wary of the first decision, that is, the first thing that comes to my mind if I have to make a decision. This is usually the wrong thing. I have to wait and assess, looking deep into myself, taking the necessary time.” Pope Francis

“God is not bound by time, nor is our story. We desperately want our situation solved. We want resolution. But God unfolds the plot in his own time. It is in our months or years of waiting that our story comes to maturity. It is over a lifetime of stories that he turns our desire toward him.” Dan Allender

“Brothers and sisters, as an example of patience in the face of suffering,
take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.”
James 5:10

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • “When the Spirit of God descends, patience is His inseparable companion.” Are you a patient person?
  • Do you allow for the fact that “the realization of goals almost always takes much longer than you expect?”
  • Are you wary of “decisions made hastily?” of the “first decision?” What does this look like in your actual experience?
  • Do you know how to look “deep into yourself” so that you act with an awareness of your unconscious motives?
  • Is there a spiritual discipline you can devise to help you develop a slower, more aware approach to decision making?

Abba, here it is, yet another reason for me to learn to slow down.

For More: To Be Told by Dan Allender

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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 Difference Between Thinking and Praying (Donald McCullough, William O’Malley, and John Donne)

Posted on by under "Being" with Jesus, Being the Beloved, Contemplative Prayer, Embracing Losses and Limits, Prayer, Striving and drivenness, The Love of God

“I don’t understand why God loves me–or anyone else, for that matter. But does a minnow have to understand the ocean to swim in it? Does a goose have to understand his instinctive urges to fly south in winter before taking flight? Does a hawk understand the physics of hot air rising to soar atop the currents? Do I really need to understand the height and breadth and depth of God’s love to throw myself upon it? Authentic spirituality, it seems to me, does not depend on understanding everything about ourselves and God and then using that knowledge to hoist ourselves to a higher level of experience and achievement. …Authentic spirituality confidently assumes that God is up to something good, going ahead of us, calling us, embracing us, and it seeks simply to participate and delight in this.”  Donald McCullough

“Prayer begins with being connected to God. One way I find helpful to remind myself of the ever-present God is to say over and over again, ‘God, my great friend, … somehow you’re alive in me.’ At times, I am sure, you will need nothing more than that. But the essential difference between thinking and praying is the conscious ‘connection.’ The goal of these prayers is connecting with and resting in God, not trying to learn anything or to make ‘progress in the spiritual life.’  Remember, God will lead us as God will, and God’s faithfulness, goodness, and love for us are infinite.” William O’Malley

“I pray that you, being rooted and established in love
may … grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ,
and know this love that surpasses knowledge….”
Ephesians 3:18,19

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Do you believe more knowledge can hoist you to “a higher level of experience” with God? How can striving for more knowledge be helpful? how can it be harmful?
  • Do you pray in order to “make progress in the spiritual life” or to “connect with and rest in God?” What’s the difference?
  • Do you experience God’s love mostly as fact or feeling? Does it “surpass knowledge?”

Abba, take me to you, imprison mee, for I
Except you enthrall mee, never shall be free,
Nor ever chast, except you ravish mee.
John Donne

For More: Daily Prayers for Busy People by William J. O’Malley

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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: God … As He Really Is (Thomas Merton and Henri Nouwen)

Posted on by under awe and wonder, Embracing Losses and Limits, Humility, Learning Your Proper Place

“So much depends on our idea of God. Yet no idea of God, however pure and perfect, is adequate to express God as God really is. Our idea of God tells us more about ourselves than about God.” Thomas Merton

“God cannot be understood; he cannot be grasped by the human mind. The truth escapes our human capacities. The only way to come close to it is by a constant emphasis on the limitation of our human capacities to ‘have’ or to ‘hold’ the truth. We can neither explain God nor his presence in human history. As soon as we identify God with any specific event or situation, we play God and distort the truth. We can only be faithful in our affirmation that God has not deserted us but has called us in the middle of all the unexplainable absurdities of life. It is very important to be deeply aware of this. There is a great and subtle temptation to explain to myself or others where God is working and where not, and when he is present and when not, but nobody, no Christian, no priest, no monk has any ‘special’ knowledge about God. God cannot be limited by any human concept or prediction. He is greater than our mind and heart and perfectly free to reveal himself where and when he wants. . . After having done everything to make some space for God, it is still God who comes on his own initiative.” Henri Nouwen

“He was despised and forsaken of men,
A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief…
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.”
Isaiah 53:3

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Do you know people who know “where God is working and where not?” …”when he is present and when not?” What is your response to them?
  • The disciples lived with Jesus for over three years and didn’t understand him, and the people of Jesus’ day misunderstood and rejected him. If you know God by faith in Jesus Christ, do you still have a profound sense of the “limitation” of your knowledge of God? If so, how does that affect you?
  • What does your idea of God tell you about yourself?

Abba, give me great pause when I’m tempted to box you in, define you or explain you – to myself or to others.

For More: Show Me the Way by Henri Nouwen

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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 ‘Unquiet Universal Trance’ (Thomas Merton and the Kinks)

Posted on by under Asceticism

“Nine tenths of the news, as printed in the papers, is pseudo-news, manufactured events. Some days ten tenths. The ritual morning trance, in which one scans columns of newsprint, creates a peculiar form of generalized pseudo-attention to a pseudo-reality. This experience is taken seriously. It is one’s daily immersion in ‘reality.’ One’s orientation to the rest of the world. One’s way of reassuring himself that he has not fallen behind. …My own experience has been that renunciation of this self-hypnosis, of this participation in the unquiet universal trance, is no sacrifice to reality at all. To ‘fall behind’ in this sense is to get out of the big cloud of dust that everybody is kicking up, to breathe and to see a little more clearly. …Certainly I do not pretend that by simply refusing to keep up with the latest news I am therefore unaffected by what goes on, or free of it all. Certainly events happen and they affect me as they do other people. It is important for me to know about them too: but I refrain from trying to know them in their fresh condition as ‘news.’ When they reach me they have become slightly stale. I eat the same tragedies as others, but in the form of tasteless crusts. The news reaches me in the long run through books and magazines, and no longer as a stimulant. Living without news is like living without cigarettes (another peculiarity of the monastic life). The need for this habitual indulgence quickly disappears. So, when you hear news without the ‘need’ to hear it, it treats you differently. And you treat it differently too.” Thomas Merton

“See that fella, looking all spick and span,
Is he a tailor’s dummy or is he a real man?
Is he genuine,
or straight off the assembly line?”
“Unreal Reality”, the Kinks

“And do not be conformed to this world,
but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…”
Romans 12:2

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Have you been duped by “pseudo-news and manufactured events?” by “unreal reality?”
  • Could you benefit by waiting to digest the news as “stale crusts?” How might you “treat it differently?”
  • What can you do to “get out of the big cloud of dust that everybody is kicking up … to see a little more clearly?”

Abba, deliver me from unreality.

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 – One Year Anniversary! Thanks all!

Posted on by under Contemplation and Activism, contemplative virtues, Downward Mobility, Loving Union with God, Spiritual Disciplines, Spiritual Formation, The Upside-Down Kingdom, thirsting and longing for God

On January 1 last year my blog “Daily Riches” was born. Since then, I’ve posted 304 times, had over 20,000 views by people in 108 countries, and gained 184 faithful daily followers.

Screen shot 2014-12-31 at 2.50.17 PM (2)

My most popular post was on “Approval Addiction” (176 views): https://richerbyfar.com/2014/02/06/daily-riches-approval-addiction-richard-foster/

Thanks to so many of you for your encouragement and support in the last year! I wish you the best, and I hope you’ll keep reading and sharing “Daily Riches.”

Bill

Daily Riches: Learning Prayer, Prioritizing Prayer (John Eudes Bamburger and Henri Nouwen)

Posted on by under Contemplative Prayer, fixed-time prayers, Prayer, Spiritual Formation
In The Genesee Diary, Henri Nouwen records his experiment with life in a Trappist Monastery: “…I put this question to [my spiritual director] John Eudes: ‘How can I really develop a deeper prayer life when I am back again at my busy work? …as long as I remain surrounded by unfinished tasks, my prayer is nearly impossible since I use the time for prayer to wonder about the many things I still have to do. It always seems that there is something more urgent and more important than prayer.’ John Eudes’ answer was clear and simple: ‘The only solution is a prayer schedule that you will never break without consulting your spiritual director. Set a time that is reasonable, and once it is set, stick to it at all costs. Make it your most important task. Let everyone know that this is the only thing you will not change and pray at that time. One hour in the morning before work and a half hour before you go to bed might be a good start. Set the exact time and hold on to it. Leave a party when that time approaches. Simply make it an impossibility to do any type of work, even if it seems urgent, important, and crucial. When you remain faithful, you slowly discover that is is useless to think about your many problems since they won’t be dealt with in that time anyhow. …So praying becomes as important as eating and sleeping, and the time set free for it becomes a very liberating time to which you become attached in the good sense.’ …It seems very convincing to me [Nouwen says], even obvious. The only task left is this: simply doing it in obedience.” Henry Nouwen
 .
“devote yourselves to prayer”
1 Corinthians 7:5

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Does it always seem to you like there is “something more urgent and more important than prayer?”
  • Would you consider making a reasonable, but essentially inflexible plan for fixed-time prayers?
  • Regular daily prayer is “as important as eating and sleeping.” You probably protect your sleeping and eating time. Isn’t it “obvious” that you must also plan for and protect your praying time? How will you do that?

Abba, teach me a faithfulness in prayer that results in liberation from my self-imposed, misguided tyranny.

For More: The Genesee Diary by Henri Nouwen (more from Bamburger from this diary entry)

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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 Art of Imperfection’ (J. R. Briggs and Robyn Griggs Lawrence)

Posted on by under awe and wonder, Embracing Losses and Limits, Simplicity, The Upside-Down Kingdom

“According to Japanese legend, a young man named Sen no Rikyu …went to tea master Takeno Joo, who tested the younger man by asking him to tend the garden. Rikyu cleaned up debris and raked the ground until it was perfect, and the garden immaculate. Before presenting his work to the master, he shook a cherry tree, causing a few flowers to fall onto the ground. To this day, the Japanese revere Rikyu as one who understood …wabi-sabi …the art of finding beauty in imperfection and profundity in earthiness, of revering authenticity above all. When a white pottery bowl breaks, for example, one might glue it back together with white lacquer to disguise the breaks, making it look as new and complete as possible. But in the East the bowl might be glued back together with lacquer sprinkled with gold to highlight the cracks and imperfections. Japanese culture sees the aesthetic value of imperfection in wabi-sabi just as much as the Greeks valued perfection in their art. Wabi-sabi is seen as beautiful because it is imperfect and broken.” J. R. Briggs

“Wabi-sabi reminds us that we are all transient beings on this planet—that our bodies, as well as the material world around us, are in the process of returning to dust. Nature’s cycles of growth, decay, and erosion are embodied in frayed edges, rust, liver spots. Through wabi-sabi, we learn to embrace both the glory and the melancholy found in these marks of passing time. Bringing wabi-sabi into your life doesn’t require money, training, or special skills. It takes a mind quiet enough to appreciate muted beauty, courage not to fear bareness, willingness to accept things as they are—without ornamentation. It depends on the ability to slow down, to shift the balance from doing to being, to appreciating rather than perfecting.” Robyn Griggs Lawrence

“But we have this treasure in earthen vessels,
so that the surpassing greatness
of the power will be of God
and not from ourselves….”
2 Corinthians 4:7

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Do you “revere authenticity above all?”
  • Can you appreciate things in their simplicity – with signs of wear? of age? without “ornamentation?”
  • Can you “find beauty in imperfection” – in the world? in yourself? in others?
  • What would it mean for you to shift from “perfecting” to “appreciating?”

Abba, show your beauty in my imperfections.

For More: Tinker at Pilgrim Creek by Annie Dillard

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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: ‘Please Don’t Mention the Dysfunction’ (Walter Brueggemann)

Posted on by under Emotions and Spirituality, Social Justice

“The second loss caused by the absence of lament is the stifling of the question of theodicy …the capacity to raise and legitimate questions of justice in terms of social goods, social access, and social power. …It is now noticed and voiced that life is not as it was promised to be. The utterance of this awareness is an exceedingly dangerous moment at the throne. It is as dangerous as Lech Walesa or Rosa Parks asserting with their bodies that the system has broken down and will no longer be honored. For the managers of the system – political, economic, religious, moral – there is always a hope that the troubled folks will not notice the dysfunction or that a tolerance of a certain degree of dysfunction can be accepted as normal and necessary, even if unpleasant. Lament occurs when the dysfunction reaches an unacceptable level, when the injustice is intolerable and change is insisted upon. …The lament/complaint can then go in two different directions. …the complaint can be addressed to God against neighbor [or] addressed to God against God. …the issue is justice. …the petitioner accepts no guilt or responsibility for the dysfunction but holds the other party responsible. …The claims and rights of the speaker are asserted to God in the face of a system that does not deliver … with the passionate conviction that it can, must, and will be changed. …When the lament form is censured, justice questions cannot be asked and eventually become invisible and illegitimate. …A community of faith that negates laments soon concludes that the hard issues of justice are improper questions to pose at the throne, because the throne seems to be only a place of praise. I believe it thus follows that if justice questions are improper questions at the throne … they soon appear to be improper questions in public places, in schools, in hospitals, with the government, and eventually even in the courts. Justice questions disappear into civility and docility. The order of the day comes to seem absolute, beyond question, and we are left with only grim obedience and eventually despair.” Walter Brueggemann

“ justice is perverted”
Habakkuk 1:4

Moving From Head to Heart

  • Do you believe “the system has broken down?”
  • Are justice issues “improper … at the throne?”
  • Have you settled for “civility and docility?”
  • Do you believe things “can, must, and will be changed?”

More: The Psalms, Patrick Miller, editor

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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: Church – Where ‘Never Is Heard a Discouraging Word’ (Walter Brueggemann)

Posted on by under Emotions and Spirituality, Faith and Doubt, Social Justice

“One loss that results from the absence of lament is the loss of genuine covenant interaction, since the second party to the covenant (the petitioner) has become voiceless or has a voice that is permitted to speak only praise and doxology. Where lament is absent, covenant comes into being only as a celebration of joy and well-being. Or in political categories, the greater party is surrounded by subjects who are always ‘yes-men and women’ from whom ‘never is heard a discouraging word.’ Since such a celebrative, consenting silence does not square with reality, covenant minus lament is finally a practice of denial, cover-up, and pretense, which sanctions social control. …We can draw a suggestive analogy from this understanding of the infant/mother relationship for our study of the lament. Where there is lament, the believer is able to take initiative with God and so develop over against God the ego-strength that is necessary for responsible faith. But where the capacity to initiate lament is absent, one is left only with praise and doxology. God then is omnipotent, always to be praised. …The absence of lament makes a religion of coercive obedience the only possibility. I do not suggest that biblical faith be reduced to psychological categories, but I find this parallel suggestive. It suggests that the God who evokes and responds to lament is neither omnipotent in any conventional sense nor surrounded by docile reactors. Rather, this God is like a mother who dreams with this infant, that the infant may some day grow into a responsible, mature covenant partner who can enter into serious communion and conversation. In such … there comes genuine obedience, which is not a contrived need to please, but a genuine, yielding commitment. What is at issue here, as Calvin understood so well, is a true understanding of the human self but, at the same time, a radical discernment of this God who is capable of and willing to be respondent and not only initiator.” Walter Brueggemann

“I will look to see what he will say to me.” Habakkuk 2:1

Moving From Head to Heart

  • Is your relationship with God limited to praise?
  • Do you, does your church, practice “a consenting silence” that “sanctions social control?”
  • Can you imagine God wants you not only for a respondent but an “initiator?”

Abba, help me be the partner you desire.

For More: The Psalms by Patrick Miller, editor

_________________________________________________

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.”