Category Archives: Change Yourself First

Daily Riches: Called Out of Yourself to Love the “Other” (Gary Thomas)

Posted on by under Change Yourself First, Ego Issues, Emotions and Spirituality, hospitality, Insiders and Outsiders, Loving Well, Marriage, Spiritual Formation, The Call to Change, The Love of God

“This man or this woman seems so different from you, I know. That’s why it seems so difficult to love him or her. When you think on one level, she thinks on another. When you’re certain this perspective matters most, he brings in another angle entirely. And you ask yourself, ‘How can I possibly love someone who is so different from me?’ And yet consider, if you can ask this question with integrity, try asking yourself this one: How could you possibly love God? He is spirit, and you are encased in flesh and bones. He is eternal, and you are trapped in time. He is all holy, perfect, sinless, and you – like me – are steeped in sin. It is far less of a leap for a man to love a woman or for a woman to love a man than it is for either of us to love God. But I think it’s more than that. I think marriage is designed to call us out of ourselves and learn to love the ‘different.’ Put together in the closest situation imaginable – living side by side, sleeping in the same room, even, on occasion, sharing our bodies with each other – we are forced to respect and appreciate someone who is so radically different. We need to be called out of ourselves because, in truth, we are incomplete. God made us to find our fulfillment in Him – the Totally Other. Marriage shows us that we are not all there is; it calls us to give way to another, but also to find joy, happiness, and even ecstasy in another. …Christianity involves believing certain things, to be sure, but its herald, its hallmark, its glory is not in merely ascribing to certain intellectual truths. The beauty of Christianity is in learning to love, and few life situations test that so radically as does a marriage.” Gary Thomas

“Above all, love each other deeply.”
1 Peter 4:8

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Do you find people who are nothing like you hard to take?
  • Can you see marriage as the place where we care called “out of ourselves and learn to love the other?” …even, where we learn to love God, the “Totally Other?”
  • Is learning to love those who are “different” a priority for you? If not, why not, since this is undoubtedly the “hallmark” of Christianity?

Abba, use my marriage to teach me to love those who are not like me.

For More: Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas

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

Daily Riches: That Holy Place Where God Makes Himself Known (Gary Thomas, Brené Brown)

Posted on by under Change Yourself First, Ego Issues, Emotions and Spirituality, Loving Well, Marriage, The Call to Change

“There’s an old rabbinical story about how the spot was chosen for God’s holy temple. Two brothers worked a common field and a common mill. Each night they divided whatever grain they had produced and each took his portion home. One brother was single and one was married with a large family. The single brother decided that his married brother, with all those kids, certainly needed more grain than he did, so at night he secretly crept over to his brother’s granary and gave him an extra portion. The married brother realized that his single brother didn’t have any children to care for him in his old age. Concerned about his brother’s future, he got up each night and secretly deposited some grain in his single brother’s granary. One night they met halfway between the two granaries, and each brother realized what the other was doing. They embraced, and as the story goes, God witnessed what happened and said, ‘This is a holy place — a place of love — and it is here that my temple shall be built.’ The holy place is that spot where God is made known to his people, ‘the place where human beings discover each other in love.’ Marriage can be that holy place. The site of a relationship that proclaims God’s love to this world… Notice what makes this story so moving, two individuals who had greater empathy for the difficulties the other faced rather than their own. Selfish marriage is the opposite: each partner feels their own pain more intensely and are either unaware or calloused in regards to their spouse’s pain.” Gary Thomas

“I define connection as the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued; when they can give and receive without judgment…. If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can’t survive.” Brené Brown 

“Above all, clothe yourselves with love”
Colossians 3:14

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • If you’re married, do you see your marriage as a “holy place…where God is made known?”
  • If you’re married, you know how decidedly painful this process can be. Are you willing to submit to it?
  • Imagine what your spouse can do for you if you are “seen, heard and valued” – if he or she responds to your vulnerability with “empathy and understanding.” Imagine what you can do for your spouse.

Abba, make yourself known in the dailyness and difficulties of our marriages.

For More: Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas

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

Daily Riches: Take the Trouble to See … And Then Love (Anthony de Mello, Pete Scazzero)

Posted on by under Awareness, Change Yourself First, Jesus the Savior, Loving Listening, Loving Well, The Love of God, truth and illusion

“Love springs from awareness. It is only inasmuch as you see persons as they really are here and now and not as they are in your memory or your desire or in your imagination or projection that you can truly love them; otherwise it is not the people that you love but the idea that you have formed of them. Therefore, the first act of love is to see this person…. And this involves the enormous discipline of dropping your desires, your prejudices, your memories, your projections, your selective way of looking…. When you set out to serve someone whom you have not taken the trouble to see, are you meeting that person’s need or your own? So the first ingredient of love is to really see the other. The second ingredient is equally important: to see yourself, to ruthlessly flash the light of awareness on your motives, your emotions, your needs, your dishonesty, your self-seeking, your tendency to control and manipulate. This means calling things by their names, no matter how painful the discovery and the consequences. If you achieve this kind of awareness of the other and yourself, you will know what love is.” Anthony de Mello

One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to have dinner with him, so Jesus went to his home and sat down to eat. When a certain immoral woman from that city heard he was eating there, she brought a beautiful alabaster jar filled with expensive perfume. Then she knelt behind him at his feet, weeping. Her tears fell on his feet, and she wiped them off with her hair. Then she kept kissing his feet and putting perfume on them. When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, ‘If this man were a prophet, he would know what kind of woman is touching him. She’s a sinner!’” Luke 7:35-39

Moving From Head to Heart

“Simon the Pharisee did not really see the sinful woman as a human being loved by God. He saw a sinner, an interruption, a person without a right to be at the dinner table. Jesus saw her differently.” Pete Scazzero

  • Think about it, how would you have seen her?
  • What can you do to gain more “awareness of the other and yourself?”

Abba, open my eyes to reality as you know it.

More: Begin the Journey with the Daily Office by Pete Scazzero

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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 Community of Sinners and Saints (Miroslav Volf and Thomas Merton)

Posted on by under Change Yourself First, Jesus the Savior, Learning Your Proper Place, Loving Well

“Forgiveness flounders because I exclude the enemy from the community of humans even as I exclude myself from the community of sinners. But no one can be in the presence of the God of the crucified Messiah for long without overcoming this double exclusion – without transposing the enemy from the sphere of monstrous inhumanity into the sphere of shared humanity and herself from the sphere of proud innocence into the sphere of common sinfulness. When one knows that the torturer will not eternally triumph over the victim, one is free to rediscover that person’s humanity and imitate God’s love for him. And when one knows that God’s love is greater than all sin, one is free to see oneself in the light of God’s justice and so rediscover one’s own sinfulness.” Miroslav Volf

“Strong hate, the hate that takes joy in hating, is strong because it does not believe itself to be unworthy and alone. It feels the support of a justifying God, of an idol of war, an avenging and destroying spirit. From such blood-drinking gods the human race was once liberated, with great toil and terrible sorrow, by the death of a God Who delivered Himself to the Cross and suffered pathological cruelty of His own creatures out of pity for them. In conquering death He opened their eyes to the reality of a love which asks no questions about worthiness, a love which overcomes hatred and destroys death. But men have now come to reject this divine revelation of pardons and they are consequently returning to the old war gods, the gods that insatiably drink blood and eat the flesh of men.  …To serve the hate-gods, one has only to be blinded by collective passion. To serve the God of Love one must be free, one must face the terrible responsibility of the decision to love in spite of all unworthiness whether in oneself or in one’s neighbor.” Thomas Merton

“love your enemies” Jesus in Luke 6:27

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Have you reached the point where you have transposed your “enemy from the sphere of monstrous inhumanity into the sphere of shared humanity?”
  • Of yourself “from the sphere of proud innocence into the sphere of common sinfulness?”
  • Do you practice “a love which asks no questions about worthiness?”

Abba, let me overcome hatred with love.

For More: Exclusion and Embrace by Miroslav Volf

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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 Need for Action that Proceeds From Contemplation (Rowan Williams, Evelyn Underhill, Richard Rohr, and Thomas Merton)

Posted on by under "Being" with Jesus, Being and Doing, Change Yourself First, Contemplation and Activism, Contemplative Prayer, Daily Office, devotions, fixed-time prayers, Self-care, truth and illusion

“Contemplation is very far from being just one kind of thing that Christians do: it is the key to prayer, liturgy, art and ethics, the key to the essence of a renewed humanity that is capable of seeing the world and other subjects in the world with freedom – freedom from self-oriented, acquisitive habits and the distorted understanding that comes from them. To put it boldly, contemplation is the only ultimate answer to the unreal and insane world that our financial systems and our advertising culture and our chaotic and unexamined emotions encourage us to inhabit. To learn contemplative practice is to learn what we need so as to live truthfully and honestly and lovingly. It is a deeply revolutionary matter.” Rowan Williams

“For [mystics,] contemplation and action are not opposites, but two interdependent forms of a life that is one – a life that rushes out to a passionate communion with the true and beautiful, only that it may draw from this direct experience of Reality a new intensity wherewith to handle the world of things; and remake it, or at least some little bit of it, ‘nearer to the heart’s desire.'”  Evelyn Underhill

“The opposite of contemplation is not action, it is reaction. We must wait for pure action, which always proceeds from a contemplative silence.” Richard Rohr

“Do you think the way to sanctity is to lock yourself up with prayers and your books and the meditations that please and interest your mind, to protect yourself with many walls, against people you consider stupid? …in the refusal of activities and works which are necessary for the good of others but which happen to bore and distract you? …by winding yourself up in a cocoon of spiritual and aesthetic pleasures, instead of renouncing all your tastes and desires and ambitions and satisfactions for the love of Christ, Who will not even live within you if you cannot find Him in other people? Far from being essentially opposed to each other, interior contemplation and external activity are two aspects of the same love of God.” Thomas Merton

“I have seen you in your sanctuary
and gazed upon your power and glory.”
Psalm 63:2

 Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Is much of what you do “pure action” that “proceeds from a contemplative silence”, or are you typically just reacting?
  • Do you have a practice to help you escape the insidious influence of our “unreal and insane world?” If not by contemplation, then how?
  • Do you believe in contemplation? Do you “practice daily” what you believe?

God of Reality, may I commune with you before attempting to “handle the world of things.”

For More: New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton

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

Daily Riches: Listen To Your Life (Joan Chittister)

Posted on by under Change Yourself First, contemplative virtues, Hurry Sickness, Loving Listening, Self-care, Silence, Solitude, Spiritual Disciplines, Stillness, The Sacrament of the Present Moment, Wholeness and Brokenness

“In the midst of all this indistinguishable cacophony of life, the bell tower of every Benedictine monastery rings ‘listen.’ Listen with the heart of Christ. Listen with the lover’s ear. Listen for the voice of God. Listen in your own heart for the sound of truth, the kind that comes when a piece of quality crystal is struck by a metal rod.” Joan Chittister

“The Rule [of Saint Benedict] teaches us to listen to the circumstances of our own lives. We have to begin to face what our own life patterns might be saying to us. When we are afraid, what message lurks under the fear: a horror of failure, a rejection of weakness, panic at the thought of public embarrassment, a sense of valuelessness that comes with loss of approval? When we find ourselves in the same struggles over and over again, what does that pattern say? That I always begin a thing with great enthusiasm only to abandon it before it is finished? That I am always reluctant to change, no matter how good the changes might be for me? That I keep imposing unsatisfactory relationships with people from my past on every new person I meet? That down deep I have never given myself to anything except myself? Not to my friends. Not to my work. Not to my vocation. Until I learn to listen – to the Scriptures, to those around me, to my own underlying life messages, to the wisdom of those who have already maneuvered successfully around the dangers of a life that is unmotivated and unmeaningful – I will really have nothing whatever to say about life myself. To live without listening is not to live at all; it is simply to drift in my own backwater.” Joan Chittister

“Listen as Wisdom calls out! 
Hear as understanding raises her voice! …
Listen to me! For I have important things to tell you.”
Proverbs 8:1,6

 Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Are you a listening person? Are you quiet enough? Moving at a slow enough pace?
  • Do you think of being a good listener as essential to living the life of faith? …to loving well?
  • What habits prevent you from listening well? Are you doing anything about them?

Abba, help me to hear the important things in my life I would otherwise miss.

For More: Wisdom Distilled From the Daily by Joan Chittister

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

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

Daily Riches: Everybody Matters, So Love Everybody (Rob Bell)

Posted on by under Change Yourself First, Insiders and Outsiders, Jesus the Savior, Loving Well, The Love of God

“The most powerful things happen when the church surrenders its desire to convert people and convince them to join. It is when the church gives itself away in radical acts of service and compassion, expecting nothing in return, that the way of Jesus is most vividly put on display. To do this, the church most stop thinking of everybody primarily in categories of in or out, saved or not, believer or nonbeliever. Besides the fact that these terms are offensive to the ‘un’ and ‘non,’ they work against Jesus’s teachings about how we are to treat each other. Jesus commanded us to love our neighbor, and our neighbor can be anybody. We are all created in the image of God, and we are all sacred, valuable creations of God. Everybody matters. To treat people differently based on who believes what is to fail to respect the image of God in everyone. …Oftentimes the Christian community has sent the message that we love people and build relationships in order to convert them to the Christian faith. So there is an agenda. And when there is an agenda, it isn’t really love, is it? It’s something else. We have to rediscover love, period. Love that loves because it is what Jesus teaches us to do. We have to surrender our agendas. Because some people aren’t going to become Christians like us no matter how hard we push. They just aren’t. [I obviously love to talk to people about Jesus and my faith. I take every opportunity I can get.] And at some point we have to commit them to God, trusting that God loves them more than we ever could.” Rob Bell

“My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism.” James 2:1

 Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Can you preach the gospel without words? Can you preach it without love?
  • Is speaking the truth so important that it trumps the need to love?
  • Can you do your part (whatever is the best you can do at the time) and trust God to do his part (what only he can do, and according to his timing)?
  • Maybe having an “agenda” is not so bad. Isn’t it just wanting what you believe is best for someone? After all, Christians are “missional.” So to what is Rob Bell objecting?

Abba, let me share your great good news, but love expecting nothing in return.

For More: Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell

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

Daily Riches: The Dangerous Drowsing of the Laity (Karl Barth)

Posted on by under Awareness, Change Yourself First, Community & the Church, dissent and resistance, Learning Your Proper Place, truth and illusion, Worship

“No one, however, can be content at this point to be a mere ‘layman,’ to be indolent, to be no more than a passive spectator or reader. No one is excused the task of asking questions or the more difficult task of providing and assessing answers. Preaching in the congregation, and the theology which serves its preparation, can be faithful to its theme and therefore relevant and adapted to the circumstances and edifying to the community, only if it is surrounded, sustained and constantly stimulated and fructified by the questions and answers of the community. With his own questions and answers in matters of right understanding
and doctrine, each individual Christian thus participates in what the community is commanded to do. If he holds aloof, or slackens, or allows himself to sleep, or wanders into speculation and error, he must not be surprised if sooner or later the same will have to be said about the community as such and particularly about its more responsible members. How many complaints about the ‘Church’ would never be made if only those who make them were to realise that we ourselves are the Church, so that what it has or has not to say stands or falls with us. There can be no doubt that all the great errors which have overtaken the preaching and theology of the community in the course of its history have had their true origin, not so much in the studies of the well-known errorists and heretics who have merely blabbed them out, but rather in the secret inattention and neglect, the private drowsing and wandering and erring, of innumerable nameless Christians who were not prepared to regard the listening of the community to the Word as their own concern, who wanted privacy in their thinking, and who thus created the atmosphere in which heresy and error became possible and even inevitable in the community.” Karl Barth

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Have you thought about your responsibility to be a skillful and critical thinker in the congregation? …are you simply going with the flow?
  • Does your church encourage not only community but individuality? …not only conformity to Biblical norms, but sensitivity to violation of those norms?
  • Do you know the great Christian tradition well enough to know when it’s being ignored or perverted?

Abba, may we love you with our minds as well as our hearts.

For More: Church Dogmatics: A Selection … by Helmut Gollwitzer

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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 and share my blog. 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: God’s Unanswerable Argument (John Boswel, Jonathan Haidt, and Baruch Spinoza)

Posted on by under Awareness, Change Yourself First, Humility, Insiders and Outsiders, Jesus the Savior, Loving Listening, truth and illusion

  . “I have striven not to laugh at human actions,
not to weep at them,
not to hate them,
but to understand them.”
Baruch Spinoza

“You can’t use reason to argue someone out of a position he didn’t get into by reason. …There are, on the other hand, ways to communicate and enlighten not dependent on mere information that can overcome deeply embedded prejudices better than argument. A life can be an argument; being can be a reason. An idea can be embodied in a person, and in human form it may break down barriers and soften hardness of heart that words could not. This is, at least in part, what John the Evangelist means when he refers to Christ as logos. Although translators often render it as ‘word,’ it is much more than that. It is Greek for ‘reason’ and ‘argument’: our word for ‘logic’ comes from it. Christ was God’s unanswerable ‘argument.’ His people had hardened their hearts against his spoken reasons, the arguments propounded – in words – for centuries by prophets and sages. So he sent an argument in the form of a human being, a life, a person. The argument became flesh and blood: so real that no one could refute or ignore it.”  John Boswell

“The first principle of moral psychology [is that] Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second. To  explain this principle I used the metaphor of the mind as a rider (reasoning) on an elephant (intuition) and I said that the rider’s function is to serve the elephant. Reasoning matters, particularly because reasons do sometimes influence other people, but most of the action in moral psychology is in the intuitions. …We humans have an extraordinary ability to care about things beyond ourselves, to circle around those things with other people, and in the process to bind ourselves into teams that can pursue larger projects. That what religion is all about … it’s what politics is about too. [But] …team membership blinds people to the motives and morals of their opponents – and to the wisdom that is to be found scattered among diverse political ideologies.” Jonathan Haidt

“Then the owner of the vineyard said,
‘What shall I do? I will send my son, whom I love;
perhaps they will respect him.’”
Jesus in Luke 20:13

 Moving From Head to Heart

  • Do you depend heavily on “information” and “strategic reasoning” to persuade others?
  • Is your life a persuasive “argument” for the views you hold?
  • Does your sense of your own rightness blind you “to the motives and morals of your opponents?”

Abba, help me live a life for you that is hard to dismiss or ignore.

For More: The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt

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Thanks for following and sharing my blog. I appreciate it!  –  Bill

Daily Riches: Leadership with Vision (Pete Scazzero)

Posted on by under approval addiction, Being and Doing, Change Yourself First, Contemplation and Activism, Emotions and Spirituality, Jesus the Savior, Self-care, Success

“The only miracle, except for the resurrection, that is recorded in the four gospels is Jesus’ multiplying of the loaves and fishes. Why? The truths contained there are so vast and far-reaching. In Jesus’ mentoring of the Twelve, he returns to it multiple times to teach them about mature leadership.

‘Why are you talking about having no bread?
Do you not see or understand?
Are your hearts hardened?’
Jesus in Mark 8:17

MATURE LEADERSHIP

  • …redefines abundance as the presence of Jesus Himself.
  • …sees beneath other’s anxiety and fear to the deeper work God is doing in and around them.
  • …responds to the situation according to his values and beliefs (integrity).
  • …courageously does what is best for everyone despite other’s lack of support and validation.
  • …invites others to combine their ‘loaves’ and thankfully offers them to the Father.
  • …creates specific steps to make an overwhelming task manageable by effectively breaking down the problem.
  • …models flexible (not rigid) balance of rest and service to others to do good when the need arises.

IMMATURE LEADERSHIP…

  • …defines abundance by considering only visible resources.
  • …gets entangled in other’s anxiety, fear or negativity.
  • …responds to the pressure of others and accommodates them.
  • …takes an easy path in an attempt to keep everyone ‘happy.’
  • …leaves people alone and isolated in their fears, limits and discouragement.
  • …grumbles, blames or ignores the problem because of feeling overwhelmed.
  • …becomes so rigid it results in losing compassion.

 

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Are you practicing a rhythm of “rest and service” like Jesus did? If not, what does that say about you?
  • What are you doing to keep compassion at the heart of your ministry, to keep it more central than anything else?
  • What might be the miracle waiting to happen should you focus on what you have, rather than on what you don’t? (Scazzero)

Abba, keep me from ministering with an unbelieving heart that misses how abundant the resources are in your hands, that settles for the reasonable, that misses out on the miracle.

For More: The Emotionally Healthy Leader by Pete Scazzero

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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 and share my blog. 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: Community, Stability and Spirituality (Joan Chittister)

Posted on by under Awareness, Change Yourself First, Community & the Church, Death Daily, Ego Issues, Embracing Losses and Limits, Emotions and Spirituality, Learning Your Proper Place, Loving Well, Spiritual Formation, the importance of stability

“Everything in life, contrary to Madison Avenue’s guarantees, can’t be cured or resolved or eliminated. Some things must simply be endured. Some things must simply be borne. Some things must simply be accepted. Community and relationships enable us to do that. …It is in community where we find out who we really are. It is life with another that shows my impatience and life with another that demonstrates my possessiveness and life with another that gives notice to my nagging devotion to the self. Life with someone else, in other words, doesn’t show me nearly as much about his or her shortcomings as it does about my own. In human relationships I learn how to soften my hard spots and how to reconcile and how to care for someone else besides myself. In human relationships I learn that theory is no substitute for love. It is easy to talk about the love of God; it is another things to practice it. That’s how relationships sanctify me. They show me where holiness is for me. That’s how relationships develop me. They how me where growth is for me. If I’m the passive-victim type, then assertiveness may have something to do with coming to wholeness. If I’m the domineering character in every group, then a willingness to listen and to be led may be my call to life. Alone, I am what I am, but in community I have the chance to become everything that I can be. And so, stability bonds me to this group of people and to these relationships so that resting in the security of each other we can afford to stumble and search, knowing that we will be caught if we fall and we will be led where we cannot see by those who have been there before us.” Joan Chittister

“Iron sharpens iron,
So one man sharpens another.”
Proverbs 27:17

 Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Are you discovering “who you really are” through your life in community – perhaps as a spouse, sibling, parent, roommate, employee, church member, neighbor? What about you needs to change?
  • Have you discovered in your relationships that some things won’t change and “must simply be endured?” Are you doing that well?
  • Are you engaged in community life so that, you are not only learning about yourself, but changing? Is a probationary approach to relationships hindering your transformation?

Abba, help me to submit to this messy but essential part of spirituality.

For More: Wisdom Distilled From the Daily by Joan Chittister

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek God and he seeks you. I hope you’ll follow and share my blog.  I appreciate your interest!  –  Bill

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

Daily Riches: A Modern Monastic Movement (Thomas Merton)

Posted on by under Asceticism, Awareness, Being and Doing, Change Yourself First, Contemplation and Activism, Loving Well, Silence, Solitude, Spiritual Formation, truth and illusion

“It would perhaps be too much to say that the world needs another movement such as that which drew these men into the deserts of Egypt and Palestine. Ours is certainly a time for solitaries and for hermits. But merely to reproduce the simplicity, austerity and prayer of these primitive souls is not a complete or satisfactory answer. We must transcend them, and transcend all those who, since their time have gone beyond the limits which they set. We must liberate ourselves, in our own way, from involvement in a world that is plunging to disaster. But our world is different from theirs. Our involvement in it is more complete. Our danger is far more desperate. Our time, perhaps, is shorter than we think.” Thomas Merton

“We do not go into the desert to escape people but to learn how to find them; we do not leave them in order to have nothing more to do with them but to find out the way to do them the most good. …For the monk searches not only his own heart; he plunges deep into the heart of that world of which he remains a part although he seems to have ‘left’ it. In reality the monk abandons the world only in order to listen more intently to the deepest and most neglected voices that proceed from it’s inner depth. …The only justification for a life of deliberate solitude is the conviction that it will help you to love not only God but also other men.” Merton

”Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers
to abstain from fleshly lusts
which wage war
against the soul.”
1 Peter 2:11.

 Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Do you agree that ours is “a time for solitaries and for hermits?” Is God calling you to a life somehow separate from the crowd which would enable you “to love not only God but also other men?”
  • Do you see our world as “plunging to disaster?” Is there a way for you to “liberate” yourself from it today as the desert monastics did in theirs? What would that look like?
  • Are you able to listen intently to the “deepest and most neglected voices” of our world? What can you to do grow in that capacity?

Abba, guide me in my day as you did the monastics before me.

For More: New Seeds of Contemplation 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 and share my blog. 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’s Work in Your Loved Ones (Dallas Willard and Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

Posted on by under Change Yourself First, Detachment and Attachment, Embracing Losses and Limits, Jesus the Savior, Learning Your Proper Place, Loving Well, Prayer, Waiting on God

“What is the wisdom of the snake? It is to be watchful and observant until the time is right to act. It is timeliness. One rarely sees a snake chasing its prey or thrashing about in an effort to impress it. But when it acts, it acts quickly and decisively. And as for the dove, it does not contrive. It is incapable of intrigue. Guile is totally beyond it. There is nothing indirect about this gentle creature. It is in this sense ‘harmless.’  … These are qualities we must have to walk in the kingdom with others, instead of trying to drive them to change their ways and attitudes and even who they are. …As long as I am condemning my friends or relatives, or pushing my ‘pearls’ on them, I am their problem. They have to respond to me, and that usually leads to their ‘judging’ me right back…. But once I back away, maintaining a sensitive and nonmanipulative presence, I am no longer their problem. As I listen, they do not have to protect themselves from me, and they begin to open up. I may quickly begin to appear to them as a possible ally and resource. Now they begin to sense their problem to be the situation they have created, or possibly themselves. Because I am no longer trying to drive them, genuine communication, real sharing of hearts, becomes an attractive possibility. The healing dynamic of the request comes naturally into play. …It is a natural extension of this dynamic when we turn to ask God to work in their lives and hearts to bring about changes. These changes will certainly involve more than any conscious choice they could make or we could desire.” Dallas Willard

“Christ stands between me and others [and] … as only Christ can speak to me in such a way that I may be saved, so others, too, can be saved only by Christ himself. This means that I must release the other person from every attempt of mine to regulate, coerce, and dominate him with my love…. Thus this spiritual love will speak to Christ about a brother more than to a brother about Christ. It knows that the most direct way to others is always through prayer to Christ….” Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“be as shrewd as snakes
and as harmless as doves.”
Matthew 10:16

 Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Is your love for others characterized by nagging and coercion?
  • Do you really know what is best for them? …what God has for them?
  • Is “fixing” others a distraction from “fixing” yourself?

Abba, in my love, help me honor others, and your work in them.

For More: Presence and Recovery by Anneke Campbell

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I hope you’ll follow “Daily Riches.” Thanks!  –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

Daily Riches: Your Enemy the Savage (Thomas Merton, Martin Niemöller and Richard Rohr)

Posted on by under Awareness, Change Yourself First, Forgiveness, Loving Well, Nationalism and Patriotism, The Call to Change, truth and illusion

“It took me a long time to learn that God is not the enemy of my enemies. He is not even the enemy of His enemies.” Martin Niemöller

Today, if African American protests turn into riots, the offenders are often referred to as “animals.” In the early American West, native Americans were called “savages”, and wartime slurs dehumanized Jews, Germans, and Japanese. Richard Rohr reminds us that we all have a viewpoint, and that each viewpoint is “a view from a point.” Consequently, he says “…we need to critique our own perspective if we are to see and follow the full truth.” To love our enemies, as Jesus commands, and to escape our own unconscious biases, we will need such a critique.

“Do not be too quick to assume your enemy is a savage just because he is your enemy. Perhaps he is your enemy because he thinks you are savage. Or perhaps he is afraid of you because he feels that you are afraid of him. And perhaps if he believed you were capable of loving him he would no longer be your enemy. Do not be too quick to assume that your enemy is an enemy of God just because he is your enemy. Perhaps he is your enemy precisely because he can find nothing in you that gives glory to God. Perhaps he fears you because he can find nothing in you of God’s love and God’s kindness and God’s patience and mercy and understanding of the weaknesses of men. Do not be too quick to condemn the man who no longer believes in God, for it is perhaps your own coldness and avarice, your mediocrity and materialism, your sensuality and selfishness that have killed his faith.”  Thomas Merton

“I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
that you may be children of your Father in heaven.”
Jesus in Matthew 5:44

 Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Do you understand your enemy well enough to understand his motives? his fear of you? your common humanity with him?
  • Do you understand yourself and your fear of your enemy? How you or your nation, political party, religion or race may have helped make him your enemy?
  • Does faith as you practice it tend to disarm others or to make them suspicious and defensive? Do you approach those of other faiths or persuasions based on prejudices and stereotypes – perhaps the way they do with you?

Abba, may practiced love transform my enemy into my friend.

For More: Seeds by Thomas Merton

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek God. I hope you’ll follow and share my blog. –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

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

Daily Riches: Pastors, Churches and Second-hand Spirituality (Pete Scazzero)

Posted on by under "Being" with Jesus, Change Yourself First, contemplative virtues, devotions, Loving Union with God, Spiritual Disciplines, Spiritual Formation

“The vast majority of people in our churches have a second-hand spirituality, i.e. they live off the spirituality of others. Because people attend our weekend worship services, participate in our programs, give money and serve, we assume they are in a vital personal relationship of loving union with Jesus. We assume wrong. They are not. Ask the people you serve about their time with Jesus each day: ‘How often do you meet with Him around Scripture and prayer? What do you do, and for how long? How might silence, solitude, Sabbath, spiritual companionship, and study fit into your life?’ Ask for specifics. You are in for a shock. The world has changed dramatically. We have underestimated the magnitude of information overload, the moral decline of Western culture, and the impact of the Internet/social media in altering our brain circuits. …It doesn’t matter what we preach. Unless our people spend intentional time cultivating their own first-hand relationship with the living Jesus, we are simply shuffling chairs on the Titanic. A Christ-follower develops a posture of receptivity through spiritual disciplines that consciously help them develop the spiritual dimensions of our lives. ‘Like an artist who wishes to develop painting skills, or an athlete who desires a strong and flexible body, a person of faith chooses freely to adopt certain life patterns, habits, and commitments to grow spiritually.’ (Marjorie Thompson) How many of our people approach following Jesus with the intentionality of an artist or athlete? The answer is: ‘Not many.’ Helping our people develop a first-hand relationship with Jesus in today’s world is very hard work. But if we don’t wrestle with this, who will?” Pete Scazzero

“Join together in following my example, brothers and sisters,
and just as you have us as a model,
keep your eyes on those who live as we do.”
Philippians 3:17

 Moving From Head to Heart

  • Pastor, are you intentionally “cultivating your own first-hand relationship with the living Jesus?”
  • The status quo involves people hearing from God mostly through their clergy. Does your approach to ministry perpetuate that reality, or address it?
  • The status quo often involves giving people well-meaning but vague advice (“Read your Bible. Pray more. Try harder.”), but people need explicit spiritual direction. In your ministry, are you giving your people the tools they need to “develop a first-hand relationship with Jesus?”

Abba, lead our leaders as they lead your people.

For More: The Emotionally Healthy Leader by Pete Scazzero (planned release June 30, 2015)

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek God and he seeks you. Please follow and share my blog. My goal is to share something of unique value with you daily. I appreciate your interest!  –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

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