Category Archives: Emotions and Spirituality

Daily Riches: Loneliness and Fear (Robert Frost, Macrina Wiederkehr and Jim Palmer)

Posted on by under Desolation's Gift, Embracing Losses and Limits, Emotions and Spirituality, Loving Union with God

“Where had I heard this wind before

Change like this to a deeper roar?
What would it take my standing there for,
Holding open a restive door,
Looking down hill to a frothy shore?
Summer was past and the day was past.
Sombre clouds in the west were massed.
Out on the porch’s sagging floor,
Leaves got up in a coil and hissed,
Blindly struck at my knee and missed.
Something sinister in the tone
Told me my secret must be known:
Word I was in the house alone
Somehow must have gotten abroad,
Word I was in my life alone,
Word I had no one left but God.”
Robert Frost, “Bereft”

“My loneliness attracts me to the feet of Jesus. Like a magnet I am drawn there, longing to be all one with God. The separateness I keep choosing makes me desperately homesick, and so I am willing, at last, to surrender my divided heart. I am homesick to be one with God. Union with God is the only heaven there is, and it begins here on earth. …There is someone I must become. There is someone I must be grafted onto, and how lonely I am until it is accomplished. My loneliness blesses me because it shows me that I’m not enough all by myself, and so I am impelled to reach out my arms and heart to God and to others. My loneliness blesses me because it encourages me to allow myself to be vulnerable. My loneliness blesses me because it won’t let me hide in the illusion of my self-sufficiency.” Macrina Wiederkehr

“Fear, guilt and shame can be useful on your spiritual journey. When you experience these, follow the trail back to the idea, notion, belief or concept that was the source.” Jim Palmer

“Whom have in heaven but you?
I desire you more than anything on earth.
My health may fail,
and my spirit may grow weak,
but God remains the strength of my heart;
he is mine forever.”
Psalm 73:25, 26

Moving From Head to Heart

  • Have you experienced the loneliness, the fear of being alone, with “no one left but God?”
  • Can you “follow the trail [of that feeling] back to … the belief or concept that was the source?”
  • Is there a way that your loneliness “blesses” you?

Abba, may loneliness carry me to you.

For More: A Tree Full of Angels by Macrina Wiederkehr

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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: Elusive Joy (James Martin, Donald Salier, Henri Nouwen and Peter Kreeft)

Posted on by under Desolation's Gift, Emotions and Spirituality, Joy, Suffering and Grace, The Love of God

“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.” Ernest Hemingway
“Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.”  Mark Twain

“Joy is what makes life worth living, but for many joy seems hard to find. …Strange as it may sound, we can choose joy. Two people can be part of the same event…. One may choose to trust that what happened, painful as it may be, holds a promise. The other may choose despair and be destroyed by it.” Henri NoJoyuwen

“Joy is not simply a fleeting feeling or an evanescent emotion; it is a deep-seated result of one’s connection to God. …Joy has an object and that object is God. …Joy is a fundamental disposition toward God … [having] ability to exist even in the midst of suffering, because joy has less to do with emotion and more to do with belief. It does not ignore pain in the world, in another’s life, or in one’s own life… Rather, it goes deeper seeing confidence in God – and for Christians, in Jesus Christ – as the reason for joy and a constant source of joy.” James Martin and Donald Salier

“He came. He entered space and time and suffering. He came, like a lover. Love seeks above all intimacy, presence, togetherness. Not happiness. ‘Better unhappy with her than happy without her’ – that is the word of a lover. He came. That is the salient fact, the towering truth…. He came. Job is satisfied even though the God who came gave him absolutely no answers at all to his thousand tortured questions. He did the most important thing and he gave the most important gift: himself. It is a lover’s gift. Out of our tears, our waiting, our darkness, our agonized aloneness, out of our weeping and wondering, out of our cry …he came, all the way, right into that cry.” Peter Kreeft

“consider it all joy”  James 1:2

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Can you “choose to trust that what happened, painful as it may be, holds a promise?”
  • What might happen, if in spite of the world’s pain, you adopt a “fundamental disposition” of confidence in God?
  • What might happen, if in spite of your “thousand tortured questions” you experience the gift of God’s presence?

Abba, may our connection lead to fullness of joy in me.

For More: Between Heaven and Mirth by James Martin

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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: ‘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

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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: Religion and the Status Quo (Walter Brueggemann and Krista Tippett)

Posted on by under Emotions and Spirituality, Faith and Doubt, Prayer, Social Justice, The Poor and Disenfranchised

“… at least one third of the book of Psalms are songs or prayers of sadness and loss and grief and upset, so that very much Old Testament experience of faith is having stuff taken away from us, and what’s so interesting is that in the institutional church with the lectionary and liturgies the whole business of lamentations has been screened out [‘because we don’t know what to do with those depressing passages’*] …because [with] consumer capitalism you just go from triumph to triumph, from well-being to ease to prosperity, and you never have any brokenness.” Walter Brueggemann, with *Krista Tippet

“Faith that permits [lamentation] …redresses the distribution of power between the two parties, so that the petitionary party is taken seriously and the God who is addressed is newly engaged in the crisis in a way that puts God at risk. As the lesser, petitionary party (the psalm speaker) is legitimated, so the unmitigated supremacy of the greater party (God) is questioned, and God is made available to the petitioner. [cf. Job] The basis for the conclusion that the petitioner is taken seriously and legitimately granted power in the relation is that the speech of the petitioner is heard, valued, and transmitted as serious speech. …What happens when appreciation of the lament as a form of speech and faith is lost, as I think it is largely lost in contemporary usage? What happens when the speech forms that redress power distribution have been silenced and eliminated? The answer, I believe, is that a theological monopoly is reinforced, docility and submissiveness are engendered, and the outcome in terms of social practice is to reinforce and consolidate the political-economic monopoly of the status quo.” Brueggemann

“Teach your daughters to wail;
teach one another how to lament.”
Jeremiah 9:20

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Have “sadness, loss, grief and upset” been screened out of your church experience? your conversations? your prayers?
  • Is your faith characterized by “docility and submissiveness?” Is that good?
  • Does your religion, church or faith help perpetuate the “monopoly of the status quo?”
  • Who stands to benefit if your faith causes you to support the status quo? Who stands to lose?

Abba, I cry our for help, but no one hears me. I protest, but there is no justice. You have plunged my path into darkness.

For More:  The Psalms: The Life of Faith, ed. Patrick Miller

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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: Sniffing Out Wrong in the Neighborhood (Eugene Peterson)

Posted on by under Awareness, Change Yourself First, Emotions and Spirituality

“Anger is a most useful diagnostic tool. When anger erupts in us it is a signal that something is wrong. Something isn’t working right. There is evil or incompetence or stupidity lurking about. Anger is our sixth sense for sniffing out wrong in the neighborhood. What anger fails to do, though, is to tell us whether the wrong is outside or inside us. We usually begin by assuming that the wrong is outside us–our spouse, or our child, or God has done something wrong, and we are angry. But when we track the anger carefully, we often find it leads to wrong within us–wrong information, inadequate understanding, underdeveloped heart.” Eugene Peterson

“In your anger do not sin.” Ephesians 4:26

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Does anger function in your life more as a gift (“a diagnostic tool”) or as a trigger for sin (blaming, defending, judging, acting out)?
  • When anger rises up in you, can you look within yourself first and ask, “What does my response say about me?”
  • Think about “the wrong information, the inadequate understanding, the underdeveloped heart” that you may have. Can you resolve to be more “slow to anger?” By delaying your anger, can you create space for God to work in the situation and in you?

Abba, may I respond more often with humility as I consider the limitations of my perspective, and more often with love as I develop a heart for you. I trust in you all day long. Save me from myself.

 __________

For More: Under the Unpredictable Plant by Eugene Peterson

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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: Putting Painful Longings in Perspective (Larry Crabb and Frederick Buechner) *

Posted on by under Embracing Losses and Limits, Emotions and Spirituality, Spiritual Formation, Suffering and Grace, Uncategorized

“First, our desires … are related not only to our fallenness but also, and more profoundly, to our humanness. In other words, it’s okay to desire. Second, when we look carefully at what we deeply desire, we come to realize that what we want is simply not available, not until Heaven. …Both errors in responding to our longings–hiding them in a flurry of Christian activity and focusing on them to find satisfaction–deny the simple truth that we legitimately want what we cannot have in this world. We were designed to live in a perfect world uncorrupted by the weeds of disharmony and distance. Until we take up residence in that world, however, we will hurt. It is, therefore, not only okay to desire, it is also okay to hurt.”  Larry Crabb

“… to grit your teeth and clench your fists in order to survive the world at its harshest and worse–is by that very act, to be unable to let something be done for you and in you that is more wonderful still. The trouble with steeling yourself against the harshness of reality is that the same steel that secures your life against being destroyed secures your life also against being opened up and transformed.” Frederick Buechner

“Scorn has broken my heart
    and has left me helpless;
I looked for sympathy, but there was none,
    for comforters, but I found none.
They put gall in my food
    and gave me vinegar for my thirst.”
Psalm 69:19-21 

Moving From Head to Heart

  • Are Christians allowed to have emotions like loneliness, sadness, and disappointment? Do you allow yourself to feel these kinds of emotions?
  • Do you try to bury your emotions “in a flurry of Christian activity?”
  • Do you “steel yourself” against feeling “the harshness of reality” by sheer force of the will?
  • Imagine the loneliness, disappointment and heartbreak that filled the life of Jesus. He didn’t let these emotions rule him, but he also didn’t deny or bury them. He offered them to his Father and “let something be done for him” that was “more wonderful” than being strong. He experienced life from above while in this world corrupted “by the weeds of disharmony.” Can you let God do that for you?

Abba, help me learn to embrace my emotions – even the most painful ones. Help me not to fear them, but to allow you to work in me through them. Help me to discover something more wonderful than being strong. Help me to be transformed.

__________

For More: Inside Out by Larry Crabb

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Thanks for your interest in Daily Riches! –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

Daily Riches: “Practicing the Presence” (Peter Scazzero and Thomas Merton)

Posted on by under Contemplation, Contemplative Prayer, Emotions and Spirituality, Loving Well, The Divine Gaze

“As emotionally mature Christian adults, we recognize that loving well is the essence of true spirituality. This requires that we experience connection with God, with ourselves, and with other people. God invites us to practice his presence in our daily lives. At the same time, he invites us “to practice the presence of people,” within an awareness of his presence, in our daily relationships. The two are rarely brought together. Jesus’ profound, contemplative prayer life with his Father resulted in a contemplative presence with people. Love is ‘to reveal the beauty of another person to themselves,’ wrote Jean Vanier. Jesus did that with each person he met. We see this in his interaction with the woman with a twelve year bleeding problem in Mark 5. This ability to really listen and pay attention to people was at the very heart of his mission. It could not help but move him to compassion. In the same way, out of our contemplative time with God, we too, are invited to be prayerfully present to people, revealing their beauty to themselves. The religious leaders of Jesus’ day, the ‘church leaders’ of that time, never made that connection.” Peter Scazzero

“Our contemplative practice is a ‘laboratory’ in which we learn to die to our passing emotions and thoughts and to receive the always-permanent Divine gaze. The rest of our life becomes the field in which we live out this participation in Love, bouncing back the gaze of grace to the Other and then having plenty left over for all others besides.” Richard Rohr

“But the goal of our instruction is love….” 1 Timothy 1:5

Moving From Head to Heart

  • When you think of the “essence of true spirituality”, to you think first of “loving well?”
  • Does being “present” to God make you more effective at being “present” to others?  and vice versa? Does either increase your compassion?
  • Is your love for others what is “left over” from your “participation in Love” with God?
  • Have you tried a contemplative approach to your faith? If not, what is stopping you?

Abba, teach me to receive and return your loving gaze as a starting point in being a person who loves.

__________

For More: The Daily Office by Peter 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. Thanks!  –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

Daily Riches: Putting Painful Longings in Perspective (Larry Crabb and Frederick Buechner)

Posted on by under Embracing Losses and Limits, Emotions and Spirituality, Suffering and Grace

“First, our desires … are related not only to our fallenness but also, and more profoundly, to our humanness. In other words, it’s okay to desire. Second, when we look carefully at what we deeply desire, we come to realize that what we want is simply not available, not until Heaven. …Both errors in responding to our longings–hiding them in a flurry of Christian activity and focusing on them to find satisfaction–deny the simple truth that we legitimately want what we cannot have in this world. We were designed to live in a perfect world uncorrupted by the weeds of disharmony and distance. Until we take up residence in that world, however, we will hurt. It is, therefore, not only okay to desire, it is also okay to hurt.”  Larry Crabb

“… to grit your teeth and clench your fists in order to survive the world at its harshest and worse–is by that very act, to be unable to let something be done for you and in you that is more wonderful still. The trouble with steeling yourself against the harshness of reality is that the same steel that secures your life against being destroyed secures your life also against being opened up and transformed.” Frederick Buechner

“Scorn has broken my heart
    and has left me helpless;
I looked for sympathy, but there was none,
    for comforters, but I found none.
They put gall in my food
    and gave me vinegar for my thirst.”
Psalm 69:19-21 

Moving From Head to Heart

  • Are Christians allowed to have emotions like loneliness, sadness, and disappointment? Do you allow yourself to feel these kinds of emotions?
  • Do you try to bury your emotions “in a flurry of Christian activity?”
  • Do you “steel yourself” against feeling “the harshness of reality” by sheer force of the will?
  • Imagine the loneliness, disappointment and heartbreak that filled the life of Jesus. He didn’t let these emotions rule him, but he also didn’t deny or bury them. He offered them to his Father and “let something be done for him” that was “more wonderful” than being strong. He experienced life from above while in this world corrupted “by the weeds of disharmony.” Can you let God do that for you?

Abba, this isn’t heaven, but in my pain I can still experience it.

__________

For More: Inside Out by Larry Crabb

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Thanks for your interest in Daily Riches! –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)