Tag Archives: John Donne

Daily Riches: Trust the Fruitive Darkness (Leonard Sweet and John Donne)

Posted on by under Contemplation, Desolation's Gift, Embracing Losses and Limits, Mystery, Spiritual Formation, the dark night of the soul
“Churches are best for Prayer, that have least light:
To see God only, I goe out of sight:
And to scape stormy dayes,
I chuse An everlasting night.”
John Donne
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“The first step to seeing is knowing that you’re in the dark. If you don’t know you’re in the dark, then you need to turn on the dark. To turn on the dark is a metaphor for keeping an open mind, for resisting easy assumptions and automatic defaults in judgment, all of which I call light pollution. Less is more. Sensory deprivation is a blessing to those who need less distraction. Light can pollute dark, just as the dark can pollute the light. …In order to see the stars, it must be dark enough to see them. … [but] The brightest stars in the sky no longer come from the Milky Way Galaxy, but the night glow from our biggest cities. It’s called ‘sky glow’—light reflected off moisture and dust in the air. …In some Eastern cities like Seoul, South Korea, at night all the buildings ‘go dark.’ No matter how high the apartment complex or skyscraper, it is dark, enabling anyone awake to see the stars. But for most of the world, sky glow now outshines the moon for nearly half of each month. The biological effects of night pollution are only now being appreciated. Ninety miles from Las Vegas, the neon lights are lighting up Death Valley National Park. Many of the night creatures are dying because of light pollution. Certain nocturnal species and ecosystems require a nightly dose of darkness—for reproduction (snakes), for predation (bats), for food intake (zooplankton feed on algae in the dark), for growth and survival. Without dark they face extinction. …Darkness is the womb in which everything exists. To trust the dark is to trust those deep, underground forces—forces of the earth, the ocean, the genes—that would bring to life the seed that is your soul. God planted deep into the ground of your being the seeds of a one-of-a-kind soul. To grow our souls into the unique creation God intends us to be, we must trust the birthing that is going on inside and around us. We must trust the ‘fruitive darkness.’” Leonard Sweet

“And I will give thee
the treasures of darkness”
Isaiah 45:3

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Do you know you’re in the dark?
  • Are you able to trust the “fruitive darkness” at work in our world and your life?
  • How specifically would you do that?

Abba, help me discover the treasures of darkness.

For More: Nudge by Leonard Sweet

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

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

Posted on by under "Being" with Jesus, Being and Doing, Contemplative Prayer, Embracing Losses and Limits, 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 Head to Heart

  • Are you striving to know more about God? What can you do to make sure learning more leads to loving more, growing more, and changing more – to new practices rather than just new convictions?
  • Are your prayers routinely characterized by “connecting with and resting in God”, even when they’re filled with petitions?
  • Do you assume “God is up to something good,” going ahead of you, calling you?
  • 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: Death and the Great Physician (John Donne and Philip Yancey) *

Posted on by under Death Daily, Embracing Losses and Limits

“Our last day is our first day; our Saturday is our Sunday; our eve is our holy day; our sunsetting is our morning; the day of our death is the first day of our eternal life. The next day after that … comes that day that shall show me to myself. Here I never saw myself but in disguises; there, then, I shall see myself, but I shall see God too…. Here I have one faculty enlightened, and another left in darkness; mine understanding sometimes cleared, my will at the same time perverted. There I shall be all light, no shadow upon me; my soul invested in the light of joy, and my body in the light of glory. … That voice, that I must die now, is not the voice of a judge that speaks by the way of condemnation, but of a physician that presents health.” John Donne

“A turning point came for Donne as he began to view death not as the disease that permanently spoils life, rather as the only cure to the disease of life, the final stage in the journey that brings us to God. Evil infects all of life on this fallen planet, and only through death–Christ’s death and our own–can we realize a cured state.”  Philip Yancey

“Lord, remind me how brief my time on earth will be.
Remind me that my days are numbered—
how fleeting my life is.
You have made my life no longer than the width of my hand.
My entire lifetime is just a moment to you;
at best, each of us is but a breath.”
Psalm 39:4,5

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • St. Benedict says to “keep death daily before your eyes.” How often do you consider your approaching death? How could doing that benefit you?
  • John Donne suggests we shall only really know God, ourselves, and true health, on the day that we die – that death is “… the final stage in the journey that brings us to God.”  Can you think about your death that way? If so, how does that make you feel?
  • If your life is “a moment … a breath”, what does that mean for how you want to live?

 __________

For More: Soul Survivor: How My Faith Survived the Church by Philip Yancey

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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: Prayer and the Wandering Mind (John Donne, Brennan Manning, John Bunyan) *

Posted on by under devotions, Patience with Yourself, Prayer

“I neglect God and his angels for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door; I talk on in the same posture of praying, eyes lifted up, knees bowed down, as though I prayed to God; and if God or his angels should ask me when I thought last of God in that prayer, I cannot tell. Sometimes I find that I had forgot what I was about, but when I began to forget it I cannot tell. A memory of yesterday’s pleasures, a fear of tomorrow’s dangers, a straw under my knee, a noise in mine ear, a light in mine eye, an anything, a nothing, a fancy, a chimera in my brain troubles me in my prayer.” John Donne

“One of the cardinal rules of prayer is: Pray as you can, don’t pray as you can’t. … Remember the only way to fail in prayer is not to show up.” Brennan Manning

“The great thing is prayer. Prayer itself. If you want a life of prayer, the way to get it is by praying.” Thomas Merton

“When you pray, rather let your heart be without words
than your words without heart.”
John Bunyan

“But when you pray,
go into your room,
close the door ….”
Matthew  6:6

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • John Donne shares very honestly about his problems in prayer, and the humor in his report shows he is not condemning himself. Perhaps he is just letting these distractions “float on downstream” – not resisting them or really even giving them any mind. What do you think? Can you extend grace to yourself in this regard as he does?
  • If you focus on the “noise of a fly” or the “monkeys in the trees” (Nouwen) you’ll probably give up in frustration. Can you “show up” according to plan each day, regardless of whether you feel delighted or distracted? What would be the importance of doing that?
  • For your “heart to be without words” isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Have you tried to pray by just silently giving God your attention?

__________

For More: Seventeenth-Century Prose and Poetry, eds. Coffin and Witherspoon

Thomas Merton is also good on this topic.

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Thomas Merton expresses my heart for Daily Riches: “If I dare, in these few words, to ask you some direct and personal questions, it is because I address them as much to myself as to you. It is because I am still able to hope that a civil exchange of ideas can take place between two persons — that we have not yet reached the stage where we are all hermetically sealed, each one in the collective arrogance and despair of his own herd.” I hope you’ll follow my blog, and share it with others. I appreciate your interest! – Bill (Psalm 90:14)

Daily Riches: Death and the Great Physician (John Donne and Philip Yancey)

Posted on by under Death Daily, Embracing Losses and Limits

“Our last day is our first day; our Saturday is our Sunday; our eve is our holy day; our sunsetting is our morning; the day of our death is the first day of our eternal life. The next day after that … comes that day that shall show me to myself. Here I never saw myself but in disguises; there, then, I shall see myself, but I shall see God too…. Here I have one faculty enlightened, and another left in darkness; mine understanding sometimes cleared, my will at the same time perverted. There I shall be all light, no shadow upon me; my soul invested in the light of joy, and my body in the light of glory. … That voice, that I must die now, is not the voice of a judge that speaks by the way of condemnation, but of a physician that presents health.” John Donne

“A turning point came for Donne as he began to view death not as the disease that permanently spoils life, rather as the only cure to the disease of life, the final stage in the journey that brings us to God. Evil infects all of life on this fallen planet, and only through death–Christ’s death and our own–can we realize a cured state.”  Philip Yancey

“Lord, remind me how brief my time on earth will be.
Remind me that my days are numbered—
how fleeting my life is.
You have made my life no longer than the width of my hand.
My entire lifetime is just a moment to you;
at best, each of us is but a breath.”
Psalm 39:4,5

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • St. Benedict says to “keep death daily before your eyes.” How often do you consider your approaching death? How could doing that benefit you?
  • John Donne suggests we shall only really know God, ourselves – and true health, on the day that we die – that death is “… the final stage in the journey that brings us to God.”  Can you think about your death that way? If so, how does that make you feel?
  • If your life is “a moment … a breath”, what does that mean for how you want to live?

 __________

For More: Soul Survivor: How My Faith Survived the Church by Philip Yancey

_________________________________________________

These “Daily Riches are for your encouragement as you seek after God. I appreciate your interest!  –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

Daily Riches: Prayer and the Wandering Mind (John Donne, Brennan Manning, John Bunyan)

Posted on by under Prayer

“I neglect God and his angels for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door; I talk on in the same posture of praying, eyes lifted up, knees bowed down, as though I prayed to God; and if God or his angels should ask me when I thought last of God in that prayer, I cannot tell. Sometimes I find that I had forgot what I was about, but when I began to forget it I cannot tell. A memory of yesterday’s pleasures, a fear of tomorrow’s dangers, a straw under my knee, a noise in mine ear, a light in mine eye, an anything, a nothing, a fancy, a chimera in my brain troubles me in my prayer.” John Donne

“One of the cardinal rules of prayer is: Pray as you can, don’t pray as you can’t. … Remember the only way to fail in prayer is not to show up.” Brennan Manning

“When you pray, rather let your heart be without words
than your words without heart.”
John Bunyan

“But when you pray,
go into your room,
close the door ….”
Matthew  6:6

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • John Donne shares very honestly about his problems in prayer, the humor in his report shows he is not condemning himself. Perhaps he is just letting these distractions “float on downstream” – not resisting them or really even giving them any mind. What do you think? Can you extend grace to yourself in this regard as he does?
  • If you focus on the “noise of a fly” or the “monkeys in the trees” (Nouwen) you’ll probably give up in frustration. Can you “show up” according to plan each day, regardless of whether you feel delighted or distracted? What would be the importance of doing that?
  • For your “heart to be without words” isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Have you tried to pray by just silently giving God your attention?

__________

For More: Seventeenth-Century Prose and Poetry, eds. Coffin and Witherspoon

Thomas Merton is also good on this topic.

_________________________________________________

The “Daily Riches” from RicherByFar are for your encouragement as you seek after God, and as he seeks after you. My goal is to give you something of uncommon value each day in less than 400 words. I hope you’ll follow my blog, and share it with others. I appreciate your interest!  –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)