C. Paul Schroeder's Blog, page 3
October 28, 2017
Heartfelt Listening: Emotional Awareness as a Spiritual Practice
I live in a house full of big emotions. My wife and I have a three-year old daughter and three-month-old twins, a boy and a girl. The twins make their needs known with howls of heartbreaking intensity, while our daughter Lucy is just starting to take her first steps on the tightrope from dependence to autonomy. Our days are full of tears, outbursts of frustrated rage, butterflies in the tummy at new situations, but also wild exuberance, smiles, shrieks of laughter, dances and jumps for joy.Th...
October 6, 2017
Where the Tension is the Greatest...
(Exerpted from Part Six of Practice Makes PURPOSE: Six Spiritual Practices That Will Change Your Life and Transform Your Community)There once was a young hunter who left his life of independence to join a spiritual community. This man had a very difficult time adjusting to community life. As a hunter, he had lived a solitary existence, often spending days at a time alone in the wilderness. He had made his own choices. But in the community he was constantly around other people, and there was o...
September 18, 2017
Listening from the Heart
(This is a reprint of a homily on the spiritual practice of Heartfelt Listening by Rev. Carley Friesen of Mt. Tabor Presbyterian Church in Portland, Oregon. The original homily and others in her series on the Six Spiritual Practices can be found here.)One of the phrases which comes up in conversations with people who are tired of church is something like, “I want to live a meaningful life, or a life of purpose.” They don’t see the church as the place to do this. Though I believe they are ofte...
August 17, 2017
Seeing You (and Me)
(Excerpted from Practice Makes PURPOSE: Six Spiritual Practices That Will Change Your Life and Transform Your Community)Ending the cycle of judgment requires Compassionate Seeing, the first and most fundamental of the Six Spiritual Practices. Compassionate Seeing is a moment-by-moment commitment to viewing ourselves and others with complete and unconditional acceptance—no exceptions. Here are the basic steps:Notice your discomfort. Pay attention whenever something makes you feel uncomfortable...
August 3, 2017
What the Monk Saw in the Moonlight
(Excerpted from Practice Makes PURPOSE, Part One: Compassionate Seeing)There is an old story from the Egyptian desert about a monk who suspected his monastic brother of breaking the vow of celibacy. The first monk could never quite put his finger on what made him so suspicious; there was just something about the other monk that bothered him. He was constantly on the lookout for any evidence to prove his suspicions.After some surreptitious spying, he discovered the brother often slipped out of...
July 29, 2017
My Path to the Six Practices
(Part two of the first chapter of )The last thing I ever expected was to become a teacher of the Six Practices. Twenty years ago, the phrase “Six Spiritual Practices” wasn’t even part of my vocabulary. The path that brought me to this point has been a winding one. I can’t even say I discovered the Six Practices.If anything, they found me.When I was in my early twenties, restlessness and a deep desire for greater purpose drew me to the Greek Orthodox Church. I eventually went to seminary and b...
July 22, 2017
The Way of the Six Practices
(an excerpt from the first chapter of Practice Makes PURPOSE: Six Spiritual Practices That Will Change Your Life and Transform Your Community)
This is a book about how to love. Although the word “love” appears infrequently in these pages, the Six Spiritual Practices are what love looks like in action.The world suffers more than anything else from a lack of love. The social ills that plague our neighborhoods and cities—poverty, homelessness, crime, violence are all symptoms of this deficit. The...
This is a book about how to love. Although the word “love” appears infrequently in these pages, the Six Spiritual Practices are what love looks like in action.The world suffers more than anything else from a lack of love. The social ills that plague our neighborhoods and cities—poverty, homelessness, crime, violence are all symptoms of this deficit. The...
June 14, 2017
Creating Compassionate Community
My name is Paul Schroeder, and the theme of my presentation today is creating compassionate community. I want to talk about three defining characteristics of the solution to homelessness: the solution to homelessness is upstream, community-wide, and personal. And I want to explain why I think each of these three characteristics, upstream, community-wide, and personal are so important to the creation of a compassionate community.For seven years, I served as the director of New City Initiative...
May 10, 2017
Six Gifts of a Social Entrepreneur - Guest Post by Fr. Stephen Schneider
(The following is an excerpt of remarks delivered by Fr. Stephen Schneider on December 21, 2016, at Paul Schroeder's farewell celebration prior to leaving Portland. Fr. Stephen has a wonderful blog dedicated to exploring the "spiritual geography" of cities. You can find the original post here:www.cityandspire.com/journal/2017/3/17/leadership-lessons-six-gifts-of-a-social-entrepreneur)I want to conclude with what I am calling “Six Gifts of Paul Schroeder,” six being something of a “holy number...
April 11, 2017
The Three Thieves
(This is an excerpt from Part Three of the forthcoming bookPractice Makes PURPOSE: Six Spiritual Practices that Will Change Your Life and Transform Your Community)
One night, three robbers broke into the hut of a monk who lived alone in the desert. When the monk realized what was happening, he remained seemingly unfazed. He simply nodded to greet his uninvited guests, then returned to braiding ropes out of palm fibers by lamplight. Two of the robbers kept a nervous eye on the monk while the th...
One night, three robbers broke into the hut of a monk who lived alone in the desert. When the monk realized what was happening, he remained seemingly unfazed. He simply nodded to greet his uninvited guests, then returned to braiding ropes out of palm fibers by lamplight. Two of the robbers kept a nervous eye on the monk while the th...
