More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
January 28 - February 9, 2023
Dear friends, we have to know the darkness to be able to search for the light. We first must come to know our lostness if we want to find meaning, purpose, and direction in life. What I want to share with you is a way out of the darkness, a way to find the light.
Our prayers are directed not to ourselves but to Another, who wants to turn us around, who longs to be present, and who is able to guide us. The one who prays to God pierces the darkness and senses the source of all being.
By embracing the darkness, in solitude and community, we eventually find the light.
Divine guidance can be found in the books we read, the nature we enjoy, the people we meet, and the events we experience. Through the practice of discernment, we can test our calling and find vocation. We can open our hearts to the divine presence. We can discover who we really are. And we can ascertain when to act, when to wait, and when to be led.
When we are spiritually deaf, we are not aware that anything important is happening in our lives. We keep running away from the present moment, and we try to create experiences that make our lives worthwhile. So we fill up our time to avoid the emptiness we otherwise would feel. When we are truly listening, we come to know that God is speaking to us, pointing the way, showing the direction. We simply need to learn to keep our ears open. Discernment is a life of listening to a deeper sound and marching to a different beat, a life in which we become “all ears.”
I will see great things when I am willing to be seen.
Finding ourselves in a relationship with God is prerequisite to discernment of God’s will and direction. As in any relationship, there will be feelings of rejection as well as attraction, resentment as well as gratitude, fear as well as love. There will be ups and downs in faithfulness as we discover new things about ourselves and God. In our dynamic relationship with God, we can be sure of one thing: “If we are faithless, God is faithful still, for God cannot disown his own” (2 Tim. 2:13).
Acceptance of God’s will does not mean submission or resignation to “whatever will be will be.” Rather, we actively wait for the Spirit to move and prompt, and then discern what we are to do next. When we see ourselves in a relationship of love with God, there is always something of a lover’s dilemma, a struggle to give and receive, to trust and obey the call.
Spiritual rebirth is an evergreen openness to let the spirit of Jesus blow in us where it pleases.
Reading and reciting a sacred text is not meant to fill up your empty space or limit your spiritual thoughts, but to set up boundaries around it.
Most important is how we read—not to understand or control God, but to be understood and formed by God.
The Spirit works deep within us, so deeply that we cannot always identify its presence. The effect of God’s spirit is deeper than our thoughts and emotions. That is why setting aside a special time and place for prayer is so important. Often we do not feel like praying and our minds are distracted. The lack of motivation and difficulty focusing make us think that our prayer time is useless and wasted time. Still, it is very important to remain faithful to these times and simply stick with our promise to be with God, even if nothing in our minds, hearts, or bodies wants to be there. Simple
...more
In common worship (service of the Word and Sacrament), we avoid busyness and entertainment. We gather to be made into a spiritual body in which God’s presence can be made manifest. We sing, read, dance, sit in silence, and pray, allowing our liturgical actions to open space among us where God can act. We try to do nothing in haste, allowing for silence and encouraging simplicity.
Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us God’s beloved. Being the beloved expresses the core truth of our existence.2
How do I discern the voice that says “be humble” from the one that says “you’re nothing”? Humility has nothing to do with self-rejection. You can only be humble if you have a deep self-respect. Self-rejection cannot form the basis of a humble life. It leads only to complaints, jealousy, anger, and even violence. It is a most dangerous temptation. I know this from my own experience. Every time I start to experience myself as worthless or useless, a “nobody,” I know I am on the slippery slope to isolation and dark emotions.
Let nothing disturb you Let nothing frighten you. Those who cling to God will lack nothing Let nothing disturb you Let nothing frighten you God alone is enough.3
Saints are men and women like us, who live ordinary lives and struggle with ordinary problems. What makes them saints is their clear and unwavering focus on God and God’s people. The saints are our brothers and sisters, calling us to become like them.
It has always fascinated me that some people—so-called saints or holy people—never really leave us when they die. Their deaths somehow free them from the constraints of earthly existence and bring them closer to more people than they could ever have known on earth. God continues to speak to us through their lives, deaths, and memory so as to draw us close.
As long as we read the Bible or a spiritual book simply to acquire knowledge, our reading does not help us in our spiritual life.
Even the most severe form of asceticism was considered less important than service to a neighbor. That is why one of the wise men of the desert says, “Even if the brother who fasts six days were to hang himself by the nose, he could not equal the one who serves the sick.”
If you are to get from it all the good I anticipate, you must not throw yourself greedily upon it or let yourself be drawn on by curiosity as to what comes next. Fix your attention upon what you are reading without thinking about what follows. . . . Pause briefly, from time to time, to let these pleasant truths sink deeper and deeper into your soul, and allow the Holy Spirit time to work. . . . Simply let the truths sink into your heart rather than into your mind.
Spiritual reading and listening for the movement of the Spirit has helped me learn that God does speak through varied voices. And more importantly, God often reveals the contents of my own heart, as I slow and read not to know more but to be more fully known by God.
Often I look up into the clouds and daydream about a better world. But my dreams will never bear fruit unless I keep turning my eyes again and again back to the dust of this earth and listening to what God is saying to me on the road of life. For I am connected to the earth and to all who walk the earth with me.
I once saw contemplation as something done best in the quiet of a monastery or behind a closed door. Now I know that nature can be a contemplative companion. Instead of trying to control and manipulate the circumstances of your life and the world around you, you become more receptive to God in the world. You no longer ignore or grab nature as if it were a thing to dominate or own, but rather caress it; you no longer examine but admire it. In return, nature reveals itself transformed and renewed—no longer an impediment to prayer but a means of discernment; instead of an invulnerable shield, a
...more
Beauty by its very nature is fragile. Touch it too roughly and it’s gone, grasp it too firmly and its petals fall away. It must be held onto lightly and gazed on attentively or it slips away. You cannot analyze it or pull it apart to see what it’s made of or how it got there, if you want to experience the flower in the field. So, too, are our lives. Concrete yet so elusive. For who can fully analyze our lives or understand their many ways? But we can taste and feel them in the moment and refuse to pull them apart like the petals of a flower.”
When a tree is nothing but a potential chair, it ceases to tell us much about growth; when a river is only a dumping place for industrial wastes, it can no longer speak to us about movement; and when a flower is nothing more than a model for a plastic decoration, it has little to say about the simple beauty of life.
nature is not a possession to be conquered but a gift to be received with respect and gratitude. Only when we make a deep bow to the rivers, oceans, hills, and mountains that offer us a home—only then can they become transparent and reveal to us their real meaning. All of nature conceals great secrets that cannot be revealed if we do not listen carefully and patiently to God’s hidden language.
It is not enough for me to discern God’s will for my life. I must discern God’s desires for my life as one small but important part of God’s great call to renew and redeem all the earth.
Getting answers to my questions is not the goal of the spiritual life. Living in the presence of God is the greater call.
once we are willing to see human persons as living signs and all of life as the continuing manifestation of God’s love, we can begin to see through the relationships in our life as gifts of God that help mold and shape us, reminding us of the inner quality of God’s own love.
The power of friendship is great if it doesn’t find all its meaning in itself. If people expect too much from each other, they can do each other harm; disappointment and bitterness can overpower love and even replace it. But in the practice of discernment in daily life, we can learn to appreciate our closest friends, family members, and sometimes complete strangers, as signposts pointing toward God. Friends may be guides who see what we may not be able to see ourselves.
I discerned that my increasing inner darkness, my feelings of rejection, my inordinate need for affirmation and affection, and my deep sense of not belonging were clear signs that I needed to go.
expecting from a friend what only Christ can give.
friendship requires a constant willingness to forgive each other for not being Christ, and a willingness to ask Christ himself to be the true center of the relationship. When Christ does not mediate a friendship, that relationship easily becomes demanding, manipulating, and oppressive, and fails to offer the other the space to grow. True friendship requires closeness, affection, support, and mutual encouragement, but also distance, space to grow, freedom to be different, and solitude. To nurture both aspects of a relationship, we must experience a deeper and more lasting affirmation than any
...more
I reached a healthy place in which I was able to stop projecting my needs on another human being. We both came to understand that each of us is limited in our capacity to be for another what is needed, and learned to forgive each other for not being God. In this way, Nathan and I were free to be true friends and brothers. The restoration was God’s sign to me to claim my own belovedness and come home. I learned that people can be signs and helpful companions, but only God can guide and fully heal the wounded places in each of us.
“Whether you are the younger son or the older son, you have to realize that you are called to become the father.
“You have been looking for friends all your life; you have been craving affection as long as I’ve known you; you have been interested in thousands of things; you have been begging for attention, appreciation, and affirmation left and right. The time has come to claim your true vocation—to be a father who can welcome his children home.”
When we see time in light of our faith in the God of history, we see that the events of this year are not just a series of happy or unhappy events but part of the shaping hands of God, who wants to mold our world and our lives. Even when life seems harried and continues to have hard moments, we can believe that something good is happening amid all of this. We get glimpses of how God might be working out his purposes in our days. Time becomes not just something to get through or manipulate or manage, but the arena of God’s good work in us. Whatever happens—good things or bad, pleasant or
...more
by not remembering, we allow forgotten memories to intrude into the present and become independent forces with crippling effects on our lives. Forgetting the past is like turning our most intimate teacher against us. Remembering the past in this way allows us to live in the present and gain hope for the future, until chronos is converted to kairos.
In every critical event, there is an opportunity for God to act creatively and reveal a deeper truth than what we see on the surface of things. God also can turn around critical incidents and seemingly hopeless situations in our lives and reveal light in darkness.
if the future is not in my hands, then I have all the more reason to stay in the present and give honor and glory to God from where I am, trusting that God is the God of life who makes everything new. Who knows where you or I will be next year on June 7th? So why worry about it? God will surprise us.
Detachment, for Merton, does not mean shirking one’s responsibilities. Rather, it is a radical stance in the world that makes it possible to move unafraid into the center of evil and not be destroyed by it. If you claim nothing as your own, including your own life, you can expose the illusion of control and the false basis of war and violence by refusing any compromise with evil. Thus the self-emptied person is the true revolutionary in the world. How might we stand aside from all our demands and desires in this age of consumerism and militarism and seek peace within—peace for our immediate
...more
We seldom fully realize that we are sent to fulfill God-given tasks. We act as if we have to choose how, where, and with whom to live. We act as if we were simply dropped down in creation and have to decide how to entertain ourselves until we die. But we were sent into the world by God, just as Jesus was. Once we start living our lives with that conviction, we will soon know what we were sent to do. These tasks may be very specialized, or they may be the general task of loving one another in everyday life.
The more I realized I was truly loved, the more I felt the inner freedom to go in peace and let all inner debate about motivation subside.
The Spirit of God in us recognizes God in the world. The eyes and ears by which we see God in others are in fact spiritual sensitivities that allow us to receive our neighbors as messengers of God. Thus, to go to the poor is to go to the Lord.
A certain realism is necessary to fulfill a call to work and live among the poor. You have to accept your own history and limitations. You have to remind yourself that Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor,” not blessed are those who try to help the poor. At the same time, you have to deal with the gospel call to downward mobility, accepting that the way of Christ is a self-emptying way. What that means in your own concrete situation will probably remain a lifelong question.
All is grace. Light and water, shelter and food, work and free time, children, parents, and grandparents, birth and death—it is all given to us. Our very first vocation is to receive these gifts and say thanks.
my broader vocation is simply to enjoy God’s presence, do God’s will, and be grateful wherever I am. The question of where to live and what to do is really insignificant compared to the question of how to keep the eyes of my heart focused on the Lord.
There is no such thing as the right place or the right job. I can be miserable or joyful, restless or at peace, in all situations. It is a simple truth that came to me in a time when I had to decide about my future. Living in Lima or not for five, ten, or twenty years was no great decision. Turning to the Lord fully, unconditionally, and without fear is. He reminds me that I have no lasting dwelling on this earth, that I am a traveler on the way to a sacred place where God holds me in the palm of his hand. This deeper awareness sets me free to be a pilgrim, to pray without ceasing, and to be
...more
My daily hour with God is not a time of deep prayer in which I contemplate the divine mysteries or feel a special closeness to God. On the contrary, it is full of distractions, inner restlessness, confusion, and boredom. It seldom, if ever, pleases my senses. Even though I do not feel God’s love the way I feel a human embrace, even though I do not hear a voice as I hear human words of consolation, even though I do not see a smile like I see a human face, still the Lord speaks to me, looks at me, and embraces me there. The way I become aware of God’s presence is in that remarkable desire to
...more
