Tag Archives: meditation

The Wisdom of the Deer and Your True Self

Poetry has a wonderful way to draw out of us our true self before God. Read the following poem slowly, prayerfully. Listen to what God might be saying to you today about His will for you. The Wisdom of the Deer …a deer standing before me shamelessly telling me by his presence through his very manner of being there what I did was all I could do what I did was truly all I could do. the deer didn’t move for what seemed like the longest time kept standing there unflinching regal as if the fallen leaves adorning his great hall were lush earthen carpet and I had been grated a brief audience with a nobility whose lineage was pure and undefiled and then I understood the wisdom of the deer the secret to my own dignity all I have ever been is all I will ever need I must look back And. Read more.

Skim

When I was in high school and elementary school, I did what most of my friends did — I skimmed for tests. Learning the material was not important. What was important was to get a good grade, to survive, to get through it. Most Christian leaders/pastors skim today. We skim on ourselves, our self-care. We have so much to do, so many demands that we figure we can catch up on our sleep some other time. The space we need for Sabbath-keeping, replenishing our soil, reading, relaxing, etc. can happen later, some some other time. We lie to ourselves that all is okay. We skim on our relationship with God. There are sermons to prepare, calls to return, people to visit, e mails to read. So our devotional lives are weak and we carry a general cloud of guilt. We skim on our marriages and children. Our families rarely demand us out of a crisis so we. Read more.

Reflections on a Weekend with the Trappists

This was my fifth retreat with the 70+ monks of St. Joseph’s Abbey in Massachusetts. Maybe since it was the end of my 6 weeks away from the responsibility of leading New Life, but I entered into a deep calm, silence and rhythm with their life almost immediately. One of the highlights of the weekend was a conversation with Father Kizito Kwame, a West Indian who has been with them for 49 years. He joined at the age of 17 when the monastery was at its height (1958-1960) of 200 monks. He recently returned from 10 years of serving among the 25 Trappist monasteries in Africa. A part of me so longed to remain on the mountaintop with God and not leave return to checkbooks, house, problems, needs, noise and traffic of NYC, that I complained to him for a while, shared with him this inner compulsion I often feel to be a monk, etc.. Read more.

Daily Offices for Me

I am often asked what I do for my Daily Offices. The answer is not too complex. I generally pause 3-4x a day – morning for a longer period, midday, evening and compline (right before going to bed). I have been meditation on and praying the psalms now for over 3 and a half years, using the schedule found in the end of the Book of Common Prayer. (I have also made it available as a download from our resources at the EHS and NLF website). I don’t keep to the daily schedule with dates but just keep moving along day by day. I think it works out to praying through the Psalter every 5-6 weeks. This is my bread and butter. I generally will take 2 ten to twenty minutes blocks of silence somewhere in my offices (almost always in the morning). I almost always have a devotional handy (like the Sayings of the Desert Fathers. Read more.

Finding Rhythms in an Interrupted Life

I am convinced living rhythmically is one of our gifts to our 24/7 world and a key to walking with God. Yet my life, like most, is full of interruptions. I love and affirm Wayne Mueller’s words in his book on Sabbath and our need for rhythms: To surrender to the rhythms of seasons and flowerings and dormancies is to savor the secret of life itself. Many scientists believe we are “hard-wired” like this, to live in rhythmic awareness, to be in and then step out, to be engrossed and then detached, to work and then to rest. It follows then that the commandment to remember the Sabbath is not a burdensome requirement from some law-giving deity — but rather a remembrance of a law that is firmly embedded in the fabric of nature. It is a reminder of how things really are, the rhythmic dance to which we unavoidably belong. Yet last week I experienced a classic challenge of having. Read more.

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