Five Minutes of Prayer

10/26/2024

Let us hold each other.

For Nothing Is Fixed, by James Baldwin

For nothing is fixed,
forever, forever, forever,
it is not fixed;
the earth is always shifting,
the light is always changing,
the sea does not cease to grind down rock.
Generations do not cease to be born,
and we are responsible to them
because we are the only witnesses they have.
The sea rises, the light fails,
lovers cling to each other,
and children cling to us.
The moment we cease to hold each other,
the moment we break faith with one another,
the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

10/20/2024

Listen.

Father Richard Rohr considers the many challenges we face when seeking to “hear” God’s voice:   Humanity is in a time of great flux, of great

10/09/2024

I relate profoundly with this description.

"When we are alone on a starlit night; when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really children; when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet Bashō we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash—at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the “newness,” the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance. " Thomas Merton

Spiritual writer Joyce Rupp understands all of creation as part of a “cosmic dance”:  No one person has been able to fully communicate this amazing

09/29/2024

"Religion is not about heroic willpower or winning or being right. This has been a counterfeit for holiness in much of Christian history. True growth in holiness is a growth in willingness to be loved and to love." Richard Rohr

09/25/2024

sometimes heaven is just a new pair of glasses

Mirabai Starr writes about mysticism we can experience in the “monasteries” of our everyday lives:   I think you get it: You don’t have to enter

05/29/2024

Beautiful ministry.

Advocate Carl Siciliano recounts how relationship with his LGBTQ community has often placed him at odds with what Christian churches have taught: The

05/24/2024

I don't remember when I first stopped living in the moment. I'm sure none of us can recall that shift that happened at a very young age when we went from being led by our immediate needs and wants and responses to a speculative place, where we actually thought about what comes next and also about what just happened.

My twenties were all about the next thing. I remember thinking, "time is wasting" as if the alarm bell would sound at any moment. The race I had decided was my life was happening and I was losing.

We all experience this race. We are, in fact, conditioned to think ahead. "When I get that promotion, I'll find a soul mate and buy a house and start my 401K and get a new car and have the kid and retire at 67 to Palm Springs." It is as if everything in between means nothing.

Or (and) we all have regrets. Can you remember a moment in your life when that gnawing irritation of regret still rears its head? If we threw out all the bits and pieces of our experiences onto a table, there would be those shiny nuggets of wonderfulness, but there would also be the jagged-edged rocks of "what-ifs," and those would be larger and harder to ignore.

I am practicing living in the now and I'm rarely successful. But the practice itself is the real tool. The practice slowly nips away at the anxiety. It isn't a miraculous, instantaneous happening. But sometimes, after writing or praying or meditating or swimming or taking a walk or playing with my dogs, I forget the past and can't even remember what was stressing me out about the future. I just be, if only for a moment.

Now. Only now.

05/07/2024

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.
Einstein was really smart.

03/29/2024

https://cac.org/daily-meditations/we-do-not-know-what-we-are-doing/
Forgive them? Forgive us?

Good Friday Brian McLaren invites us to an imaginative experience of the painful reality of scapegoating that occurred on Good Friday: Let’s imagine

03/26/2024

Moonstone Beach is covered in these tiny pebbles, each totally unique, polished by the battering of the ocean currents. Somehow they all arrive on land and create a soft and ticklish carpet for our feet. We are those little stones, simultaneously perfect and imperfect, varying hues and textures, arriving together in the same place to create a divine art piece that comforts the rest of creation.

02/25/2024

Richard Rohr speaks words that I always believed and didn't have a way to articulate.

Reflecting on Jesus’ cleansing of the temple in John’s Gospel (2:13–22), Father Richard explores the implications of Jesus’ anger and actions:Jesus’

09/01/2023

Agenda
Each day, my ritual is the same. Wake. Read stuff on my phone. Go downstairs. Take the dog out. Make coffee. Feed the dog. Water the plants. Drink coffee. Meditate.
Ah, there is the hitch. Meditate.
The ritual plays out perfectly, even cheerfully. There is no agenda at hand but the tasks themselves. Until I sit to meditate.
“Set an intention,” the teacher had said in my first failed attempt at meditating where I did absolutely nothing but think about frying bacon when I got home. “Set your mind on a goal, an agenda for the day.” How harrowing, I thought.
It does make sense from our American, goal-driven sensibility. Let your meditation be about creating an agenda that will get you ahead. Ahead of what? Or whom?
I’ve found that meditation is exactly not about creating an agenda. In fact, the more intention I give it, the more it stresses me the hell out which, I believe, is the opposite of what you are hoping to achieve when meditating.
I read a cool thing this week – let your meditation be about nothing more than clearing the clouds so that you can see the sky.
I like this image. Whether you call it meditation or prayer or quiet time or contemplation, it does not matter to God, even if you, by the way, don’t even believe in God. Meditation is a time for us to clear the clouds and see clearly.
What are the clouds? They are everything that our minds have created to clutter itself, to fill itself up with, to preoccupy us, distract us from truth and love.
This is my agenda for today - to allow God to clear the clouds and let me see the expanse which is much greater than any intention I could have ever set for myself.