The power of words: architects of the new creation

Every word, a meditation. No word spoken carelessly. Let the vocal chords, the lips, tongue, and teeth connect to your heart and soul---to express the reverence, joy, love, and truthfulness dwelling there. Words are sounds that create. Every word, then, heart deep.

Slow down until you learn reverence. Listen to each word until you hear the new creation in each syllable.

Words, according to the lower standard are merely a communication tool. But words, from the higher view and when spoken from eternity, are for creation. As God spoke and brought all things into being, we, God's prophets, speak and in his name remake the world. Adam followed God's example in the Garden, and the New Adam, Jesus Christ, calls us to follow him in speaking the world toward its new and everlasting springtime.

Why you ought to work with your hands

We must learn again to work with our hands. There is a great loss in the modern world in its loss of manual labor. Touching things, sweating, stopping, starting. Manual work gives a person a sense of dignity and worth. How might work, hard work with your hands, provide the necessary antidote to desk work that involves you in the curse of Modernity, the crush of unending responsibility to an electronic universe that, by nature, knows no rest---a cyber world that plays by rules with consequences we don't yet understand?

Not all work can be manual, of course, but how might a rhythm of manual work and prayer teach a way of life that brings intellectual and electronic work into a goodness it might not know apart from it?

TOMORROW! "The Art of Spiritual Friendship" :: an urban retreat

Friday and Saturday, February 18-19, 2011 University Presbyterian Church, Fresno, California

Click here for a link to our PDF file of the brochure.

Living an alert spiritual life is demanding; no one can go it alone.  And in today's world, we are hungry for meaningful personal intimacy.  Friendships not only provide us with companionship, they keep us grounded, and give us guidance along the way.  This year's conference will focus on St. Aelred of Rievaulx and will explore biblical and historical witnesses to the gift friendship can be to the spirit.  David and Jonathan, Mary and Elizabeth, and nearer our time, JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis show us ways of joining together as soul friends as we walk the way of Christ in challenging times.

Led by Dr. Robert Hale of the New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur, Dr. Steve Varvis, interim provost and historian at Fresno Pacific University, and Dr. Chris Erdman.

• Begins Friday evening the 18th, 7pm

• Saturday morning through mid-afternoon the 19th

• $35 includes lunch; please pre-register to help us plan for lunch ($45 fee at the door). Mail your check by February 15th to University Presbyterian Church, 1776 E. Roberts Ave. Fresno, CA  93710.

• Contact the church office at 559.439.8807 for more information and to register.

• Monastery Bookstore with books, candles, icons, and other handcrafts from around the world.

• Click here for a link to our PDF file of the brochure.  Please forward to friends!

This conference is open to all, so please invite a friend and spread the word.

Prayer's not a contest but a doorway

Mary Oliver's meditation on the simplicity of true prayer: Praying

It doesn't have to be the blue iris, it could be weeds in a vacant lot, or a few small stones; just pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don't try to make them elaborate, this isn't a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak.

Constancy is the mother of habit

Saint Hesychius of Jerusalem writes: "There is but one task that we must hold before us and must always perform in the same manner---to call on Jesus Christ, our Lord, entreating Him with a burning heart that He would grant us to partake of and to taste the blessings of His Holy Name. For constancy is the mother of habit for both virtue and vice, and habit eventually takes over as second nature." A taste of heaven is not yet habit. But such a taste creates the desire for virtue.