Auditing Your Use of Time: A Spiritual Practice

Awareness is about being where you are, not some place else. Trouble is, most of us live mostly in our heads, absorbed in our thought-life and the emotions our thoughts trigger. But the truth is, what’s going on in our heads is mostly fiction most of the time. What you’re thinking maybe about a real event yesterday or one that’ll come your way tomorrow, but right now, the thought is only a thought. It’s not real . . . not really. So, take a guess: how much time do you think you spend fantasizing about life and not living it? So, how do you increase your awareness and the pleasure that comes from it?

Click here for a link to a concrete exercise for practicing awareness: Auditing Your Time: A Spiritual Practice

How to face the reality of suffering and evil

There's a lot of talk these days about the evil of the world and much concern about the suffering many of us experience. Questions about God, suffering, and evil will abound as the ten year anniversary of 9/11 comes and goes.

Here's something that challenges us to see things differently--

John Goldingay, a distinguished Old Testament professor, has written a remarkable memoir of his 43 year marriage, much of it challenged by his wife's experience with multiple sclerosis.  In the final years before her death in 2009, she was unable to walk or even speak.

To students who often struggle intellectually with the nature of God and the reality of suffering and evil, Goldingay often says:

"It's odd that people who are not suffering often seem to fret more about this problem than people who are? . . . [The people who worry about such things] are people who each day have food to eat and sunshine to enjoy and friends to share life with and a roof over their head and God to talk to.  What on earth are we to make of the fact that there is so much good in the world?  Isn't that at least as striking as the fact that there is so much evil?"

Yes, that fact is at least as striking.

Taking hold of that fact more consistent with a life of prayer that's nourished by the teaching of another Old Testament scholar who writes: "And God saw all that he had made and indeed it was very good" (Genesis 1.31).

The heart of Christianity

Many today are ignorant of the treasures of Eastern Orthodoxy. But much of what I write here on this blog simply mines those treasures, making them available to modern people, and in particular, Prostestants---all who seek a deeper and richer experience of God. In this short video interview, Bishop Kallistos Ware of Oxford, talks about what Protestants (especially evangelicals) can learn from the Orthodox, and the Orthodox from Protestants.

Ware winsomely explores our inner experience with Christ in the Holy Spirit . . . that Christianity is not an ideology or philosophical system, dogma or a list of moral rules, but an experiential reality.

You'll enjoy this delightful little interview:

I've referred to Kallistos Ware elsewhere and heartily suggest his writings, especially his little book, The Power of the Name (listed here on my Recommended Books page).

Understanding the history of Christian spirituality

I recommend this excellent introduction to the depth of Christian spirituality. Archbishop Rowan Williams explores the relation of personal experience of God to daily life by surveying the course of history, East and West.

An important read for anyone who wants to understand the living tradition that undergirds their personal practice of prayer.

A good guide to the life of prayer

I've stumbled upon a book that parallels my own teaching on prayer.  And since my own book is bogged down or delayed, I suggest you pick it up.  John Main (deceased) and I've read much the same historical material and come to similar conclusions and practices drawn from the wellspring of historic Christian spirituality. From the Amazon.com review:

This is his classic book on how to practice contemplative prayer, or Christian meditation. Stepping aside from the busyness of our daily lives and being still in the presence of God is the key to discovering our true selves and knowing God as 'the ground of our being'. This book offers a twelve step programme in learning meditative prayer, but as the author says, it is not so much about mastering a set of techniques, or escaping from life's challenges and difficulties, or cultivating a self-conscious piety. Its purpose is to teach us how to be at peace with ourselves in order that we might let the presence of Christ flood our whole lives and our relationships.

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