Thoughts

You know, don't you, how your thoughts crowd and push inside your head, almost incessantly, from the moment you rise to the moment you fall asleep. Even sleep is no vacation from the thoughts that assault and confuse and entertain. Because of this mind-parade of incessant thoughts, most of us are living a spiritual catastrophe. We float along in the flotsam of thoughts, carried somewhere, and often feeling we have very little power to escape them. One long, sleepless night is evidence enough that you're among that mass of sufferers. Or maybe you anesthetize yourself by falling asleep to the TV, or getting a little help from a drink or drug.

Truth is, you are not your thoughts. The very fact that you can think a thought, watch a thought, even exchange thoughts is proof that there's a you beyond your thoughts.

St Paul said, "Take every thought captive" (2 Corinthians 10.5). Paul knew that there's a you who can take your thoughts captive, who doesn't have to be a slave to the stuff parading through your brain.

How?

This kind of spiritual freedom is the fruit of the prayer of the heart--a form of prayer that can occupy you for a lifetime, but is so simply a child can practice it. The prayer of the heart is simply the practice of the steady, patient, and habitual drawing the mind down into the heart using a simple prayer like the Lord's Prayer or the words "Jesus have mercy." By repeating the prayer, reverently, mindfully, you'll find yourself resting there in your heart with the Christ who dwells within you. It can be practiced even during the busiest moments of daily life.

"The head and hands at work," the saints instruct us, "and the heart at rest in prayer."

Intention: Today, I will pause periodically throughout the day; whisper a simple prayer silently in my heart, and commune with Christ for awhile and give my mind a break from the steady stream of thoughts within.

Voice

I was working with a group of preachers this morning to help them find their voices.  On a regular basis, preachers use their voices publicly.  But as these preachers recognized today, the voice they use publicly isn't always their real voice--their own voice. Your voice--my voice--is deeply spiritual.  Your voice arises out of who you are--your own God-breathed originality.  Your voice is different from the words you may speak.  Your voice is the living witness to all that makes you who you are; it comes directly out of the experiences that have shaped you, the truth that's real to you, your intimate connection with the Divine.  It is the true you God's made you to be.

If you know your distinctive, God-breathed voice, you're on your way to owning the gift you have to offer for the healing of the world.

The trouble is, our voice is usually hijacked by the voices in our heads that come from parents, older siblings, friends, enemies, religious leaders, affinity groups, and so on.  The voice we usually present to the world is the voice we think the world around us wants to hear.

If you want to live with integrity, to live as God desires you to live, you must find your own voice--peel back the masks we wear, strip away the falsehoods, stop the charades.  Only then can you live as the unique person you are meant to be.

Finding your voice is critical if you want to live a more focused, strategic, purposeful life--a life aligned with the God who made you--and to make a real difference in the world.

Intention: Today I will begin my search for my one, authentic God-breathed voice--so that I may live a more focused, compassionate, purposeful life.

EXTRAS . . .

Here's a witness to a young Indian woman who has found her voice and is leveraging it for good:

Pranitha Timothy: a voice for the voiceless

Here are two good pieces that can help you find your voice:

4 Steps to Finding Your Voice

10 Questions that Will Help You Find Your Voice

Less

"Objects tend to crowd out the life they are meant to support," says Graham Hill. He's a guy who made it big, very big, before he was thirty. A windfall from a tech-startup put more money into his bank account than he knew what to do with. So he bought stuff. Lots of it. Eventually, owning two residences on the west and east coast, a bunch of nice cars, techie equipment, and so on, he came to realize that he wasn't owning any of it; it was owning him.

So he quit the consumerist trap. Cold turkey. He now says, "I sleep better. I have less--and enjoy more. My space is small. My life is big."

If you want God, then I want you to know Graham Hill. You can read more about him in this short article from yesterday's New York Times, Sunday Review.

All of us can do what he did, but most of us will choose not to. Nothing necessarily wrong with that. What matters is that you and I do something now to let go of what is nonessential so that we can find the freedom to hold on to what is.

Look around yourself. You'll find there's so much that's nonessential . . . non-essence . . . so much that's not part of the life, the essence, God is holding out to you.

Intention: Today, I'll stop, momentarily, a couple times throughout the day. I'll look around and notice how much of my stuff is nonessential, how much of it clutters my life, keeps me from the life I long for. I'll bet I can find at least 10 nonessential things for every 1 that is. I'll toss at least one thing I can do without.

Dysfunction

Today I read about a new Lindsay Lohan film, "The Canyons." It's a microbudget film that's an attempt to aid in the recovery of just about everybody who's making it--director, writers, and, of course, Lohan . . . who has pretty much made herself a walking disaster, and frightened away just about anyone who thinks of working with her. The article paints a portrait of Lohan that compares her to notoriously difficult George C. Scott, the alcoholic actor who's made many a director shake in his boots. Only Lohan looks even more challenging than Scott.

"We don't have to save her," says director Shrader. "We just have to get her through three weeks in July."

There's a little of Lohan in each of us, more or less.

If you're struggling against dysfunction, some part of you that makes life difficult for you and those around you, you may be tempted to think things will never change. Never's a long time. But can you work with that part of you, give it some kind of container, a second (or third chance), a ton of patience . . . for just "three weeks in July"?

Three weeks of sane and sober living may not be enough to save Lohan. But then again, it could. It might be the footing she needs for a whole new beginning.

Intention: Today, I'll face that challenging actor within; the one that whines and roars, and drives me nearly insane. I won't walk away, nor will I let that part of me rule the set for the next 24 hours. I'll try it again tomorrow, and the day after that too. Maybe get a little help from someone who knows how to tame the craziness within. I'll give it a shot for a few weeks and see what kind of saving God's up to within.

Nakedness

This is an advanced teaching, but a goal toward which even the beginning disciple can aspire.  Thomas a'Kempis, in his book, The Imitation of Christ, says: "Desire to be stripped of all, and once naked you will be ready to follow the naked Jesus. All your foolish imaginings will disappear, as well as the evil thoughts and useless worries that plague you." He wrote that in the fifteenth century, but it so easily fits with today. Foolish imaginings? Useless worries? How many of those imaginings and worries crowd into my brain like fearful Americans lined up at the gun counter at Walmart?

Yet Jesus himself said: "Do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. And do not be afraid, little flock. Sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven" (Luke 12.22-34).

We've got too much stuff to take care of, organize, and protect. It gets in the way of what you really crave: the Beloved.

Intention: Today, I'll let myself feel the weight of all I own. Not just my stuff, but my ambition, my hopes, my fears. And I'll choose to let one thing go, and as I do, draw nearer to Christ.