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December 29, The Fifth Way: Walking

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Part of the Series The Twelve Days as Twelve Ways to Deepen Your Connection with God.

Most of us live life mostly in our heads, but our thoughts are not where real life is lived.  Your thoughts may be memories of real experience, they may imagine experience yet to come, but they're not real experience.  They're interpretations of the past and projections of what may come.  They're illusions really, fantasies.  Powerful, to be sure, but not ultimately real no matter how much they'd like to persuade you otherwise.

by Brian Smithson

The only life you can live is the one that's coming to you right now.  Jesus said, "Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own" (Matthew 6.34).  You cannot meet God in the past or in the future, but only in the present.  So, you must find a way to live here, now, "taking every thought captive" as St. paul taught (2 Corinthians 10.5).

This is why walking is a spiritual practice.

When you walk on the earth, your feet touch the ground.  You awaken more fully to your senses.  And your senses root you to this moment.  But you can't be in this moment when you're galloping along, eyes fixed on the future (or fleeing the past) lost in your anxious, calculating, or ambitious thoughts.

You're a wise a woman, a wise man, when you regularly get down off your high horse or lumbering camel, get out of your head, and walk the real earth for a while, aware of what's right around you.  The feet of the God you aim to meet walked this earth; yours ought to as well.

Today, I'll take off my shoes and feel the ground beneath my feet.  I'll wiggle my toes in the carpet, stroll in a garden, or walk into the kitchen or to the copier at work---and I'll pay attention while I'm doing so.  Remember, "the place beneath your feet is holy ground" (Exodus 3.5).

December 28 The Fourth Way: Wonder

by nevil zaveri

Part of the Series The Twelve Days as Twelve Ways to Deepen Your Connection with God.

To live with wonder is to live with awe and reverence.  Wonder is childlike--wide-eyed and innocent before a mystery bigger than you are.  You don't have to be a child to know wonder, but most of us grown-ups no longer know what it's like to stand wide-eyed and awe-struck before a mystery that's beyond us.

Beauty is the surest way back into a sense of wonder.  Beauty renders your mind temporally dumb, your thoughts overwhelmed by splendor.  There are no words, no thoughts that can pull your mind into the beauty that's before you.

Prayer needs wonder like your camel needs water.  Not all the time or even frequently.  Frequently would be nice, and prayer-that-frequently-leads-to-wonder may come your way, but you're probably not there yet.  It's enough when it comes to you here and there.  Just a little taste of beauty-inspired wonder will carry you a long, long way.

Frankly, on your journey up to this point your prayers have often been more like a supply list of things you've needed to pick up at the next town along the way, or like a to-do list for the God you seek.  That's understandable.  But take care to get yourself our of yourself from time to time, and into something much, much bigger.  Wide-eyed and innocent again before beauty.  There's no better way to infuse your praying with wonder and a sense of the Divine.

Silent, still, and awe-struck before beauty--now you're speaking the language of God.

Today, beauty will cross my path, but I'll miss it if I'm preoccupied.  I must watch for it.  And when it comes, I'll stand silent and still, drinking deep of wonder.

December 27, The Third Way: Companions

by VinothChandar

Fourth in the Series The Twelve Days as Twelve Ways to Deepen Your Connection with God.

No one can take this journey for you.  The journey toward God is yours--start to finish.  Setting out has energized you, and following this Star is the one things you now know you must do.  You're afraid of this journey into the unknown, but you fear more staying put, staying where you were, stuck in the rut that's been your life up till now.

The journey toward God is yours, but that doesn't mean you have to walk it alone, nor should you.  You'll need companionship along the way, for this is neither a safe or easy journey.

As you proceed, you'll most likely want to choose your own companions.  Who doesn't?  There are scoundrels out there, and who wants to spend a long journey side by side with someone whose personality grates on you like fingers on a chalkboard?

Honestly though, those who will help you most aren't the ones you'd choose for yourself.  So, don't go looking for your companions.  Instead, keep focused on the Star, the One you seek.  Walk in the light that's given you and remain open to God's mischief along the way.  The Holy Spirit  will orchestrate surprise meetings with remarkable people traveling in the same direction.  You'll miss them if you focus on making your own friends.  These God sends your way might not fit in at a dinner party back home, but they're the ones who'll bring you the comfort, humor, wisdom, safety, and challenge you'll need along this road.

And when the night is darkest and the companions you need are nowhere in sight, here's the best mischief of all . . . the Light you seek at the end of your journey will walk beside you, thought you cannot yet see it.

Today, I'll trust that the companions I need will come.  I don't need to find them.  I will wait and watch in faith.  And when they're given to me, I will listen with my heart for the gifts they bring.

 

December 26, The Second Way: Awareness

by F. Montino

Third in the Series The Twelve Days as Twelve Ways to Deepen Your Connection with God.

There comes a point in each of our lives when we wake up, take a long look at ourselves, and wonder what's become of us.  We look around ourselves and at the person we've become and realize that the life we're living isn't the life we want for ourselves.  There are new questions that old answers can no longer satisfy.  There are tattered relationships, an insane pace.

Maybe you're medicating your pain or boredom with work or sex, or by abusing alcohol or drugs.  Life as it is isn't working for you, but you haven't a clue what to do about it.

You can avoid the crisis that stares at you from the mirror.  You can pray for a miracle.  You can keep medicating your pain, but that's like to keep you in this cul-de-sac, bored, broken, or worse, dead.  Or you can embrace your crisis as the path of God—as incongruous as that may seem.

The sacred text doesn't tell us why the Magi left the life they once knew (Matthew 2.1-12).  We only know that the light they'd glimpsed in the sky gave them such hope that they left everything behind and set out on a long, arduous, and dangerous journey, not knowing if they'd ever return or what would become of them.

Take this moment and imagine you're one of them.

You look in the mirror with new eyes—eyes filled with a new and holy light.  Like them, you begin right now to turn from what is not working—from the frustration and pain, the crushed dreams, the boredom.  You watch yourself as you set out on the path your crisis has opened up before you.  Suddenly, someone behind you is shouting.  They're hollering that you're a fool.  For an instant you believe them.  But you return to your resolve and turn your back on doubt.  Something else within your tells you this is the path of wisdom, the path leading to God.

Today, this second day of Christmas, I will grow still in prayer, taking a long look at myself—no matter how painful that look may be.  I'll look long and deep until I see two truths about myself.  One, that I'm in crisis.  And two, that taking this path may well be the smartest thing I've ever done.  Trusting that wisdom, I set out into the unknown.

December 25 The First Way: Awakening

Continued from December 24.  Second in the Series The Twelve Days as Twelve Ways to Deepen Your Connection with God.

by Luz Adriana Villa A.

Prayer is universal.  At all times and in all places people have uttered some kind of prayer.  Every human heart years to awaken to the Light that radiates from the Center, Source, and Substance of all things.  We are restless vagabonds until we come home to this Light manifest in Jesus, who is, astonishingly Son of God---God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, Love who gives life to all.

Prayer is coming home--to God and to ourselves, to heaven and earth and all that fills them.  Prayer is waking up to Life itself.  But prayer's been so terribly reduced in our day.  For most, it's more like rubbing a Genii's lamp than an encounter with the Almighty, Who's aim is our glorious transformation.  

The recovery of prayer and the discovery of all you seek--God, Who permeates and pervades all creation--will require a journey.  This journey is not from one place to another; rather it's a pilgrimage into the deepest places within you where God dwells in fullness.  As scandalous as that sounds, it's a universal truth---all who've sought God and found what they were looking for will tell you that.  I once traveled farther than the Magi traveled in search of all this, only to find that what I was looking for was right beneath my nose---close as my next breath, near as the beating of my heart.  Such long distance trips are unnecessary and can even be distracting.    

The journey of the Magi across mountains and deserts, through rivers and valleys is an apt metaphor for your inner journey, a pilgrimage into God which will be every bit as challenging and wondrous.  One you can take without ever leaving home.  Like the journey of the Magi, yours begins with a single point of light breaking into the shadows that envelope you. 

The Magi "observed his star at its rising" (Matthew 2.2) and had only hints at what this sign in the skies meant.  They had no idea where it would take them and what it would do in and through them.  They only knew they had to follow it, come hell or high water.

So to begin this journey of prayer, you don't need to know anything more than that you've glimpsed a light that's awakened you.  The first step of prayer is for you to arouse your desire, even desperation, to move in its direction.

Prayer begins this way, with the humble awareness of your need for God.

Today, Christmas Day, all I must do it to look to the Light and awaken my desperation to follow it and my heart's desire to find it, come hell or high water.