He who is the glory of Israel does not lie or change his mind; for he is not a man, that he should change his mind.
1 Samuel 15:29
Withholding Nothing
April 5, 2009
Excerpt from Clowning In Rome, Henri Nouwen:
We want to be men and women who love and worship God, but we also want to protect a little corner of our inner lives for ourselves. We cling to a protected space where we might sometimes hide out with our own secret thoughts, our dreams and fantasies, and our play with our own mental fabrications. When we begin to think about living and thinking always in God’s loving presence we experience the immediate temptation to select carefully the thoughts that we bring into our conversations with God and the ones we reserve for our own private time.
What makes us so frightened and stingy? Maybe we wonder if God can handle all that goes on in our minds and hearts. Is God up to accepting our hateful thoughts, our cruel fantasies and our shameful dreams? Can our compassionate Brother handle our primitive images, our inflated illusions, and our exotic mental castles? Or do we want to hold onto our own pleasurable imaginings and stimulating reveries, afraid that in showing them to our Lord, we may have to give them up? We shuffle forward and backward, desiring intimate communion and seduced to selfish introspection. Fear mixes with our yearnings and greed with our generosity, and we gradually become aware of how much those secret meanderings are most in need of Love’s healing touch.
…By refusing to share these thoughts, we limit our own healing, erecting little altars to the mental images we are withholding from the divine conversation.”
It’s You, Not Me
April 4, 2009
Excerpt from Clowning In Rome, Henri Nouwen:
Prayer asks us to break out of our monologue with ourselves and to imitate Jesus by turning our lives into an unceasing conversation with the One we call God.
Prayer, therefore, is not introspection. Introspection means to look inward, to enter into the complex network of our mental processes in search of some inner logic or some elucidating connections. Introspection results from the desire to know ourselves better and to become more familiar with our own interiority. Although introspection has a positive role in our though processes, there is a danger that it may entangle us in a labyrinth of our own ideas, feelings, and emotions and lead us to an increasing self-preoccupation. Introspection often causes paralyzing worries or unproductive self-gratification. Introspection has the potential to create moodiness, and this moodiness is a very widespread phenomenon in our society. It betrays our great concern with ourselves and our undue sensitivity to all our thoughts and feelings. It leads us to experience life as a constant fluctuation between “feeling high” and “feeling low,” between “good days” and “bad days,” and thus becomes a form of narcissism.
Prayer is not introspection. It is not a scrupulous inward-looking analysis of our own thoughts and feelings but it is an attentiveness to the Presence of Love personified inviting us to an encounter.”
Something Out of Nothing
March 14, 2009
Excerpt from “The Efficacy of Prayer” by CS Lewis, on praying the prayers of men and understanding that God does not act because we pray:
“God,” said Pascal, “instituted prayer in order to lend to His creatures the dignity of causality.” But not only prayer; whenever we act at all He lends us that dignity… For He seems to do nothing of Himself which He can possibly delegate to His creatures. He commands us to do slowly and blunderingly what He could do perfectly and in the twinkling of an eye.
Running On Empty
February 12, 2009
Excerpt from Clowning In Rome, Henri Nouwen:
Life is frenetic and stressful. In the midst of our nagging desire for relevance, we are overcome with our own need to keep moving, often “running on empty.” The questions “How are you doing individually?” or “How are you faithful to your calling in life?” are often difficult to answer. Mostly we respond by saying “I work in a hospital,” or “I teach in a school,” or “I work in a professional setting, in a parish, or in an individual job, and I try to support others while raising a family or living in community.” Our responses indicate that the urgency of work takes precedence over the state of our being.
