If what we said during our entire whole life was,

"Thank You!,"

that would be more than enough."

Meister Eckhart

MAY WE ALWAYS HAVE

A GRATEFUL HEART

RESILIENCY IN OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD

The "Resilient Tree" at the Fahrnwald Retreat House
by Winnebago Lake in Oshkosh, WI

"Come to the Water all you who are thirsty;
...come to me; listen, and you will live."
Is. 55:1,3

"LORD, EVERYTHING IN MY LIFE

CAN BE A TEACHING

AND A MEANS 

OF COMING CLOSER TO YOU.

GIVE ME THE CONFIDENCE AND THE HOPE

THAT WHATEVER I ENCOUNTER

BRINGS ME CLOSER

TO YOUR WILL AND LOVE."

Meister Eckhart, 30 days with a Great Spiritual Teacher

Gratitude

"Gratitude is the memory of the heart"- French Proverb - 




THANK YOU FOR BEING THERE!

SACRED SPACE

There is a place in the soul

that time cannot touch!

-Meister Eckhart-


MAY WE ALWAYS 
BE IN AWE AND WONDER
OF GOD'S CONSTANT SURPRISES!

What keeps us alive, what allows us to endure?

I think it is the hope of loving and being loved.

I heard a fable once about the sun going on a journey

to find its source, and how the moon wept without her lover's warm grace.

We weep when light does not reach our hearts.

We wither like fields if someone close does not rain their kindness upon us."

Meister Eckhart, from LOVE POEMS FROM GOD, 
translated by Daniel  Ladinsky. 109

"And so we pray:

May God bless you with discomfort at easy 
answers, half truths, and superficial
relationships so that you will live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger at injustice,
oppression, and using people on earth
so that you will work for justice, equity and peace.

May God bless you with weeping and desolation, 
so that you may grow compassion 
for those who suffer because of others,
and may you reach out to them.

And May God bless you with foolishness
to think that you can make a difference
where you are, in this world, in this ministry,
in your surroundings, 
and that you can do the things
which others say cannot be done.

We pray this, God, in your Name. Amen."

-Original author of prayer unknown, adapted by Alexis Navarro

Sunrise at Chicamauga Dam
GOD'S PRESENCE
This snapshot was entered in the 6th Annual Exhibit and Awards of the National Arts Program and CHI Memorial Health System recently held at Memorial Hospital - Chattanooga. This entry has won the First Prize Award in Photography Amateur Level. The original copy is ob displayed at the Rembrandt Hall of Memorial Hospital from October 2012 to September 2013.
 http://www.nationalartsprogram.org/venues/memorial-health-care-system-chattanooga-tn/images/gods-presence

May we always experience God's abiding love,

which is "all 'round us, embracing us all!"

- Meister Eckhart -


COROLLARY REFLECTION

     "Rudolf Otto in his book, "The Idea of the Holy" says that when someone has an authentic experience of the Holy, they find themselves caught up in two opposite movements at the same time: mysterium tremendum and mysterium fascionosum, a scary mystery and a very alluring mystery. We both draw back from and are pulled forward into a kind of liminal space where we are not at home at all and yet totally at home for the perhaps the first time.

     In the mysterium tremendum, you know God as far and beyond - unreachable and beyond description! Here you experience God as dreadful and fearful, as one who has all the power, and in whose presence I am utterly powerless.  People at that stage tend to become overwhelmed by a sense of separation or alienation.  If you stop here, you either become an atheist, an agnostic, or a loyal but distant soldier. The defining of sin and sin management becomes the nature of religion.

     But simultaneously with this dimension is an opposite feeling of fascination, allurement, and seduction, a being pulled and drawn into something very satisfying and inviting. This is mysterium fascinosum.. If you only have the alluring part of this mystery you get merely sentimental and emotional religion, usually without any real social consequences ("Sweet Jesus," Christianity, as it sometimes called.). Otto says that if you don't have both, you have not have a true or full experience of The Holy." -  Richard Rohr, "Experiencing the Holy," RICHARD's DAILY MEDITATION, @ cac@cacradicalgrace.org

We are bathed in God

who is around us all,

EMBRACING us!

Meister Eckhart

This looking to God is 
CONTEMPLATION.
It is an inward gaze into the depths of the soul
and, for that very reason, beyond the soul to God.
The more the soul finds God, 
the more it forgets itself and yet finds itself in God. 
It is an "unwavering gaze,"
where "looking" is always "hearing."
For what is looked at is the free and infinite Person
who, from the depths of his freedom,
is able to give himself 
in a manner ever new, unexpected and unpredictable.
That is why the Word of God 
 is never something settled once for all
that can be surveyed like a clearly defined landscape,
but something that comes forth ever new,
like water from a spring or
rays from a light.

Hans Urs von Balthasar

OPEN MY EYES, LORD
Open my eyes, Lord, help me to "see";
Open my ears, Lord, help me to "hear"
Open my heart, Lord, help me to "love."
I live within your heart; rest in me Lord!