De Mello: Albums and Awareness

De Mello: Albums and Awareness

“This return to past scenes where you felt love and joy is one of the finest exercises I know for building up your psychological health.”

Anthony de Mello in Sadhana: A Way to God (N. Y.: Image Books, 1984), pp. 72-73.

I must admit that I decided to read Anthony de Mello’s book, Sadhana: A Way to God, while I was studying about spiritual direction because it is not long, looked like easy reading, and I knew I had a great deal going on in my life in the next coming weeks of study! Well, it is only 140 pages, but it is the kind of material where one should practice one exercise one day at a time for 140 days or even better one exercise, one week at a time. There was only one exercise that I found too hard to do, and that was Exercise 29 where we image ourselves as a corpse decomposing! I have otherwise found every one of them so helpful with so many ways to connect to God.

Each exercise was one that I wanted to practice. I think I identified most with the fantasy exercises, especially Exercise 18, the joyful mysteries of your life. Here we immerse ourselves in joyful times in our lives, remembering details, staying in the moment, experiencing the joy, love. De Mello then recommends that we build an album of these peak experiences to return to in order to help us through difficult times, to keep reminding ourselves of the joy in our life, and the presence of God in those past moments during dry times when God may not feel present.

De Mello writes that when we have memorable experiences we never truly appreciate and take in the joy of the total awareness of what is happening. He asks us to go back again and again to the event to replay it and feel the love we were offered and be nourished again by the experience. He cautions us not to be an observer but put ourselves totally back into the experience. De Mello believes remembering these experiences increases our capacity for joy and consequently opens our life to receive more fully the love of God.

Purchase a copy of A Daily Spiritual Rx for Lent and Easter in Little Rock from me joannaseibert@me.com or from Wordsworth Books or from the publisher Earth Songs Press or on Amazon.. Proceeds from the book go for hurricane relief in the Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast.

God's Presence

God’s presence

“Union with God is not something we acquire by a technique. Because God is the ground of our being, separation is impossible. God does not know how to be absent.” Martin Laird, Inward Outward daily quote, May 16, 2018.

We may feel that God is not beside us or that we have been abandoned by God, but Martin Laird reminds us that God is never absent. Never absent. Never absent. We need to remind ourselves about this every day, every moment. We are never alone. The vastness of God’s presence and God’s love is greater than we can know or feel or imagine.

My experience is that when I start asking for more love from friends and family than they can give, this is a stop sign that I have become disconnected from God’s presence. I am asking others to give more love than they can give because I do not feel God’s love’s. When I talk to people in spiritual direction who feel estranged from God, I remind them of my experience.

So, how do we change? How do we feel God’s presence and God’s love rather than God’s absence? My experience is that we have become disconnected especially with the Christ within us. There are a multitude of ways to try to put ourselves in position to know and feel that love of God that is always there. That is the purpose of all of the spiritual exercises. Some make gratitude lists. Some try to be more intentional about their prayer time, spending more time with God, listening instead of talking. Some spend more time in Nature where God’s presence and beauty is overwhelming.

Another place we are told God is always present is among the sick, the poor, the needy, the lonely. My experience is that visiting those in need is one of the surest way to connect with the Christ in another who then reflects to us the Christ in ourselves that has been there all along. Working at a food pantry, visiting the sick, sitting with someone who is lonely is where we find God.

The paradox is that getting out of ourselves leads us back to the God within.

Joanna joannaeibert.com

Purchase a copy of A Daily Spiritual Rx for Lent and Easter in Little Rock from me joannaseibert@me.com or from Wordsworth Books or from the publisher Earth Songs Press or on Amazon.. Proceeds from the book go for hurricane relief in the Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast.

Lectio Divina

First Week in Lent

Lent 1

Praying Lectio Divina

“Lectio Divina means Divine Reading. It is a prayerful way to read scripture or any spiritual writing.
Read -- Read Deeply
Read a scripture passage slowly and hear deeply the sound and meaning of every word. Imagine that God is speaking to you through these words. Listen attentively to see which word or phrase catches your attention and speaks to you and your life.
Meditate – Think, imagine Deeply
Take what caught your attention from your reading and think deeply about it using your imagination. Imagine what it meant to those at that time who first heard it? Why is this important to you and your tradition and your experience and your life today? What about it particularly moves you.
Pray -- Pray from the Heart
If your heart is moved or your emotions touched, go with the feelings and offer what you are feeling to God in prayer.
Contemplate -- Rest
Fall into the love of God and the love from God that was generated. Rest in the silence. Just be.
Finally, memorize or copy the thought that moved you and try to remember it from time to time during the day.
Journal if possible about what happened during the prayer.”

Modified from the Community of Reconciliation at Washington National Cathedral and the Friends of St. Benedict

Lectio Divina is an ancient Benedictine practice of reading the scriptures, which similar to centering prayer cultivates contemplative prayer. It was practiced in community in monasteries during the time of St. Benedict. This is a time-honored way to try to connect to God through reading scripture, prayer, meditation, and contemplation or listening for God. If your tradition has fixed lectionary readings for Sunday, this is an excellent way to prepare for Sunday by practicing Lectio Divina with one or all of the readings daily as your personal discipline or in a group.

Macrina Wiederkehr in her book, A Tree Full of Angels, Seeing the Holy in the Ordinary, writes extensively about Lectio Divina, calling it “plowing up the field of the soul.” She uses as her guide a quote from the Benedictine Abbot Marmion, “Read under the eye of God until your heart is touched, then give yourself up to love.” She uses imagery in the process, and waits for a mantra, a holy word, a phrase, a sentence that may stay. She then carries that word or phrase with her during the day. She describes giving yourself to God as surrender, melting into God.

Joanna. Joannaseibert.com

Today Sunday March 10 you can purchase a signed copy of A Daily Spiritual Rx for Lent and Easter at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Little Rock in the narthex after the 8 and 10:30 services. Proceeds from the book go for hurricane relief in the Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast.