Hesychastic prayer, which leads to that rest where the soul can swell with God, is prayer of the heart...We find the best formulation of the prayer of the heart in the words of teh Russian mystic Theophan the Recluse, "To pray is to descend with the mind into the heart, and there to stand before the face of the Lord, ever-present, all-seeing, withing you."

Prayer is standing in the presence of God with the mind in the heart; that is, at that point of our being where there are no divisions or distinctions and where we are totally one. There God's Spirit dwells and ther ethe great encounter takes place. There heart speaks to heart, because there we stand before the face of the Lord, all-seeing, within us.

Henri Nouwen, The Way of the Heart, 73-74

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1. I have no right to critique anyone if I can't first celebrate him. Celebration comes before critique. There is a musician's motto: three strokes for each poke. If I can't say three positive things about somone and lift him/her up with prayer and thanksgiving to God, I have no warrant for complaint.

2. I should not argue with anybody until I can state their position back to them in such a way that they approve. 

3. Listen to friends for confidence and courage but listen to enemies for wisdom and information. L.L. Bean uses this formula: there are twenty-five complains for every one you hear. Multiply every criticism you hear by twenty-five. That's the reality you live under. 

4. Recognize it's my choice: will I spread kudos or kudzu? Kudos are compliments. Kudzu are complaints and criticisms that spread...like kudzu. Kudzu eventually covers everything and chokes the life out of whatever it touches.

Len Sweet: SoulSalsa, 108.

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The history of God's people is a history of life cycles, a history of clarity about call and identity, followed by complacence, followed by collusion with the powers, followed by catastrophic loss. Contrary to being a disaster, the exilic experiences of loss and marginalization are what are needed to restore the church to its evangelistic place. On the margins of society, the church will once again find its God-given voice to speak to the dominant culture in subversive ways, resisting the powers and principalities, standing against the seduction of the status quo. The church will once again become a prophetic, evangelistic, alternative community, offering to the world a model of life that is radically "other," life-giving, loving, healing, liberating. This kind of community is not possible for the church of Christendom. Christendom opposed prophetic community with its upside-down power and its exposure of golden calves.

Elaine A. Heath, Mystic Way of Evangelism, The: A Contemplative Vision for Christian Outreach, 26-27.

What do you think of Heath's assessment?

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We must find the freedom to step over our wounds and the courage to forgive those who have wounded us. The real danger is to get stuck in anger and resentment. Then we start living as "the wounded one," always complaining that life isn't "fair."

Jesus came to save us from these self-destructive complaints. He says: "Let go of your complaints, forgive those who loved you poorly, step over your feelings of being rejected, and have the courage to trust that you won't fall into an abyss of nothingness but into the safe embrace of a God whose love will heal all your wounds."

Henri Nouwen: Here and Now: Living in the Spirit, 57-58

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Leaders we admire do not place themselves at the center; they place others there. They do not seek the attention of people; they give it to others. They do not focus on satisfying their own aims and desires; they look for ways to respond to the needs and interests of their constituents. They are not self-centered; they concentrate on the constituent. . . Leaders serve a purpose and the people who have made it possible for them to lead . . . . In serving a purpose, leaders strengthen credibility by demonstrating that they are not in it for themselves; instead, they have the interests of the institution, department, or team and its constituents at heart. Being a servant may not be what many leaders had in mind when they choose to take responsibility for the vision and direction of their organization or team, but serving others is the most glorious and rewarding of all leadership tasks." ~

James Kouzes and Barry Posner in Credibility: How Leaders Gain and Lose It, Why People Demand It.

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God is a jealous lover. He will not share you, so don't give yourself to anyone but him. He's unwilling to work in your will unless you're willing to be entirely his, and his alone. He's not asking for your help. He's asking for you. He want you to lock your eyes on him and leave him alone to work in you. Your part is to protect the door and windows, keeping out intruders and flies. And if you're willing to do that, just ask him, praying humbly, and he will help you immediately.

The Cloud of Unknowing, translated by Carmen Acevedo Butcher

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The word "obedience" comes from the Latin word ob-audire, which means to listen with great attentiveness. Without listening, we become "deaf" to the voice of love (Christ). The Lain word for deaf is surdus. To be completely deaf is to be absurdus, yes, absurd. When we no longer pray, no longer listen to the boice of love (Christ) that speaks to us in the moment, our lives become absurd lives in which we are thrown back and forth between the past and the future.

Henri Nouwen, Here and Now: Living in the Present, 22-23

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Keep your goal before you and remember that lost time never returns. Only by careful diligence will you acquire virtue. If you begin to grow lukewarm, you will become spiritually ill; but if you see that you grow in ardor, you will find great peace and your labors will grow lighter, all because of God's grace and your love of virtue.

The fervent and diligent man is ready for anything that happens. It takes harder work to eradicate faults and subdue passions than to engage in strenuous physical labor. If you do absolutely nothing about your small faults, you will, little by little, fall into greater ones. If you spend your day profitably, then your evening will be enjoyable. Watch over yourself, admonish yourself, and spur yourself onwards, and no matter what happens to others, never neglect your spiritual welfare. 

The Imitation of Christ, Thomas a Kempis, 42-43

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What Technology Wants, 14

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I am a mysterian. The word mysterian is a recent coinage of the American philosopher Owen Flanagan. Its technical meaning is the espousal of the position that no physical theory can ever solve the riddle of consciousness. I use the word is a much looser sense: there are some aspects of life that never yield to scientific investigation. Or in its most precise looser formulation, a mysterian believes in the paradox that the more we know about life, the more we know we don't know.

I read the sciences like a scientist. They have their truth. But the truths of life are deeper and more complex than the truths of physics or the truths of biology. The notion that science is the truth, or is a path to truth, was the greatest heresy of the modern world. It is what led Thomas Paine to announce in 1793 that the discovery of a plurality of worlds "renders the Christian system of faith at once little and ridiculous and scatters it in the mind like feathers in the air."

Quite the contrary. Biblical faith is built on the assumption of a plurality of worlds - heaven, earth, hell - and plurality of worlds within worlds ("in my Father's house are many mansions," John 14:2 KJV reads, and "hell has as many mansions as heaven does," comments Drew Professor Lynne Westfield). If the God who created the Milky Way, which boasts 100 billion stars, also created billions of similar galaxies that make up the universe, it seems almost incredible to image that there aren't other forms of life out there. While the theological implications of the search for extraterrestrial life are significant, the notion that any scientific discovery, even this one, can negate faith is a condescension truly breathtaking.

Len Sweet, Learn to Dance with SoulSalsa: 17 Surprising Steps for Godly Living in the 21st Century, 67.

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How many perish in the world because of useless learning and for caring little about the service of God! Because they prefer to be famous rather than humble, they lose themselves in intellectual acrobatics and come to nothing.

He is truly great who has abundant charity. He is truly great who is unimportant in his own eyes and considers the greatest of honors a mere nothing. He is truly wise who esteems all earthly things as dung so that he may gain Christ. Finally, he who does God's will and abandons his own is truly the most learned.

Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, 8-9

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He who has a pure, simple, and constant spirit is not distracted by the many things he does, because he does all for the honor of God and endeavors to remain inwardly free of all seeking of himself. What greater hindrance or annoyance is there than our heart's uncontrolled passions?

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According to John Locke, "In the beginning all the world was America." America stood for the primordial state of the world and man and was indeed seen, by the first generations of Europeans to learn of it, to be the last remaining remnant of that earlier time...America came to be thought of as a paradise and a wilderness, with all the rich associations of those terms in the Christian and biblical traditions, or, more simply, thus Europeans came to think of America as both a heaven and a hell. - Robert Bellah, The Broken Covenant: American Civil Religion in Time of Trial, 5-6

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The grace of God sometimes overflows like a river and invades the emotional power of the soul...there follows spiritual intoxication, which is a breaking out of overwhelming tenderness and delicious intimacies greater than the heart can desire or contain. - Br. Boniface Maes

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