A Labyrinthine Journey: Soon Coming in 3-D

Another busy week. I remember visiting Sacred Space, but I find it
hard to remember any of the particular day’s reflections. Not much
earth-shaking I guess, but filling and strengthening, like daily
bread. The weekly reflection was a good one, though, about how Jesus
went searching for the lost sheep. The direction the author took with
their reflection was to recognize that there are parts of our own
lives that are lost–griefs, trials, sins, emotions, ideas–and the
importance of knowing that Jesus comes to gather all of me into the
Divine Presence for healing and enlivening. I found that a helpful
background thought for the week since I had to write and record a
series of morning devotionals for a local radio station. It helped to
picture the persons listening as lost sheep, or at least with lost
parts of themselves that needed to hear a word of hope, joy, peace,
and life.

This next week, I need to take the time to write in my journal at
least every 2-3 days. It would be great to do daily, and that is what
I will aim at. That will definitely help me to retain more of the
daily meals and blessings.

This week was a much busier week and so fitting in the time for
reading and Sacred Space[1] was more difficult, but I was glad that I
was able to do it. I’m not able to remember a lot of what the readings
were about, but I do recognize that making myself do it for 10 minutes
each day was a beneficial thing. I have been one plagued by not
completing and following through on tasks. I usually get to weeks like
last week and drop something because I am “too busy” and then don’t
get it picked up again.

There was one line in a prayer from Sacred Space that has stuck with
me though. In the prayer, I thanked God for ‘/the fragments of my
yearned-for wholeness./’ As I reflected on that, I realized that I
spend too much energy looking at the gap between my current living and
that wholeness. The prayer challenges me to look instead with
gratitude at what God is already doing in my process of wholeness and
grow in trusting that the process will be completed. This is very much
akin to recognizing the process of divinization at work in my life.

[1]: http://www.sacredspace.ie

\* FCS Foundations of Christian Spirituality Class

Throughout this week, I have found myself haunted by a line in Charles
Healey’s Preface to his book Christian Spirituality. On page xii, he
writes this about a definition of Christian spirituality, “…all of
them focus on God, the human person, and the way, the means, or the
journey by which the human is united with the divine.” I realized at
that point that my own definition of Spirituality has become reduced
to a way for relaxation and search for meaning. I accept that those
are parts of it, but throughout this week, I kept seeing how my
definition needs to be greatly expanded.

As often happens, all my reading became colored by that question and
kept pulling out more meaning from it. To be united with Christ! That
is truly what it is all about. A unity that brings an anointing to
greater healing, that frees me from whatever demons and dragons are
binding my life, and calls me to a more personal daily life in greater
awareness of Christ in me.

In later reading of the first chapter in Healey, I really liked
Ireneaus’ line: ‘/The Glory of God is the human person fully alive
(gloria Dei, vivens homo)/’ And that fully aliveness (the abundant
life Jesus promises) comes through living more and more united in
God’s love.

\* FCS Foundations of Christian Spirituality Class