Stranded on the Mainland: Inner Pilgrimage and Living Alone as a Spiritual Path:

In my last post I blogged about finding a book I'd misplaced for months called,  Essence of Prayer , written by the Carmelite nun Ruth Burrows.  Since finding the book I've been turning to it for morning lectio divina. This morning I opened to chapter three, Faith, Trust, Surrender to God: This is Prayer. I do not get beyond the first line of my lectio reading before something jumps out at me and I stop, "For Christians, those who claim Jesus as their Way, Truth and Life... "  (27). I stop reading here because it strikes me, "Do I really claim Jesus for myself as the Way, Truth and Life?" I put the book face-down on my lap for a moment, then pick it up again and move on: I read, "The surest help we can give to ourselves and others is to exhort them to an ardent coming to grips with Jesus in the New Testament so as to 'get God right' and the constant plea for greater faith.  Nothing else is needed"  (28). If nothing else is needed, then this...

This lecture by Thomas Merton given to monks in 1967 could have been given today.  I've put a link for the lecture at the bottom of this post. I stop in my tracks hearing Merton say, "It's not contempt for what's in the world, but our contempt for what isn't there."   Or something to that effect.   Do I have contempt for love? Did I develop a contempt for love after many accumulated disappointments? On some unconscious level I think I must have.  That said, I like this Wikipedia definition, "Disappointment is the feeling of dissatisfaction that follows the failure of expectations or hopes to manifest.  Disappointment is normally a drain on our emotional energy, but it is possible to switch some disappointments around (metanoia) and turn them into sources of energy."  I'm thinking of the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13).  Lord, help me turn this and other disappointments into refurbished sources of energy, while remembering I am not alone. On a last no...