Category: surrender

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from the heart . . . from you

Prayer is the one thing that can make a change in your life. If you will go direct to God in simple, affirmative prayer, you can heal your body, bring peace and harmony into your life, and make well-being a reality.Paint splatter heart
– Emmet Fox, Around the Year, January 10

O God, give me light in my heart and light in my tongue
and light in my hearing and light in my seeing and light
in my feelings and light in every part of my body and light
before me and light behind me. Give me, I beg you,
light on my right hand and light on my left hand and light
above me and light beneath me. O Lord, make light grow
within me and give me light and illuminate me.
-The Prophet Muhammad, from Light the Flame- 365 days of Prayer Andrew Harvey- January 11

“It is not so important how we pray, but from where we pray. Thank you can be enough. I Love You, says it all, and in the silence is the recognition of the infinitude of divine source.”1

From wherever we are -I am- in this moment, I say Thank you! I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of God, except in nature, which is always forgiving, always moving forward, in spite of my errors or successes. Nature is the perfect, unfolding instrument, nay, example of the divine, Mankind, its social experiment.

So, I turn within, and with outstretched hands, I surrender to the will of the divine with faith that Its presence in each of us, the divine within, percolates to the surface as a loving expression of that divinity, offering up new possibility, new direction, and greater transparency in all our institutions and leaders everywhere.

I sit in the silence with only my breath and the beat of my heart and am grateful first and foremost for just that. From that place of gratitude, I know this same breath and beat is repeated 7 billion times a second, maintaining humanity as each of us tries to figure it all out.

I complete my prayer knowing love, compassion, joy and equanimity flows through each emanation of God in Its own time.

In gratitude for this knowing, I move into the flow of life, allowing God to do Its work, and know that it is so.

And so it is.

 

1 Jim Starke

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On Seeking

“Our conceptual minds like being involved in searching and seeking and sometimes prolong it, slyly keeping ego alive and kicking in the process, hoping for its own ‘enlightenment.’”
~Kathleen Dowling Singh, The Grace in Living

backlit-clouds-cropThere is so much available today for individuals seeking something greater in their lives, so much so, that people spend most of their lives seeking something that seems elusive to them. It seems to me that spending all their time seeking leaves them fractured, confused and unable to really find something to actually build on. You can’t build a house by continually searching the perfect design and not being willing to settle on one to actually build. Whereas, if you build something, and it isn’t quite what you envisioned, you at least have a starting point, and know a little better what you would do differently the next time.

It seems people seek because they can’t see what they want, or because the “grass is always greener” or seems it may be greener, because another person doing something else seems happier.

Until you are willing to settle upon something and stop seeking, you can’t actually build, a house or a spiritual practice. Like Jesus says in Matthew 7:26, “But everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them is like a foolish man who built his house on sand.” You need to build your foundation on rock or today, in a more “concrete” manner, in order to build a spiritual practice. Constantly seeking will only keep you seeking. Until, you are willing to take a leap of faith and make a choice, change conscious change cannot happen.
-rev-jim

““Without mindful attention, self-doubt and confusion can lead directly to discouragement. Indirectly, they can also lead to egoic striving—the grim determination of the self to choreograph enlightenment—as well as endless seeking.”
~Kathleen Dowling Singh, The Grace in Living

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The Circle of Life

treeoflifeThe risen Christ is the standing icon of humanity in its full and final destiny.
He is the pledge and guarantee of what God will do with all our crucifixions.
~from Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation 4.1.18

It is with hope that we are able to move beyond all of the desperate, fearful moments of our life. It is in these times that our faith carries us above any hurtful residues of the past that, without forgiveness, paralyze us and hold us in that story.

Just as, in the story of Jesus, he forgave all those who judged him, conspired against him and thought to bring finality to his life through forgiveness of ourselves and others, we can move out of our old ideas of living and into a new idea for ourselves, and a new paradigm of living consciously and fearlessly. In knowing and taking back our spiritual power, nothing can deter us on our path. Our spiritual path can only be changed by us, because it is not only unique to us individually, but because that path and our beliefs and faith are internal and unseen by others in its full color spectrum.

We are born to “boldly go” where no other person has ever before been. As our paths cross those of others, they have the potential of strengthening each other’s path in previously unknown ways yielding new directions, new challenges and new awakenings, until we come full circle to our beginnings once again.

This circle of life is best served allowing ourselves to move ever forward with the flow of life, instead of pushing against it, just as it is easier to paddle a canoe downstream than to paddle upstream.

~rev jim

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What Turns You On?

be-fearless

What sets your soul on fire? What in you tells you that, in spite of all that may or may not have happened or may be happening around you right now, that you will succeed in whatever you are pursuing?

There is something in each one of us, that deeply tells us, not in words, but in feelings, when we’re doing something worthwhile, that it IS just that, WORTHWHILE!  It may not even be for us.

It may be a selfless act for which we are never even acknowledged, but it doesn’t mater, because it was the right thing to do.

We can be assured though, that some day, in some way, karma insures that something, something will be repaid. We may never even realize it, nor do we have to, because the thing we did has, in fact, been repaid many times over already.

Cause and Effect is one of the laws that always repays us somehow. We can’t avoid it even by doing nothing, because nothing happens. How boring.

When you give yourself to life fully, life give back. We just need to accept it graciously.

from Love, in Peace,

~revjim

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