God Speaks to Each of Us

“God Speaks to Each of Us” is a poem by the European mystical poet and novelist Rainer Maria Rilke.

Though the entire poem is worthy of time spent with it, there are two lines I dwell upon most.

The first is: “Don’t let yourself lose me.” Remember that these are meant to be God’s words spoken to each newly made person. It is the responsibility of each of us to see that we don’t lose God, that we don’t lose sight of Him or turn away from Him, no matter what comes to us in life. This is the principal reason for pursuing spiritual practices as an everyday matter. We all need to be reminded daily, even hourly, of Whose we are and why we are here.

The second line that especially draws me is the final one: “Give me your hand.” Yes, it is our own responsibility to keep God centermost in our lives, but we don’t have to work at that without God’s help. The guidance of God is always available to us. But it is our choice whether or not to reach out for it.

       

For the “Down” Day

It’s very hard to avoid them completely. Sooner or later, it seems that we will all have days when our spirits are troubled by doubt or loss or confusion or a frightening suspicion that we might have been abandoned by the Spirit we must have to sustain us.

Christian Century (April 29, 2015, issue) published an article entitled, “Books for the Dark Night.” Eight persons who are active in the Christian community in one way or another were asked to identify and reflect on a book that helped them at a low point in their faith journey.

Several of these books are worth taking a look at. These are titles that would be useful to have available in any case, but especially for those times when you need a place to turn. Here are the books mentioned and briefly discussed:

The Sacrament of the Present Moment, in a translation by Kitty Muggeridge

Don Quixote, in a translation by Walter Starkie (This one surprised me!)

The Soul’s Sincere Desire, by Glenn Clark

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, by Isabel Wilkerson

God Is More Present Than You Think, by Robert Ochs, SJ

Morality: Memory and Desire, by Luigi Giussani

Companions on the Inner Way, by Morton Kelsey

Traveling Mercies, by Anne Lamott

I will be reading a few of these and will likely report on them here in future posts.

       

Getting Pushed Around by Your Thoughts?

In his 2003 book Stillness Speaks, Eckhart Tolle offers the startling advice: “Here is a new spiritual practice for you: don’t take your thoughts too seriously.”

His point is that we get trapped in our concepts of what is going on, when really those concepts form only one of many perspectives of reality. Further, your thinking constitutes only a small portion of your overall consciousness, so it’s best not to assign too much weight to your thoughts.

Other authors too numerous to list urge us to take control of our thoughts because “we are what we think about.” This theme suggests that we must take our thoughts very seriously because they determine who we will be.

These are really not two diametrically opposed positions, though at first they appear to be. Instead, they work together quite well if we can approach them deliberately.

The first step is to compose in your thoughts the kind of person you want to be, then use your thoughts to intentionally cement that persona into your subconscious. Thoughts can also be used successfully to sort out decisions and plan actions. But left to itself, when those thinking activities are completed, the mind goes off in all sorts of tangents, forming judgments, criticizing what we ourselves or other people are doing, remembering and reliving nasty experiences best forgotten, etc. Clearly, these “left-to-itself” thoughts of the mind are the ones we must not take seriously, but, in fact, should replace as quickly as possible with the deliberate thoughts composing the persons we want to become.