Notes, quotes for Spiritual Life Class

Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments and life itself is grace”
Frederick Buechner,
Now and Then

“Spiritual growth is learning to not be frightened by what we hear” Rob Campbell
http://www.explorefaith.org

Pay attention - to your tears, to your laughter,
to your fear, to your hope, to your loneliness,
to your connectedness
- pay attention to those key moments
when you sense yourself being more alive,
more challenged,
more centered,
more a part of something greater.
Spirituality, is listening to God,
as God is present in our daily lives,
the Guidance of the Holy Spirit,
the scriptures and traditions of the faith,
reason and experience.

Ask God to make you aware of divine nudges in your life. What had God said to you through recent incidents? What was God saying to you in that unexpected phone call? In that flat tire? In that moving television program? in that bout of anxiety, in that ‘coincidence?””
Tilda Norberg quoted in Habits of the Heart p, 22

Spiritual practices are tools for listening, seeing, awareness.
Christian Scripture speaks of people being blind, deaf and asleep.
This is primal spiritual language for our spiritual blindness,
deafness and lack of wakefulness.

Holy spirit,
giving life to all life,
moving all creatures,
root of all things,
washing them clean,
wiping out their mistakes,
healing their wounds,
you are our true life,
luminous, wonderful,
awakening the heart
from its ancient sleep.

Hildegard von Bingen

"It is the belief in a power larger
than myself,
and other
than myself ,
which allows me to venture into
the unknown
and even the unknowable”
...............Maya Angelou

Courage doesnt always roar.
Sometimes courage
is the little voice
at the end of the
day that says,
“I’ll try again tomorrow’”
P,. 38 Mary Anne Radmacher
In the Spiritual Life Companion Book
Habits of the Heart


When Jesus says:
“Do Not be Afraid”
What is your fear
that is being spoken to?

"The true purpose of all spiritual disciplines is
to clear away
whatever may block our awareness
of that which is God (working) in us.

The aim is to get rid of whatever may so distract
the mind and encumber the life that we function
without this awareness."

--Howard Thurman in "Disciplines of the Spirit"