Chapter
5: The Practice of Getting Lost – Wilderness
Friday, August 9
Once you leave the path, the unpredictable territory is full of life. True, you cannot always see where you are putting your feet. This means you can no longer afford to stay unconscious. (5-70)
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| Photo: Upper Hoffer Lake, Elephant Heads - Anthony Lakes basin, Oregon |
Leaving the known path turns out to be such a boon to the senses – such a remedy for my deadening habit of taking the safest, shortest route to wherever I am going – that I decide to get lost on my way home from work. (5-71)
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| Photo: Ridge above Anthony Lake with Lakes Lookout and Lees Peak in distance, Oregon |
Sunday, August 11
If you do not start choosing to get lost in some fairly low-risk ways, then how will you ever manage when one of life’s big winds knocks you clean off your course? (5-72)
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| Photo: Sailing on Flathead Lake with Tartaglinos |
Monday, August 12
I have found things while I was lost that I might never have discovered if I had stayed on the path. (5-73)
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| Photo by Rick - On the Continental Divide at Glacier National Park |
Tuesday, August 13
Stop fighting the prospect of getting lost and engage it as a spiritual practice. God does some of God’s best work with people who are truly, seriously lost. (5-73)
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| Photo: Beartooth Highway peaks, Wyoming |
Wednesday, August 14
The Israelites needed forty years in the wilderness to learn the holy art of being lost. (5-74)
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| Photo: Logan Pass area, Glacier National Park, Montana |
Saturday, August 17
Those who follow Jesus are meant to follow him into the wilderness, where they too may be tested. (5-77)
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| Photo: Logan Pass waterfall, Glacier National Park, Montana |
Sunday, August 18
Popular religion focuses so hard on spiritual success that most of us do not know the first thing about the spiritual fruits of failure. Yet if someone asked us to pinpoint the times in our lives that changed us for the better, a lot of those times would be wilderness times. (5-78)
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| Photo: St. Mary Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana |
Monday, August 19
I keep my eyes open for opportunities to get slightly lost, so that I can gradually build the muscles necessary for radical trust. (5-79)
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| Photo: Grand Prismatic Pool, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming |
Tuesday, August 20
Anything can become a spiritual practice once you are willing to approach it that way – once you let it bring you to your knees and show you what is real, including who you really are, who other people are, and how near God can be when you have lost your way. (5-82)
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| Photo: Grinnell Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana |
Wednesday, August 21
The best way to grow empathy for those who are lost is to know what it means to be lost yourself. (5-83)
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| Photo: Paintbrush along Highline Trail, Glacier National Park, Montana |
CHAPTER 6: The Practice of Encountering Others - COMMUNITY
Friday, August 23
Walk joyfully on the earth and respond to that of God in every human being.
- George Fox
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| Photo: City of Rocks National Monument, New Mexico |
There is so much emphasis on community in most congregations that anyone who does not participate risks being labeled a loner….community does not HAVE to include coffee hour! Chapter 6, page 88
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| Photo: Internet source |
The deeper reason we need one another is to save us from the temptation of believing in our own self-sufficiency. Chapter 6, page 90
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| Photo: Fir and fungi along trail to Van Patten Lake, Elkhorn Mts. |
Saturday, August 24
The hardest spiritual work in the world is to love the neighbor as the self – to encounter another human being not as someone you can use, change, fix, help, save, enroll, convince or control, but simply as someone who can spring you from the prison of yourself...if you will allow it. Ch 6, page 93
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| Photo: Van Patten Lake, Elkhorn Mountains, Oregon |
The everyday practice of being with other people is the practice of loving the neighbor as the self….focus on one of the human beings who usually sneak right past you because they are performing some mundane service such as taking your order…. Chapter 6, page 94
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| Photo: Hamilton Gardens, Hiawassee, Georgia |
In the Biblical tradition, the practice of encounter shows up most often as the practice of hospitality or philoxenia, love of stranger. Ch 6 page 96
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| Photo: New Mexico clouds |
In the Hebrew Bible, just one verse commands us to ‘love our neighbor’ but no fewer than 36 verses commands us to ‘love the stranger’ Ch 6 p 97
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| Photo: Silver Falls State Park, Oregon |
We have just enough religion to make us hate one another, but not enough to make us love one another. - Jonathan Swift
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| Photo: Ice Lake Trail, Glacier National Park |
The supreme religious challenge is to see God’s image in one who is not in our image, for only then can we see past our own reflections in the mirror to the God we did not make up. - Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
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| Photo: Mt. Shuksan, Washington |
What we have most in common is not religion but humanity. Encountering another human being is as close to God as we may ever get – in the eye to eye thing, the person to person thing, which is where God has promised to show up. Ch 6, page 102
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| Photo: Bryce Canyon National Park |
Sunday, August 25
I believe that appreciation is a holy thing – that when we look for what’s best in the person we happen to be with at the moment, we’re doing what God does all the time. So in loving and appreciating our neighbor, we are doing something sacred. - Fred Rodgers
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| Photo: Tree roots at Van Patten Lake, Oregon |
Chapter 7: The Practice of Living with Purpose -
VOCATION
Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of too much life. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something. -Henry David Thoreau
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| Photo: Rock Lake near Continental Divide Trail, Colorado |
Whatever our jobs in the world happen to be, our mutual vocation is to love God and neighbor. - Martin Luther
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| Photo: Cascade Range near Leavenworth, WA |
Every job can offer the chance to recognize the divine in human form, to invite one out of self long enough to engage someone whose fears, wants, loves, and needs are at least as important as my own. Ch 7, p 111
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| Photo: Lakes Lookout from Anthony Lakes Ski Area, Oregon |
Monday, August 26
No work is too small to play a part in the work of Creation. Ch 7, p 115
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| Photo: Van Patten Lake, Elkhorn Mts. Oregon |
Tuesday, August 27
In a world where the paid work that people do does not always feed their hearts, it seems important to leave open the possibility that our vocations may turn out to be things we do for free. 7-116
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| Photo: Gila National Monument, New Mexico |
To become fully human means learning to turn our gratitude for being alive into some concrete common good. Ch 7, p 117
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| Photo: Ponderosa Pine near Baker City, OR |
Chapter 8: The Practice of Saying NO -
SABBATH
God is not found in the soul by adding anything but by subtracting. - Meister Eckhart
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| Photo: Fall aspens north of Durango, CO |
A being is free only when it can determine and limit its activity. - Karl Barth 8-125
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| Photo: Oregon Grape Fall foliage |
Saying no is a more difficult spiritual practice than tithing, praying on a cold stone floor, or visiting a prisoner on death row. 8-125
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| Photo: Internet image from thespruce.com |
Wednesday, August 28
Practice Sabbath. One day each week, MORE GOD is the only thing on the list. (8-126)
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| Photo: Tucson, AZ sunset |
God blessed the seventh day and called it holy [not just ‘good’], making Sabbath the first sacred thing in all creation. 8-130
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| Photo: Sunset on Velella jellyfish, Bandon, Oregon |
Practice praising yourself for saying no as lavishly as you do when you say yes. 8-138
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| Photo: Sunrise Alpenglow on Elkhorn Peak, Baker County |
Thursday, August 29
You are worth more than what you can produce – that even if you spent one whole day being good for nothing you would still be precious in God’s sight. 8-139
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| Photo: Garden of the Gods near Colorado Springs, CO |
Chapter 9: The Practice of Carrying Water -
PHYSICAL LABOR
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| Photo: Internet Source |
Friday, August 30
Stay tuned to the grace of physical labor, for we live in a culture that regards it as the lowest kind of work. 9-146
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| Photo: Internet image of potato field |
Saturday, August 31
Many have gotten the idea that physical labor is part of God’s curse – labor pains for women and field labor for men – until labor itself gets all mixed up with punishment. This is not so. 9-151
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| Photo: Flathead Valley, Montana barn circa 2014 |
Chapter 10: The Practice of Feeling Pain -
BREAKTHROUGH
There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning. - Louis L’Amour
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| Photo by Luke: Fall cottonwoods at Ghost Ranch Conference Center, New Mexico |
Pain is provocative. Pain pushes people to the edge, causing them to ask fundamental questions such as “Why is this happening?” and “How can this be fixed?” 10-156
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| Photo: Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah |
Sunday, September 1
I can try to avoid pain. I can deny pain. I can numb it and I can fight it. Or I can decide to engage pain when it comes to me, giving it my full attention so that it can teach me what I need to know about the Really Real. 10-157
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| Photo: Beartooth Lake, border of Wyoming and Montana |
Pain makes theologians of us all. If you have spent even one night in real physical pain, then you know what that can do to your faith in God, not to mention your faith in your own ability to manage your life. 10-157
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| Photo: Daisies surround an old trunk taken during a hike. |
Monday, September 2
Pain is one of the fastest routes to a no-frills encounter with the Holy, and yet the majority of us do everything in our power to avoid it. 10-158
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| Photo: Geysers at Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming |
There is a difference between pain and suffering. Pain originates in the body. Suffering, on the other hand, happens in the mind. 10-161
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| Photo: Organ Mountains east of Las Cruces, NM |
If anyone has ever lacked the words to lodge a fluent complaint against the Almighty the script is right there in the Bible. Job is one of pain’s most eloquent poets. 10-163
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| Photo: Tamarack (larch) trees turning golden in the fall, Elkhorn Mountains, Oregon |
For those willing to stay awake, pain remains a reliable altar in the world, a place to discover that a life can be as full of meaning as it is of hurt. 10-173
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| Photo: Rainbow over Anthony Lake, Elkhorn Mts. Oregon |
Chapter 11: The Practice of Being
Present to God - PRAYER
Present to God - PRAYER
The best preparation for a life of prayer is to become more intensely human. - Kenneth Leech
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| Photo by Rick from the top of the Sassongher - a major peak near Corvara, Italy |
To say I love God but I do not pray much is like saying I love life but I do not breathe much. 11-176
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| Photo: White columbine wildflowers |
Tuesday, September 3
Prayer is more than saying set prayers at set times. Prayer...is waking up to the presence of God no matter where I am or what I am doing. 11-178
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| Photo: Crypt Lake Trail, Waterton National Park, Alberta Canada |
Isn’t the point of prayers to sharpen my hearing, not God’s? Are words necessary at all? Is emptying the mind of all thought a surer path to God than trying to turn my thoughts to God? 11-181
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| Photo: High Country Lane sunrise out my 'nook' window 2019 |
Are set prayers the stitches that keep the quilt of prayer in place? 11-185
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| Photo: Internet image of prayer quilt |
The longer I practice prayer, the more I think it is something that is always happening, like a radio wave that carries music through the air whether I tune in to it or not. 11-190
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| Photo by Luke: Chimney Rock at Ghost Ranch, New Mexico |
Wednesday, September 4
All I did was light the candles.
Did God find me or did I find God?
Hush.
The time for words is past.
11-192
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| Photo: Akamina Parkway, Waterton National Park, Alberta, Canada |
Chapter 12: The Practice of Pronouncing Blessings - BENEDICTION
It is forbidden to taste the pleasures of this world without a blessing. The Talmud
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| Photo: Mountain sunset glory |
A blessing does not confer holiness. The holiness is already there, embedded in the very giveness of the thing. 12-203
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| Photo: Sky reflected in the surf, Bandon, OR |
Given a choice between a blessing and a curse, a blessing will do more to improve air quality. 12-204
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| Photo: Kona, Hawaii sunset, 2014 |
Thursday, September 5
Pronouncing a blessing puts you as close to God as you can get...to open your arms to what is instead of waiting until it is what it should be. 12-206
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| Macdonald Creek, Glacier National Park, Montana |
To pronounce a blessing on something is to see it from the divine perspective. To pronounce a blessing is to participate in God’s own initiative. 12-206
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| Photo: Fungi near Libby, MT |
Friday, September 6
The world needs you to bless, because there is a real shortage of people willing to kneel wherever they are and recognize the holiness in all of life…. 12-209
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| Photo: Albuquerque Botanical Gardens, New Mexico |
