Weekly Pause & Ponder

There is an eternal, ever-present One Life beyond the myriad forms of life that are subject to birth and death. Many people use the word God to describe it. I often call it Being.

Being is not only beyond but also deep within every form as its innermost invisible and indestructible essence. This means that it is accessible to you now as your own deepest self, your true nature. But don’t seek to grasp it with your mind. Don’t try to understand it. You can know it only when the mind is still. When you are present, when your attention is fully and intensely in the Now. Being can be felt, but it can never be understood mentally.

“The Spiritual Journey: Being and Enlightenment,” by Eckhart Tolle, healthy.net.

Weekly Pause & Ponder

…our human role is not about controlling or directing the whole creative enterprise, but listening and attending to the ongoing revelation. Our primary task is not to dominate life, but to celebrate it – in love and justice. The late Karl Rahner suggested that God reveals in accordance with our capacity to receive revealed truth (wisdom). If we ourselves continue to play God, to manipulate the will-to-power totally and solely in anthropomorphic terms, then little wonder that we live in such a godless world. The central religious problem of our time is that most of our religious Gods are false ones, alien to and alienated from the meaning of life and evolution.

Diarmuid O’Murchu, Our World in Transition, p. 154.

Weekly Pause & Ponder

Feminism is about allowing every member of the human race to become a fully functioning human adult, to make choices at every level of society, to participate in the decision-making that affects their lives, to be financially independent, to be safe of the streets, secure in their homes, to have a voice in the courts and constitutional bodies of the world—to enjoy in other words, full and equal civil rights. It is about bringing to public visibility and public agency the agendas, the insights, and the wisdom of the other half of the human race. It is about taking their ideas and plans seriously. No! Correction: It is about taking the theology of creation seriously.

Joan Chittister, “We are at a crossroads for women in the church,”
National Catholic Reporter, Dec. 11, 2013.

Weekly Pause & Ponder

Our deepest calling is to grow into our own authentic selfhood, whether or not it conforms to some image of who we ought to be. As we do so, we will not only find the joy that every human being seeks – we will also find our path of authentic service in the world. True vocation joins self and service, as Frederick Buechner asserts when he defines vocation as “the place where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.”

Let Your Life Speak by Parker J. Palmer, p. 16

Weekly Pause & Ponder

Amid the chaos of history, we discern a trajectory for our species that is taking us toward harmony. A world that will be “one,” but in a oneness comprised of diversity, not unison. For this to happen, each of the religions that until now have tended to divide based on dogma need to rediscover the spiritual experience of their heart which was their source, and draw on this to establish a commonality.

David Ord, The Interfaith Observer, Nov. 12, 2012.