Video 1:
Pick something in God's creation to "consider" today.
Transcript of Video:
In this phase, we will be exploring our relationship with God. Out of all the elements of creating a Rule of Life this is probably the central part. Jesus came to offer us abundant life and through his teaching, through his life, death and resurrection he has offered us this wonderful way to come home to God, to receive that life, which is his promise to each one of us. And I think in my own experience my own relationship with God deepens in proportion to my own life of prayer. Prayer is the lifeblood. It is the very thing which binds me to God and God to me. And during this phase, we’ll be exploring ways in which we can develop and grow our own life of prayer with God.
I love the way that Jesus, who came to teach us about God and help us to come to know God, didn’t do that through very difficult theological concepts. Jesus preferred to talk about God and about the kingdom of God through very simple images, using the very ordinary things of life, which were so very familiar to his hearers. He would say, “Consider the birds of the air or consider the lilies of the field,” when he was trying to help them not be so anxious or not to worry so much. Don’t worry, consider the birds, consider the lilies. And what I like is that word he uses, ‘consider’. We see the word consider and we assume it just means think of them or just imagine them for a moment. But that word in the original Greek is a very special word and it actually means look at very carefully. Look at it and consider what you are looking at. Spend time looking at those lilies – and what do they say to you? What do they reveal to you about God and about yourself? I think one of the best things we can do, I think, in developing our own life of prayer is practicing simply paying attention. Actually look and consider and spend time looking at something in creation, looking at it and marveling at it, wondering at it, and allowing its deep mystery to come to you and change you and reveal something of a mystery of God the Creator. I think this is a wonderful way of deepening our relationship with God.
And during this phase, we’ll be offering various ideas, reflections, to help you in your own growth in your life of prayer with God. And at the end of the phase, we’ll be encouraging you to gather together some ideas or thoughts, which have come to you, and offer you some tangible ways in which you may incorporate them, so that you may enrich your own life of prayer, and enable you to receive in a new way the abundant life, which is God’s gift to us all.
– Br. Geoffrey Tristram
In this phase, we will be exploring our relationship with God. Out of all the elements of creating a Rule of Life this is probably the central part. Jesus came to offer us abundant life and through his teaching, through his life, death and resurrection he has offered us this wonderful way to come home to God, to receive that life, which is his promise to each one of us. And I think in my own experience my own relationship with God deepens in proportion to my own life of prayer. Prayer is the lifeblood. It is the very thing which binds me to God and God to me. And during this phase, we’ll be exploring ways in which we can develop and grow our own life of prayer with God.
I love the way that Jesus, who came to teach us about God and help us to come to know God, didn’t do that through very difficult theological concepts. Jesus preferred to talk about God and about the kingdom of God through very simple images, using the very ordinary things of life, which were so very familiar to his hearers. He would say, “Consider the birds of the air or consider the lilies of the field,” when he was trying to help them not be so anxious or not to worry so much. Don’t worry, consider the birds, consider the lilies. And what I like is that word he uses, ‘consider’. We see the word consider and we assume it just means think of them or just imagine them for a moment. But that word in the original Greek is a very special word and it actually means look at very carefully. Look at it and consider what you are looking at. Spend time looking at those lilies – and what do they say to you? What do they reveal to you about God and about yourself? I think one of the best things we can do, I think, in developing our own life of prayer is practicing simply paying attention. Actually look and consider and spend time looking at something in creation, looking at it and marveling at it, wondering at it, and allowing its deep mystery to come to you and change you and reveal something of a mystery of God the Creator. I think this is a wonderful way of deepening our relationship with God.
And during this phase, we’ll be offering various ideas, reflections, to help you in your own growth in your life of prayer with God. And at the end of the phase, we’ll be encouraging you to gather together some ideas or thoughts, which have come to you, and offer you some tangible ways in which you may incorporate them, so that you may enrich your own life of prayer, and enable you to receive in a new way the abundant life, which is God’s gift to us all.
– Br. Geoffrey Tristram
Video 2:
What makes you most aware of God's love?
Transcript of Video:
So how can we come to know the love of God in our lives and in the lives of those around us? I start with the understanding that God is Himself love. God is love. And in a sense all love is God’s love and all love has its source, its ultimate source, in the heart of God. Like that very old hymn reminds us, “Wherever love is, God himself is there.” So we see God’s love all around us in the lives of those that we know, in their compassion, in their generosity, in their giving, in their acts of love and kindness, the way that they care for other people. It is all God’s love even though it is coming through those individuals. Even more immediately, we can come to know God’s love within ourselves because we too, like the people we admire and appreciate, we, too, are instruments of God’s love. We are Christ’s hands in the world, as it were. So God’s love is something that’s alive and present and active in and through us and so recognizing that in our giving, in our generosity, in our compassion, in our loving kindness and care for others, that that’s God living and active and working through us and through our lives.
Some of us have gotten very good at making confessions, you know, making a list of our failings and our sins. But sometimes I wonder if we are not very good at recognizing the good that we do and maybe we need some kind of sacrament, a confession of good deeds. A confession of the ways in which Christ’s love has been active and manifested in our own lives, in and through us. And so I think this is important to consider in a Rule of Life because a Rule of Life, of course, will include some kind of reasonable, healthy self-care plan, some ways to make sure that we are healthy in ourselves. But it also will include some opportunities for serving others and for some plan for giving to others so that Christ’s love can be manifest in and through us, and in an intentional way. I think it is a very important part of making our lives livelier still.
– Br. Mark Brown
So how can we come to know the love of God in our lives and in the lives of those around us? I start with the understanding that God is Himself love. God is love. And in a sense all love is God’s love and all love has its source, its ultimate source, in the heart of God. Like that very old hymn reminds us, “Wherever love is, God himself is there.” So we see God’s love all around us in the lives of those that we know, in their compassion, in their generosity, in their giving, in their acts of love and kindness, the way that they care for other people. It is all God’s love even though it is coming through those individuals. Even more immediately, we can come to know God’s love within ourselves because we too, like the people we admire and appreciate, we, too, are instruments of God’s love. We are Christ’s hands in the world, as it were. So God’s love is something that’s alive and present and active in and through us and so recognizing that in our giving, in our generosity, in our compassion, in our loving kindness and care for others, that that’s God living and active and working through us and through our lives.
Some of us have gotten very good at making confessions, you know, making a list of our failings and our sins. But sometimes I wonder if we are not very good at recognizing the good that we do and maybe we need some kind of sacrament, a confession of good deeds. A confession of the ways in which Christ’s love has been active and manifested in our own lives, in and through us. And so I think this is important to consider in a Rule of Life because a Rule of Life, of course, will include some kind of reasonable, healthy self-care plan, some ways to make sure that we are healthy in ourselves. But it also will include some opportunities for serving others and for some plan for giving to others so that Christ’s love can be manifest in and through us, and in an intentional way. I think it is a very important part of making our lives livelier still.
– Br. Mark Brown
Video 3:
Do you feel connected to God's love on a daily basis?
Transcript of Video:
And I remember one day specifically we were reading from the Psalms and this little nugget jumps out at me and says, “Lord, I love the house in which you dwell and the place where your glory abides.” And when you think about that for a minute, if God is in us and God is a part of who we are and flourishes in us then he actually dwells inside of us. And so I am actually that dwelling place. And so sometimes, like when planting a garden, you plant the seed but there has got to be a time when things are happening beneath the soil that you don’t know what’s going on and what’s happening. But eventually there is going to be something start to sprout out of the ground and it is not by anything that you did really except to be the soil and to give it a chance. And yet something begins to flourish and something begins to bloom but we have to sometimes be patient and let that happen and remember that God in us is working what we cannot do ourselves.
– Br. Jim Woodrum
And I remember one day specifically we were reading from the Psalms and this little nugget jumps out at me and says, “Lord, I love the house in which you dwell and the place where your glory abides.” And when you think about that for a minute, if God is in us and God is a part of who we are and flourishes in us then he actually dwells inside of us. And so I am actually that dwelling place. And so sometimes, like when planting a garden, you plant the seed but there has got to be a time when things are happening beneath the soil that you don’t know what’s going on and what’s happening. But eventually there is going to be something start to sprout out of the ground and it is not by anything that you did really except to be the soil and to give it a chance. And yet something begins to flourish and something begins to bloom but we have to sometimes be patient and let that happen and remember that God in us is working what we cannot do ourselves.
– Br. Jim Woodrum
Video 4:
What do you long for in your relationship with God?
Transcript of Video:
Nature takes time. There is so much in terms of cycle, seeds are slow to grow, and I so often want things to go quickly or have an expectation of what is possible, what should be possible now. And part of the journey is learning to be patient, learning to slow down, learning to change my expectations of what God is inviting. Sometimes I sense what God is inviting me to and, as my spiritual director told me, it may be something you are living into ten years later, when I am thinking it is going to happen next month, and I keep coming back to that. Maybe this is the thing that yes, I am working towards and maybe I will be there ten years later. What I am doing today is important and it is another step on the journey but I may not see the fruit now. That’s part of the process. I am trying to look to the future and wait for today.
– Br. Luke Ditewig
Nature takes time. There is so much in terms of cycle, seeds are slow to grow, and I so often want things to go quickly or have an expectation of what is possible, what should be possible now. And part of the journey is learning to be patient, learning to slow down, learning to change my expectations of what God is inviting. Sometimes I sense what God is inviting me to and, as my spiritual director told me, it may be something you are living into ten years later, when I am thinking it is going to happen next month, and I keep coming back to that. Maybe this is the thing that yes, I am working towards and maybe I will be there ten years later. What I am doing today is important and it is another step on the journey but I may not see the fruit now. That’s part of the process. I am trying to look to the future and wait for today.
– Br. Luke Ditewig
Video 5:
What needs to be weeded or cultivated in your soul
for you to grow closer to God?
What needs to be weeded or cultivated in your soul
for you to grow closer to God?
Transcript of Video:
I have had these moments in life where time seems to just stand still for a second and everything becomes very big and vivid. And I stop and I look around and think, “How in the world did I end up here of all places?” I wanted to be a music teacher and perform music and travel – and being a monk in the greater Boston area was never on my radar and kind of hit me from behind. Yet I am at one of the happiest places I have ever been in my life and I feel very fulfilled and it seems like the shoe fits for me, but yet it is not what I would have ever imagined or planned for myself. And I think that that is something that we often have to think and pray about is sometimes we have to give up some of our own plans in order to have a full or abundant life that God is actually cultivating in us. And so maybe you’ve had that experience where you find yourself in a place where you never thought you would be, living among people or doing a job that you never thought you could possibly do, and yet you feel very fulfilled. And it could be that you are in a place where maybe you are praying about that now and wondering where am I going and this is not what I thought, yet I am on this path now. So what does this mean and where am I going? And that is a perfect place for your prayer and for your relationship to God is to ask God, “What would you have me do now? Where am I going?” And then wait. Wait. In God’s time, you’re going to know. But you have to be patient and you have to wait for that seed to sprout.
– Br. Jim Woodrum
I have had these moments in life where time seems to just stand still for a second and everything becomes very big and vivid. And I stop and I look around and think, “How in the world did I end up here of all places?” I wanted to be a music teacher and perform music and travel – and being a monk in the greater Boston area was never on my radar and kind of hit me from behind. Yet I am at one of the happiest places I have ever been in my life and I feel very fulfilled and it seems like the shoe fits for me, but yet it is not what I would have ever imagined or planned for myself. And I think that that is something that we often have to think and pray about is sometimes we have to give up some of our own plans in order to have a full or abundant life that God is actually cultivating in us. And so maybe you’ve had that experience where you find yourself in a place where you never thought you would be, living among people or doing a job that you never thought you could possibly do, and yet you feel very fulfilled. And it could be that you are in a place where maybe you are praying about that now and wondering where am I going and this is not what I thought, yet I am on this path now. So what does this mean and where am I going? And that is a perfect place for your prayer and for your relationship to God is to ask God, “What would you have me do now? Where am I going?” And then wait. Wait. In God’s time, you’re going to know. But you have to be patient and you have to wait for that seed to sprout.
– Br. Jim Woodrum
Video 6:
What Spiritual practice might help you grow?
Transcript of Video:
It helps to set aside specific times when we’re aware, I’m doing a spiritual practice with a specific intention of cultivating that connection with God. Often unless we set aside a specific time just for that purpose we can forget that our whole life is, in fact, spiritual practice.
I think a great help in that is cultivating the offering of an intention at the beginning of a session of spiritual practice. So whatever the practice is, whether it is one of the literally hundreds of practices that the huge treasury of the church tradition offers us, or something that just makes us feel alive, feel connected with life, we can use that as a spiritual practice by offering an intention before we begin a specific period of doing that as prayer. So we might just say a prayer to God, something like, “As I sit down to do this practice of gardening or writing or yoga or scripture reading, or whatever it happens to be,” we can say, “God, I offer my whole person, my heart, my mind, my whole being to you in this practice and I intend to come to know you and to love you more deeply and to make myself more available to your love through this particular practice.”
– Br. Keith Nelson
It helps to set aside specific times when we’re aware, I’m doing a spiritual practice with a specific intention of cultivating that connection with God. Often unless we set aside a specific time just for that purpose we can forget that our whole life is, in fact, spiritual practice.
I think a great help in that is cultivating the offering of an intention at the beginning of a session of spiritual practice. So whatever the practice is, whether it is one of the literally hundreds of practices that the huge treasury of the church tradition offers us, or something that just makes us feel alive, feel connected with life, we can use that as a spiritual practice by offering an intention before we begin a specific period of doing that as prayer. So we might just say a prayer to God, something like, “As I sit down to do this practice of gardening or writing or yoga or scripture reading, or whatever it happens to be,” we can say, “God, I offer my whole person, my heart, my mind, my whole being to you in this practice and I intend to come to know you and to love you more deeply and to make myself more available to your love through this particular practice.”
– Br. Keith Nelson
Video 7:
Growing a Rule of Life: What would help you renew your relationship with God?
Transcript of Video:
In this phase, we’ve been exploring our relationship with God. We hope you have enjoyed it and we hope you have found something sustaining and inviting. And we’d like to invite you now to sit down and spend some time reflecting on your relationship with God in prayer, and reflecting on ways in which you can help sustain and develop and grow and deepen that relationship with God to be able to know more deeply that gift of life, which is Jesus’ promise to us.
Rather like a garden, plants do need space to grow and our lives are often so incredibly busy that for many people prayer is the first thing to go when there are many other demands on our time. But if that does happen, life becomes even more stressful and difficult. So I would like to invite you to reflect on how you can give your life of prayer more space to grow and develop, and to think of particular ways and particular practices that perhaps you can adopt to enable prayer to take root more deeply in your life and that you may bear fruit to God’s glory.
– Br. Geoffrey Tristram
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