The creative process is rarely linear. So, too, with the spiritual life. In the final days of 2017, as I began a two-month fast from all social media and news, my friend singer/songwriter Blake Flattley asked me if I’d help him write a liturgy. I had no idea what part of the writing I wasContinue reading “New Music”
Tag Archives: Contemplative Prayer
Prayer for Our Daughters
May they never be lonely at parties Or wait for mail from people they haven’t written Or still in middle age ask God for favors Or forbid their children things they were never forbidden. May hatred be like a habit they never developed And can’t see the point of, like gambling or heavy drinking.Continue reading “Prayer for Our Daughters”
Word
I, who live by words, am wordless when I try my words in prayer. All language turns To silence. Prayer will take my words and then Reveal their emptiness. The stilled voice learns To hold its peace, to listen with the heart To silence that is joy, is adoration. The self is shattered, all wordsContinue reading “Word”
So Teresa of Avila & Martin Luther walk into a bar….
Two years ago this month, I spent a glorious five days at my favorite Benedictine monastery learning more about a 16th-century Carmelite nun who reformed much of the monastic community of her day by training the women—and then many of the men—in prayer. Not the verbal kind of prayer but the practice of meditation, contemplation,Continue reading “So Teresa of Avila & Martin Luther walk into a bar….”
Beyond The Limits of Knowing
Another glorious jolt in my inbox this morning from Richard Rohr’s new series on The Wisdom Tradition. This passage in particular spoke to me. “Alongside all our knowing, accompanying every bit of our knowing, must be the humble “knowing that we do not know.” That’s why the great tradition of prayer is balanced by bothContinue reading “Beyond The Limits of Knowing”
Heather Choate Davis 