Minute Meditations

Living intentionally and fully alive—from a place of groundedness, being at home in our own skin—is not a technique. Nor is it a kind of mental Rubik’s cube, to be solved. There is no list. But if we demand one, chances are, we pass this life by—the exquisite, the messy, the enchanting, the wondrous, the delightful, the untidy—on our way to someplace we think we ought to be.

—from the book This Is the Life: Mindfulness, Finding Grace, and the Power of the Present Moment by Terry Hershey

We know there is power in the word enough. We carry this capacity to honor the present into every encounter and relationship, meaning that we honor the dignity that is reflected by God’s goodness and grace. Every encounter, every relationship, is a place to include, invite mercy, encourage, receive, heal, reconcile, repair, say thank you, pray, celebrate, refuel, and restore.

—from the book This Is the Life: Mindfulness, Finding Grace, and the Power of the Present Moment by Terry Hershey

Did you ever have one of those days where the whole idea of God was just too much to think about? As if trying to “get a handle” on God was like trying to kiss the moon? If the mystics are right (and usually they are because they see things much differently than we do) then you were probably closer that day to God than any other day in your life. How is this possible, you ask? How can God be close to you (or you to God) when God seems so far away or not at all? Even better, how can God be close to you when you are totally confused? This is my answer to you: God is a mystery of humble love. It is a mystery that you cannot reason or try to figure out. You must simply live in the mystery. This is my hope for you—that you may live in the mystery of God’s humble love.

—from the book The Humility of God: A Franciscan Perspective  by Ilia Delio, OSF

A Christian celebration of humanity consists in lovingly midwifing our fellow humans into full being. One of our God-given endowments is creativity, the ability to cooperate with God in the inauguration of the kingdom. We’re called to use this creativity in nurturing our brothers and sisters as full members of that kingdom, and we do this by going out of our way to help them recognize and affirm themselves as images of God. In concrete terms, this means performing the acts of charity listed in the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew: clothing the naked, tending the sick, visiting the imprisoned, giving food and drink to the hungry and thirsty. Celebrating the sheer existence of others often demands that we do the dirty work of easing the material burdens that inhibit them from arriving at a conscious appreciation of their own holiness.

—from the book Perfect Joy: 30 Days with Francis of Assisi  by Kerry Walters

God’s creative will is an eternally sustaining will, namely, that my existence will not end, summons me to humble acquiescence and dialogue—or to proud, illusory self-sufficiency, which is a kind of hell because it severs the bond of love and results in a turning in upon oneself. God’s love, in contrast to self-absorption, overflows, and though the eternal creator chooses to become one with love’s creation entering the created world as creative word becoming obedient to the Word’s own speaking of what it means to be a creature, obedient, as Saint Paul says, even “to the point of death— / even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8). Christ was broken and died on the cross: Life did not spare the eternal Son, just as life will not spare us, but God’s Incarnate Word confirmed for us that love endures, no matter what humans or fate or life does or refuses to do. And in the end obedient love rises from the grave.

—from the book Mystics: Twelve Who Reveal God's Love by Murry Bodo, OFM

The mystics teach us that one who tries to know and love God sooner or later becomes aware that God is unknowable, but one can love God intimately despite God’s ultimate unknowableness. With this awareness comes the further realization that all one’s desire to know and love God has from the beginning been God’s work and that, try as one may, two things are certain: You cannot find God who has already found you by running away from yourself, your own problems, your own unresolved fears; and secondly, everything you leave in order to respond to God’s love is in the end redeemed, transformed and given back to you wholly new and in an unpossessive way. It is as if you have returned to the garden of paradise illumined and purified so that you can walk again with God in the earthly paradise God intended for you from the beginning.

—from the book Mystics: Twelve Who Reveal God's Love by Murray Bodo, OFM

When we go into the inner desert, we appreciate for the first time just how much unnecessary baggage we carry around. We see and gasp at the incredible artificiality of our old way of life, the flimsiness of our old values, the duplicity of our old self. The process is harrowing because it rips away everything by which we’ve defined ourselves. But this desert dying, this going under, is a necessary condition for the kind of “ineffable joy” and “wonderful light” that suffused Francis at the end of his time in the pit.

—from the book Perfect Joy: 30 Days with Francis of Assisi  by Kerry Walters

Mary’s life, like that of her son, will be a living out of her own canticle. She will enter into the mysteries of Christ’s life. Like the Christian mystics after her, she will participate in a more intense way in the very mystery that she is sharing. As the model of intimacy with God, Mary will enter into the death and resurrection of her son. She will stand beneath the cross of his dying; she will rise with him body and soul in the mystery of her Assumption into heaven. Franciscans pray a seven-decade rosary, the Franciscan Crown, based on the Seven Joys of Mary, that for me summarizes what it means to enter into the mystery of how we are transformed by and into Christ. The mystic knows in a uniquely graced way these mysteries that we believe and live out as we try to be true to the mystery of our baptism.

—from the book Mystics: Twelve Who Reveal God's Love by Murray Bodo, OFM

An embrace of Lady Poverty means that we try to live freely by getting out from under the possessions that own us. This can range from adopting a Franciscan-like life of voluntary poverty to the more common effort to cut down on consumption of needless luxuries. The purpose in either case is to forgo what we don’t need in order to imitate better the holy poverty of Christ, to appreciate better our fellow humans, and to contribute to a more equitable distribution of resources. But genuine freedom—which, recall, is a necessary condition for the joy Francis craves—isn’t simply a matter of throwing off externalities that burden us. It entails a relinquishment of internal acquisitiveness. In addition to ridding ourselves of goods that weigh down our spirits, we must wean ourselves from our psychological desire for them. Doing the one without the other simply won’t suffice. We can steel ourselves to a life of material poverty yet still remain enslaved by our lusts, vanity, and jealousies.

—from the book Perfect Joy: 30 Days with Francis of Assisi  by Kerry Walters