Category: Meditations

Daily meditations to provide inspiration

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Minute Meditation – The Awful Grace of God

The suffering creatures of this world have a divine Being who does not judge or condemn them, or in any way stand aloof from their plight, but instead, a Being who hangs with them and flows through them, and even toward them, in their despair. How utterly different this is from all the greedy and bloodthirsty gods of most of world history! What else could save the world? What else would the human heart love and desire? Further, this God wants to love and be loved rather than be served (John 15:15). How wonderful is that?! It turns the history of religion on its head. Jesus said it of himself: “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself” (John 12:32) and “from my breast will flow fountains of living water” (7:38). It is only the “harsh and dreadful” commingling of both divine love and human tears which opens the deepest floodgates of both God and the soul. Eventually, I must believe, it will open history itself. I will sink my anchor here. To mourn for one is to mourn for all. To mourn with all is to fully participate at the very foundation of Being Itself. For some reason, which I have yet to understand, beauty hurts. Suffering opens the channel through which all of Life flows and by which all creation breathes, and I still do not know why. Yet it is somehow beautiful, even if it is a sad and tragic beauty.

—from the book Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps by Richard Rohr 

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Minute Meditation – Being Still in the Storm

Amid the tumult of these electrically charged, frenzied times, contemplative living does not propose an escape from our very real, practical, and sometimes intractable problems. On the contrary, it suggests a way of being still, while still being in the storms that rage all around and within us. Like sturdy trees that bend with the breeze, wisdom-inspired living offers a deeper mooring for our being and our doing, which allows for movement even as we are deeply rooted. Seasoned by tears of joy and lament, prayer-centered presence invites us to welcome the whole world by drawing it into our heart-center. Here theology mixes with theater and prophetic action with poetry, as walls come tumbling down, making way for wonder, woe, and well-being.

—from the book Wandering and Welcome: Meditations for Finding Peace by Joseph Grant

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Minute Meditation – Straining for Wonder

Amid all the disaster and distress that wheels around and swirls within us in chaotic times, there are also always marvels to behold. Let neither fear nor preoccupation keep you from being touched by wonderfully wounded life. May you find a way in every day, to share your great-fullness for all that touches your eyes. May you refuse to be crushed but rather, look lovingly upon all with tear-washed eyes, trained on woundedness, straining for wonder. As you savor the sweet brevity of your days, may passion puncture you, letting out joy, till warmly you are welcomed; a sight for sore eyes.

—from the book Wandering and Welcome: Meditations for Finding Peace by Joseph Grant

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Minute Meditation – Stars in the Night Sky

In this world darkened by despair and deep division, we fumble dimly, to see past self-interest, fears, and endless feuding. But even looking down we can see beyond, like the pilgrim seeking clarity who found a limpid pool, and bending down glimpsed the Milky Way mirrored in the deep. Then gazing heavenward, gaped and gasped at the cosmic show above, while awe-filled silence taught: the stiller you become, the clearer will your reflection be.

—from the book Wandering and Welcome: Meditations for Finding Peace by Joseph Grant

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Minute Meditation – Disciples of the Prince of Peace

Pained by opportunities missed, and the many violations of life, still we give thanks. With humility we acknowledge our general failure to imagine much more compassionate alternatives to life in these times. And when at last we realize we don’t know where to go, we are ready to be led into brighter days. Disciples of the Prince of Peace live in tension between grief for all that’s lost and never can be, and gratitude for all that’s given; an overflow of possibility.

—from the book Wandering and Welcome: Meditations for Finding Peace by Joseph Grant

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Minute Meditation – Why Do We Need to Ask?

If God already knows what we need before we ask, and God actually cares about us more than we care about ourselves, then why do both Step 7 and Jesus say, each in their own way: “Ask, and you will receive. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened” (Matthew 7:7)? Are we trying to talk God into things? Does the group with the most and the best prayers win? Is prayer of petition just another way to get what we want, or is it to get God on our side? In every case, notice that we are trying to take control. In this short chapter, I will address that one simple, often confused, but important mystery of asking. Why is it good to ask, and what is really happening in prayers of petition or intercession? Do we need, are we encouraged, to talk God into things? Why does Jesus both tell us to ask and then say, “Your Father already knows what you need, so do not babble on like the pagans do” (Matthew 6:7–8)?

Let me answer in a few brief sentences, and then I will backtrack to explain what I mean. We ask not to change God, but to change ourselves. We pray to form a living relationship, not to get things done. Prayer is a symbiotic relationship with life and with God, a synergy which creates a result larger than the exchange itself. (That is why Jesus says all prayers are answered, which does not appear to be true, according to the evidence!) God knows that we need to pray to keep the symbiotic relationship moving and growing. Prayer is not a way to try to control God, or even to get what we want. As Jesus says in Luke’s Gospel (11:13), the answer to every prayer is one, the same, and the best: the Holy Spirit! God gives us power more than answers.

—from the book Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps by Richard Rohr 

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Minute Meditation – Amazing Grace

“Amazing grace” is not a way to avoid honest human relationships. Rather, it’s a way to redo them—but now, gracefully—for the liberation of both sides. Nothing just goes away in the spiritual world; all must be reconciled and accounted for. All healers are wounded healers, as Henri Nouwen said so well. There is no other kind. In fact, we are often most gifted to heal others precisely where we ourselves were wounded, or wounded others. “We are only the earthenware jars that hold this treasure, to make it clear that such overwhelming [healing] power comes from God and not from us” (2 Corinthians 4:7). Each of us is being prepared to be a healer

—from the book Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps by Richard Rohr 

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Minute Meditation – God Fills Our Emptiness

God’s totally positive and lasting way of removing our shortcomings is to fill up the hole with something much better, more luminous, and more satisfying. Then our old shortcomings are not driven away, or pushed underground, as much as they are exposed and starved as the false programs for happiness that they are. Like used scaffolding, our sins fall away from us as unneeded and unhelpful because now a new and better building has been found.

This is the wondrous discovery of our True Self, and the gradual deterioration of our false and constructed self. When we learn what good food is, we are simply no longer attracted to junk food. We don’t need to crusade against greasy burgers and fries, because we just ignore them. They become uninteresting as we happily search out the whole, organic, fresh, and healthy markets. All spiritual rewards are inherent, not rewards that are given later. Take that as a trustworthy axiom. Not “heaven later” as much as “health now,” which prepares us for—and becomes—heaven later!

—from the book Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps by Richard Rohr 

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Minute Meditation – Reconnecting Head, Heart, and Body

If we are to come to believe that a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity, then we will come to that belief by developing the capacity for a simple, clear, and uncluttered presence. Those who can be present with head, heart, and body at the same time will always encounter the Presence, whether they call it God or not. For the most part, those skills are learned by letting life come at us on its own terms, and not resisting the wonderful, underlying Mystery that is everywhere, all the time, and offered to us too. “God comes to us disguised as our life,” as I have heard Paula D’Arcy say so beautifully in her talks and retreats.

—from the book Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps by Richard Rohr 

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Minute Meditation – The Holy Spirit Within

Consciousness, our soul, the Holy Spirit, on both the individual and the shared levels, has sadly become unconscious! No wonder some call the Holy Spirit the “missing person of the Blessed Trinity.” No wonder we try to fill this radical disconnectedness with various addictions. There is much evidence that so-called “primitive” people were more in touch with this inner Spirit than many of us are. British philosopher and poet Owen Barfield (1898–1997) called it “original participation” and many ancient peoples seem to have lived in daily connection with the soulful level of everything—trees, air, the elements, animals, the earth itself, along with the sun, moon, and stars. These were all “brother” and “sister,” just as St. Francis would later name them. Everything had “soul.” Spirituality could be taken seriously and even came naturally. Most of us no longer enjoy this consciousness in our world. It is a disenchanted and lonely universe for most of us. We even speak of the “collective unconscious,” which now takes on a whole new meaning. We really are disconnected from one another, and thereby unconscious. Yet, religion’s main job is to reconnect us (re-ligio) to the Whole, to ourselves, and to one another—and thus heal us. We have not been doing our job very well.

—from the book Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps by Richard Rohr