Minute Meditations

Resting in Our Limits

There is a restfulness in this acceptance of our limited lives. When we move low, back toward the soil from which we can learn the lessons of our true humanity, we are able to enter a kind of peace. Humility is not about struggle or diminishment but rather is the relief that we are not God, that we are mere creatures. Berry gives voice to this truth in one of his most popular poems, “The Peace of Wild Things”:

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

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What Is a Mystic?

The mystics cultivate awareness. They listen for God’s word; they respond with concrete, often heroic, actions when they hear it. A mystic, then, is one who shows the rest of us who we really are, who we can become, if ...
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Love Gives Itself Away

The simplest way to describe God’s poverty and humility is in terms of love. Love gives itself away—this is God’s poverty. Love turns toward the other so it can give itself to the other—this is God’s humility. In the Incarnation, ...
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Stop Trying to Figure God Out

Francis of Assisi grasped something of the mystery of God and, in a particular way, the mystery of God’s humility. Although he was simple and not well educated, he had an insight into God that I can only say was ...
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Eyes Fixed on the Lord Jesus

In exploring Francis as a mystic, we are reminded again to look upon Christ on the cross and know that despite what things look like from a human point of view, God is love, and everything we do and everything ...
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Silence Is a Language God Can Speak

Too often our prayers are projections of our own needs and desires and we give God little room to enter into the conversation. Talking all the time to God without ever listening is like a phone conversation with constant static; ...
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What It Means to Be Blessed

To be blessed, is to know that place of no striving. To be blessed, is to know that place of rest and dignity. To be blessed, is to know that I am loved by a gracious Creator, and that I ...
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