Spiritual Listening and Action

We are in touch with God every moment that we live, for the simple reason that God is life; not religious life, nor church life, but the whole of life.  God is the Life of life.

Spiritual awareness, then, is about being aware of God in the midst of the change and movement and flow of life, in the rising of the morning sun, in the work and relationship of daily life, in the great struggles of society and nation, in alertness to the interior life of the soul, in times of rest and sleep and even dreaming.  God is at the heart of all life, in both the visible and invisible.  We don't have to try to reach God through acts of devotion, for God is closer to us than our very breath.  We have been given union with God whether we like it or not.  Our flesh is his flesh, and we can't jump out of our skins. This is not pantheism.  It is rather to believe, like Scott, Eriugena, and other Celts before him, that God is the Being on which all being rests, the Light within all light, the Life at the heart of all that has life.

The true mark of Christian spirituality, according to George MacLeod, is to get one's teeth into things.  Painstaking service to humankind's most material needs is the essence of Christian spirituality.  In other words, to move more deeply into life, and especially into its places of struggle and suffering, is to move closer to the life of Christ, the light that is within even the darkest of situations.

What most debilitates our prayer life is not bad prayer technique. It is our presupposition that the pressures of life are on one side while God is on some other side.  Instead, it is precisely at the pressure points of life that God is to be looked for.  God is to be found on the high street of life, in the busyness of our lives.

~J. Philip Newell (on the teachings of George MacLeod)

Comments

[Jennifer @ Quiverfull Family]

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[Tony]

"In other words, to move more deeply into life, and especially into its places of struggle and suffering, is to move closer to the life of Christ, the light that is within even the darkest of situations."

But that's not the American dream...

We want to avoid suffering which usually requires living a superficial as we can. Then we wonder why our prayer life feels so superficial.

Great post. Thanks.

Tony