How do you take — and make — time to “be” with God? What do you do with your God-time? Could you benefit from time spent with a spiritual director?

I am blessed to be deeply married to a spiritual director, and several of our closest and dearest friends are spiritual directors. 

I make/take time with "god" on a daily basis… I feel I need it and it's a first priority: it's not hard to do. The "how" would be: time in silent listening prayer, an hour or more; a deliberate walk and time of listening to the river, an hour tops; a variable amount of time spent writing down my experience (depending on the demands of the day, 0-2 hours). The writing part, though it's erratic, is something I finds helpful to embedding the listening/reflection: it pushes me into a kind of cognitive as well as spiritual affirmation of the listening experience.  The disciplined moving of my fingers on a keyboard or pen in my notebook in this context becomes a physical, tangible form of listening and my notes inform me in a differently nuanced way by meshing with what I've always done as a living.

To the extent that any of it has a conscious "methodology", I try to make the way open for god by deliberating letting go of anything I might want to say "about" god… I've become very aware that any fixed idea of what god is or can do is a denial of god… it diminishes my experience of god and narrows my open-ness to god.

It is easy to say, "god is love", for example — it's a truism. But we then risk expecting a "loving" god to express "love" coherently in the ways we would… and start doubting its existence when things don't pan out the way we'd wish. That becomes a very different approach to god from one which involves trusting the mystery…  trusting that "god-love" reaches infinitely beyond human imagining and we're inevitably mistaken when we anticipate its meaning.

I don't think we are given a life in order to conform god to its vagaries or our desires, but to conform life to god's being, as it's revealed to us in our paricular time and place: to help "build the kingdom" at the core of our being and in our relations with others.

We're dots and it's through god's energy and existence that we best join each other up, or not.

Discuss: How do you take — and make — time to “be” with God? What do you do with your God-time? Could you benefit from time spent with a spiritual director?

Lately, I seem to be spending alot of time praying - asking for guidance.  I also write alot in a diary/journal and find this helps me to get things off my chest and clears a space to "listen" for what God might be saying.  I very much enjoy my monthly women's spiritual direction group, and also find creativity - art & crafts helps me to connect spiritually in ways that are hard to describe.  I think I just feel more connected to my "true self" when working on a creative project.  Having chronic fatigue forces me to spend quite alot of time alone and in quietness - it's the kind of illness where I have to "just be" - whether I like it or not.  

Feeling gratitude today that dad's monthly check up went well (he's taking a chemo pill called Vemurafenib).  Treatment is continuing and seems to be effective.  Thanks to the Goddess.

“Frightens” and “discourages” are powerful words.

People and, even more especially, organizations that frighten and discourage other people commit a violence as cruel and far-reaching in its impacts as physical violence.

Racism is a particularly nasty form of assault. It can make brutalization seem “normal” because whole communities, not just individuals, are often its targets. And the way communities adjust to cope can end up providing fewer and fewer routes of escape.

This is why I see Idle No More as an enormously courageous movement, and its restraint has been an extraordinary witness to reason and good faith. History may yet come see it as one of the most hopeful and admirable mass actions in modern Canadian history… and declare the reactions of Canada; media, many of its citizens and it government despicable.

Those reactions give me my tastes of fear and discouragement. So I pray and reflect, support activist native friends as best I can, I make it a priority to learn more and more about these cultures and their histories. My wife is active in a Conference-based Circle of Right Relations and we both speak out in our community and among our friends and family.

Racism is a bedrock issue in Canada… now. It must be addressed as a Constitutional imperative. It affects and impoverishes all, and there are far too many who are frightened and discouraged by it.

Is is a healing issue… we ALL need healing before we can have a country we can truly call our "home and native land".

IN THE NEWS THIS WEEK:

TIMMINS – Timmins-James Bay MP Charlie Angus is raising alarm bells about the third world policing conditions face by northern First Nations after the apparent suicide of a young woman in Kasabonika First Nation who was being held in the back seat of a police car because the local police station had no heat.

Angus says this death is just the latest in a series of horror stories facing the under-funded Nishnawbe Aski Police (NAPs) service.

“We have police officers working with no back-up and sleeping in places where you wouldn’t let a dog sleep. We have prisoners being held in the back seats of cars or in makeshift jails where they face risk of either fire or freezing,” said Angus. “The NAPS officers are being forced to work in conditions that no other police unit in Canada would accept. Why the double standard?”

NAPs is funded 52% by the federal government and 48% by the Province of Ontario. The Federal government has refused to come to the table to discuss addressing the funding shortfalls. Last October, Angus wrote to Justice Minister Vic Toews asking for a plan to address the chronic under-funding. Toews has yet to answer.

“The Conservatives talk loudly about being tough on crime and providing safe communities. Yet they are leaving northern citizens and First Nation police to put up with third world conditions. This situation is unacceptable.”

In 2006, two young men burned to death in a makeshift jail cell in Kashechewan First Nation. A coroner’s inquiry came forward with 86 recommendations to address the situation faced by NAPs police. So far, the government has ignored many of the key recommendations.

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Do WE care?

Nothing in my life frightens or discourages me.  There have been moments when fear fought for a place, to date I have been given the grace and the strength to resist that advance.  There are also times when discouragement would have been the easiest response to all that was going on, to date I have been given the grace and the strength not to cave in.

My time wrestling developed within me the ability to learn lessons while being mastered and the awareness that no matter how tough the opponent they have a weakness and they make mistakes that I can capitalize on.  In the end it is about being able to endure and be ready to take advantage when those mistakes happen.

Every problem I have ever faced fits into the framework that my wrestling experience provided.  The grace of God gives me what I need to endure and resist even when taking a beating.  So long as I bide my time and keep my balance there will be an opportunity for the tables to be turned.  Should I fail to bide my time, then I will be better prepared for the next struggle.

God's grace is sufficient for me and I am assured of receiving it whether I am the victor in any particular match or not.

For me it is less about needing courage to take the next step and more about being confident of which step provides the surer footing.

Grace and peace to you.

John

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