May 20 Reflections

Sunday-May 20 Ps. 104 is a hymn on creation. God the sustainer is evoked well in vv.27-28 as an open handed, open-hearted god. It sees life as having breath or spirit, all life. Does faith inform your view of our environment?

Monday-After firmly holding the cups of our lives and lifting them up as signs of hope for others, we have to drink them. Drinking our cups means fully appropriating and interiorizing what each of us has acknowledged as our life, with all its unique sorrows and joys.How do we drink our cups? We drink them as we listen in silence to the truth of our lives, as we speak in trust with friends about ways we want to grow, and as we act in deeds of service. Drinking our cups is following freely and courageously God's call and staying faithfully on the path that is ours. Thus our life cups become the cups of salvation. When we have emptied them to the bottom, God will fill them with "water" for eternal life.Nowen Tuesday- Music helps us to overcome any division we experience between body and soul, because the purpose of music is to the heavenly and earthly, the invisible and visible closer together." -- Christine Valters Paintner, PhD wednesday-It is never the brothers right next to us, but the brothers in the abstract that are easy to love.Source: Escape Routes Thursday-"We are each called to have [an] inner discerning presence that knows what or who to let into the fold and what or who to keep out. We each have times when this boundary becomes weaker and we say yes to too many things, experiences, or meeting other people’s needs. We all have experienced trying to avoid the wisdom of our inner gatekeeper and let in commitments that steal our energy, that lead us to become strangers to our deepest passions, until one day we may realize we don't even recognize our lives anymore." -- Christine Valters Paintner, PhD Friday-Forgiveness is a door to peace and happiness. Forgiving is not ignoring wrongdoing, but overcoming the evil inside us and in our world with love. To forgive is not just a command of Christ but the key to reconciling all that is broken in our lives and relationships. We get rid of an enemy by getting rid of enmity.Source: Why Forgive? Saturday-Friends cannot replace God. They have limitations and weaknesses like we limitations they can be signposts on our journey towards the unlimited have. Their love is never faultless, never complete. But in their and unconditional love of God. Let's enjoy the friends whom God has sent on our way.Nouwen