Seeking Authentic Voice

When I left St. Homeostasis a few months ago I received some good advice from a colleague, the Jungian Priest. He said, "It's a sick church, let it go." Letting go seems to be a theme in my life these days, something I blogged about in my post yesterday on the yoga DVD Gravity and Grace. A day later I find myself thinking more about this: "In letting go, by relaxing into the postures, one builds strength, stamina, and flexibility. Counter-intuitive, perhaps. But I think there is great wisdom in that principle which can be applied to life in many ways - letting go, breathing, relaxing into the posture, the situation, or whatever life throws at us - builds us up. Letting go is not the same thing as collapsing or giving up, letting go is a process of holding a very difficult posture/life experience while at the same time breathing, relaxing into it, and letting go." This process of letting go, as I describe above, is a process of working through resistance. Stiff m...

Gunilla Norris in her book "Simple Ways" offers a number of reflections on life. One of her reflections is called, "Receiving Our Challenges." She writes this: "Trusting God with all our life means also to be able to trust the difficulties that come our way. Challenges and bitter sufferings can be gifts as well. To open to them is a profound act of humility. When the door slams and our hopes are dashed, when our health fails, a loved one dies, when the world closes in and the air we breath is full of despair, it is hard to receive such experiences as gift. Years after a dreadful difficulty or loss, many people will say that it was the difficulty that was somehow a profound turning point, a gift in disguise. But in the middle of the suffering we simply want it "not to be." To pray for endurance, reprieve, help of any kind, is only natural then. But when the challenge is the kind that will not go away, we have no choice but to be in it, and with it, and...