LIVING WISDOM OF SOUL GUIDES
• HOW I PRAY IS BREATHE: Wise Guides on Prayer
~ A Series ~
What I wear is pants. What I do is live. How I pray is breathe.
– Thomas Merton
My Bowl Is Full, 2012 Bridgette Guerzon Mills*
Has your understanding, experience, and practice of prayer changed since you were a child? A teenager? A young adult? As we grow and develop as persons what might it look like to grow and mature as pray-ers as well? How do we nurture our relationship to the divine so that everything we do is a prayer?
Drawing on classic and modern guides, this series will explore different understandings and practices of prayer within the Jewish-Christian tradition. Possible guides we will learn from are Benedict of Nursia, Brother Lawrence, The Cloud of Unknowing, Teresa of Avila, Etty Hillesum, Thomas Merton, Abraham Heschel, Anthony Bloom, Matthew Fox, and Henri Nouwen. Our hope is that we will discover ways to offer our lives as a daily living prayer.
• WELCOMING CHRIST
The Spirituality of St. Benedict
Let them prefer nothing whatever to Christ,
and may he bring us all together to everlasting life.
– Rule of Benedict 72
St. Benedict by Fra Angelico
Deep listening. Yearning for life. Commitment to the good of the community. Physical work, diligent study, corporate prayer. Openness to ongoing conversion and transformation. Awareness of the divine presence everywhere. Conforming to Christ.
These are the values inherent in Benedictine life. Perhaps more than any other spirituality originating in the Christian monastic tradition, Benedictine spirituality has been found to be most adaptable to persons and families who live and work outside the monastery walls in the everyday world. Transposed for our time and circumstances, St. Benedict’s spirituality offers serious seekers a vision, pattern, and way of life that is oriented toward cultivating intimacy with God, a listening heart, loving service with and toward others, manual labor as a partner to prayer, and simple, reverent living with the whole Earth community. Join us as we let Benedict guide us toward the balanced and full life.
• RADICAL AMAZEMENT & DEEP SYMPATHY
The Life and Wisdom of Abraham Joshua Heschel
Just to be is a blessing.
Just to live is holy.
– Abraham Heschel
Abraham Joshua Heschel**
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972) is considered by many to be one of the greatest and most profound religious thinkers and spiritual guides of the twentieth century. A mystic, poet, scholar, social critic, activist, and holy man, Abraham Heschel offers a spiritual vision for our troubled times, one that brings together deep personal piety and passionate concern for the world. Writing as he lived and living as he prayed, he was committed to cultivating, nourishing, and sustaining a spirituality of radical amazement and prophetic sympathy, one oriented toward healing the soul and repairing the world. Come learn from this man of passionate vision, compassionate action, and embodied wisdom.
*My Bowl Is Full, 2012 Bridgette Guerzon Mills; www.guerzonmills.com
**Abraham Heschel, Iconographer Mark Duke, Photographer David Anger http://www.allsaintscompany.org/dancing-saints-icon-project