I have read about The Dark Night of the Soul. What is all this talk of darkness in spirituality?
Posted: 12 Nov 2011
There is a darkness that we are all led into by our own stupidity, by our own selfishness, blindness, or by just living out of the false self. And there is a darkness that I believe God leads us through for our own enlightenment. In both cases, we have to walk through these dark periods by brutal honesty, confessions, surrenders, letting go, forgiv...
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What did Paul mean in Galations 2:20 “It is no longer I who live, but Christ living in me”.
Posted: 11 Nov 2011
Great question! My deepest and truest me is always God.
Spiritual life is always about letting go of unnecessary baggage so that we’re prepared for death’s final letting go. That can only happen if we’re willing to know that our protected self-image is not the deepest me.
Our passing personas are important and a good part of the journey and...
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What is the "unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit" that Jesus speaks of?
Posted: 03 Nov 2011
Only contemplative prayer touches the deep unconscious, where all of our real hurts, motivations, and deepest visions lie.
Without it, we have what is even worse—religious egocentric consciousness, which is even more defensive and offensive than usual! Now it has God on its side and is surely what Jesus means by the unforgivable “sin against th...
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What is the difference between a myth and a parable?
Posted: 19 Oct 2011
In spirituality, myths and parables interact. Our myth is a symbol system out of which we think and operate. Everyone has a myth. We have to have our myth because it creates our world and provides our frame of reference.
In contrast, a parable confronts our world and subverts it. It doesn’t call for discussion, debate, or question; it is not Go...
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Jesus told us to visit the sick. Does this means more than just visiting family members, relatives, and friends who are hospitalised?
Posted: 03 Sep 2011
Among all the corporal works of mercy, it would seem, we do the best with this one. At a more obvious level at least, we tend to fulfil our duty here. If someone close to us, a family member, relative, or friend, is more seriously ill, we generally do not find it difficult to spend some time with him or her.
Most people who are sick in hospital...
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Thank you for this amazing website! However, do you really think it is "absolutely necessary" - for our health - to be connected to God?
Posted: 01 Sep 2011
I do think some kind of experience of God is necessary for mental and emotional health. You basically don't belong in the universe until you are connected to its centre, and one word for that centre (and everything else by implication) is “God.” When you live in the false self you are “eccentric” or off centre. You're trying to make something—yours...
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In order to develop a deeper relationship with Jesus I am trying to remove myself from the company of sinners, money-makers and loud offensive people. Strangely, however, I don't feel liberated. Bob in Johannesburg
Posted: 13 Aug 2011
Once we are liberated from ego, false religion, mind games, and conventional thinking and given some kind of practice whereby we can go deeper in prayer, we will know how to be liberated by Jesus for God. Jesus, more than anything, came to liberate us for God.
By idealising those who were not worthy—the sinners, the drunkards and the tax collect...
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Hi Rev Brent - I notice that you are a Roman Catholic minister. Do you subscribe to the view that only Roman Catholics will be "saved" and all the rest of us are heretics ? Regards, Vonnie
Posted: 11 Aug 2011
My dear Vonnie, it is true that I am an ordained Roman Catholic deacon, but it is also true that Jesus liberated us from religion.
Jesus taught simple religious practices over major theorising. There is no indication He wanted any of His followers to be what I call “thought police”—thought police for others.
That has been Rome’s preoccupati...
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I am constantly trying to get rid of my sins, but they just keep coming back. How can I truly transform into the person I want to be?
Posted: 14 Apr 2011
Many of us were trained to “get rid of our sins.” There was little or no education in seeing our sins as symptoms and learning what the symptoms had to tell us. Many of us never learned the difference between what we said, even to ourselves, and what was really going on. We learned laws but not spiritual discernment.
Two people can be perform...
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I always thought that "belonging" to a church and "believing" what I was taught were more important than transforming my life. Now I am not so sure.
Posted: 13 Apr 2011
Early-stage religion is more about belonging and believing than about transformation. When belonging and believing are the primary concerns, people don’t see their need for growth, healing, or basic spiritual curiosity. Once we let the group substitute for an inner life or our own faith journey, all we need to do is “attend.” For several centuri...
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What does the Garden of Gethsemane have to teach us as we struggle with weakness and inadequacy? (From Gerri in Port Elizabeth)
Posted: 18 Mar 2011
"Her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you!" Leonard Cohen coined that phrase in a melancholic poem, Hallelujah, and it reflects how certain things can seduce us so that we end up breaking our word, our commitments, and even our integrity. Lot of things, it seems, can overthrow us.
Beauty, sex, ambition, jealousy, fear, tension, wounds, anger, d...
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Your riveting sermon last weekend was about the symbolic difference between the desert (a place without God) and the garden (a place with God). How can you explain the agony of Jesus in a garden?
Posted: 16 Mar 2011
It's significant that this agony should take place in a Garden. In archetypal literature (and scripture, among other things, is this kind of literature), a garden is not a place to pick cucumbers and onions. Archetypally, a garden is the place of delight, the place of love, the place to drink wine, the place where lovers meet in the moonlight, the ...
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I always seem to be too-busy, too-stressed, too-tired, or too-preoccupied to sit or kneel down to pray.
Posted: 09 Mar 2011
You are so right! It's hard to pray in our over-busy lives.
But we're not just too busy to pray, we're also too restless. There's a congenital disquiet inside us. Moreover this natural restlessness is fanned to a high flame by the culture: Five hundred TV channels are within our reach, the internet brings the whole world into our private rooms,...
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Your entire website and almost everything you do seems to be about "soul". What exactly do you mean by this? (from Abie in Kemptonpark)
Posted: 22 Feb 2011
I believe that God gives us our “soul,” our deepest identity, our true self, our unique blueprint.
Our unique little bit of heaven is installed by the Manufacturer within the product, at the beginning!
We are given a span of years to discover it, to choose it, and to live our own destiny to the full. If we do not, our true self will never b...
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Having just turned 84, I am reaching the end of my life. Could you give me some hints on how I should prepare to die?
Posted: 19 Feb 2011
The heaviness of this question is enough to intimidate a person with a spirituality deeper than my own, and when it's asked by someone twice my age whose heart seems already deeply charitable, faith-filled, and wonderfully-mellowed through years of quiet prayer, then perhaps the best answer is silence. I am not so naive as to offer you much by way ...
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I often worry about the Church becoming too narrow in its embrace. (from Kim in Port Elizabeth)
Posted: 12 Feb 2011
The Width Of Our Ecclesial Embrace ?September 1, 2003 ??Nikos Kazantsakis once said "the bosom of God is not a ghetto, but our hearts often are."
So too, sadly, are our ecclesiologies. ??In church circles today, both liberal and conservative, our ecclesiologies are often anything but inclusive and Catholic ("Catholic" meaning wide and universal...
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2010 BOOK REVIEW by Ron Rolheiser
Posted: 07 Jan 2011
There's some rhyme and reason to how I select my reading material. I check reviews, I try to be alert to what gets mentioned when friends and colleagues talk literature, and I deliberately set myself a diet that balances spiritual books, novels, intellectual essays, and select biographies. Nonetheless, invariably, some of the best books I read eac...
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Could you give me some pointers on how to overcome the root sin of vanity and pride also?
Posted: 07 Jan 2011
“Vanity of vanities, says Qoheleth, vanity of vanities! All things are vanity!” That line from the Book of Ecclesiastes rings as true today as on the day it was written. Vanity is one of the three root sins that plague humanity. Much of our economy is built on vanity, on helping people to maintain the right “image.” Think of the money spent on cosm...
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I have often wondered what is the source of my spiritual power? Is it the position I occupy, the work I do, my "ministry" to others?
Posted: 21 Dec 2010
It’s radical union with God, not just doing good things or holding a role or function. Often we make the basis for ministry professionalism, education, and up-to-date-ism, which are all good in themselves.
But in the end, the only basis for fruitful Christianity is divine union. Such people change you and change the world. Leon Bloy said it ...
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I am not a Catholic, but I admire their teaching on justice. My concern is that there are just so many issues to tackle. Shouldn't we just focus on one or two issues and leave the rest to other people (from Pieter in Houdspruit)
Posted: 19 Nov 2010
If we do not have a seamless garment of justice that applies to all of our relationships and all of society, we will not be taken seriously on any individual hot-button issue. If we do not seek and pursue justice across the board, then any concerns for or against issues of abortion, homosexuality, immigration, women’s rights, prison reform, opposi...
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Could you recommend some ways in which I could earn God's love? (from Micheline in Pretoria)
Posted: 06 Nov 2010
No, I can't. We have put our emphasis on trying to love God, which is probably a good way to start—although we do not have a clue how to do that. What I consistently find in the mystics is an overwhelming experience of how God has loved them. God is the initiator, God is the doer, God is the one who seduces us. All we can do is respond in kind,...
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Why do you often use the word "contemplation" instead of "meditation". Surely they are one and the same thing? (from Alice in Waverley)
Posted: 25 Oct 2010
They are not at all the same thing and it is critical that we understand the difference.
Hugh of St. Victor (1078-1141) and Richard of St. Victor (1123-1173) wrote that humanity has been given three sets of eyes, each building on the previous one.
The first eye was the eye of the flesh (thought or sight), the second was the eye of reason ...
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I am finding it very difficult to "grow up" those in my immediate sphere of influence. What can I do to pull them forward? (from Luke in Germiston)
Posted: 21 Oct 2010
You can’t really pull or force people forward. In the final analysis, you cannot “grow up" other people. All you can do is reveal the real and keep growing up yourself.
Jesus walked the earth as a mature, transformed, and enlightened man; and power went out from him. Those who have eyes to see and ears to hear will be attracted and will be pu...
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I notice you place a huge emphasis on Soul Work. What qualities should I look for in a Soul Coach?
Posted: 20 Oct 2010
The “real work” is always soul work. When we move to the level of the soul, externals like skin colour, age, career, status, religion, and nationality are not the important things. Rather, the question is, “Who am I before I am any of those things?” Soul recognizes soul. Soul reads reality at the level of soul, and not merely persona or persona...
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What is meant by a mentor in the spiritual sense? (From Adila in Johannesburg)
Posted: 17 Oct 2010
“Mentor” was the name of the man that Odysseus placed in charge of his son, Telemachus, when he went off to fight the Trojan wars. The very fact that he saw such a need created the role and the name.
A mentor has a mature sense of himself or herself. A true mentor has inner authority that gives confidence to others. She or he possesses a cert...
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What is the source of our spiritual power? (From Louis in Parkview)
Posted: 14 Oct 2010
It’s radical union with God, not just doing good things or holding a role or function.
Often we make the basis for ministry professionalism, education, and up-to-date-ism, which are all good in themselves. But in the end, the only basis for fruitful Christianity is divine union.
Such people change you and change the world. Leon Bloy said...
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Sometimes I feel like a stranger and a nomad trying to live as a Christian in this world of ours. It seems to become more difficult each year. (From Julia in Constantia)
Posted: 19 Sep 2010
Jesus announced, lived and inaugurated for history a new social order based on grace and not on merit. He called it the Reign or Kingdom of God. It is without doubt his most common metaphor, so it must be very important. Maybe we would just call it “the final and big picture.” In the end, all will be based on the love and mercy of God—for everyone...
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Pope Benedict XVI's address to the Houses of Lords and Commons on 17 September 2010
Posted: 19 Sep 2010
Mr Speaker,
Thank you for your words of welcome on behalf of this distinguished gathering. As I address you, I am conscious of the privilege afforded me to speak to the British people and their representatives in Westminster Hall, a building of unique significance in the civil and political history of the people of these islands. Allow me also to ...
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I am a regular attendee of your Soul Workshops. It troubles me that some people seem to just accept the spiritual journey, where others, like myself, hold back and cynically question everything you say. (from Patrick in Johannesburg)
Posted: 17 Sep 2010
Nice question Patrick! An initial surrender must precede any spiritual search. It is a primal acceptance that there is meaning out there, history does have a goal, and love is somehow that meaning.
I fully admit that is a leap of faith for many people, for others it comes more easily. It is this surrender that finally generates the long-las...
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I lead a pretty boring 9-t0-5 life. How can I go about more wholeheartedly? (from Louis in Boksburg)
Posted: 11 Sep 2010
Much of life is spent going to work, running errands, cleaning house, mowing the lawn, waiting in queues, attending meetings, and tending to the necessary but endless minutia that make up life. We know that we can’t live as if we’re in the middle of an Indiana Jones adventure. We know that much of life is rather dull and repetitive.
That’s why...
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Don't you think that the current shortage of Catholic priests could be solved by the ordination of women? Why should the clergy be reserved for the masculine? (from Alison in Vereeniging)
Posted: 08 Sep 2010
One of the reasons women have become so angry at men is that they are tired of being manipulated, objectified, and devalued. In fact, all of Western civilization is tired of the feminine being devalued. It’s tired of the rational “command-and- control” model for reality. For far too long, the negative masculine energy has been running everything...
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I am a 20 year-old male and I would like you to recommend a book or course whereby I could attain true enlightenment. (from George in Port Elizabeth)
Posted: 06 Sep 2010
I cannot find a single example in male stories where a man comes to enlightenment by taking a course, studying philosophy, becoming ordained, joining a community, or going to school. Those are all quite fine things to do, but in themselves they do not transform us.
In mythological traditions, the young man cannot reach enlightenment until he has...
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I have just returned from a walk through the Kalahari desert. I felt much closer to God there than I ever do in my church or even a big European cathedral. Is the wilderness good for our spirituality? (From Louis in Sandton)
Posted: 05 Sep 2010
Have you ever noticed how nearly all mythic stories take place in the wilderness or “wildness.” For both men and women through the ages, it was in the wilderness that they discovered the soul. The civilized or domesticated world was of our making; wilderness was God’s making—the first and natural cathedral.
But now we have created a society that...
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We are told to love our enemies, but I find this very difficult to do. How can my Christian practice help? (from Joe in Umhlanga Rocks)
Posted: 02 Sep 2010
Instead of showing people how to obey Jesus' command to love their enemies, the Church often ended up condemning them or splitting them, because we did not give them the software to know how to actually do this. Again, we gave them the what but not the how.
Emerging Christianity is going to have to emphasize orthopraxy (walking the talk) muc...
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I was fortunate enough to hear your magnificent sermon this Sunday. I felt like clapping afterwards. Is this allowed? (from Claire in Rosebank)
Posted: 30 Aug 2010
Thank you for the compliment Claire however I think Pope Benedict XVI answered your question when he was still Cardinal Ratzinger. He said: "Whenever applause breaks out in the liturgy because of some human achievement, it is a sure sign that the essence of liturgy has totally disappeared and been replaced by a kind of religious entertainment."
...
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Spirituality is all good and well, but does it have anything to do with the "real" world, the material world in which we have to live? (from Chris in Pretoria)
Posted: 27 Aug 2010
The human and the divine co-existing at the same time is real religion. This creates honest people, people who don’t waste time proving they’re right, superior, or saved, but just try to live and love the mystery that they are.
There are basically four world views: 1) Reality is just matter, 2) Reality is just spirit, 3) Through religion an...
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I never feel the presence of God more than when I am making love to my husband. Is this perverse? (From Jane in Johannesburg)
Posted: 19 Aug 2010
This is a great question Jane! The major goal of all spirituality is to lead the “naked person” to stand trustfully before the naked God. The important thing is that we are naked; in other words that we come without title, merit, shame, or even demerit. All we can offer to God is who we really are, which to all of us, never seems like enough. Th...
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When I see all the suffering around me, especially with "good" people, I find I become angry with God. Is this terribly wrong? (Bob in Alberton)
Posted: 13 Aug 2010
Most religions seem to begin with the assumption that God is good. But then the believers look at the reality in front of them, and there begins the most unnerving problem: Why does the just person suffer?
In the Book of Job this whole problem is stretched to its limits. Job is described at the outset as a just and good man too, and yet he i...
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One of my closest friends suffered a brain haemorrhage last week and died, leaving behind a devastated husband and a highly dependant son. They were a very religious family and I just don't see how God could permit this. (From Anon in Johannesburg)
Posted: 11 Aug 2010
We live in a finite world where everything is dying, shedding its strength. This is really hard to accept, and all our lives we look for exceptions to it. We look for something strong, undying, infinite.
Religion tells us that something is God. Great, we say, we’ll attach ourselves to this strong God. Then this God comes along and says, “E...
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How is participation related to surrender?
Posted: 05 Aug 2010
Our ultimate goal is to be able to think and behave like Jesus. This is a journey toward great love, which invariably becomes a journey of great suffering.
This journey leads us to a divine love where we don’t just love those who love us. We learn to participate in a larger love—where we experience Someone Else loving through us, in us, and ...
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You have spoken about us "getting out of the way" and letting God in. I don't understand? (from Lucy in Vereeniging)
Posted: 30 Jul 2010
Once I can recognise the divine image where I don’t want to see the divine image, then I have learned how to see. It’s really that simple. And here’s the rub: I’m not the one that is doing the seeing. It’s like there is another pair of eyes inside of me seeing through me, seeing with me, seeing in me. God can see God everywhere, and God in me ...
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I would like to start a Soul Workshop at my church, but I don't understand why 20 minutes (33%) of the session is wasted on just sitting in silence. (from Ronald in Harrismith)
Posted: 29 Jul 2010
As a rule, most people are afraid of silence. That’s our major barrier to prayer and to depth. Silence and words are related. Words that don’t come out of silence probably don’t say much. They probably are more an unloading than a communicating.
Yet good words can also feed silence. But even the word of God doesn’t bear a great deal of fru...
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You often write and speak about becoming "transformed". What does transformed really mean? (from Joe in Kempton Park)
Posted: 26 Jul 2010
Paul uses a wonderful and telling phrase: “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). It is a radically different sense of self that he is trying to describe. Until I have come to that realization myself, I have not been transformed, spiritually speaking.
Contemplative prayer draws us to our True Self, who we are “hidden wit...
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I attended your Soul Workshop for the first time last week and really enjoyed it. What is this "contemplative mind" that you talk about? (Jessica in Rosebank)
Posted: 25 Jul 2010
The contemplative mind is the most absolute assault on the secular worldview that one can have, because it is a different mind from what we’ve been taught in our time. The calculative mind, or the egocentric mind, reads everything in terms of personal advantage and personal preferences. As long as we read reality from that small self with a narro...
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Whilst we were all horrified at your recent painful attack, at least we know that when you speak about how to handle pain and loss, you have first hand experience. (from Michele in Randburg)
Posted: 21 Jul 2010
If religion is not primarily a belonging system, but is truly a transformational system, one would need, it seems to me, a very different kind of authority.
One needs the experience and conviction of someone who has walked the journey himself or herself.
One needs the authority of a person who can say, “I know what God does with pain, bec...
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Do we really want our country's leaders to love our enemies? (from Thomas in Lanseria)
Posted: 17 Jul 2010
The greatest and the summit of Jesus' commandments and the most radical of all of his teachings is, “You must love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44).
How many of us love other people who kick us around or those who make it hard for us?
Do we even know how to do this? Is it something we desire to do?
Let’s admit that our culture sees this ...
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You often write about confidence and gratitude. How does confidence connect us to God? (from Michelle in Inanda)
Posted: 07 Jul 2010
Greatness emerges when, above all else, people are confident. When we believe—together—that life is good, God is good and humanity is good, we become very safe and salutary people for others. What we seem to suffer from today is a lack of confidence, which would become a calm self confidence. St. Therese of Lisieux wisely said that her entire spi...
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Why is it that it seems many teachings put praise and contemplation at polar opposites? It would seem to me that they are, at the very least, complimentary. (I DO believe there are times to be silent before God.) — RG
Posted: 05 Jul 2010
Dear RG,
The landscape of contemplation, as you seem to intrinsically recognize, rarely features landmarks labeled "right" or "wrong". Instead, it is a place of exploration and discovery. We can follow a guide there -- especially someone of Merton's stature -- and yet what we truly follow is our own resonance with their guidance, a sure knowing ...
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Sometimes I get so frustrated by the evil all around me because I can't do anything about it. I feel like crying in the wilderness, like John the Baptist. (from Mike in Lydenburg)
Posted: 24 Jun 2010
The deep masculine is love for the truth like the love of John the Baptist. You love the truth no matter what the price of it is, no matter how many you displease. You stand by your principles even if you don’t get promoted or rewarded, applauded or hugged, even if you are a lone voice “crying in the wilderness.” John is shouting the truth in th...
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Could you give us a thought on what boys need from their fathers this Fathers Day? (From George in Alberton)
Posted: 20 Jun 2010
I once heard a story from a nun friend who was working in prisons. She said as Mother’s Day was approaching the prisoners kept asking for Mother’s Day cards. She brought card after card so they could write to their moms. As Father’s Day approached she decided to be better prepared. She bought an entire case of Father’s Day cards, so she could g...
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I was fascinated by your response to Cathy on 18 June. What covenant should we be making with the earth? (From Jules in London)
Posted: 19 Jun 2010
At the end of the Noah story—when the floodwaters have receded—they all come out of the ark, and God makes with them what has been called the second covenant, after the covenant with Abraham and Sarah.
“Then God said to Noah and to his sons, ‘I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you, and with every living creature...
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Do you think that spirituality and ecology are mutually exclusive? (From Cathy in Johannesburg)
Posted: 18 Jun 2010
No I don't.
The ark in the Noah story became the image of the church and the image of salvation. Notice that God doesn’t have Noah take only his wife and his children into the ark. He also has him take two of every animal. Now what is that saying? Apparently that animals matter! That the animals also needed to be saved and to be liberated...
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How does the judgement of God differ from that of us human beings? (from Michael in Stellenbosch)
Posted: 03 Jun 2010
Those who pray learn to favour and prefer God’s judgement over that of human beings.
God always outdoes any of us in generosity and in receptivity. God is always more loving than the person who has ever loved you the most! All you can bring is today’s latest product, whatever it is, for a new dose of love. It will always be immature on some...
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What makes us able to stand "naked before God"? (from Richard in Potchefstroom)
Posted: 02 Jun 2010
When you are able to offer yourself as you really are to God, it is like the experience of standing naked in front of your lover. Your lover sees your imperfect or aging body and loves you and receives you and embraces you anyway. That’s the kind of love that we all want, that we all wait for, that we all need. It is the engine of the soul.
...
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Thanks for your continual assurance that God loves me. I have lived such a sinful life that I cannot really believe it. (from Claudette in Cape Town)
Posted: 28 May 2010
The great thing about God’s love is that it’s not determined by the object. God does not love us because we are good. God loves us because God is good. It takes our whole lives for that to sink in because that’s not how human love operates.
Human love is largely determined by the attractiveness of the object. When someone is loveable, nice, ...
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I was taught that God would love me more if and when I change. Is that true? (from Robbie in Houghton)
Posted: 26 May 2010
Most of us were taught that. In fact, God loves you so that you can change. God always entices us through love. What empowers change, what makes you desirous of change is the experience of love. It is that inherent experience of love that becomes the engine of change. If the mystics say that one way, they say it a thousand ways. But because mo...
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I sometimes worry that my spiritual practices may not be opening me to an authentic God experience. (From Blake in Craighall Park)
Posted: 24 May 2010
Another word to describe mystical moments is emancipation. If it isn’t an experience of newfound freedom, I don’t think it is an authentic God experience. God is always bigger than we imagined or expected or even hoped. When you see people going to church and becoming smaller instead of larger, you have every reason to question whether the pract...
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Could you suggest a way or an exercise to help me become more aware? (From Joan in Northriding)
Posted: 22 May 2010
Here is one exercise to help you practice awareness:
1.With your senses (not so much your mind), focus on one single object until you stop fighting it or resisting it with other concerns. This should lead to an initial calmness in your body and mind.
2.You must choose not to judge the object in any way, attach to it, reject it as meaningless...
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Religious teachers, including Jesus, the Buddha, and many Hindu sages, are always telling us wake up—to be alert, alive, awake, attentive, or aware. But what does this really mean? (From Maria in Cape Town)
Posted: 19 May 2010
Being conscious or aware means:
I drop to a level deeper than the passing show.
I become the calm seer of my dramas from that level.
I watch myself compassionately from a little distance, almost as if the “myself” is someone else—a “corpse” as St. Francis put it.
I dis-identify with my own emotional noise, and no longer let it pull m...
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You often write about being "aware". Why is the practice of awareness necessary?
Posted: 16 May 2010
To be aware is not just to be conscious of the many things around us. Scholars speak of objectless consciousness. We are not necessarily being aware of any particular thing, but being able to take in all that the situation offers without eliminating anything.
Now this does not come naturally to us. We have to work for this type of awareness....
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Poverty is such a huge problem in South Africa. What more can we do than just make contribution to out local churches and hope that they act on our behalf for the poor. (from Carol in Morningside)
Posted: 08 May 2010
We can no longer be satisfied by simply being the Church for the poor from our position of establishment. We must realize that sometimes that very generosity, that very attempt to be good to other people, has kept us in a position of power and superiority.
Somehow we must be of and with the poor, and then be ready for some mistrust and even cri...
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I sometimes think that our belief system is too complicated. Do you think that is the way to true happiness? (from Roger in Kempton Park)
Posted: 02 May 2010
Jesus starts his Sermon on the Mount talking about happiness.
The people I know who are happy always have a simple belief system.
It’s very concrete, it’s personal, and they don’t refashion it every week according to the new polls or the cultural mood.
The happiest people alive usually believe one or two things really well, and base the...
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I notice that Soul Provider is very keen on the word "Soul". How exactly would you define soul? (from Linda in George)
Posted: 19 Apr 2010
Soul is the blueprint inside of everything that tells it what it is. Now in many ways, we human beings haven’t found our own blueprint. That’s why we’re largely conformists. We do what everybody tells us is the appropriate thing to do because we haven’t really discovered our own deepest ultimate meaning, our deepest destiny, our purpose, that wh...
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I live in constant pain from a disease I have had since childhood. Do you think that holding pain can transform us in some way? (From Jonah in Algoa Bay)
Posted: 15 Apr 2010
When we finally allow life to take us through the Paschal Mystery of passion, death, and resurrection, we will be transformed. At this stage we’ll have found the capacity to hold the pain, not to fear it or hate it or project it onto other people.
Actually, it’s really God holding the pain in us, because our little self can’t do it. But the Bi...
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I recently attended a Baptism where you told the congregation that Christ was not Jesus' surname? I don't get it. (from Courtney in Johannesburg)
Posted: 11 Apr 2010
That's right, Christ is not Jesus’ last name. Christ is a much more inclusive title, which we so consistently tack onto the name Jesus that we think Jesus Christ is his full name! There is a wonderful and correct phraseology in Peter's first sermon after the Pentecost event: he says, "God has made this Jesus whom you crucified into the Christ" (Ac...
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How can we, the children of God, achieve our inherent dignity? (From Maureen in Germiston)
Posted: 07 Apr 2010
Forget it, Maureen. We cannot achieve our inherent dignity—our divine sonship and our divine daughterhood. All we can do is awaken to it and start drawing upon it, appreciating it, reveling in it. We live with an inherent dignity by reason of our creation, a dignity that no one has given to us and no one can take from us.
And it has nothing t...
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I understand the importance of Good Friday and Easter Sunday. But why is Easter Saturday such a big deal? Do we really need to attend the Service of Light? (From Adam in Kensington)
Posted: 03 Apr 2010
Yes, Adam, you do need to get your butt to the Service of Light tonight!
Limen is the Latin word for threshold. A “liminal space” is the crucial in-between time when everything actually happens and yet nothing appears to be happening. It is the waiting period when the cake bakes, the actual movement is made, the real transformation takes place...
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I must admit that I struggle with all this talk of "sacrifice" at Easter. What message are we meant to get? (from Bob in Silvermine Air Force Base)
Posted: 01 Apr 2010
Exodus (12:1-8, 11-14) says on the 10th day of the month of Nissan (“April”), they are to procure a small year-old lamb for each household. They are to keep it in the household for four days—just enough time for the children to bond with it and for all to see its loveliness—and then “slaughter it during the evening twilight”! That night they are ...
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I am struggling to fall pregnant. Do you think I should be more like Mary and just try to "let it be"?
Posted: 24 Mar 2010
The unusual numbers of barren women in the Old Testament are the symbols of “I can’t do it, but God can!” Now this is personified in the Virgin Mary, but it is still the same Jewish symbol. In Mary, and in us, we see our incapacity to make it happen by our own devices, by our own cleverness and by our own sexuality, but we can let it be and let G...
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I am not a Catholic, but I am fascinated by their fascination of Mary. Why is she so special? (From Bob in Boksburg).
Posted: 21 Mar 2010
If Jesus is the archetype of how a gift is given, Mary is the archetype of how a gift is received.
The amazing thing is the Scripture says almost nothing about Mary. No credit ratings are stated; it doesn’t say she prayed a lot or went to the temple.
The Catholic reading on Mary at its best moments is highly mystical. This feminine re...
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Mel Gibson's movie was called "The Passion of the Christ". Why "the Christ"? I thought that was Jesus' surname. (from Therese in Sandton).
Posted: 18 Mar 2010
Gibson was right. To understand Jesus in a whole new way, we must first know that Christ is not his surname, but his transformed identity after the Resurrection—which takes humanity and all of creation along in its sweet path.
Jesus became the Christ, which existed from the moment of the Big Bang (John 1:2, Colossians 1:17-20) and included us ...
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Please explain why I need to detach from my self-image? (from Joan in Rustenburg)
Posted: 17 Mar 2010
Jesus on the cross is not an image of the death of the bad self but, in fact, the self that feels essential, right and necessary—but isn’t necessary at all!
It’s the image of Jesus who was only thirty-three years old and had not even gotten started on his mission, the misunderstood and misinterpreted Jesus, the oppressed Jesus.
There were a...
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Although I live in a busy city and am surrounded by colleagues and friends, I realise that I am deeply lonely. How can this be possible? (From Shannon in Cape Town)
Posted: 06 Mar 2010
Do you know what the answer for deep loneliness is? Solitude! No one would have ever imagined it, but I promise you it is true.
In solitude, we are able to let Reality/God define us from the inside out. We stop looking outside of ourselves for diversions, entertainment, or real satisfaction. It is the birth of the soul. When we keep looking ...
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As a Jew, I must say that find your meditations most enlightening about Christianity. What still puzzles me is why you worship a scapegoat figure as God. (from Selwyn in Berea, Durban)
Posted: 26 Feb 2010
You are right Selwyn, it really is quite amazing that we Christians worship a visible victim rather than an apparent victor.
So what does worshiping Jesus as the scapegoat teach us? In worshiping the scapegoat, we should gradually learn to stop scapegoating, because we could be utterly wrong, just as “church” and state, high priest and king, J...
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I read your brilliant meditation on Tiger Woods on Monday. What do we need to sacrifice in order to forgive? (From Lise in Sandton)
Posted: 24 Feb 2010
We have always needed to find a way to deal with human anxiety and evil by some means—and it was invariably some practice other than forgiveness or healing. We usually dealt with human anxiety and evil by sacrificial systems of some sort, and that has largely continued to this day. (Exclusion, torture, war, segregation, class division, prejudice, a...
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How do I stand against hate without becoming hate myself? (From Julie in Krugersdorp)
Posted: 23 Feb 2010
This is the great spiritual problem.
We would all agree that evil is to be rejected and overcome; the only question is, how? How can we stand against evil without becoming a mirror—but denied—image of the same?
That is often the heart of the matter, and in my experience is resolved successfully by a very small portion of people, even though ...
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I have heard you speak about coming to God through imperfection. I find this difficult to understand. (from Louise in Potchefstroom)
Posted: 19 Feb 2010
It is indeed wonderful news that we come to God not by our perfection but by our imperfection! That gives all of us an equal chance, and utterly levels the human playing field. No pretending is necessary.
Deep within each of us live both a leper and a wolf in Franciscan imagery: Francis embraced the leper on the road, and called it his conver...
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On this Ash Wednesday, could you perhaps let us have any pointers for Lent this year? (From Greg in Sandringham)
Posted: 17 Feb 2010
I can do no better than quote Thomas Merton who wrote "Only in silence and solitude, in the quiet of worship, the reverent peace of prayer, the adoration in which the entire ego-self silences and abases itself in the presence of the Invisible God to receive His one Word of Love; only in these "activities" which are "non-actions" does the spirit tru...
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What makes me judge something as wrong? (from Tracy in Robindale)
Posted: 13 Feb 2010
Don’t confuse words with reality. The very function of words is that they are dualistic and make distinctions of this from that. Experience, however, is always non-dual. If you’d be honest, you will see that with every actual experience you have, if you receive it at any depth, there are some good sides to it and some problematic sides to it—e...
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God just doesn't seem to hear my prayers. What should I do? (from Sheba in Germiston)
Posted: 05 Feb 2010
Prayer is indeed the way to make contact with God, but it is not an attempt to change God’s mind about us or about events.
Such attempts are what the secularists make fun of—and rightly so. It is primarily about changing our mind so that things like infinity, mystery, and forgiveness can resound within us.
The small mind cannot see Great T...
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Often I wonder what my life is really all about? Must I undergo a "conversion"? (from Sue in Centurion)
Posted: 25 Jan 2010
St Paul’s conversion was a classic and authentic religious conversion. It was an inner and authoritative experience, not just an idea, not hearsay, nor some secondhand information given to him, not textbook knowledge. Afterwards, he knew. God has no grandchildren, only children.
Every person has to come to the God experience on their own. Conv...
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Sometimes it feels like I am allowing hate or mean-spiritedness to control my life. Please help! (from Jaco in Stellenbosch)
Posted: 18 Jan 2010
Fear is almost always behind hate. Sometimes it looks like taking necessary control, but control freaks are usually afraid of losing something. It is almost always fear that justifies hatred, but a fear that is hardly ever recognized as such.
For fear to survive, it must look like reason, prudence, common sense, justice, or even religion. ...
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How best should we approach contemplation? Should we "put on a different mind"? (from Eddie in Ballito)
Posted: 03 Jan 2010
Non-dual thinking is the most accurately descriptive term I can find for contemplation. Not necessarily inspiring, but accurate!
It is a different mind, a different way of seeing and hearing which does not divide the field of the moment, but lets the whole moment, as it is, come toward you. It allows each moment to be an epiphany and its own k...
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I find it very uncomfortable to accept praise from others. How should I approach this? (from Carol in Mondeor)
Posted: 10 Dec 2009
I would like to offer Mary, the mother of Jesus as the perfect approach. Mary offers no refusal or false humility to Elizabeth’s loud cry: “Of all women you are the most blessed….Yes, blessed is she who believed that the promise made her by the Lord would be fulfilled” (Luke 1:42, 45).
Mary is a woman who is profoundly self-possessed. She ca...
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God calls me in so many ways, but I really do feel unworthy. Can you suggest a way for me to respond? (from Nicola in Pinetown)
Posted: 06 Dec 2009
The Annunciation story (Luke 1:26-38) is the crescendo point of the theme of total grace and gift. Did you ever notice that Mary does not say she’s "not worthy"? She just asks for clarification. She only asks “How” because that might ask something more of her. She never asks if, whether or why!
That is quite extraordinary and reveals her egoless...
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I am not a Christian, but I am intrigued by Union with God. What do you mean by being "saved"? (from Irfaan in Cape Town)
Posted: 05 Dec 2009
When it comes to the gift of contemplation, every major religion in the world has come to very similar conclusions. Every religion—Hinduism, Buddhism, the eastern religions—all agree, but each in its own way, that finally we are called to a transformed consciousness, a new mind or being “born again” a second time in some way. Each religion has dif...
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How can God love me if I can't love myself? (from Marius in Johannesburg)
Posted: 03 Dec 2009
We must be willing to admit to the contradictions inside of us, and still let God love us in that partial state. Once we agree to see our own shadow side, our own foolishness, and our own sin and still know that God has not abandoned us, we become a living paradox that reveals the goodness of God. This is what the tax collectors and prostitutes ha...
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I can't believe that God can love a sinner like me. And I can't believe He needs my puny little response and thanks. Rev Brent, please help! (From Juliet in Parow)
Posted: 27 Nov 2009
In a young adults class a few years ago, I wrote the following on the blackboard: "God does not love you because you are good, but you are good because God loves you."
However, many later, I think we have improved on it. Now I say, "God does not love you because you are good, God loves you because God is good." Both sayings are true—in fact,...
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Today is THANKSGIVING in the United States. The Soul Provider Trust would like to thank all volunteers and humbly offers this prayer (please feel free to use it as you see fit):
Posted: 26 Nov 2009
Thank You for Your goodness, Ever Giving God,
for the goodness of this place and work,
for the goodness of one another,
for the goodness of all creation,
and even for our own goodness,
all of which is merely a part of Yours.
You volunteer Your Love to us, freely and without limit,
You volunteer to come among us as a human being in Jesus.
...
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I have just been retrenched and I am finding it very difficult to thank God for His grace right now. Help! (from Candice in Modderfontein)
Posted: 25 Nov 2009
When Job's life is about to be taken away from him, he can say one of two things. He can curse God, as he is tempted to do, and say, “God, why not fifty-one years of life?” Or he can surrender to love and say, “God, why even fifty years?” Why did I deserve life at all? When we take on that attitude, we've made a decision for grace.
"Naked I c...
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How can I learn from my mistakes and life-wounds? (from Paul in Killarney)
Posted: 22 Nov 2009
Give me your failure, God says, and I will make life out of it. Give me your broken, disfigured, rejected, betrayed lives, like the body you see hanging on the cross, and I will make life out of it.
This is the divine pattern of promise and transformation which gives such hope to history. It is probably the central Gospel message.
We are al...
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I have a problem with my self-image. Could you give me some guidance? (From Anonymous)
Posted: 21 Nov 2009
The greatest gift of centered and surrendered people is that they know themselves as part of a larger history, a larger self. Their life is not about them! They are just one lovely instance of a Much Larger and More Wonderful Life.
In that sense, holy people are in one sense profoundly conservative, knowing that they only stand on the shoulder...
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Why is it that Mother Teresa could stand up before crowds of thousands and simply repeat simple New Testament phrases, and blow people away?! (from Theresa in Mondeor)
Posted: 18 Nov 2009
You are right, Theresa, she didn’t say anything new: “Jesus loves you,” she assured us. “We’re sons and daughters of God and we have to love Jesus’ poor.” Yet people walked out renewed, transformed and converted.
She wasn’t a priest. She wasn’t well-educated. Her authority came from her life-style and her pure goodness.
Servanthood with ...
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Could you help me to understand how John the Baptist managed to transform people so effectively? (from Michael in Parktown North)
Posted: 18 Nov 2009
John the Baptist is the prophet who rejects the system without apology, eats the harsh food of that choice, and wears the clothes of rejection.
Like our Koi San people in the Kalahari, he goes on his vision quest into the desert where he faces his aloneness, boredom and naked self. He returns with a message, a clarity, a sureness of heart that...
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Mary McLeod Bethune
Posted: 18 Nov 2009
Invest in the human soul. Who knows, it might be a diamond in the rough. ...
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What is St Catherine's Tree and what can it teach us? (from Brian in Robertsham)
Posted: 18 Nov 2009
St. Catherine of Siena in her Dialogues pictures the spiritual life as a large tree:
The trunk of the tree is love.
She says the core of the tree, that middle part that must be alive for the rest of the tree to be alive, is patience.
The roots of the tree are self-knowledge.
The many branches, reaching out into the air, are discernment.
(N...
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What is "the journey of the mind to God" that Bonaventure wrote about? (from Kathy in Randburg)
Posted: 15 Nov 2009
St. Bonaventure, building on Francis’ personal love of nature and the Incarnation of Jesus, saw the "traces" or "footprints" of God in all things. The whole world was also the “incarnation” of the God mystery, and the very “Body of God.” Jesus was the microcosm of the cosmos, the hologram of the whole, as it were! (See Colossians 1:15-20.)
Th...
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What is "metanoia"? (from June in St Francis)
Posted: 14 Nov 2009
Jesus talks frequently about metanoia: turning around, or changing your mind. What are we supposed to turn around from? What if we are already facing in the good Christian direction? Does this verse no longer apply to us?
I remember having problems with that myself. I thought, “What am I supposed to turn around from? I’m baptised, I’m confirme...
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I heard you talking about "surrender" in one of your recent sermons. Why do I find it so hard to do? (from Derek in Constantia)
Posted: 12 Nov 2009
It is somewhat disconcerting to modern self-made people that they should need “salvation” at all. We have all been trained in doing it ourselves, and many of us succeeded pretty well. So why change the pattern? Is it just “fire insurance”? Just in case?
Life will normally lead you to some situation or relationship that you cannot fix, control,...
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Why is it so difficult to surrender to God? (from Michael in Turffontein)
Posted: 09 Nov 2009
Many Christians have gone through years of religious education and church services and have never trustfully surrendered to Jesus or to God or to any “Higher Power.” Like all of us, they are still trying to steer and control the ship themselves.
But why would we entrust ourselves to Someone that we do not know, or that we do not know is inhere...
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Why do I always find difficulty in just letting go and trusting God? (From Chrissie in Ballito)
Posted: 06 Nov 2009
Spiritual life is always about letting go of unnecessary baggage so that we’re prepared for death’s final letting go.
That can only happen if we’re willing to know that our protected self-image is not the deepest me.
Our passing personas are important and a good part of the journey and they even help us to taste moments of the Great I Am th...
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I have just lost my wife. Could you tell me something about death and grief? (from Martin in Orange Grove)
Posted: 04 Nov 2009
We must learn how to walk through the stages of dying. We have to grieve over lost friends, relatives, and loves.
Death cannot be dealt with through quick answers, religious platitudes, or a stiff upper lip.
Dying must be allowed to happen over time, in predictable and necessary stages, both in those who die graciously and in those who love...
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Could you give me some advice on how best I can handle the pain of my daughter's divorce? It's causing us all great suffering. (from Joan in George)
Posted: 03 Nov 2009
Pain teaches a most counterintuitive thing—that we must go down before we even know what up is. Suffering of some sort seems to be the only thing strong enough to destabilize our arrogance and our ignorance. I would define suffering very simply as “whenever you are not in control.”
All healthy religion shows you what to do with your pain. If we...
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Why is it that only us men have "initiation"? (from Bob in Parkmore, Johannesburg)
Posted: 01 Nov 2009
The male psyche is normally fragile and insecure because it is based on overwhelmingly external and transitory criteria, a game which almost all men eventually lose. The poor male has to look good and he has to defend the honour of his bank account, his family, his race, his country, but all in reference to himself! His question is not allowed to b...
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You often refer to "the contemplative mind". How would you define that? (from Albie in Saxonwold)
Posted: 15 Oct 2009
The contemplative mind does not need to prove anything or disprove anything.
It looks for wisdom by saying, “What does this text ask of me, what do I need to change in me?” Not, "how can I change others?"
The contemplative mind lets the terrifying/wonderful moment be what it is and primarily ask something of me, not always using it to conver...
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How does it feel to really live in cooperation with God? Can I be God’s conduit? (from Michael in Big Sur, California)
Posted: 26 Sep 2009
To live in cooperation with God is to live inside of an unexplainable hope, because your life will now feel much larger than your own. In fact, it is not your own life, and yet, paradoxically, you are more “you” than ever before.
That is the constant and consistent experience of the mystics—their vision that can also be your own. “God, you were...
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I am currently doing an Alpha course and find the constant "praising, thanking and asking" method of praying a bit facile. Could you advise me how best we should pray? (from Sharon in Johannesburg)
Posted: 23 Sep 2009
The word “prayer” has often been trivialized by making it into a way of getting what you want. But here I use “prayer” as the umbrella word for any interior journeys or practices that allow you to experience faith, hope, and love within yourself. It is not a technique for getting things, a pious exercise that somehow makes God happy, or a requireme...
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Why do we have this gift of the Holy Spirit within us and yet not always realise it? (from Chris in Sandown)
Posted: 21 Sep 2009
Perhaps God does not want to force anything on us that we do not actually desire or choose for ourselves. So a lovely dance ensues between God and the soul that preserves freedom on both sides. The gift is already within, and yet has to be desired and awakened by the person. But you never know that it is within until after it is awakened! This is a...
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Do you think that spirituality and religion can help me to define my own identity? (from Alice in Potchefstroom)
Posted: 17 Sep 2009
Most people in our whimsical culture live in a hall of mirrors, and so we find ourselves with fragile and rapidly changing identities, needing a lot of affirmation. We see this especially in so many young people. Their identities are built on feelings, moods, and ideas that are easily manipulated by everything around them, including advertising and...
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How will I know that I have truly found God? (from Stephen in Pretoria)
Posted: 15 Sep 2009
It has been said many times that, after transformation, you seldom have the feeling you have found anything. It feels much more like Someone found you!
You find yourself having been grabbed, being held, and being Someone’s beloved. At first, you do not even know what is going on. All you know is that it is a most wondrous undergoing, but an unde...
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Why do I find it so difficult to pray that God's will "be done unto me"?
Posted: 14 Sep 2009
Mature transcendence is an actual “falling into” and an “undergoing” of God. God is “done unto us,” and all we can do is allow it, as both the similar prayers of Mary at the Annunciation and Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane make clear. What we fall into is what Christianity would call both “an abyss” and an “utter foundation.” What a paradox! But ...
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How can we best avoid falling into cynicism, bitterness, fear and despair? (from Charles in Pretoria)
Posted: 08 Sep 2009
Somewhere each day we have to fall in love, with someone, something, some moment, event, phrase, animal, or person. And it must be done quite definitively! Somehow each day we must allow a softening of our heart, which usually moves toward hardness and separation without our even knowing it. We can now prove neurologically that it is easier to move...
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I have been given so many talents but I feel I am not using even a fraction of them to save the world. Where do I start? (from Morgan in Sandton)
Posted: 03 Sep 2009
As long as we think that we alone have to save the world, we become arrogant in our methods, impatient in our attitudes and quick in our solutions. Instead, we must seek the patience and peace of God. The man and woman of God are content to let God work through their lives for some little bit of unity. Wherever you are, let God create a little bit ...
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I love God, but sometimes I find it difficult to love the Church. How can I love the unlovely? (from Nadia in Pietermaritzburg)
Posted: 31 Aug 2009
Nothing in this world is an end in itself, including Church, pastors, priests, bishops, popes, laws, Bible—nothing! Only God is an end; everything else is a means. Only God can save us, not the Church and not any formula, technique, or pious practice.
The Church is a beautiful gift given by God to preach that word which will set us free. But when...
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In the wake of recent Facebook attacks on Jesus Christ, there is a petition addressed to Pope Benedict demanding these pages be withdrawn as offensive to Christians. How best do you think we should defend our God? (from Michelle in Johannesburg)
Posted: 30 Aug 2009
Those who have walked this transformative journey through death to resurrection (“the Paschal Mystery”) are the ones who have the authority to say” I know God.” They are drawing upon a Life larger than their own. It is not a belief system but an actual “knowing”. Instead of just “I believe there is a God”, God becomes a “well springing up within us...
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I believe that I am a fairly orthodox Christian, but I do have difficulty with the Church's whole doctrine of Transubstantiation of bread. (from Michael in Bedfordview)
Posted: 28 Aug 2009
True spiritual authority (which is the power to “author” life in others) does not have to do with “transubstantiating” bread,it does not have to do with any external title, office, or costume. Transubstantiating bread is merely a metaphor for the transubstantiating of persons that the bread feeds. I believe that matter and Spirit, the divine and th...
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Should my faith help me to transform my pain? (from Artie in Port Elizabeth)
Posted: 27 Aug 2009
If your religion doesn't help you to transform your pain, it is junk religion. We all have pain—it’s the human situation, we all carry it in a big black bag behind us and it gets heavier as we get older: by betrayals, rejections, disappointments, and wounds that are inflicted along the way.
If we do not find some way to transform our pain, I ca...
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Why do we pray “Our Father” instead of “My Father”? (From Lizette in Germiston)
Posted: 25 Aug 2009
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gives us his only taught prayer, which we call the “Our Father” (Matthew 6: 9 - 13).
The prayer aligns all relationships truthfully and situates us correctly in a universe of meaning. The first three petitions align us vertically with the Transcendent, and the second four align us with the horizontal world of r...
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I am a recovered alcoholic. How best can I use my experience to promote and prove my new-found faith? (from Caroline in Cape Town)
Posted: 20 Aug 2009
“If salt is tasteless, it is good for nothing. . . .A city built on a hill-top cannot be hidden” (Matthew 5:13a-14b). These primary metaphors of Jesus might be the same as the Alcoholics Anonymous tradition which tells their members: “We must grow by attraction and not by promotion.” Mere ideas need to be promoted, protected, and proven, whereas li...
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What is "contemplation" and where can I go to learn more about it? (from Syd in Durban)
Posted: 11 Aug 2009
Francisco de Osuna was one of the last teachers of the contemplative tradition that had been systematically taught in the monasteries for centuries, and started with the Desert Fathers and Mothers. It was lived and practiced spontaneously by Jesus, it seems, but has largely been lost for the last four to five hundred years.
The good news is tha...
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What is the "third eye" that you hear contemplatives referring to? (from Andre in Parkwood)
Posted: 05 Aug 2009
The first step in contemplative prayer is to experience how negative our thoughts often are, how compulsive they usually are, and how self-referential they invariably are. Early meditation is an experience of immense humiliation as we recognize that our thinking is really of no consequence and will never get us to greatness. Such “thinking” cannot ...
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I find it impossible to meditate or contemplate for longer than about 60 seconds. Then my mind starts thinking about all sorts of things. Can you help me to let go? (from Sally in Sandton)
Posted: 04 Aug 2009
The practice of letting go of all the thoughts that try to demand our attention is difficult, yet it was discovered in some form by contemplatives of all religions. Somehow it is essential. Our compulsive thinking and feeling keeps saying, “This is important!” and “This is urgent!” Eckhart Tolle says that for most Western people, to say “I think” i...
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I am completely disillusioned with the Church right now. Sex abuse scandals, doddery old priests and endless tinkering with minuteae like the liturgy while the poor starve has made me wonder if organised religion has any future. (from Jane in Durban)
Posted: 30 Jul 2009
What is the future of organized religion? Whatever it is, I hope that we will have the courage to stop rewarding and confirming people's egos and calling it morality, ministry or church. I hope that we will have lower expectations of leadership and the institution and therefore less need to rebel against it or unnecessarily depend upon it. True lea...
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Can I get closer to God by studying His law? (from Maxie in Somerset West)
Posted: 23 Jul 2009
The smallest of events can teach us everything, if we learn Who is doing them with us, through us and for us. But have no doubt: That is the total goal. We want law for the sake of order, obedience and “moral purity”; God and Paul want law for the sake of channeling us toward a realization of divine union, to force the honest person to stumble (see...
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What is true prayer? (from Mandy in Craighall Park)
Posted: 20 Jul 2009
Naturally, you should read and love Scripture, but you must also make sure to go there for yourself, to find both your own inner experience named, and some outer validation of the same.
Only when the two come together, inner and outer authority, do we have true spiritual wisdom. We have for too long insisted on outer authority alone, without any...
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If I am moral, will I someday achieve union with God? (From Letitia in Harare, Zimbabwe)
Posted: 18 Jul 2009
I am afraid that’s backwards, Letitia. We must put the horse before the cart, and not the cart before the horse. Union with God is objectively already given to everyone from the moment of their creation. Who else created them? All we can do is awaken to it. We cannot achieve it.
Once we live the life of union and abundance—not hating ourselves ...
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Could you recommend what I should do to become more worthy of God? Which is the best church/denomination for me to do so? (from Lizette in Johannesburg)
Posted: 15 Jul 2009
Our worthiness is given to us, like our DNA, like our genes. We were created in “the image and likeness of God.” That was resolved in the first chapter of the Bible (Genesis 1:26)! But not many unpackaged that for us—in its immense and life changing implications.
All these reformers have come along, thinking they are renewing Christianity, but ...
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I am continuosly troubled by concerns that I am not "measuring up" in the spirituality stakes. How can I become more worthy? (from Lynette in Northcliff)
Posted: 14 Jul 2009
Henri Nouwen, the marvelous spiritual author, once wrote, “If I had to describe what we mean by original sin, I believe it is humanity’s endless capacity for self-loathing.”
We were given the absolutely most magnificent gift of therapy (if I could call it that) in the Mystery of the Incarnation. If we could really believe that objectively, metap...
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How do I cultivate a relationship with my guardian angel? (from Michelle in Boston, USA)
Posted: 14 Jul 2009
I would hesitate to encourage people to try to "cultivate" relationships with their guardian angel and I certainly wouldn't call doing so a "necessity."
While we are part of the communion of saints and should consider praying to them to ask their intercession and to honour them, a "relationship" with a saint or angel in this life is a gift and ...
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You recently wrote that God even uses evil to bring us to God. I don't agree because God is totally holy and could never be "unholy". (from John in Cape Town)
Posted: 12 Jul 2009
When the crucifixion of Jesus is dramatised in the Gospels, we have this very interesting image of the tearing of the temple veil from top to bottom. Now the word for temple is fanum. Everything outside the temple was pro fanum. (Hence we get our word “profane.”)
There was “the holy” and it was distinguished from “the unholy.” The tearing of th...
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We Catholics worship Mary as the Mother of God. How can we possibly be expected to imitate her? (from Rose in Maryvale)
Posted: 11 Jul 2009
I think it’s important that we let Mary be a human person. An image of Mary as one of us helps us to identify with her and to duplicate her attitude. In this way she’ll much more readily become a living image for the reform of the Church and for human liberation. You can put someone on a pedestal and thereby prevent any authentic relation with that...
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We always refer to God the Father. But is he really masculine? (from Shelley in Zambia)
Posted: 09 Jul 2009
The Father that Jesus knew looks amazingly like what most cultures would call “Mother.” In Luke 15, the story of the prodigal son, Jesus makes his most complete presentation of the character of this Father, whom he called God. The father is in every way the total opposite of the male patriarch and even rejects his older son’s appeal from a world of...
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Even though we now live in a democracy, I still don't really feel free and liberated. (from Thabo in Soweto)
Posted: 04 Jul 2009
It’s quite clear that in the final analysis it’s the grace of God that liberates us. It’s the experience of divine and unconditional love that really sets us free. No political system can offer us this inner liberty.
But first we have to need, really need and long for Something More. Perhaps this is why the “drunkards, the prostitutes, and the ...
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How can we use our failures to get closer to God? (from Alphie in Johannesburg)
Posted: 02 Jul 2009
The freedom to fall is also the freedom to rise. It’s precisely in our failure, our experience of poverty, weakness, emptiness that we come to experience God’s restoration and healing love.
You can say, “Oh, that’s dangerous, it sounds like you’re justifying sin.” I’m just trying to be the ultimate realist. Failure is part of the deal for every...
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Despite my best efforts, neither of my children attend church. In fact, I don't even think they believe in God. How can I persuade or even force them to save their eternal souls? (from Debbie in Durbanville)
Posted: 30 Jun 2009
We can never bring about the Kingdom of God by means of fear (see Romans 14:16-17) or mere social pressure. It is by definition not the Kingdom of God if it is brought about by fear or coercion, yet we have often been satisfied with just that, even in the church.
God allows and respects the freedom of creatures, even to the point of allowing ou...
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What is meant by "contemplation"? Is it some kind of new-age technique? (from Joe in Barberton)
Posted: 29 Jun 2009
All great traditions teach us some form of contemplation, because it is actually a different form of knowledge that emerges inside of the “cloud of unknowing.”
It is a refusal to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and finding freedom, grace and comfort in the not needing to know, which ironically opens us up to a much deeper con...
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How can I find true freedom in religion? (from Annette in Port Elizabeth)
Posted: 28 Jun 2009
The primal freedom is the freedom to be our True Self—the freedom to live in the whole truth of the moment—attractive and unattractive. This takes far more courage than we might imagine.
Great religion offers us, not just freedom from our small illusion (often called “sin”) but freedom for the Big Picture. That’s why the saints could be imprison...
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I am an alcoholic and seem to always be on the outside of the existing system. Can the Gospel lead me back in? (From Anonymous in South Africa)
Posted: 27 Jun 2009
The Gospel doesn’t bless the existing system; it leads us to the edges where freedom might be found. It does so in such a way that we can return to the world, without being addictively dependent on it any more.
We are able to return to the suffering and joys of this world, without letting ourselves be seduced by its false promises from either t...
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Is the purpose of the Soul Provider to give us encouragement and comfort? (from Lilian in Turffontein)
Posted: 26 Jun 2009
Walter Brueggemann says the job of the prophet is to free people from their numbness. That is also the task of Soul Provider. It is to wake people up, to bring them to consciousness, and not just to comfort them in their unconscious state.
I am afraid a lot of soft piety and too quick religious comfort does precisely that. The giveaway is when ...
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How do I know that I am on the right religious course? Sometimes I feel like I am posturing or being a phoney. (from Fr George in Cape Town)
Posted: 25 Jun 2009
Unhealthy religion often feels like posturing; it feels like ego, it doesn’t feel too much like Jesus. He was always patient and humble, holding his truth calmly. When the ego has no real inner experience, it has to pretend it knows perfectly. It likes to demand agreement and compliance from others—preferably right now.
The sign that someone re...
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My husband and I have always insisted on our kids attending church with us. Now that they are teenagers, they are resisting this pressure. Should we force them? (from Mildred in Krugersdorp)
Posted: 23 Jun 2009
Humans do not have the patience or the humility of God. We want things done tomorrow, today or yesterday to achieve our immediate goals. To achieve this we use various forms of pressure, force, or manipulation of events or people.
Spiritual power, however, is the ability to influence events and others through one’s very being. Evolved people ch...
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Should we be concerned with the world at large or just with our own faith community? (from Michael in Constantia)
Posted: 21 Jun 2009
All of us must have one foot in our faith community and one foot in the larger world—or frankly we have little to offer either group. We become either idolatrous and isolated inside of our group, or we become alienated seekers with no ground, inner core, or accountability to a community. Somehow we all must learn to love people, groups, and institu...
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If, as you say, we are all members of the Body of Christ, what about non-believers, Hindus, Buddhists etc? (From Alex in Springfield)
Posted: 16 Jun 2009
“Now the body is not made up of one part, but of many. If the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body” (I Cor. 12: 14-15). Just because it doesn’t know it is a part of the body, doesn’t mean it isn’t a part of the body. We must differentiate between objective ...
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How is the Holy Spirit present in my prayers? (from Caroline in Amsterdam, Holland)
Posted: 12 Jun 2009
St. Paul refers to the Spirit’s presence in our prayer as the one who breathes life into it. The Holy Spirit takes over our human spirit and makes up for our shortcomings.
“The Spirit also helps us in our weakness. For when we do not know what to say in prayer, the Spirit expresses what we mean in wordless sounds and sighs” (Romans 8:26).
W...
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I heard an interesting debate on Radio 702 between two theologians. They were debating whether or not there is salvation for those outside the church. What do you think? (from Jackie in Vanderbijlpark)
Posted: 07 Jun 2009
A Christian is someone who’s animated by the spirit of Christ, a person in whom the spirit of Christ can work. That doesn’t always mean that we consciously know what we are doing, or we formally belong to a church or to Christianity. As St. Augustine said, “God has many that the church does not have, and the church has many that God does not have.”...
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How do I get to grow in the Spirit? (from Linda in Dunkeld)
Posted: 04 Jun 2009
You don't grow in the Spirit, Linda, the Spirit grows in you! To span the infinite gap between the Divine and the human, God’s agenda is to plant a little bit of God, the Holy Spirit, right inside of us! (Jeremiah 31:31-34; John 14:16ff.) The Spirit then operates like a homing device or a divine pace maker, driving us toward life. You will receive...
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I heard you preaching this Pentecost Sunday. It was very moving but I don't understand how I can get the Holy Spirit to come into my life (Bob from Rosebank)
Posted: 03 Jun 2009
You can't "get" the Spirit, Bob. Nor can you "find" her, because the Spirit is always present. The day of Pentecost frees the apostles to believe in the power of the seemingly invisible Spirit. God had not changed; they had, by the Spirit’s gift. They became like Jacob, at the foot of his ladder, saying, “You were here all the time, but I never kn...
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Don't Get Too Educated (from L Host)
Posted: 02 Jun 2009
A Ph D graduate and an ordinary man went on a camping trip, They set up their tent, and they fell asleep. Some hours later, the ordinary man woke up his Phd friend.
"Look up and tell me what you see?"
The Ph D replies: "I see millions of stars."
The ordinary man asks: "What does that tell you?"
The Ph D ponders for a minute:"Astronomica...
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Rev Brent's Pentecost Sermon
Posted: 01 Jun 2009
Today is the great feast of Pentecost, the feast that ranks with Christmas and Easter as the greatest of the Church year.
It is the feast of the Holy Spirit; the love between the Father and the Son; the Holy Spirit that enlivens and animates the whole Church; the Holy Spirit that is in your heart and is in my heart.
It’s the Feast of the Chur...
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How can contemplation help us to find the God out there? (from Buster in Vredehoek)
Posted: 29 May 2009
Contemplation is the only way to come back to unitive consciousness, to experience the primal, in-depth oneness of all things with God. It allows us to overcome the illusion that we are separate and it allows us to see the enchanted universe as inherently sacred and filled with meanings. Without contemplation, the world is an empty place, and we ha...
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I heard you talking about "shadow work" at a Soul Workshop recently. Can you explain what it is? (P. Ndlela from Norwood)
Posted: 26 May 2009
The biblical revelation is about awakening, not accomplishing. It is a realization, and not any kind of performance principle whatsoever.
The ego is that part of the self that wants to be significant, central, and important. It is very defended and self-protective by its very nature. It must eliminate the negative to succeed.
The shadow is ...
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Could you guide me in developing a contemplative mind? (from Jeremy in Sandton)
Posted: 25 May 2009
The calculating mind is the opposite of the contemplative mind. The first is taught by the systems of our world, the second by the Holy Spirit.
We might consider this prayer to try to draw ourselves into a contemplative frame of mind:
Be still and know that I am God.
Be still and know that I am.
Be still and know.
Be still.
Be. ...
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Could you expand on this idea of seeing The Divine Image inside myself? (Sr Lucy from East London)
Posted: 22 May 2009
When we find the divine image planted so firmly inside ourselves, and when we find that ability to honour the divine image within, we learn reverence, adoration and praise—as a way of life.
The love of self and the love of the other are always moving forward together. As one advances, the other has to advance. As one regresses the other will no...
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You wrote recently that we should "get out of the way" and let God be God. How do we do that? (from Byron in Plettenberg Bay)
Posted: 21 May 2009
The eyes by which we look back at God, as Meister Eckhart said, are the very same eyes by which God has first looked at us. All we can do is complete the circuit. We don’t know how to look at God. We don’t know where to look. We don’t know what to look for. It is God in us that loves God. And all we can do is get ourselves out of the way.
It is...
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The Pope on Facebook?
Posted: 20 May 2009
In the latest bid to broaden Pope Benedict XVI's appeal among computer savvy, younger generations, the Vatican is to post the pontiff's profile on popular online social networking site, Facebook, officials said on Monday.
"The pope has a great interest in these things," Archbishop Claudio Celli said in an interview with television news channel S...
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POPE RECALLS THE HIGHLIGHTS OF HIS HOLY LAND TOUR
Posted: 19 May 2009
Pope Benedict XVI offered two assessments of his visit to the Holy Land-- first speaking to journalists who accompanied him on the flight from Tel Aviv back to Rome, then speaking to the crowd gathered for his regular Angelus audience on Sunday, May 17.
In his talk to reporters, the Pope mentioned a few memorable moments from the trip:
* ...
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You have often said that our seperation from God is an illusion. I don't get it so could you please explain that. (from Bobby in Sandton)
Posted: 18 May 2009
Contemplation is the only way to come back to unitive consciousness, to experience the primal, in-depth oneness of all things with God. It allows us to overcome the illusion that we are separate and to see the enchanted universe as inherently sacred and filled with meanings. Without it, the world is an empty place, and we have to create all the mea...
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I am constantly fretting about the past and the future. How do I pay more attention to the present? (from Cynthia in Northcliff)
Posted: 15 May 2009
The contemplative secret is to learn to live in the now. The now is not as empty as it might appear to be or that we fear it may be.
Try to realize that everything is right here, right now. When we’re doing life right, it means nothing more than it is right now, because God is in this moment in a non-blaming way.
When we are able to experienc...
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I find that the Catholic Church (like Zille's Western Cape) is too patriarchal and masculine. Is God male or female? (From Yvonne in Tamboerskloof)
Posted: 13 May 2009
Patriarchy and masculinity are not the same thing. Patriarchy is wounded and un-whole masculinity. If we believe that we are created in the image of God - "male and female, God created them" - then half of God is what it means to be feminine.
Anyone who only gives you half of that truth is only giving you half of the mystery of God. The journ...
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Where would you recommend I go to find God? (from Braam in Westdene)
Posted: 13 May 2009
As Eckhart Tolle points out in The Power of Now, we don’t have to be in a certain place or even a perfect person to experience the fullness of God.
God is always given, incarnate in every moment and present to those of us who know how to be present ourselves.
Strangely enough, it is often imperfect people and people in quite secular setting...
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SERMON : 5th Sunday of Easter Year B
Posted: 10 May 2009
In the second half of the Easter season, we are reading from the extraordinary text from the 14th, 15th, 16th and 17th chapter of the Gospel of John. These chapters constitute what we call the Last Supper Discourse. In the Gospel of John, we don’t have an account of Jesus blessing the bread and the cup – that’s in Matthew, Mark and Luke. In John,...
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FORGIVENESS
Posted: 08 May 2009
As a result of the large amount of interest and correspondence we have received about this subject, we have moved it to the Web Blog section.
Please feel free to make your opinions known by clicking on Web Blogs (with Podcasts, Webcasts) and then the subject that you want to comment on....
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'Spin Control' for the Pope's trip to the Holy Land
Posted: 08 May 2009
May. 7, 2009 (CWNews.com)
Expectations are high, as Pope Benedict XVI (bio - news) prepares to leave Rome on Friday for a week-long trip to the Middle East. But tensions are high as well, both at the Vatican and in the Holy Land. The Pope will be visiting the world's most volatile region, working his way through the diplomatic equivalent of a m...
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A lot of my friends have become "born again". Is this necessary? (from Yvette in Springs)
Posted: 28 Apr 2009
There is something that has to die in all of us. It is the self we do not need, and the self that we are not. We know that Jesus’ death and resurrection are pointing to the state of letting go that the ego has to go through in order to be reborn in its true and larger state.
However, before we too quickly use the re-born language we must first ...
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I can accept that God raised Jesus from the dead. My problem is that I don't know if He will do the same for me. (from Ryan in Woodstock)
Posted: 27 Apr 2009
If you accept that there was a Resurrection that will not necessarily lead to any active or transformative faith. (Of course God could raise up Jesus if he wanted to. Mere belief in miracles does not transform us.)
But if you can trust that God would do the same for you, then you also will be changed, and you can begin to change the world. The ...
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Please help me to pray. I am new to Christianity so could you give me something to get started with? (from Bob in Kempton Park)
Posted: 26 Apr 2009
Sure, Bob, try this: "Loving God, we love how you love. We love how you free us. We love what you have given and created.
Help us to recognize, Holy One, and to rejoice in what is given, even in the midst of what is not given.
Help us not to doubt, Lord, what you have given us, even when we feel our shortcomings. We praise you, and we thank...
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You often refer to us as the children of God. Who exactly are the children of God and how do we achieve that status? (from Debbie in Saxonwold)
Posted: 23 Apr 2009
We cannot achieve our inherent dignity—our divine sonship and our divine daughterhood. All we can do is awaken to it and start drawing upon it, appreciating it, reveling in it. We know we live in an inherent dignity, a dignity that no one has given to us and no one can take from us.
And it has nothing to do with our race or religion. Hindus have...
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MOVIE REVIEW: DEFIANCE
Posted: 21 Apr 2009
"Defiance" is based on the true story of a group of Jews in Belarus who successfully defied the Nazis, hid in the forest and maintained a self-contained society while losing only about 50 of their some 1,200 members. The "Bielski Partisans" represented the war's largest and most successful group of Jewish resisters, although when filmmakers arrived...
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How do I discover the real me? (from Neirie in Glendower)
Posted: 16 Apr 2009
Jesus didn’t move from Jesus to the Christ without death and resurrection. And we don’t move from our independent, historical body to the Christ consciousness without dying to our false self.
We, like Jesus himself, have to let go of who we think we are, and who we think we need to be. We have to let go of the ego names by which we have named ...
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How do I follow Christ and not just Jesus? (from Janet in Windhoek)
Posted: 15 Apr 2009
Let me put it this way: Jesus is the microcosm; Christ is the macrocosm. There is a movement from Jesus to the Christ that you and I have to imitate and walk. A lot of us have so fallen in love with the historical Jesus that we worship him as such and stop there. We never really followed the same journey which he made, which is the death and resurr...
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The Urbi et Orbi Message from Pope Benedict XVI
Posted: 15 Apr 2009
The Resurrection Is Not a Theory, but a Historical Reality
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Rome and throughout the world,
From the depths of my heart, I wish all of you a blessed Easter. To quote Saint Augustine, "Resurrectio Domini, spes nostra – the resurrection of the Lord is our hope" (Sermon 261:1). With these words, the great Bishop expl...
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MOVIE REVUE: GRAN TORINO
Posted: 14 Apr 2009
Who wouldn't want to grow up to be like Clint Eastwood? Eastwood the director, Eastwood the actor, Eastwood the invincible, Eastwood the old man. What other figure in the history of the cinema has been an actor for 53 years, a director for 37, won two Oscars for direction, two more for best picture, plus the Thalberg Award, and at 78 can direct him...
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What can I learn from Easter that I can apply in my own life? (from Frank in Alberton)
Posted: 11 Apr 2009
To be a Christian means to be an optimist because we know what happened on the third day.
We know that it worked, that Jesus' leap of faith was not in vain. His trust was not in vain, and the Father raised him up.
He trusted enough to outstare the darkness, to outstare the void, to wait upon the resurrection of the third day, not to try to cr...
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We hear a lot of talk about the "Paschal Mystery". What exactly does this mean? (from Christine in Durban)
Posted: 07 Apr 2009
Christians speak of the "paschal mystery", the process of loss and renewal that was lived and personified in the death and raising up of Jesus. We can affirm that belief in ritual and song, as we do in the Eucharist.
However, until we have lost our foundation and ground, and then experience God upholding us so that we come out even more alive o...
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I don't understant this business of worshipping Jesus as a "scapegoat". Please explain. (from Carl in Johannesburg)
Posted: 03 Apr 2009
Christianity is the only religion in the world that worships the scapegoat as God.
In worshiping the scapegoat, we should gradually learn to stop scapegoating, because we also could be utterly wrong, just as “church” and state, high priest and king, Jerusalem and Rome, the highest levels of discernment were utterly wrong in the death of Jesus. ...
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MOVIE REVIEW: THE READER
Posted: 03 Apr 2009
The crucial decision in "The Reader" is made by a 24-year-old youth, who has information that might help a woman about to be sentenced to life in prison, but withholds it. He is ashamed to reveal his affair with this woman. By making this decision, he shifts the film's focus from the subject of German guilt about the Holocaust and turns it on the h...
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Do we not have a Christian duty to get rid of immoral people? (From Fanie D. in Villiers)
Posted: 30 Mar 2009
We, who worship the great scapegoat, Jesus, became many times in history the primary scapegoaters ourselves: Jews, heretics, sinners, witches, women, homosexuals, the poor, other denominations, other religions.
The pattern of exporting our evil elsewhere, and righteously hating it there, is in the hardwiring of all peoples.
After all, our ta...
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POPE UNLEASHES A MEDIA STORM!
Posted: 26 Mar 2009
Mozambique’s health minister, Ivo Garrido, condemned Pope Benedict’s March 17 comments on AIDS and condoms. “I don't know in what context the Pope said this, but we in the Mozambican government live in the real world, not the world we would like to live in,” he said. "In the real world, we know that people have sexual relations with more than one p...
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Was Jesus' surname Christ? (from Bob in Amanzimtoti)
Posted: 26 Mar 2009
Christ is not Jesus' last name, but his transformed identity after the Resurrection—which takes humanity and all of creation along in its path.
Jesus became the Christ, and included us in this identity.
That’s why Paul will create the new term “the body of Christ,” which clearly includes all of us.
So think of the good Jesus, who has to...
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Why does the good, innocent, and loved in us have to die? (from MG of Rhema South)
Posted: 25 Mar 2009
Jesus on the cross is not an image of the death of the bad self but, in fact, the self that feels essential, right and necessary—but isn’t necessary at all! It’s the image of Jesus who was only thirty-three years old and had not even gotten started on his mission, the misunderstood and misinterpreted Jesus, the oppressed Jesus.
There were all k...
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How should we Christians fight evil in the world? (from MC in Randparkridge)
Posted: 24 Mar 2009
Jesus on the cross identifies with the human problem, the sin, the darkness. He refuses to stand above or outside the human dilemma.
Further, he refuses to be the scapegoater, and instead becomes the scapegoat personified.
In Paul’s language, “Christ redeemed us from the curse…by being cursed himself” (Galatians 3:13); or “God made the sinl...
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Rev Brent's Sermon for 22 March 2009 - Laetare Sunday
Posted: 22 Mar 2009
When I was a kid, today was a great day. Called Laetare Sunday it meant that Lent was two-thirds complete and soon I’d be able to eat sweets again, drink Coke or go to the movies again.
Laetare means to Rejoice and it is meant as a bit of a break in Lent. Even that dreadful purple has been replaced with a more user-friendly pink. The clergy ev...
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How could the Pope say that condoms won't prevent HIV/AIDS in Africa? (from MU in Pretoria)
Posted: 19 Mar 2009
It is very important not to take all media reports at face value. What the Pope actually said was: "It is my belief that the most effective presence on the front in the battle against HIV/AIDS is in fact the Catholic Church and her institutions. ... The problem of HIV/AIDS cannot be overcome with mere slogans. If the soul is lacking, if Africans d...
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I struggle to pray in silence. Please help. (from JW Barberton)
Posted: 19 Mar 2009
As a people, we are afraid of silence. That’s our major barrier to prayer. I believe silence and words are related. Words that don’t come out of silence probably don’t say much. They probably are more an unloading than a communicating.
Yet words feed silence, and that’s why we have the word of God... the written word, the proclaimed word. But t...
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Can Contemplation make me a happier person? (from WA in Sydney, Australia)
Posted: 18 Mar 2009
As the our sophistication increases, I need this to be happy, and then I need that to be happy. Once I reach that level I can never go back, whereas, the saints need less and less to make them happy. Their contentment is from within. They’re not expecting the future to be any different than it is right now; because how one does anything is how one ...
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MOVIE REVIEW: THE CHANGELING
Posted: 17 Mar 2009
Tuesday Night is Movie Night so Wednesday is Reviewday!
Clint Eastwood's "Changeling" made me feel sympathy, and then anger, and then back around again. It is the factual account of a mother whose little boy disappeared, and of a corrupt Los Angeles Police Department running wild. Angelina Jolie stars as Christine Collins, whose 9-year-old son, ...
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Do you think the Contemplative mind is any match for the Secular world as we know it? (from GT in Marianhill)
Posted: 15 Mar 2009
I think the contemplative mind is the most absolute assault on the secular world view that one can have because it is a different mind from what we’ve been taught.
The calculative mind or the egocentric mind reads everything in terms of personal advantage. As long as we read reality from that small self and read everything with a calculative mi...
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After the murder of Fr Lionel Sham, I question whether I, as a parishioner, have a role in protecting my Pastor against attack. Was he alone too often and vulnerable to opening his door for company? (from ML Johannesburg)
Posted: 14 Mar 2009
Like almost everyone, we at the Soul Provider Trust are saddened and outraged by the murder of Fr Lionel Sham, who has given his life to God in service of the poor of all descriptions.
So many priests have been murdered by people who know them. Few of us would reply to the knock on the door if we judged it not safe to do so.
Lionel opened ...
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You have spoken often of "surrender". Why is that so difficult to do? (from KB in Rosebank)
Posted: 13 Mar 2009
Do you realize with what difficulty surrender will come to a fixing, managing mentality? There's nothing in that psyche prepared to understand the spiritual wisdom of surrender.
All of the great world religions teach surrender. Yet most of us, until we go through the hole in our soul—our weak spot in the middle—just don't think surrender is nec...
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Draft
Posted: 12 Mar 2009
Something is happening at Lourdes. And God wants to give us the eyes to see it and the ground to receive it. What are all these crippled and handicapped people telling us? What is the witness of all these nurses and life-bearers? It seems God wants us to live a vulnerable life, a life dependent on other people, a life that is unafraid to cry.
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I have just lost my Mom and I feel guilty that I didn't appreciate her more when she was still with us! (from BP in Johannesburg)
Posted: 11 Mar 2009
We live a long time in order to become lovers. God is like a good parent, refusing to do our homework for us.
We must learn through trial and error. We have to do our homework ourselves, the homework of suffering, desiring, winning and losing, hundreds of times.
Loss is one of the greatest occasions of passionate feeling, and it’s one that ...
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Why does God allow suffering? (from HG in Soweto)
Posted: 10 Mar 2009
Suffering is the necessary feeling of evil. If we don’t feel evil we stand antiseptically apart from it, numb. We can’t understand evil by thinking about it. The sin of much of our world is that we stand apart from pain; we buy our way out of the pain of being human.
Jesus did not numb himself or withhold from pain. Suffering is the necessary pa...
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Movie Review: Slumdog Millionaire
Posted: 10 Mar 2009
Danny Boyle's "Slumdog Millionaire" hits the ground running. This is a breathless, exciting story, heartbreaking and exhilarating at the same time, about a Mumbai orphan who rises from rags to riches on the strength of his lively intelligence. The film's universal appeal will present the real India to millions of moviegoers for the first time.
T...
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Rev Brent's Sermon for 8 March 2009
Posted: 08 Mar 2009
Last Sunday we reflected upon the gifts that God has graciously bestowed upon us. Today we continue that meditation but we deepen it as we focus our gaze, not on the gifts, but on the One giving them.
The Zen Masters say that they are not the moon, but just fingers that point at the moon. We spend most of our time arguing over who has the be...
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I have prayed so hard to God to help me, but it doesn't seem to work (from MS is Barberton)
Posted: 05 Mar 2009
In Romans 8:28, St. Paul says that God both initiates and cooperates in all human growth. God “works together with” us, which means both our workings are crucial. Every moment, God is trying to expand our freedom. Can you imagine that?
God is trying to make this choice more alive, more vital, more clear, more true. God even uses our mistakes an...
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How does the 12 Step Programme tie in with Christian teachings? (from BB in Delmas)
Posted: 03 Mar 2009
[We]
4. Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admit to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Are entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
The story of the woman caught in adultery is a perfect example of Jesus giving people the "gift of guilt.”
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Can the Bible help me to be more spiritual? (from JA in Alberton)
Posted: 01 Mar 2009
It is not about becoming spiritual beings nearly as much as about becoming human beings. The biblical revelation is saying that we are already spiritual beings; we just don’t know it yet. The Bible tries to let us in on the secret, by revealing God in the ordinary. That’s why so much of the text seems so mundane, practical, specific and, frankly, u...
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I am an alcoholic who has been helped by the 12 step programme. Do you think it has any worth in terms of spirituality? (from Anon. Alcoholic in Plettenberg Bay)
Posted: 28 Feb 2009
The spirituality behind the Twelve Steps is a “low Church” approach to evangelization and healing that is probably our only hope in a suffering world of six-and-a-half billion people.
Do we really need to verify belief in atonement doctrines and the Immaculate Conception when most of God’s physical, animal and human world is on the verge of mas...
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How can I get rid of my imperfections? I feel so guilty (from Maryvale).
Posted: 26 Feb 2009
In a Persian carpet there is always an imperfection woven into the corner. And interestingly enough, it’s where “the Spirit moves in and out of the rug.”
Its called the Spirit line. The pattern is perfect and then there’s one part of it that clearly looks like a mistake. The Semitic mind, the Eastern mind (which, by the way, Jesus would have b...
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Can you help me to get control of my life (from JM in Bloemfontein)
Posted: 25 Feb 2009
After the need to be successful and the need to think well of the self, the third human addiction is the need for control or power. So the devil tells Jesus to bow down before the systems of this world: “All of them you can have” (Matthew 4:8).
Just buy them. Believe in them. Jesus refuses to bow down before the little kingdoms of this world, t...
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How do I know that my ministry is really what God wants? (from JP in Muizenburg)
Posted: 24 Feb 2009
I believe that all would-be ministers must face the same three temptations as Jesus before they really can minister.
The first temptation of Christ, to turn stones into bread (Matthew 4:3), is the need to be effective, successful, relevant, to make things happen. You’ve done something and people say, “Wow! Good job! You did it right. You’re OK....
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What should I give up for Lent? (from JM in Scottburgh)
Posted: 24 Feb 2009
The second temptation of Jesus: Satan takes him up to the pinnacle of the Temple, symbolizing the religious world, and tells him to play righteousness games with God. “Throw yourself off and he’ll catch you” (Matthew 4:6). It’s the only time when the devil quotes Scripture. The second temptation is the need to be right and to think of the self as s...
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Movie Review: Frost Nixon
Posted: 24 Feb 2009
Well, I finally got to see this movie last night. It was worth the wait.
Strange, how a man once so reviled has gained stature in the memory. How we cheered when Richard M. Nixon resigned the presidency! How dramatic it was when David Frost cornered him on TV and presided over the humiliating confession that he had stonewalled for three years. ...
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How can I become more tolerant? (from P&S, Johannesburg)
Posted: 22 Feb 2009
You have the power to tolerate anyone and any situation. But tolerance is not just suffering in silence. It means going beyond any personal discomfort you may feel, and giving a gift to whom ever you would tolerate.
Give your time, attention, understanding, compassion, care - all are gifts, which paradoxically, you also receive in the process o...
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I am really afraid to "let go" of the things of this world. (from MH Rondebosch)
Posted: 21 Feb 2009
The Hebrew people entered the desert feeling themselves a united people, a strong people, and you'd think that perhaps they would have experience greater strength as they walked through. But no! They experienced fragmentation and weariness; they experienced divisions among their people. They were not the people they thought they were.
When all o...
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What is all this Soul Work stuff? (from EDS, Boksburg)
Posted: 20 Feb 2009
Soul Work sends you in the opposite direction from consumerism. It’s not addition that makes one holy but subtraction: stripping the illusions, letting go of the pretense, exposing the false self, breaking open the heart and the understanding, not taking myself too seriously. In a certain sense we are on the utterly wrong track.
We are climbing...
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How Come Atheists Don't Get Religious Holidays? (from MB in Parkwood)
Posted: 20 Feb 2009
In Florida USA, an atheist created a case against the upcoming Easter and Passover holy days. He hired an attorney to bring a discrimination case Against Christians, Jews and observances of their holy days. The argument was that it was unfair that atheists had no such recognized days. The case was brought before a judge. After listening to the pass...
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What is God asking me to surrender?
Posted: 17 Feb 2009
Risk all for love, Jesus tells us, even your own life. Give that to me and let me save it.
The healthy religious person is the one who allows God to save.
If this is the ideal Christian attitude toward God, then Mary is the ideal Christian of the Gospels. She sums up in herself the attitude of the poor one whom God is able to save.
She is...
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Movie Review: The Duchess
Posted: 13 Feb 2009
Much is made in Britain of the fact that Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire (1757-1806) was the great-great-great-great-aunt of Diana, Princess of Wales. I wouldn't know where to start in counting my own great-great-great-great-aunts, but the British have an obsession with genealogy, and then too both women married men who were fabulously wealthy...
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How can I save my soul?
Posted: 12 Feb 2009
The greatest act of faith is to believe God loves us, even in our nakedness, poverty and sinfulness.
But human beings always think we have to earn God's love. We work for it and, by doing good things for God, think we are going to get God's blessing and love in return.
This is Jesus-and-me religion. It ends up being a self-centered morality...
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How can I say yes to God today?
Posted: 11 Feb 2009
Read the praise prayers of St. Francis from beginning to end. All St. Francis needs to do is praise God. That takes care of everything else. Because he's letting God be God. He praises God for this, he praises God for that.
Every situation, even though immediately it might look unhappy or difficult or absurd or impossible, he praises God.
T...
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When has love broken through in my life?
Posted: 10 Feb 2009
The saints are so aware that love is not something to be worked for—to be worked up to or learned in workshops. It breaks through now and then, in ways suddenly obvious.
Maybe it's looking at a sunset or a beloved one; maybe it's a moment of insight or a gut intuition of the foundational justice and truth of all things.
But when we discover...
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Movie Review: DOUBT
Posted: 09 Feb 2009
A Catholic grade school could seem like a hermetically sealed world in 1964.
That's the case with St. Nicholas in the Bronx, ruled by the pathologically severe principal Sister Aloysius, who keeps the students and nuns under her thumb and is engaged in an undeclared war with the new parish priest. Their issues may seem to centre around the refo...
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What's the difference between religion and relationship?
Posted: 09 Feb 2009
Humans do not want a God of love, because a lover always makes demands. That is the very nature of love and humanity doesn't want it.
We seek to hide from it and destroy it. So people sought to destroy Jesus, brother to creation. The people did not want relationship; they wanted religion.
Should that seem so unreal to us? It is the same for...
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Homily: 5th Sunday in Year B
Posted: 08 Feb 2009
Today the readings offer us snapshots from the photo album of life.
We see three related dimensions of human existence: poor old Job’s experience of the harshness of life; the disciple Paul preaching Jesus’ message of salvation in spite of this harshness and then, in the Gospel, Jesus relieving us of this harshness.
And if we carefully read...
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What are you in love with?
Posted: 07 Feb 2009
It seems to me that the emerging church is emerging because people are finding the ability to have a grateful foot in both camps—Tradition (the mother church) along with a new consensus, a new support group that parallels, deepens, broadens, grounds and personalizes the traditional message. But you don’t throw out the traditional message. The emerg...
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How am I cooperating with God in using my gifts?
Posted: 06 Feb 2009
Another exciting piece of the emerging church is that really, for the first time, we've stopped idealizing the top.
Now what's happening is a recognition of real gifts, real ministries.
The first question is not, "Is she trained in theology?" or "Is he ordained?" The first question is "Can she do the job? Is he changing lives? Is it working...
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With what mediating institutions am I involved?
Posted: 05 Feb 2009
The new structures for the emerging church have to be almost parallel and symbiotic to the existing church structures. Now these are already happening.
Let me name just a few of these mediating institutions:
- Prayer groups
- Bible study groups
- Justice & Peace groups
- Service groups
- Centering Prayer groups
...
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What am I being called to do better?
Posted: 04 Feb 2009
New structures that can make the emerging church possible cannot be in opposition to any existing church structures. The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better. Just go ahead and do it better.
Don't waste the next 20 years of your life being against anybody, anything, any group, any institution.
Just go ahead and do it bette...
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How can I be more simple, more real?
Posted: 03 Feb 2009
As you listen to the examples and the metaphors of Jesus, they're much more nature based, lifestyle based, relationship based, much more than church based or religion based. He simply says "Look at the lilies of the field."
He's using normal language that everybody can understand – not highfalutin theology, not highfalutin philosophy.
Just ...
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Whom or what do I need to include?
Posted: 02 Feb 2009
Jesus was consistently inclusive. YOU find a story where Jesus excludes. He will name the moment correctly, but he never excludes people. And yet, I think most people’s estimation of most Christian denominations is that they are largely exclusionary institutions.
Even the Eucharist itself is used, at least in my Catholic Church, to define the w...
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Movie Review: Elegy
Posted: 30 Jan 2009
David Kepesh (Ben Kingsley) is a 62-year-old college professor who teaches a seminar on Practical Criticism. A frequent commentator on PBS and radio about cultural issues, he has supreme confidence in his intellect and exquisite taste.
Consuela Castillo (Penelope Cruz), a beautiful Cuban woman, takes his breath away when she enters his classroom...
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Where do I see the contemplative mind being taught?
Posted: 28 Jan 2009
The contemplative mind is really just the mind that emerges when you pray instead of think first.
Praying opens the field and moves beyond fear and judgment and agenda and analysis, and just lets the moment be what it is—as it is.
We really have to be taught that mind. We now are pretty sure that it was systematically taught—mostly in the m...
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How can I broaden my own view of Jesus?
Posted: 27 Jan 2009
The new Jesus scholarship acknowledges that it’s at the energetic level, the life level, the love level, that the mystery of Jesus is passed on; and not just getting the words right.
This scholarship broadens the view to include previously neglected perspectives: the feminist/womanist lens, the lens of the poor, the lens of the Blacks, the lens ...
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How is the Spirit moving in your church/life?
Posted: 25 Jan 2009
Perhaps to you the term "emerging church" is new, strange, or probably vague.
What does it refer to? Let me address the exciting parts of this new movement of the Holy Spirit—for that is what it is!
Movements are the energy-building stages of things, before they become monuments, museums or machines. In the last fifty years, several signific...
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Pope strongly endorses apostolic use of the internet
Posted: 24 Jan 2009
Vatican, Jan. 23, 2009 (CWNews.com) - Pope Benedict XVI has wholeheartedly embraced the use of new communications technologies, with his message for the 43rd World Day of Social Communications. Although he cautions against the dangers of the internet, the Holy Father strongly encourages Christians-- and especially young people-- to use the new medi...
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What has the "belly of the whale" taught you?
Posted: 24 Jan 2009
In general the only people I really trust doing reconstruction work are people who have paid their dues to deconstruction.
If someone has never been able to see the dark side, they haven't gained the right to talk the language of reconstruction.
You need to have seen the dark side, have felt the sour stomach and have emerged renewed from th...
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What "better" can I practise today?
Posted: 23 Jan 2009
A core principle of the Soul Provider Trust is: The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better.
Just go ahead and live positively "in God, through God, with God."
In the short run, you will hold the unresolved tension of the cross. In the long run, you will usher in something entirely new and healing.
This was the almost int...
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How is your suffering redemptive?
Posted: 22 Jan 2009
The cross, as we see again and again, is the "coincidence of opposites": One movement going vertical, another going horizontal, clearly at cross-purposes.
When the opposing energies of any type collide within you, you suffer. If you agree to hold them creatively until they transform you, it becomes redemptive suffering.
This stands in clear...
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How have I been able to hold opposites together?
Posted: 21 Jan 2009
You could say that the greater opposites you can hold together, the greater soul you usually have.
By temperament, most of us prefer one side to the other. Only a few dare to hold the irresolvable tension in the middle.
It is the "folly" of the cross, where you cannot "prove" you are right, but only “hang” between the good and the bad thiev...
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ARE YOU REGISTERED TO VOTE?
Posted: 20 Jan 2009
1. Go to www.elections.org.za.
2. Press the ‘Registration voters roll’ tab.
3. Go to “Am I registered?’
4. Type in your ID number as well as the code supplied.
5. You will be able to see within seconds whether you are registered as well as where you will be voting.
6. You can also sms your ID number to 32810 in order to check your ...
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What can I learn from Martin Luther King?
Posted: 19 Jan 2009
Isn't it surprising and amazing that a man who almost perfectly parallels the Biblical prophets would arise in our time?
It should not be surprising if we knew more about the prophets and about Martin Luther King, Jr. too.
We would see clearly how he was chosen, formed, used, and rejected—and, an imperfect human being like the rest of us.
...
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Where can I see the Divine Light?
Posted: 18 Jan 2009
If you are a believer you are utterly responsible, connected and aligned everywhere. Before we can reconstruct this deconstructed culture, we must be utterly reconnected ourselves. That is the work of healthy religion (re-ligio = "re-bind").
Our goal ought to be a spirituality connected to this world in every aspect, seeing the Divine Light shin...
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Do I consider myself earth's steward or earth's master?
Posted: 14 Jan 2009
In our anthropocentric thinking, humans seem to feel we’re the centre of the world.
Unfortunately, Genesis 1:28 was quoted everywhere all the time. "Be fruitful, multiply fill the earth and dominate it. Be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of the heavens and all the animals on the earth"
Another scripture we made a big deal of is th...
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Where do I most need to see God’s presence?
Posted: 13 Jan 2009
When you cannot recognize the divine indwelling in the earth itself and the waters upon the earth and the plants and trees that grow upon the earth and the animals, you will not see it in the human.
And that’s what has happened.
We finally don’t see that presence in the angels, saints or the divine itself. ...
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In what creatures is it easy for you to recognize God’s presence?
Posted: 12 Jan 2009
Creation is clearly the first revelation of God. "Ever since God created the world, his everlasting power and deity have been there for the mind to see in the things that he has made." (Romans 1:20).
Thomas Aquinas wrote in his Summa Theologica: "The divine goodness cannot be adequately represented by one creature alone. Therefore, God produced ...
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How can I more fully experience my experiences?
Posted: 11 Jan 2009
We are becoming aware of the necessity of simplifying our lives if this whole planet that we are all a part of is going to survive.
If we don’t live more slowly, more simply, and more consciously, we don’t experience what’s right in front of us.
And here’s the connect: if you don’t experience your experiences, nothing satisfies you and you ...
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Have you found a way to say "Yes"?
Posted: 10 Jan 2009
THE SHINING WORD “AND” teaches us to say yes
And allows us to be both-and
And keeps us from either-or
And teaches us to be patient and long suffering
And is willing to wait for insight and integration
And keeps us from dualistic thinking
And does not divide the field of the moment
And helps us to live in the always imperfect no...
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How does suffering help us find this new vision?
Posted: 09 Jan 2009
The second pattern for breaking down a dualistic mind is suffering.
It probably is the most common path. If there were anything else that could destabilize your control tower. I’d like to know what it is. But suffering, especially grief, like nothing else, breaks down the dualistic mind.
There is no one to blame, there is no one to hate. Alt...
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How can we break away from dualistic thinking patterns?
Posted: 08 Jan 2009
The first patterns for breaking down this dualistic mind is prayer.
Prayer is when you go on that contemplative journey where you consciously let go of your ego boundaries, your ego certitudes, and you start falling into the mystery of God, the Mystery of love, the Mystery of forgiveness, the mystery of mercy, the mystery of unconditional love,...
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How do I really observe what is in my world?
Posted: 06 Jan 2009
Contemplation is a way to describe what Jesus did in the desert. It is refusing to judge too quickly and refining quietly in observation and awareness. You cannot understand things once you have approved or disapproved. That has too much YOU there!
Contemplation is loosening our attachment to ourselves so the Reality can get to us, especially th...
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Have you had an encounter that has proved to be an Epiphany for you?
Posted: 06 Jan 2009
When there is an encounter with another, when there is mutuality, when there is presence, when there is giving and receiving, and both are changed in that encounter; that is the moment when you can begin to move toward transformation.
Don’t let the word transformation scare you. You just allow what you have met to change you. You look back at it...
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How do you see reality?
Posted: 04 Jan 2009
If we allow ourselves to stay at the lower level of consciousness; either/or, all or nothing thinking, we haven’t been taught how to pray.
The reason some of us almost hesitate to use the word prayer is because it has become this practical, functional, making announcements to God.
It is the very thing that Jesus told us not to do. "Why do y...
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How does Contemplative prayer lead to a new way of seeing?
Posted: 03 Jan 2009
You can’t see what you are never told to look for.
And we can’t see it because we are only ready for what we are ready for. We can only see over there what has begun to happen within. There is a connection between the seer and the seen. Between the knower and what is known.
One of the greatest discoveries of the last century, maybe the word...
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A new vision for 2009. But are you looking through a clear lens?
Posted: 02 Jan 2009
When the heart is right seeing will be right, Jesus says. He ties together heart and sight.
Consider the saying: “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” So is God. All we need to do is keep the lens clean. If your heart is cold, your vision is distorted.
If there is coldness and unforgiveness or the desire to do violence verbally, or just t...
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How can I change my vision?
Posted: 01 Jan 2009
When we celebrate New Year’s Day, we celebrate the rebirth of time.
We wait for our God to do new things.
We wait for who we are.
We wait for the coming of grace, for the revelations of God.
We wait for the truth.
We wait for the vision of the whole.
But we cannot just wait. We must pray. We say that prayer is not primarily wo...
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What must I let go of in order to be open to growth in 2009?
Posted: 31 Dec 2008
The sin in the beginning of the Bible is to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The moment I sit on my throne where I know who the good guys are and who the bad guys are, then I’m capable of great evil. Don’t judge, don’t label. You don’t know.
What the author of the classic The Cloud of Unknowing says is that first you have to e...
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How can I incorporate waiting for wisdom into my day?
Posted: 29 Dec 2008
Ignorance does not result from what we don’t know! According to the great spiritual teachers, ignorance results from what we think we do know.
Wisdom is not just knowledge (i.e. data, facts, information) but putting it in the largest frame possible. It’s connecting it with everything.
Most people’s first reaction is usually based on knowled...
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How can I make room for the mind of Christ?
Posted: 28 Dec 2008
Wisdom is using your mind yes, but then letting go of it for awhile—not trusting it too much, not grasping it too closelY. So in fact there’s room for another mind to get in. We would call that the mind of Christ or the mind of God which will always break down our explanations, our either-or, dualistic thinking and open us up to what might just...
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What does the Incarnation at Christmas really reveal?
Posted: 27 Dec 2008
It is not about becoming spiritual beings nearly as much as about becoming human beings. The biblical revelation is saying that we are already spiritual beings; we just don’t know it yet. The Bible tries to let you in on the secret, by revealing God in the ordinary. That’s why so much of the text seems so mundane, practical, specific and, frankly, ...
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What are your New Year priorities?
Posted: 23 Dec 2008
If “success” and “winning” are our priorities, we’ll look at people in a very specific, limited way. We’ll see them as potentially useful tools and also as possible adversaries, and we won’t see much else. That way of looking at people screens out their best parts and leaves the gift of a new friend lying unnoticed on the cutting room floor. God se...
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