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Simplify Your Spiritual Life: Spiritual Disciplines for the Overwhelmed

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Donald S. Whitney

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“Real contemplation, in other words, is not for its own sake. It doesn't take us out of reality. On the contrary, it puts us in touch with the world around us by giving us the distance we need to see where we are more clearly. To contemplate the gospel and not respond to the wounded in our own world cannot be contemplation at all. That is prayer used as an excuse for not being Christian. That is spiritual dissipation.”

SpiritualityContemplativeSpiritual DisciplinesSpiritual DirectionRule Of Life
Author:Joan Chittister
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“Contemplation is the ability to see the world around us as God sees it. Contemplation is a sacred mindfulness of my holy obligation to care for the world I live in. Contemplation is awareness of God within me and in the people around me. Contemplation is consciousness of the real fullness of life. Contemplatives don't let one issue in life consume all their nervous energy or their hope. ... God is calling me on and on and on, beyond all these partial things, to the goodness of the whole of life and my responsibility to it.”

SpiritualityContemplativeSpiritual DisciplinesSpiritual Direction
Author:Joan Chittister
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“There is no quick and easy way to make the life of God the life we lead. It takes years of sacred reading, years of listening to all of life, years of learning to listen through the filter of what we have read. A generation of Pop Tarts and instant cocoa and TV dinners and computer calculations and Xerox copies does not prepare us for the slow and tedious task of listening and learning, over and over, day after day, until we can finally hear the people we love and love the people we've learned to dislike and grow to understand how holiness is here and now for us. But someday, in thirty years and thirty days perhaps, we may have listened enough to be ready to gather the yield that comes from years of learning Christ in time, or at least, in the words of the Rule of Benedict, to have made "a good beginning.”

SpiritualityListeningSpiritual DisciplinesSpiritual DirectionRule Of LifeSpiritual Formation
Author:Joan Chittister
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“Holy leisure... is the foundation of contemplation. There is an idea abroad in the land that contemplation is the province of those who live in cloistered communities and that it is out of reach to the rest of us who bear the noonday heat in the midst of the maddening crowd. But if that's the case, then Jesus who was followed by people and surrounded by people and immersed in people was not a contemplative. ... some of our greatest contemplatives have been our most active and most effective people. No, contemplation is not withdrawal from the human race.”

SpiritualityContemplativeSpiritual DisciplinesSpiritual DirectionRule Of Life
Author:Joan Chittister
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“Dom Cuthbert Butler made the point that it is not the presence of activity that destroys the contemplative life but the absence of contemplation. The genius Benedictinism is its concentration on living the active life contemplatively. ... Life is not divided into parts holy and mundane in the Rule of Benedict. All of life is sacred. All of life is holy. All of life is to be held in anointed hands. ... So, contemplation does not take non-work; contemplation takes holy leisure. Contemplation takes discipline.”

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Author:Joan Chittister
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“Unless we learn in our own personal relationships, as the ancient definition of heaven and hell indicates, to live for someone besides ourselves, how shall we as a nation ever learn to hear the cries of the starving in Ethiopia and the illiterate in Africa and the refugees in the Middle East and the war weary in Central America? What will become of a nation in this day and age that has no sense of community? What, indeed, will become of the planet? the warning of the wise is clear: 'In hell,' the Vietnamese write, 'the people have chopsticks but they are three feet long so they cannot reach their mouths. In Heaven, the chopsticks are the same length, but in heaven the people feed one another.' The message is no less new, no less important today.”

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Author:Joan Chittister
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“There are three stages of spiritual development,' a teacher taught. 'The carnal, the spiritual, and the divine.' 'What is the carnal stage?' the disciple asked. 'That's the stage,' the teacher said, 'when trees are seen as trees and mountains are seen as mountains.' 'And the spiritual?' the disciple asked eagerly. 'That's when we look more deeply into things. Then trees are no longer trees and mountains are no longer mountains,' the teacher answered. 'And the divine?' the disciple said breathlessly. 'Ah,' the teacher said with a smile. 'That's enlightenment - when the trees become trees again the and the mountains become mountains.' We pray to see life as it is, to understand it, and to make it better than it was. We pray so that reality can break into our souls and give us back our awareness of the Divine Presence in life. We pray to understand things as they are, not to ignore and avoid and deny them. We pray so that when the incense disappears we can still see the world as holy.”

SpiritualitySpiritual DisciplinesSpiritual DirectionContemplative PrayerRule Of LifeSacramental Life
Author:Joan Chittister
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