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Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - A Candle
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - A Candle
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
Candlelight has all the associations of the past when, with a fire, it was the only source of light. Lighting a candle is different than lighting an electric lamp. A candle is a living, flickering light. It can easily be blown out. As we watch a candle burn we see the wax diminis…
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - Receiving Our Opportunities
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - Receiving Our Opportunities
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
We have preconceived ideas of what we consider opportunities. Unless an opening comes in a recognizable way, we might miss it or be afraid to take a chance. So much keeps us unduly cautious—like fear of failure or a sense of our ineptitude. Lack of imagination or the inability to…
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - Receiving Our Relationships
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - Receiving Our Relationships
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
We are often not aware how full of expectations our relationships are—that we should be considered, understood, and done right by. Unstated rules, for the conduct of ourselves or another, lie like land mines on the path of our connections. The conditioned sense of one’s rights, o…
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - Receiving Our Daily Round
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - Receiving Our Daily Round
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
If we count up the hours we make beds, wash dishes, run the vacuum or the lawn mower, pay bills, shop for groceries and cook, we will realize that we have spent not just days, but months and years in these activities. Every day we have a choice to just get through our daily round…
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - Receiving Our Challenges
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - Receiving Our Challenges
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
Trusting God with all of our life means also to be able to trust the difficulties that come our way. Challenges and bitter sufferings can be gifts as well. To open to them is a profound act of humility. When the door slams and our hopes are dashed, when our health fails, a loved …
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - Receiving The Gift Of Our Being
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - Receiving The Gift Of Our Being
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
The mind divides, categorizes, analyses, and defines. Our souls open, wonder, suffer, and love. To receive the gift of being we must let go of the ways we define and give names to who we are. We cannot receive the gift of our being unless we suspend our own self-conceptions and d…
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - Receiving Our Daily Bread
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - Receiving Our Daily Bread
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
In a day we may say thank you ten to twenty times as easily as we say hello or goodbye. But to truly receive and give thanks for our daily bread we must give more than words; we must recognize how many are the givers. Countless hands have been at work for us to have what is on ou…
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - Receiving
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - Receiving
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
The world, our lives, our daily bread, our loved ones, our opportunities, our challenges and difficulties—all are gifts. Even the innate capacity to receive is a gift. There is not a single moment in life in which we are not given something. We can begin to notice this; we can in…
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Staircase
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Staircase
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
Most days we use the stairs of our homes without a thought about their possible meaning beyond enabling us to climb. And often we don’t even think about that obvious use. Yet stairs and ladders have always been powerful spiritual images. Humans have forever wanted to transcend th…
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Door
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Door
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
We enter our dwellings through a door. When the door closes we are within the protection of our home. Yet we do not always want to be enclosed and protected. We also want to let the world in, to crack the door, to set it ajar, to invite that which is new into the trusted and fami…
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Floor
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Floor
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
We don’t seem to pay attention to the floor unless it is missing, unless it has a spill or an obstruction on it. Mostly we are confident that the floor is present and we merrily step upon it. Many things become floor-like to us—certain steady relationships, certain habits, certai…
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Roof
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Roof
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
To have a roof over our heads is to have a home. Days of storm, days of intense sun, gray days, pleasant days—the roof is there and we are sheltered. How easily we take that fact for granted, yet all around us there is homelessness—a roof-less population. In appreciating that we …
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Window
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Window
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
If we have been out in the dark, how comforting to see a lighted window; if we have been shut in, how refreshing when the light finds us. Without windows a house is a tomb. We need light and air. We need the new day to enter our homes, to bring us out of the night’s slumber and o…
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Wall
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Wall
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
Many people who meditate sit facing a wall—facing a limit in order to find the limitless inside. Many pilgrims have traveled to stand beside the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem or to be witnesses by the walls where the names of the dead are inscribed. We need walls to help us with memo…
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - To Hear
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - To Hear
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
We can close our eyes, but we cannot close our ears. Without ear-lids we are in a sense always open to the world, to its noise and joy, its confusion and its deep cries. Our eardrums cannot but resonate with what is around us. We thrum, whether we like it or not. Sometimes we dro…
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - To Sleep
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - To Sleep
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
It may seem strange to some of us to think that entering into sleep could be prayer. Many of us say prayers before we turn off the light, but we seldom think of consciously giving ourselves over to the losing of our daytime awareness for the mysteries of sleep and dreams. Attende…
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - To Touch