Tag: water
Aridity in our walk with God
“Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her. (Hosea 2:14) The soul is made for the ‘Living Water’, that which allows our souls to flourish and grow. Yet the desert is also a reality that dwells within each of us. A place of… Read More ›
Drinking sand
I often don’t understand what I am about, saying one thing then doing another, wondering all the while at my mediocrity, my winding journey up the mountain, fits and starts unending or so it seems, often ending back in the valley lost and alone among my own inner demons, failures, also just a simple fear… Read More ›
That which eludes us
As water to roots, is grace to the heart, the Sun warms the earth and allows being to grow, as grace heals the soul and fills it with life. We each must die to all but to what we love, some lead to life, others to sorrow, in the end its is one thing we… Read More ›
Fasting
Fasting is about making room. About letting go of a crutch that allows us to get away from inner discomfort, to a place of temporary release from inner pain or disease…though of course it is short lived. It is about food, or perhaps noise, or TV, or drinking, well just about anything. Letting something go… Read More ›
That for which I was sent is accomplished
Moses, the Libyan, was a very gentle and exceedingly lovable man who was accounted worthy of the gift of healing. He told me: When I was a youth in the monastery, we dug a large cistern twenty feet across. Eighty of us had been digging away there for three days and we had gone about a cubit farther than… Read More ›
God is everywhere
Abba Doulas, the disciple of Abba Bessarion said, ‘One day when we were walking beside the sea I was thirsty and I said to Abba Bessarion, “Father, I am very thirsty.” He said a prayer and said to me, “Drink some of the sea water.” The water proved sweet when I drank some. I even… Read More ›
How the Sea Can Help You Pray
Everyone living today in America in or near a city has a desperate need for the three S’s: silence, solitude, and slowing down—both for psychological sanity and for prayer. 1. Silence. Kierkegaard, the great nineteenth century Danish Christian philosopher, spoke often of silence. Almost the last thing he ever wrote was about silence. He said:… Read More ›
On Malice
As water standing behind an earth dam, and finding an aperture, washes it wider and wider and filters through it, if we do not strengthen the dam, or strengthen it insufficiently, at last, with growing weakness on our part and with repeated efforts, the water gets through with greater and greater force, so that at… Read More ›
Direction in the Fog of Life
Once a friend of mine went swimming in a large lake at dusk. As he was paddling at a leisurely pace about a hundred yards offshore, a freak evening fog rolled in across the water. Suddenly he could see nothing: no horizon, no landmarks, no objects or lights on shore. Because the fog diffused all… Read More ›
Abba Helenus and the Crocodile
Abba Helenus visited a certain monastery on a Sunday and found that they were not observing the solemnity of the day. Upon asking why, he was told that the priest who lived on the other side of the river had not come. No one indeed was willing to cross the river for fear of the… Read More ›