"A Better Choice"

from God is not Reasonable and other tales of Mother Macrina

"I need some direction in my life," a woman told Mother Macrina, "and I have been praying a lot for a word from God to tell me what I must do."
"And did you get one?" she asked.
"No, not yet," the woman replied.
"I'm glad to hear it," said Mother Macrina. "Perhaps now you'll try listening to God's silence instead."

What does this mean to you? How does one listen to silence?

Honestly, it's one of my favorite challenges to offer up to people. Listen in the quiet places of your heart, what do you hear in the silence? It could almost be capitolized, a proper noun. Silence. God's Silence is often deeper and even more fulfilling than just regular silence. It's sort of like when you blind fold yourself and let your other sense tune in to compensate for the loss of one of the body's senses; when you sit in Silence, your mind, your soul, your Self begins to tune in to what you didn't realize was there. God's Silence. It's not Him ignoring us, it's not the spiritual cold shoulder, it's God challenging us to grow and encourages us to challenge ourselves to increase the depth of our own Faith.

So far in to Lent, stop and don't think.

Feel.

Listen to God's Silence.

~~~~~~~~
Oh, my God,
Please open my heart and strengthen me to grow in your Silence. Help me feel the presence of the Holy Spirit as It guides me closer to you. Let Jesus continue to stand beside me and walk with me, and may I always find my way back to Your path.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
~~Amen~~

Think, Think, Think...

I haven't forgotten about you- I'm just hitting an inspirational, spiritual, emotional, personal writer's block.

When it comes down to it, I'm working on me, and that's a BLOCK in and of itself!

Lenten Blogging, Week 1.5

So, I meant to get this started earlier, a weekly blog during the season of Lent... perhaps my Lenten commitment will be to stop procrastinating???

A pal from PLU posted a blog entry that's motivated me to start talking about Lent.

It was always hard, growing up Catholic, to find something to give up- I felt like I was punishing myself because of God. But our family priest put a fresh spin on the tradition, and challegened us to think of Lent as a time to better yourself for God, rather than making a sacrifice. Now, from a matured point of view, these things could be synonymous- but from a child's point of view, it made so much more sense! Don't punish yourself for 40 days by giving up coffee or chocolate, but make a change to better yourself...

Another friend of mine from PLU and I made a pact to give up negativty each Lenten season, and I still do- I have the little calendar page Becky gave me, with the verse on the back and everything! I actually laminated it, and it's in a safe place with all of my materials from PLU. (I'm going to go searching for that, now that I mention it!)

My thoughts for the moment- and my challenge to you 1.5 weeks into Lent- are to answer these questions: How have I failed myself? How can I prevent that from happening again?

That's all for now... break's over, back to work!