Day 6 : The purpose of My Life
Indifference is another way of describing spiritual freedom.
It's a stance of openness to God ; we look for God in any person, any situation and any moment.
Indifference means that we are free to love and serve as God desires.
Spiritual freedom or indifference is a gift from God ; we can't make it happen. But we can, over time, foster indifference by developing good habits of thinking, choosing and acting.
God creates me out of love, in a particular time and place, with particular talents and temperaments, strengths and limitations. God continues to create and reveal who God is to me and who I am before God.
God invites me to partner with God to build a more just and gentle world. I learn that the best way to praise God to be who God made me to be and honour the uniqueness of other creatures.
Reading : The First Principle and Foundation
The goal of our life is to live with God forever.
God, who loves us, gave us life.
Our own response of love allows God's life to flow into us without limit.
All the things in this world are gifts from God, presented to us so that we can know God more easily and make a return of love more readily.
As a result, we appreciate and use all these gifts of God insofar as they help us to develop as loving persons.
But if any of these gifts become the center of our lives, they displace God and so hinder our growth toward our goal.
In everyday life, then we must hold ourselves in balance before all of these created gifts insofar we have a choice and are not bound by some obligation.
We should not fix our desires on health or sickness, wealth or poverty, success or failure, a long or short life.
For everything has the potential of calling forth in us a deeper response to our life in God.
Our only desire and one choice should be this :
I want and choose what better leads to God's deepening His life in me
Reflection : The meaning of detachment by Margaret Silf
It was late August, and the bees were constantly visiting the Fuchsia. They would land very gentle on those flowers that were fully open to receive them. They made no attempt to enter a closed flower or to force the petals in any way.
When they found an open flower, they crept into its depths to extract the nectar. In doing so, they also carried the pollen from flower to flower thus ensuring further fruitfulness.
As I watched them, I realized that although the bees were choosing the fuchsia flowers and disregarding other plants growing in the courtyard, other insects were seeking their nourishment from different sources.
In choosing what was exactly right for them, they were not only receiving their own nourishment but were also playing an essential role in the fruitfulness of their environment.
And choosing one plant rather than another, they were in no way rejecting the others. The secret of this harmonious and cooperative life seemed to life in each creature's being true to its own essential nature.
Each gained what it needed for survival and growth from the source that was right for it and it did so without harm either to itself or to the flowers. In fact after each encounter both were left in a richer state than before.
It was a truly creative kind of detachment. The bees made no attempt to "possess" the flowers nor did the flowers attempt to trap and hold the bees. This was a free interchange, fulfilling the needs of the bees, fuchsia and wider circle of creation around them
Indifference is another way of describing spiritual freedom.
It's a stance of openness to God ; we look for God in any person, any situation and any moment.
Indifference means that we are free to love and serve as God desires.
Spiritual freedom or indifference is a gift from God ; we can't make it happen. But we can, over time, foster indifference by developing good habits of thinking, choosing and acting.
God creates me out of love, in a particular time and place, with particular talents and temperaments, strengths and limitations. God continues to create and reveal who God is to me and who I am before God.
God invites me to partner with God to build a more just and gentle world. I learn that the best way to praise God to be who God made me to be and honour the uniqueness of other creatures.
Reading : The First Principle and Foundation
The goal of our life is to live with God forever.
God, who loves us, gave us life.
Our own response of love allows God's life to flow into us without limit.
All the things in this world are gifts from God, presented to us so that we can know God more easily and make a return of love more readily.
As a result, we appreciate and use all these gifts of God insofar as they help us to develop as loving persons.
But if any of these gifts become the center of our lives, they displace God and so hinder our growth toward our goal.
In everyday life, then we must hold ourselves in balance before all of these created gifts insofar we have a choice and are not bound by some obligation.
We should not fix our desires on health or sickness, wealth or poverty, success or failure, a long or short life.
For everything has the potential of calling forth in us a deeper response to our life in God.
Our only desire and one choice should be this :
I want and choose what better leads to God's deepening His life in me
Reflection : The meaning of detachment by Margaret Silf
It was late August, and the bees were constantly visiting the Fuchsia. They would land very gentle on those flowers that were fully open to receive them. They made no attempt to enter a closed flower or to force the petals in any way.
When they found an open flower, they crept into its depths to extract the nectar. In doing so, they also carried the pollen from flower to flower thus ensuring further fruitfulness.
As I watched them, I realized that although the bees were choosing the fuchsia flowers and disregarding other plants growing in the courtyard, other insects were seeking their nourishment from different sources.
In choosing what was exactly right for them, they were not only receiving their own nourishment but were also playing an essential role in the fruitfulness of their environment.
And choosing one plant rather than another, they were in no way rejecting the others. The secret of this harmonious and cooperative life seemed to life in each creature's being true to its own essential nature.
Each gained what it needed for survival and growth from the source that was right for it and it did so without harm either to itself or to the flowers. In fact after each encounter both were left in a richer state than before.
It was a truly creative kind of detachment. The bees made no attempt to "possess" the flowers nor did the flowers attempt to trap and hold the bees. This was a free interchange, fulfilling the needs of the bees, fuchsia and wider circle of creation around them
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