For Lent... and Beyond

Live attentively.
The Buddhists call this mindfulness. All it means is to be aware of life.

Hear the silence of the snow. Feel the cracks in the earth. Look into one another's eyes.

Pay attention to every single moment and that moment alone. Feel it. Take it into your bones. Let it transform you.

Learn to let go.
Start to simplify your life. Simplify your possessions, your thoughts, your desires, your expectations.

When you can let go, your arms are open and ready to receive all the good things God longs to give you.

Develop intimacy with God.
Gather in yourself a phrase or thought from this calendar. Let the thought or phrase filter through your heart and mind throughout the day.

Say it when you stand in the grocery line, when you eat your lunch, when you scrape ice off your car.

Let it settle deeply in your heart so that it can work from within to bring you into closer intimacy with God.

Patrick was born in Britain in the latter part of the fourth century. ...

Patrick had some religious training, but it had not affected his life.

At the age of sixteen he was captured by Irish raiders and taken to Ireland as a slave.

Separated from home and family, he was forced to tend the sheep and cattle on isolated hillsides.

In his loneliness he began to cry out to God and by God?s mercy he felt lifted up and comforted. This defining moment of mercy became the touchstone of Patrick?s mission.

I was like a stone that lies in deep mud
And he who is mighty came and in his compassion
Raised me up and exalted me very high.
St. Patrick from Confessions, I, 12, p. 84 ...

by Sylvia Maddox
--from St. Patrick: Christ Within Me
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People often wonder if they can hear God's voice, and how to determine whether it is God's voice or their own.

God speaks to us in many ways. ...

It will not always be the answer we want, and it may not always seem at first to solve our problem ...

by Renée Miller
--from Hearing God's Voice
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