“Oh it wasn’t difficult at all. All I did was chip off the parts of the stone that are not David, and David just appears!” – Michelangelo on sculpting the statue of King David.

My thoughts on the above quote:
- It’s about pruning the parts of us that do not belong.
- It’s about being able to see negative spaces and letting those go (like letting go of bad habits).
- It’s about seeing beauty on yet to be carved clay or stone or a blank paper.
- It’s about perspectives and seeing things in a different light.

What else? Add to this list by adding your comments to this post. Read the quote by Michelangelo again slowly. Read it with new “eyes”. Hear it speak to you. What does it say?

May you find God in uncompleted works.

I am on travel in Switzerland. Travelling by train between cities yesterday I realized that I have to stop and stare. I am asked, by the inner spirit, to notice.

For days I clicked away on my camera – fabulous scenery, pretty flowers by the roadside, cloud formation, clear blue skies, icons and landmarks. But did I really see? When this thought arose I began to sit up.

Now I see the different faces of mountain slabs. I notice the shapes and sizes of boulders – big, small, ragged, smooth, odd sizes and cracked ones. I notice how the branches of some trees by the roadside swung to one side (probably due to the strong winds that come one direction towards them perpetually). I notice that yellow and white flowers are beginning to sprout amidst green fields (ah … summer is here). I thought about how these fields will be a glorious yellow in a few weeks time.

I see new green shoots on some tree branches. They look lovely … fresh, small and light green blobs on frail branches that were stoned cold by snow on them just months ago.

I am thankful for my eyes … to savour God’s created things. It does make a difference to be able to see and to appreciate deeply than to see without heart.

May you notice God’s created things with a grateful heart.

Last night at a prayer meeting someone shared about a friend’s anger at God for taking away her husband and that these days this friend is moping at home, away from social activities and away from church. This morning as I flipped through articles on a magazine-style app on my iPad I found an article on how someone coped with the loss of his daughter.

In moments like this – listening to someone’s grief – there is sadness and pain in my heart. Words like “God is with you; God is here; God loves (name of deceased) much and He does not want (name) to suffer any more here on earth …” do not help much for the person who is grieving. We all want our loved ones to be alive and to share our life here on this plane, even though it may not be a joy ride.

I reflected further after reading the article this morning and I recalled the story that was shared last night. What words could I offer to grieving persons? Assuming that they are open to words of comfort and help I would ask them to celebrate, to remember God’s gift of life to the deceased. Why remember? Well, just like in prayer we say that when in desolation we remember the consolations we had from God previously I think the same principle applies in grief when a loved one is taken away. I imagine that if the grieving family can celebrate and remember the deceased’s lived life – the laughter, the fun, the mishaps and escapades of the deceased, and so on – then the attention is diverted away from “Why is God doing this to me?” Remembering helps a person to notice that God was there. So can one forget God’s goodness? The latter question begs further self-reflection questions. Who am I and what is my relationship with God? Am I expecting my God to be Santa Claus? Do I see God loving me less in my grief? How is God seeing this whiny me now? Is God glorified though my self-exile (estrange from friends, church and pursuing hobbies)?

I do not want to negate the emotions that arise when a loved one dies but I am suggesting here that we look at the loss from another perspective – the lived life of the deceased and how we had shared meals, the fun, laughter and probably secrets whispered between us. We rejoiced that we had the opportunity to befriend this person, now dead.

May you find God in memories and in grief.

During dinner tonight I caught a bit of a weekday 7pm TV serial in the local Mandarin channel. There was this lady who apparently was zonked out from caring for a sick male patient in hospital. This man was her ex-boyfriend. He had found out that she was in love with another man. Not having followed the serial I guessed that this guy had hurt himself so badly that he had to be hospitalized. The lady felt guilty and masked herself just to look after him in hospital. When the guy found out that she had been doing that for his sake he begged her not to hurt him again and that she need not have done what she did, but as with soap stories the lady begged for forgiveness and said that she would do whatever he asked of her. Great. So you know the rest of the story? Well, you are right if you guessed that that the guy asked her to come back to him and she had no answer. The guy walked off and we can figure out that this is a difficult request for the lady to accede to.

Hmm…. But then I return to her “I will do anything you want” plea to the guy when she was begging for forgiveness. Doesn’t “anything you want” include returning to the ex-boyfriend? Did she thought this through before blurting out the line?

This reminds me of how we would like to say to God, “Thy will be done.” Alas, before we blurt this magnanimous line do we know first what is God’s will for us? I think if we don’t know God’s will for us then carrying out what He wants of us will be difficult. Jesus knew the will of His heavenly Father and meeting his Waterloo he fought to be free. However because he knew precisely what he came for he could say, “Thy will be done”. Jesus’s will was aligned with his heavenly Father.

Returning to our weak “Thy will be done” think about someone asking for the healing of another. After verbalizing the prayers for healing the intercessor says, “Thy will be done unto (name of the person in need of healing).” If the intercessor and the person to be healed do not know what God’s will is for the latter how are they to accept come what may. If the person is healed praise be to God. But if the person is not healed then accepting the unfortunate outcome is fraught with anxiety, guilt, loss of faith, why and the dilemma of where is God. Thus we should all strive to know or at least understand God’s will in our life. We could be sent to be a blessing for others. We could be sent to be the killjoy for another person so that the person may learn how to love. We could be sent to learn how to live with a greater faith. We could be sent to be the catalyst of change in society. Whatever it is we are sent. For good or for bad we have to find out about ourselves. This can be done by building a closer relationship with God.

May you find God’s will for you.

Disciples are gospel people who introduce and reintroduce themselves and others to the person and power of Jesus over and over again. A disciple of Jesus never stops learning the gospel, relating in the gospel, and communicating the gospel.

By Jonathan Dodson

As I reflected on the above quote I saw how Christ-ians (people who profess that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior) should continually profess Jesus the Christ. Sure, we can’t be good and Christ-like all the time, but we should always remember that we must get up and continue the journey with Jesus. Remember how Jesus fell under the weight of the Cross on his way to Calvary? We should not give up hope.

Likewise, we may have a love-bickering relationship with Jesus. During bad times or during times when the Lover does not seem to please us, we may sulk a little but we must remember to move on and forward, holding on to the hands of Jesus. You see the “reintroducing” bit in the quote above?

Each day I continually pray to love Jesus more. May you too find the love for Christ in your heart.

In recent days there have been news items about movie director James Cameron’s dive in a specially built vessel to explore the Mariana Trench, one of the deepest parts of the earth. Some critics have lambasted this as a waste of money but to Cameron it was an adventure of a lifetime. The construction of the vessel took years and lots of money.

I am thinking of another kind of dive this morning. Jesus asked Simon and the fishermen to put out into deep waters (Luke 5:4) for a catch. A way to look at this invitation by Jesus is for us to go deep within ourselves to find the God who resides in us, to find our Calcutta (read my previous post about this), and to find out who we really are. A priest said to a group of us prayer guides, “Prayer is God revealing you to you.” I have lived this reality. This sort of prayer is not the set prayers of Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be or your lists of requests to God but the type of prayer that could reveal who you are requires silence, quiet meditation and contemplation, waiting, noticing, listening, openness to want to be transformed and more returning to the Lord in prayer. Praying with Scripture is a good place to start. I think I will offer a post or two on how to pray with Ignatian Contemplation for those of you who want to learn how to pray with Scripture. Watch this blog!

May you find who you are in prayer.

“God does not call everybody to work with the poor. God does not call everybody to live poor like he calls us (the Missionaries of Charity) to. But God does call everybody to a Calcutta. You have to find yours.” – Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

God does call everybody to a Calcutta. How apt I thought as I read this quote. How unusual to describe God’s Will as our Calcutta. I like it.

To begin looking for that Calcutta (a.k.a. God’s Will for us) I think we look first for our God-given gifts and talents. What have we offer to our families, our neighbours, our friends in need, our society, and the world at large? We begin small but ain’t what a journey towards goodness is about? God does not call us to works that are beyond our capabilities. Often we feel we are not capable of the task before us, we feel insufficiently equipped, we feel stuck. However, these could be limitations that we set upon ourselves because we feel we are not good enough. But remembering that God made everything good (Genesis 1:31) hopefully is grace enough for us to move forward.

For someone who is discerning avenues of work or ministry that one can go into I would like to offer this suggestion: take a step forward, dip your foot into it, experiment, pray, ask for God’s graces, reflect and check back. How are you doing? Is what you are doing giving you life? Is what you are doing giving life to others. Is what you are doing bringing you closer to God?

As you explore God’s Will for you may you find your own Calcutta.

I was reading a blog post this morning titled “The silence of Scripture”. Hmmm… the title appealed to me. When I read this I thought of praying with Scripture immediately. I reckon that when the bible is silent, that is when God speaks to each of us personally. I have always told my retreatants that if the Word is to be alive and active, then surely the Word has to minister to us in the here and now. So when Scripture is “silent” during your prayer time, I urge you to take notice. Sit up and l-i-s-t-e-n attentively. God’s gentle voice will rise up within your being. Engage with the thought, the ideas, the suggestion that spring forth during your prayer time. Ask the Holy Spirit to enlighten. Notice the feelings that arise within you. Do you find fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23)? If not, go back another day to pray on the residuals of the feelings. This is also an act of discernment – discerning what God has in store for you. Be gentle with yourself. Om.

May you find God in the silence of Scripture.

It is not knowing much,
but realising and relishing things interiorly,
that contents and satisfies the soul.

~ St Ignatius of Loyola
Spiritual Exercises, Annotation #2

I chanced upon the above quote today and understood it, interiorly. Let’s see if I can explain this better.

Well, for one, I can safely say that my experience with praying with Scripture is not bible study. The latter does have its place of importance but praying with Scripture requires attentive listening to God’s voice in the Word and this often is a whisper. What I heard are not thunder clapping disturbances but a gentle knowing – an interior movement as St Ignatius might say.

In praying with Scripture I am not interested in the why and how; for example, why did the followers did what they did?, how did the loaves and fishes get multiplied?

In praying with Scripture I remain quiet (both within and without) and allow the Word of God to speak to me. I look at the context of the bible stories in the context of my lived experience. So if I see John baptising his followers in the river, I could well imagined that John was baptising in the sea at East Coast Park in Singapore. If the Word is to become alive, surely I have to be able to relate to it in the here and now. My lived experiences are how God would interact with me.

To give a further example, if I am praying with John 1:35-39 and assuming that I am at the crossroad of deciding which ministry I should join. I might take the invitation of Jesus’ “Come and see” (John 1:39) and resolve to put my foot in a ministry to experiment. If I sensed some fear at the thought of service, then I could take this fear to God at another prayer time and seek the Holy Spirit’s light to notice what this fear is about. I have someone who told that when she prayed this same text she saw that Jesus’ home (following the followers’ question to Jesus as to where he lived) was actually in her heart.

That’s how praying with Scripture should be. Every pray-er will ask for a different grace and they will receive “messages” that are related to their state of life. This is good news since everyone has the opportunity to receive God’s Word without fearing that they have no knowledge of the bible.

May you find God in His Holy Word.

In an earlier post I asked if there was a difference between “bringing others to Jesus” and “bringing Jesus to others”. I had always told people that I am in a ministry to bring others to Jesus. However, during a recent workshop to review my 30-day Ignatian retreat I came to better understanding that there was a difference. I should be bringing Jesus to others.

One thing I “saw” in that aha moment was the hard work I have to put in to bring others to Jesus. I have to cajole, I have to pull and push. The “I” become high and mighty. On the other hand if I (gently) bring Jesus to others, it is Jesus who is going to do the “work” of meeting these people. I have long discovered that I have Jesus in me – a pearl deep in the pits of my being. Now it is a matter of allowing that pearl to surface in my being so that others can “see” the Christ in me. When I bring the face of Jesus to others I am hoping too that Jesus becomes alive in their beings. Together then we glorify God as we all carry Jesus around and introduce Him to more people.

Little, and possibly unimportant stuff you might say but to me the revelation marked a shift on getting “unstuck” in my YES to the Lord. From now onwards I am “clothed” with Jesus and hopefully this means I will live a more Christ-like life. It also makes more sense to me when I say, “the Jesus in you and the Jesus in me.” Jesus is no longer “out there” and I no longer have to bring you to Him. Rather, I carry Him around and He knocks on the door of your heart.

Pray for me that this revelation be incarnated in my life and in my ministry.