Daily 5 - Year 3, Days 180 & 181

It occurred to me as I sat down just now to make today's daily 5 list, that making a list for yesterday completely slipped my mind in the time and space between when I arrived home last night, and when I fell into a rather exhausted stupor and eventually sleep.

So, first, here's yesterday's Daily 5:

1. gorgeous orange sunrise
2. Vietnamese noodle bowl
3. Chinese food with house church friends
4. the laughter and joyful conversation that always comes on the nights we share a meal together at house church
5. a hug and kiss goodnight from my favorite little man as I left house church last night - I always love the moments when he comes to offer affection.

And, here's today's Daily 5:

1. Making my way through Ian Cron's memoir "Jesus, My Father, the CIA and Me" via audiobook.  I've lacked the energy to do much "traditional" extracurricular reading since school started, but this book (which, by the way, you should all read or listen to!) has been an awesome way to meet my need for words that don't have anything to do with the nursing process and do have everything to do with the value of story, the process of healing, and a love of Jesus.
2. Vietnamese noodle bowl, second day in a row!
3. A quiet lunch hour, shared with a friend.
4. that a necessary (if somewhat frustrating) errand went quickly and smoothly on my way home from school tonight
5. Loving a quiet Friday evening at home.  They've become almost sacred, this time where I clean, sort, decompress from my week, eat simple meals, and ease myself into the weekend and catching up on things like the latest episode of Grey's Anatomy.  Tonight has been particularly lovely, since it is the beginning of reading break, so I am ushering in a week with a different schedule, and lots of time to rest.  It's also been lovely in that a particular activity, which was once sacred, and then needed to be separated from my sacred life in order for me to heal, was able to be a bit sacred again tonight, but sacred in a way that wasn't marked by painful memories, but the joy instead of sitting with it, and knowing that I was choosing to let it be sacred and not feeling forced into it.

Friday Reflections, February 17, 2012

Today's Friday Reflection comes from a daily email written by Richard Rohr.  His words on prayer challenged me earlier this week, and I wanted to share them with you today:


DISCOVERING YOUR TRUE SELF THROUGH PRAYER

“Everything exposed to the light itself becomes light,” says Ephesians 5:13. In prayer, we merely keep returning the divine gaze and we become its reflection, almost in spite of ourselves (2 Corinthians 3:18). The word “prayer” has often been trivialized by making it into a way of getting what we want. But I use “prayer” as the umbrella word for any interior journeys or practices that allow you to experience faith, hope, and love within yourself. It is not a technique for getting things, a pious exercise that somehow makes God happy, or a requirement for entry into heaven. It is much more like practicing heaven now.


Such prayer, such seeing, takes away your anxiety for figuring it all out fully for yourself, or needing to be right about your formulations. At this point, God becomes more a verb than a noun, more a process than a conclusion, more an experience than a dogma, more a personal relationship than an idea. There is Someone dancing with you, and you are not afraid of making mistakes.


From The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See, pp. 22-23