Fr Philip Carter offers a ministry of spirituality, with a series of meditations on some questions that we may ponder as we consider our life in God.
You will find here his reflections and questions for meditation, images, music and poetry to enrich your life’s journey.
Go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.
Abba Moses
Do not be always wanting everything to turn out as you think it should,
but rather as God pleases,
then you will be undisturbed and thankful in your prayer.
Abba Nilus
Prayer leads us straight into the heart of mystery where we find words fail, concepts no longer help, knowing gives way to unknowing. At this point we feel lost, no longer in control. Yet if we do not give up and turn back…we discover not only our true selves, but also our neighbour and God’s creation in all its goodness and glory.
John Dalrymple
Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.
Isaiah 43:1
Most of our problems
come from our not being able to sit quietly
in our own chamber
Blaise Pascal
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.
Robert Frost
Sr Wendy Beckett says prayer is learning “to stand unprotected before God”.
This is not a dramatic or romantic notion.
Notice in yourself resistance to such self-surrender.
Let it be an opportunity to be gently self-accepting.
Open yourself to God, admit your fears or anxieties –
and wait upon God, listening to what God might be saying to you.
As you sit in your cell- facing your desert –
you will bump up against the three compulsions of the world: to be relevant (“turn stones into loaves”),
to be spectacular (“throw yourself down”)
and to be powerful (“I will give you all these kingdoms”).
Your cell – (“when you pray go into your room and lock the door”)
is the metaphor and place for self-awareness.
For a printable PDF of the text of this meditation please click on the link below.
