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.
Can I say this is what I want? Or at least, “I want to want it”?
Is my faith – what I believe and how I am in the world – leading me towards freedom, compassion, generosity of spirit – or is it leading me towards greater anxiety, confusion or fear?
Our disciplines of attending are about noticing what our hearts run after, noticing our disordered longings which move us away from God, and lock us into self-defeating and destructive ways of living.
It is always helpful to ask ourselves where a particular mood, feeling, behaviour or action leads. However important the root cause of such moods, feelings, behaviours are, it is vital we focus on the direction our desires/longings are moving.
Monica Furlong says of God in a poem:
Fatally attracting
Our waywardness
Into new tracks
Of faithfulness.
Do I dare to be “fatally attracted”?
Do I know the cost?
Am I willing to let go and let God,
“in whose service is perfect freedom”?
Ignatius says
“We can be so detached [free – indifferent – poised] only if we have a greater attachment”
Our only desire and our one choice should be this: I want and I choose what better leads to God’s deeper life in me.
Ignatius of Loyola
Can I say this is what I want?
Or at least, “I want to want it”?
Is it attractive enough?
We grow into this freedom by bringing an order of values into our lives so that we find that at the moment of choice or decision we are not swayed by any disordered love.
Ignatius of Loyola
The raw material for the “discernment of spirits” is our everyday life, and as we pay attention to that, we begin to notice “movements” within us, peace or turmoil attractions or revulsions, an openness towards others or a closed-ness, a creativity of destructiveness.
The images in this post are of land art by Andy Goldsworthy who has found so many different ways of imagining pathways.
For a printable PDF of the text of this meditation please click on the link below.
