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.
Discernment is about sifting what is genuine or true from what is false
Fr Philip Carter
Am I experiencing a new freedom in my life in such a way that my decisions are more and more in keeping with my desire to know Jesus intimately, love him more intensely and follow him more closely?
Vocation:
What’s left when all the games have stopped.
Rowan Williams
The long term shaping of our llves by desires that we “own”.
David Ford
What are the key temptations in my life
and what happens within me when I allow myself to be controlled by them?
What happens when, through grace, I resist?
Think about the choices I have made in the past – and how they have shaped or formed me.
What choices present themselves to me now?
Where will they lead?
How prepared am I to be more and more shaped into the likeness of Christ?
How willing am I to be vulnerable and unprotected before God?
Or to consider poverty, weakness, unpopularity?
Do I welcome or avoid these attitudes and states Jesus calls blessed?
As I grow in awareness of the struggle within me between two sets of values, two wisdoms – can I hear an invitation towards a radical conversion of outlook and a growing freedom to desire the grace to live as Christ lived?
Is there an image(s) of Jesus which might help in this choice tor life? How attractive is Christ’s paschal way?
I so much want the truth of Jesus’ life to be fully the truth of my own that I find myself by God’s grace asking to follow Jesus in as intimate union as possible.
Ignatius of Loyola
Discernment is about sifting what is genuine or true from what is false. It is about distinguishing what gives us life, and what allows us to make choices which arise out of our deepest truth.
The images in this post are of Andy Goldsworthy’s ice sculptures at the North Pole.
In 1989, Andy Goldsworthy created four massive snow rings at one the most remote place on Planet Earth, the North Pole. These ephemeral sculptures marked the position of the North Pole and were built around it. Through any of the four sculptures, the direction will always be south. Source: Andy Goldsworthy touching north
For a printable PDF of the text of this meditation please click on the following link.
