One of many ways of doing Intercessory Prayer: The Empty Chair

  Connecting to God’s Presence As We Pray for Others: The Empty Chair

“It is vital that you become aware of Jesus and connect with him at the start of your intercessory prayer. Otherwise, your intercession risks becoming not prayer but an exercise in remembering people. The danger is that your attention will be focused only on the people you are praying for, not on God.”—Anthony de Mello in Sadhana: A Way to God (Image Books), p. 126.

De Mello’s book had a significant impact on my spiritual practices. The awareness exercises focused on my surroundings, my body, and my senses have been the most practical ways to learn to experience God’s presence. I was familiar with these exercises before and had tried them without success, but they have now become an essential spiritual practice for me. 

One more lesson to remember: Spiritual practices that were not meaningful before can become important later.

De Mello suggests that rather than envisioning the face or clothes of Jesus, we might seek a sense of Jesus in the shadows, calling him by as many names as we are led. He recommends imagining Jesus in our prayers, seated in an empty chair beside us. This can be one of the most consistent ways to experience the presence of Christ.

These intercessory prayer exercises can change how we pray and how we talk about prayer with others. We remember Jesus as the great intercessor, imagining Jesus’ presence directly beside us and visualizing those we pray for as Jesus lays hands on them.

The book’s final prayers focus on turning desires and prayers over to God one at a time—praising God at all times for everything, both good and bad. This can change our prayer practice and how we live our lives.

De Mello invites us to live and pray intimately, becoming part of the grand mystery of God’s love for us and all creation in the present moment. He believes that this precious now, the present moment, is where God meets us.

Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/

There is Only One Race on Earth: the Human Race

There is Only One Race on Earth: the Human Race

Guest Writer and Artist Mary Ann Stafford

There is only one race on this earth – the human race.

We’re all human beings created by the same true God.

We may have different kinds of hair, eye color, skin color,

Speech, customs, religions, but we are more alike than different.

Our bodies work the same way – digestion, senses, pain.

We feel in the same ways – love, fear, anger, humiliation.

Differences are because of location, climate, culture, condition,

And these are what happens to us after birth.

At our birth, we are the same tiny creatures.

Our parents look upon us with either love or disgust,

We could be born into wealth and grandeur and

Never have a financial worry in the world, or

We could be born into severe poverty with no stable home

In a war-ravaged world, and never able to feel secure.

These differences are of the world, of the devil, of circumstances

Over which we have little or no control.

So why do we look down on others who are not as fortunate as us?

We disrespect them, consider them inferior or unwelcome?

We turn against them, fight them, despise them, and enter groups

To work against them, hurt them, commit genocide.

They are our brothers and sisters, and we should treat them as such.

We are all part of the human race, God’s creation

No matter shape, ability, circumstances, or appearance.

But then, our hubris gets in the way.

Mary Ann Stafford pastelanne@sbcglobal.net

Joanna Seibert joannaseibert.com https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Isabel Anders talks about being an editor and a writer

Isabel Anders talks about being an editor and a writer

Guest writer: Isabel Anders

“Editing and writing walk together, and they both require the eye and the ear.” —Found in the New Yorker (3/27/23).

It never failed. Every time I typed my name, Isabel, the spell-check on my old computer would change it to “usable.” I laughed, but there was a kind of logic to it.

Eventually, it accepted my name as a valid entry rather than a typo. If you stick around long enough, you get written into the story.

“Editors and their input are inconspicuous by design. … Editors work in the service of their authors and are the invisible shepherds (or packhorses or midwives, pick your metaphor) of the books we read,” wrote Sara B. Franklin.

My primary vocation as an editor has suited me perfectly—requiring accuracy, diligence, and solitude, and allowing a degree of independence while working on a manuscript. If only life were like that—a page spread out with identifiable bumps (errors) and cracks (omissions) that could, at one time, be “fixed” by an editorial pencil—but now succumb to the electronic delete key that wipes away mistakes completely.

An editor’s work should be invisible, allowing a piece to read and flow as though it had been written that way from the beginning. Injecting one’s own style is not the function of a responsible editor who serves the work.

Since I have written books on the side, I truly appreciated other editors who performed that useful function for me—because, as they say, “everyone needs an editor.”

Perhaps workers in any helping profession can easily relate to this need for focus: “Attention,” the psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist writes, “is a moral act: It creates, bringing aspects of things into being.” Those of us who are useful in some way are privileged to have a hand (though often an invisible one) in the process.

“Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might,” we’re told in Ecclesiastes 9:10. When the scroll of life’s story is fully unrolled, editors will likely not be needed.

Isabel Anders’ Mother Bilbee Tales is a collection of nursery rhymes and folktales with a twist that lets her editorial spirit have a fun ride.

Sing a Song of Six Birds and several others are available on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/review/create-review/?channel=glance-detail&asin=B0D53LDWQ8

Isabel Anders

Joanna Seibert. joannaseibert.com https://www.joannaseibert.com/