This Wednesday we were blessed to have Sister Roselle from the Catholic Retreat Center The Cenacle. We have invited Sister Roselle to share with us about spiritual practices in light of our community's deep commitment to engage spiritual practices as a way of life. Sister Roselle had us explore our earliest memories about and experiences with prayer.
She also gave us two very nice definitions of prayer; one very succinct and the other a bit longer, but both quite enlightening and life-giving. The first is that prayer is "anything that helps you pay attention to God." For lots of people nature does this. For others it may be a piece of music, or a conversation. Even tragic things like disasters can draw from us an awareness of God as we are drawn out from a place of compassion.
Her second definition ran like this: It is not what we do; it's a relationship between the core of me and God's true self, with reflection. Sister Roselle spent some time talking about how our true selves get layered over by years of different colored "paint." As we experience hardships from birth to about 5-6 years old, a new layer of "paint" covers over the "diamond" that is the core of us. Also, our view of God is impacted by lots of other experiences that only give us a partial view of God's true self. So, prayer is the getting of our core selves connected to God's true self over a lifetime.
Others who were there...add to this things that you heard and thought!
Join us for the remaining Lent Wednesdays - for a light supper and more time with Sister Roselle. Here's the link to more information
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It sounds like it was an enlightening experience. I wish that I had been able to attend instead of being stuck at work.
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