Thank you, Richard for your kind and thoughtful words. I will take them to heart and have hope.

I have realized that I have not regularly practiced centering prayer in recent months, and this most definitely hurts! I can see it in my daily life - I am more impatient and short-tempered than usual, both to those close to me and to more remote entities as the faceless institutional church. The individual people in this church continue to inspire and uplift me. Many humble me to the edge of shame. The individual everyday saints. They simply do the work of God, rooted in love, and don’t worry about the abstract stuff.

I must learn again simply to let it go when it comes to the “head issues” related to the official church. I allow these issues to distract me from the truth that it all comes back to love, and that my job is to love those who come into my life, whether family, friends or strangers. I don’t need to worry about whether Mary was assumed body and soul into heaven, even though the church has, for some reason, deemed this to be an absolutely essential teaching! As the kids say, “whatever.” And I know also that I must seek out the opportunities to love those whose lives never normally cross mine, because I am affluent and live in a beautifully manicured suburban cocoon, and they are poor and live in places I must actively travel to - in body, but, more importantly, in my heart and soul and spirit.

My centering prayer practice has been a catch-as-catch-can process for several months now, instead of a daily discipline. I am resolving again to return to the silence every day - to make it the first priority- because that is where God speaks to me. I have allowed myself to get caught up again in the din and the clashes of ideas and opinions, become prideful and frustrated and even angry at times, and that is obviously never helpful to the spiritual life.

Thank you again.

Peace and love to you also, Richard! Ami