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The Compass, the Choice, and the Practice

Admin
Mar 9, 2024
2 min read

The clock and the compass.

Another chance to choose.

Practicing depth and presence.

We have a dilemma. Steven Covey teaches us that we have both a clock and a compass competing for our attention and our intention. The clock involves completing the tasks of daily living. The compass involved the direction our lives are headed. Our dilemma requires we focus the heart of our energy on what genuinely matters to us. The clock is important, but we need to have the discipline to step back from the clock to remember our compass. Our guiding principles and our heart’s cry. These are the areas in life that are not necessarily urgent but are critically important. Yes, somedays we will choose poorly and blow it, but those days where we choose wisely are so worth it.

The year following the note above, I began my journal with an affirmation statement. “Today is another chance to choose, and I choose to have a very good day. I choose mercy, compassion, and forgiveness for myself and for others. I choose love and joy and peace.” I enjoyed reading those words again this morning. Every day is another chance to choose. And again, today, I choose to have a very good day.

Last year’s journal was a reflection on Thomas Keating’s book, Open Mind, Open Heart: the contemplative dimension to the Gospel. This book is a wealth of wisdom based on the format of Jesus’s prayer in Matthew, chapter six. If you want to pray, enter your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret, and your Father who sees you in secret will reward you. In the introduction, Brother Thomas brings our attention to this and offers these words: the centering prayer method responds to this invitation: 1. by consenting to God’s presence and action within, 2. by surrendering our will completely to God, and 3. by relating to God who dwells in secret, which is silence itself.

Contemplative / centering prayer is a beautiful way to practice depth and presence with God and with Life itself. Using Jesus’s prayer model reminds us that each day and moment we are given a direction and another chance to choose. Every day. Every moment.