Looking About Just Look

Looking behind I am filled with gratitude. Looking forward I am filled with vision. Looking upwards I am filled with strength.

 Looking within I discover peace.

Quero Apache Prayer

Looking is not something we do as much in this thinking, thinking world. This prayer reminded me of an exercise I first learned from the teaching of Richard Rohr. In his book Near Occasions of Grace he wrote:

"There are two spiritual disciplines that keep me honest and growing: contemplative prayer and the perspective from the bottom. Regarding the first, I was always encouraged in contemplative prayer from my early days as a Franciscan novice. But it was only five years ago that I was freed for a year to pursue that part of my vocation. It was a major turning point. After a thirty-day solitude in Thomas Merton's hermitage in Kentucky, I spent the rest of the year at our Franciscan novitiate house in Cincinnati. I took as my guide a simple phrase: "Don't think. Just look." Father McNamara's definition of contemplation became transformative: "A loving look at the real." The world, my own issues and hurts, all goals and desires gradually dissolved into proper perspective. God became obvious and everywhere.

"You see we do not earn or find God. We just get ourselves out of the way. We let go of illusion and the preoccupations of the false self. As the cheap scaffolding falls away, the souls stands revealed. The soul, or true self, cannot be created or worked for. It is awakened. It is, and it is already. The soul of God's "I AM" continued with me. That part of me already knows, desires, and truly seeks God. That part of me knows how to pray naturally. here "I" and God seem to be one "I." All we need to do is forget the false self. Don't fight, hate, or reject it. Just observe it and let go of it. As you let go of your own "house" you will find yourself living in a place that is both "utterly different and exactly the same." Merton called it "the palace of nowhere" and Jesus called it "the Father's house." It is the only place you will ever want to live.

"I am not there, but I am being urged and led in spite of myself. Someone out there - and within here - is loving me and loving through me. The days continue to be given. And I am in wonder." 

And Amy Grant sings "Don't try so Hard."

JUST LOOK!