INTRODUCTION
The over-all goal of this blog, Praying Alone Together / Orando Solos Juntos, hopes to tap into the riches of Carmelite spirituality and prayer. These treasures have been developing over eight hundred years in the tradition of the Carmelite Order. This blog will give special prominence to St. Teresa of Avila as a teacher of prayer.
Anybody who comes to this blog is looking for one thing. In in one fashion or another, they want to be happy. They have come to the conclusion that the yearning in their heart is in some way related to God. If they are not seeking God, even in the most remote way, the Internet offers a seemingly endless array of other options.
Praying Alone Together hopes to direct people to God by answering two of the most fundamental questions facing the universal human experience of seeking happiness. The questions are: Where are we going? How do we get there?
If you take a moment to think about it, almost every day of our life is driven by our search for an answer to these questions. Most often, our search is utterly futile. Far too often, we think we are on the road only to realize our GPS is not trustworthy. Every so often we find love. Then we know something is guiding us in the right direction.
Carmelite spirituality starts with awareness that God loves us first and loves as we are. The Gospels are filled with stories that reveal this truth. The stories of the women are especially clear examples: the Samaritan woman, Mary Magdalene, the woman with the hemorrhage, and the woman caught in adultery.
God’s love is a driven love always coming after us. We all have moments of recognition of this divine activity. At times, it seems as if God is playing peek-a-boo with us. When this happens, we know in the depths of our heart there is more to life that we normally experience.
In this bitterly broken world, it is hard to believe that God is always pursing us with a divine ferociousness but that is the truth. Our mind and heart are so concerned with false values and activities that only occasionally do we have this special encounter with divine. We are constantly creating barriers to the divine initiative.
Here is a real quick summary of the Bible: God is love. Jesus tells us what love is. We need to turn to Jesus for the true answer to the big questions of where are we going and how do we get there.
Carmelite spirituality tells us we best get in touch with Jesus by deep personal prayer. We learn that prayer is always love responding to love. Prayer continuously creates upheaval in our lives and values. Prayer is the pursuit of God. The final goal of prayer is to be boldly in love with God. Prayer’s task in this journey of love is to lead us God’s will and teach us how to live it. Prayer assists us in understanding Jesus’ message that is the liberating truth of where we are going and how we get there. This is our Pilgrimage to God.
The following reflections will be a series on deep personal prayer as developed in the Carmelite tradition as a true guide for our Pilgrimage to God.
Anybody who comes to this blog is looking for one thing. In in one fashion or another, they want to be happy. They have come to the conclusion that the yearning in their heart is in some way related to God. If they are not seeking God, even in the most remote way, the Internet offers a seemingly endless array of other options.
Praying Alone Together hopes to direct people to God by answering two of the most fundamental questions facing the universal human experience of seeking happiness. The questions are: Where are we going? How do we get there?
If you take a moment to think about it, almost every day of our life is driven by our search for an answer to these questions. Most often, our search is utterly futile. Far too often, we think we are on the road only to realize our GPS is not trustworthy. Every so often we find love. Then we know something is guiding us in the right direction.
Carmelite spirituality starts with awareness that God loves us first and loves as we are. The Gospels are filled with stories that reveal this truth. The stories of the women are especially clear examples: the Samaritan woman, Mary Magdalene, the woman with the hemorrhage, and the woman caught in adultery.
God’s love is a driven love always coming after us. We all have moments of recognition of this divine activity. At times, it seems as if God is playing peek-a-boo with us. When this happens, we know in the depths of our heart there is more to life that we normally experience.
In this bitterly broken world, it is hard to believe that God is always pursing us with a divine ferociousness but that is the truth. Our mind and heart are so concerned with false values and activities that only occasionally do we have this special encounter with divine. We are constantly creating barriers to the divine initiative.
Here is a real quick summary of the Bible: God is love. Jesus tells us what love is. We need to turn to Jesus for the true answer to the big questions of where are we going and how do we get there.
Carmelite spirituality tells us we best get in touch with Jesus by deep personal prayer. We learn that prayer is always love responding to love. Prayer continuously creates upheaval in our lives and values. Prayer is the pursuit of God. The final goal of prayer is to be boldly in love with God. Prayer’s task in this journey of love is to lead us God’s will and teach us how to live it. Prayer assists us in understanding Jesus’ message that is the liberating truth of where we are going and how we get there. This is our Pilgrimage to God.
The following reflections will be a series on deep personal prayer as developed in the Carmelite tradition as a true guide for our Pilgrimage to God.
