Conference lgp30::christian-perspective

o  Prayer.

o  Meditation.

o  Devotional time, which often includes Scripture study.

o  Daily planning and carrying out of a deliberate act or expression
   of love.  As frequently as possible, I do this anonymously.

o  Weekly community worship.

o  Giving 2 hours per week to God through service.

o  On occasion I have fasted.

Richard

    
    thanks, Richard...
    
    i, too, pray and meditate..
    
    but my primary spiritual discipline is to dance
    
    each and every day i try to start with a physical prayer
    and celebrate my body
    
    
    peter

    RE: .2   Peter,
    
                      Prayer and meditation are major.  Peter, I like the
    dance way...and it did seem important to David in the Bible.  :-)
    
    
    Dave

    I keep a spiritual journal, although not with as much regularity as I
    would like.  Prayer for me is not so much a formal activity as it is a
    kind of intuitive spiritual communion.  The silence of the Quaker
    meeting is a very special environment for me, where I combine this form
    of prayer with meditation and even journal writing.

    I like the idea of using dance or other forms of creative expression as
    a form of worship and spiritual discipline.  I believe that creativity
    is very much a part of the divine impulse.

    -- Mike

    Daily 

    Rise 5 A.M.
    Morning Prayer
    Scriptural Reading
    Meditation (centering prayer)
    Tai Chi 

    Through out the day I pray and will read Scripture during lunch
    or when I need some guidance.

    Evening:
    Talk with children
    Talk with wife
    Tai Chi
    Evening prayers
    Scripture reading
    Meditation (Centering Prayer)

    Read in bed while sipping on Ginseng Tea. (My favorite time of day)
    Retire
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Weekly

    Attend Mass on Sunday
    Teach Confirmation (during season)
    Fast - Wednesday and Friday's (just started doing this)
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Monthly:

    Work at a homeless shelter.
    Parish Council
    Religious Education Board
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Yearly

    Men's Retreat
    Parish Bazaar (I run the food booth)
    Christmas food basket for the community action council.

    Peace
    Jim

    RE: 3
    
    David's dance was indeed important.  It is from these scriptures that I
    get the impetus to be me, Playtoe...as it is said that in dancing David
    says, "I will PLAY before the Lord".  It denotes the "friendship"
    relationship with God.  So when dancing for/in the Lord, think of Him
    and how close you are to Him.
    
    My disciplines, are prayer, meditation, singing and dancing before the
    Lord (in my heart and aloud).  However, another that I do is a mental
    training sort of thing.  I spend a great deal of time reading scripture
    and related works, and I am constantly about the business of honing in
    on truth...and as I acquire truth the discipline involves standing on
    that truth.  So often you might think I'm being intransigent or narrow
    or whatever, but I'm actually cultivating truth.
    
    1)	Plato, the Greek philosopher, taught us about "noumenon vs
    phenomenon".  That the "idea" is the reality and the "thing" is an
    illusion.  He also taught that the mind can "conceive" utopia, but that
    never can it be perfectly manifested, because of the nature of
    matter...we can only approximate utopia at best in material forms. 
    Even speech, if we can understand it as sound and (sense-able, thus)
    material, is only at best a reflection of the idea we bear in mind, the
    silent idea.  However, it is a truth that the degree to which we
    approximate the idea/noumenon in physical/material forms is a factor of
    how clearly we conceive in mind the idea (of utopia, etc.).  So it is
    important to "renew the mind", through acquiring knowledge and
    understanding of truth.  He defined truth as "absolute", as something
    inherent in reality, something that we must dis-cover.
    
    2)	The bible says, in Revelations, "I wish thou wert hot or cold, but
    sense thou art lukewarm (standing on the fence) I'll spew you out of my
    mouth.  Which means we must "choose" one way or the other, and not be
    undecided on any issue.  Why?  What is the value of choosing?  I like
    to equate what a theatrical director once told me, he says, "Always
    OVERACT, because the director can easily tell you where you're going
    too far.  But if you underact, it's hard to direct you to do more." 
    The same with God.  If you choose, say the right thing, and overact it
    you'll be greatly blessed.  If you choose the wrong thing and overact
    it (say like Paul), you will be greatly corrected, first by God, and
    then in the spirit of reproof you can correct yourself, still moving
    full steam ahead...and that's how I basically, pursue mental
    development as a discipline....another aspect of this is "sharing" my
    beliefs or my choosings with others, because it is then that correction
    is made by God, either you are teaching truth or you're  teaching
    falsehoods, God will correct you when you teach others falsely...but if
    you don't teach and just have a false belief that you keep silent about
    it doesn't harm others directly, so God doesn't check it directly.  Now
    if you are acting out of this false belief and your actions are evil,
    then God checks the action directly.  So I would rather have my beliefs
    corrected than my ways corrected, correcting my ways may involved
    physical pain, but correcting my beliefs only involves spiritual pain
    (ie grief, sadness, embarrassment, guilt, shame, etc.).
    
    Anyway, hope you see what I'm trying to say.
    
    Playtoe  

    
    i'm greatly impressed (and humbled) by the replies here..
    
    but i wasn't thinking of dance as worship although certainly that
    is it's history
    
    more like RichadJ bluegrass and his daily Tai Chi..
    or Yoga 
    
    i tend towards the abstract, dance brings me back to my body
    and centers me in the material world, i try to work outward from there
    
    Mike, to address the second part
    
    dance (as a discipline) has taught (and continues to teach) me
    numerous things, too often we idealize our brains above our bodies,
    the body has its own knowledge...it has brought me closer to the
    God(dess)..the path is not always book learning and eschatology.
    
    peter
    

    I share your views Peter, on the wisdom of the body and it helping
    us to connect more fully with the Divine.  There is something I do
    quite often called "body prayer" that looks like a combination of
    Yoga and Tai Chi (of which I've taken both).  It is very centering
    and prayerful.  
    
    blessings,
    Karen

    re: body prayer
    
    There are some positions/poses that are interesting.
    
    1)	Standing, with your hands together in prayer form, place the thumbs
    against the chest, so that the tips of the thumbs are just over the
    solar plex, should fit there naturally.
    
    2)	On your knees, all the way down, hands together in prayer form,
    lift the arms over the head and place them at the back of the neck, the
    head in full extension (like the tail of a scared dog between his legs,
    this is an example) stretching back towards the knees/lap.  Agains
    hands together in prayer position are against the knap of the neck,
    should fit there naturally.
    
    3)	On your knees, same position as in two, except the arms are now
    extended behind you, hands together in prayer form, the tips of the
    thumbs should reach the anus, should fit there naturally.
    
    Note the hands are in three different locations, the solar plex, the
    knap of the neck and the base of the spine (or anus).
     

    I wrote the following text a little over a year ago:
    
Yesterday, it was nearly 80 degrees outside.  The humidity was low, the
trees were finally beginning to bud, and though it was a bit cloudy, in
every other way it was a perfect spring day in Colorado.  Today is
another story; it has been snowing all day, and hard.  Though it is
April 29, it seems that winter has not quite let go, but I have lived
here long enough to know that this is anything but surprising.  These
abrupt changes in the weather seem to be more the rule than the
exception, and I have learned to accept all of it, both the wintry
spring days and the spring-like winter days.

I am reminded of the book by Martin Marty, A Cry of Absence, which
discusses the metaphor of spiritual seasons.  Much like the seasons of
the Earth, Marty argues, we also live in a spiritual climate.  For some
of us, and at various times in our lives, we may live a kind of summery
spirituality, in which we feel the Presence clearly and distinctly.  Yet
many may also find themselves unable to sustain this summery kind of
spirituality on a consistent basis.  At those times when we sense the
Presence dimly or not at all, the Absence can be discomforting.  In this
"winter of the heart", the Presence cannot simply be summoned at will.

We cannot eliminate winter; we learn to cope with it by insulating
ourselves against it, and waiting for spring.  Similarly, as in the
winter coats we wear, there are certain ways of insulating ourselves
against the winters of the spirit.  The "coats" we wear, in this case,
are the spiritual disciplines.  There are many such disciplines, and
some may suit various individuals differently, but their importance lies
in the ways that they help the individual ride out their spiritual
winters.

Because the appropriate disciplines can vary for each person, there can
be no fixed rule, other than what works for the individual.  Prayer,
meditation, scripture reading (to Martin Marty, the Psalms were
particularly valuable), or journal writing are all examples of spiritual
disciplines.  Even regular attendance at worship meetings can serve as a
kind of spiritual discipline.  In a recently published Pendle Hill
pamphlet, Carol Conti-Entin discusses several spiritual disciplines in
depth, as techniques of improvising in the divine-human duet.  But what
if we have lost our duet partner in the shadows?  The disciplines are no
less valuable then, not only as an insulation against the spiritual
winters, but also as a reminder of a coming spring.

The spiritual disciplines can also insulate us during the spring, 
against those wintry days that defy the calendar.  Like the seasons here
in Colorado, which are ill-defined, with frequent and abrupt changes in
weather, our spiritual experience can also take sudden turns, both for
the better and the worse.  New and often unexpected events unfold in our
lives, and to prepare for these sudden changes becomes a necessity.  We
may easily wish to take the sunshine and warmth for granted, but, alas,
yesterday's sunshine then becomes today's snow storm.  When rapid
change, rather than entrenched stability, is the norm, acceptance of the
day to day is a survival mechanism.  We also know, after all, that
today's clouds will disappear as well, and through that knowledge, and
through our spiritual insulation, we endure them with hope.  

So, as I look at the late spring snowfall from the window of my
apartment, I know that in a few days the accumulation on the ground will
melt away--just as I also know, during my spiritual snowfalls, that the
Absence will melt away.   Meanwhile, I wear my spiritual disciplines
like a winter coat, waiting for the Presence to return.

    Mmmmm... Nice Mike, really nice.  Thanks for entering that!
    
    ---Kb

Peace,

jim

    Now that I am moved in, I have been unpacking, in fits and starts
    mostly.  Once you get the necessities out of the way, which involves
    setting up the bed, television, and stereo, the rest can wait. :-)  But
    I did do some unpacking tonight, and I ran across a journal that I was
    maintaining over a year ago.  I flipped through it and was actually
    a little embarassed at the triteness of what I was writing.   That
    isn't to say that the journal wasn't valuable to me at the time as a
    vehicle for spiritual exploration and communication with God, but it
    also means that you won't find a hardback copy of it in the religion
    section of Waldenbooks any time soon.  :-)
    
    -- Mike