Author: rkcdlitt

I meditate; I pray. These two begin my spiritual day. I never take leave of these. My prayers expand my ability to believe and trust in God. In my spiritual journey, I am blessed with the companionship of the Holy Spirit in my life.

My wonder is how God loves us so much; we are always harming each other and His creation. But in our daily lives we try to express the love that we are taught in the Bible. We love because He loves.

Regardless of our faults, we receive His generosity; we receive His love: we receive His healings. We are His beloved children – all of us. The love we share is defined by our relationships with God and each other. This is both difficult and easy to accept. Prayer helps.

We know that all our blessings are received from God. Because we are His beloved children, we also receive the inner peace that He brings.

© Russell Kendall Carter

A promise is something to keep; it is that simple! I trust in God; therefore, I promise to love and obey His every word. When I fear something, the trust I have in God comes from the promises He made to me. God’s promise to me that whether I have joy or sorrow, I am protected by the presence of the Holy Spirit. Like Job, I struggle with questions, am hesitant about reality, and lack confidence in my future; but God’s eternal promise gives me the comfort of Hope. My soul rests with God, so I am in comfort. The power in my life belongs to God and therefore, I can love all of his creation. I believe in His promise, so I share my heart with all and forgive them of all things. With God, my promise is also eternal.

© Russell Kendall Carter

In our human experience, we learn to appreciate and love each other. Even when we face adversities and failures, we turn to God, for He alone is all love and all power. As Matthew writes, “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you (6: 33).” In this way, we always recognize the presence of God in our midst. We also recognize that we are all made in His image.

Our daily lives are meant to reflect that image in all our actions. We are reminded that before anything else, we are good which is how God wants us to live. Peter writes, “. . . get rid of all ill will and all deceit, pretense, envy, and slander. Instead, like a newborn baby, desire the pure milk of the word. Nourished by it, you will grow into salvation, since you have tasted that the Lord is good (1 Peter 2: 1-3)”. With this reflection and this action in our lives, righteousness and grace rule our society.

Regardless of how we look at the world and all of its faults, created by humanity, God is still with us, nurturing and healing, but above all loving. We are God’s people receiving His Mercy and Grace. As righteous people of God, we live in our faithfulness to God.

© Russell Kendall Carter

Ownership is an interesting concept. There was no true ownership concept until the Norman’s conquered England in 1066. A law was then written that created the rite of land ownership. This myth of ownership adds to our mistaken ideas of independence and strength. This is mine; look how important I am.

In reality, we rent, we borrow, but only for a fleeting time. This false security that ownership brings money and power quickly fails when our human bodies die. It is then that we realize the myth of ownership is false, useless. Owning, being rich, is not something that Jesus was concerned with. He ministered to the weak and the poor and told a rich landowner to sell all his property and follow Him. The landowner couldn’t; he believed that his wealth was more important.

We are not perfect! We are flawed in our belief that the richer we are, the more we own, is important, and God recognizes that our lofty position puts us at the head of the line. But this is not true, when our bodies die, we are just as naked as the poor infant who has died from malnourishment. We both stand before God baring our souls. The poor being homeless admits to stealing for survival. The rich merchant admits to hording and owning, keeping others from what he has (or rents).

We as humans have created the myth that through ownership, we are the center of the universe. We control the future of mankind and the Earth. Noting can be further from the truth. God is the center of His creation; God runs the show. We answer to God for our misbehaving and egotism. He is great; we are small. We should trust God for our needs, not our false sense of ownership.

© Russell Kendall Carter

We are all familiar with 1st Corinthians 13:13: “. . . these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” The first thing I was taught in Sunday school was God is Love. The way of God’s Love is the way of life. We really do not have an alternative, for love is patient and kind. It is not self-centered and is shared freely. Thomas Merton writes in No Man is and Island: ““The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves.”

In paraphrasing a recent Pickles cartoon, the grandson tells his grandfather that dogs die young because they already know how to love; man lives longer to learn how to love. This is an unnecessary truism. Love requires us to respect deeply. It calls on our ability to endure hurt and persevere, defeating any hurdles that are placed in our way. Egotism is one of these hurdles, our own and others. I once had a superior who was the picture-perfect icon for egotism and was hard to love. We argued often; one day I asked him why we hated each other so much. The question came out of nowhere and stopped us cold. We looked at each other, apologized for our animosities, and had a good relationship from then on. Love given a chance!

God loves us; to think otherwise is impossible. We, therefore, should also love us, all of us. God gives us the opportunity and the model in Jesus. We live a righteous life by loving all of God’s creation; and, by loving, God gives us a righteous life – a two-way street. When we love in the spirit of the Holy Spirit, we are preparing ourselves for Jesus’s return. When we love, God changes the way we look at the world, at humanity, and at all of His creation. Our path is lighted by His aura.

The Love of God and the Love we share in His name endures forever. And the greatest of these is love.

© Russell Kendall Carter

When we recognize that God dwells within us, we know what His will is, but cannot speak about in a natural way of conversation. It is a sense of comfort and security that is impossible to explain. God gave us Jesus first then the Holy Spirit to lighten our path, bringing us together in His single message of love and brotherhood. Our fruitfulness relies on our togetherness. Even though persecution, misunderstanding, and other forms of hardship seem to bar our ways, we know that our faith overcomes and eases many of these hurdles.

We listen for the reign of God; our faith comes from listening to His voice; now is the time for us to listen; it is time for us to recognize the damage we do to each other and the Earth. God spoke to us through Jesus and continues through the Holy Spirit; He has not left us; we may have left Him. Jesus told us to go into our quiet space to hear the Word.

My quiet space is everywhere I can hear God. I hear Him in the voices of my fellow humans; I hear Him when the birds sing for more food in the feeders outside our windows; I hear Him in the trees shivering in the cold winds of winter. His voice is all over; listen! When you hear the comfort enter your muscles, you know God is speaking. It is very easy; yet. . . it is very difficult. We choose!

I hear God whispering to me in my ministry to others. My ministry is to share His Love. Each of us share our blessings and ministries in a unique way, showing and spreading God’s Truth and Love. We are blessed when we are caregivers to others and our ability to listen to God’s voice grows as we share our ministries.

I prefer to pray in my special place; this gives me a sense of being in constant communion with God’s Truth and Light. However, sharing the Eucharist in church is a massive communal prayer that does and will reverberate throughout the world. Millions of people around our small globe sharing this common prayer brings the reality to us all that Christ is everywhere. . . always.

We celebrate the reign of God through prayer and when making our lives prayer-centered, we shine His light throughout the world.

© Russell Kendall Carter

Prayers are wonderful exercises. They calm the soul and the body. Through prayer we renew our faith in God. Through prayer we heal our wounds and work through our wounds and pain. Prayer is and essential part of faith and faith is an essential part of prayer. Prayer allows us to watch; prayer allows us to dream.

When we read the Gospel, we realize that the Gospel is a prayer, and it lives within us. We know this by the presence of the Holy Spirit. Prayer allows us to take the time to notice God’s creation. Today, I watched an ant crawl across a blade of grass: such beauty; such grace; a gift from God.

We can make our bodies houses of prayer. Saint Paul tells us to pray continually. That is not impossible. Greeting a new person with dignity and love is a prayer. It is a gift from and for God. Prayer allows us to be happy every moment we live. And that is enough!

© Russell Kendall Carter

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, humility, and self-control are all names for what Saint Paul calls the fruits of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit. Over the next few weeks, I will return to these images for meditative reflections. As Henry Melvill writes: “Ye cannot live for yourselves; a thousand fibers connect you with your fellow men, and along those fibers, as along sympathetic threads, run your actions as causes, and return to you as effects.” St. Paul has deep reflections on all of these sympathetic threads.

As humans, we touch everything; aw we walk the earth, we water it with our pure beings and greatly enrich whatever we touch. But we are also doing harm to what we touch; we must accept that if our children and grandchildren are to survive, we must now adopt a worldview that sustains the earth, including all people of all faiths and origins. We must work together for our children. We can do this by using the Fruits of the Spirit.

We must allow ourselves to accept what God gives us and protect it; we must also bow to His will. We must recognize our relationships and brotherhood with all living objects in God’s creation. We need to recognize that the outcasts of society, the criminals, the loser classes, are in fact more important than us. Jesus mentions the least of these. We are in fact the least of these.

Using the thoughts of Saint Paul, let us grow in the grace of Jesus, reflecting the goodness and glory of God, the God that Jesus brought to live within us. It is time to recognize our grief and loss that we have created within ourselves and our society. May God bring these Fruits of the Spirit to your doorstep.

© Russell Kendall Carter

As humans living in this sometimes-frustrating world we remain living signs of God’s Graced and Glory; as Matthew reminds us, we must demonstrate this by shining God’s light on all we do. As free people of God, we inherit the wonderful tradition of demonstrate the freedom and dignity of all men and women around our small planet. We are all one of God’s chosen children. As His children, we honor justice and hate immorality.

As Peter reminds us “Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received.” Each of us are missionaries of God’s word and light. Sometimes, we are put through unpleasant times; this darkness in our lives can be devastating; it is these times that we must seek rescuing from ourselves. Our old worn-out ideas no longer work, we need to love ourselves as Jesus invites us to do. We are God’s holy creation; we must use all of God’s creation to be of service in spreading His love.

We have a great teacher in Jesus; when we follow his lighted path, invite Him not our hearts, we find it simple to spread Love to one another. My prayer is that we look upon the other as an equal and share God’s Grace given freely without God asking from us nothing but love.

© Russell Kendall Carter

I sometimes get very confused and upset when I am in pain. I am told to pray. Well, I meditate and pray daily. I am told to praise God. I try to live by what Matthew writes in chapter 5, verse 16. I live my life doing what I can to reflect on the glory of God. But I still suffer in pain. There are two things that I truly believe: suffering is not the last word in my life, and, for God, all things are possible.

Do not get me wrong; I rarely ask God to lift my pain. There too many people suffering more than me, and whom I pray for God to comfort. This praying for others helps me cope with my difficulties. This is one way God eases my pain. And yet, there are times that I do complain to God; never as critically as Job does. I think I complain because when I am in pain, I feel like I am lost in the wilderness.

Then I remember that Jesus fasted for forty days in the wilderness, and I immediately find relief from this feeling. I never feel that my pain is sanctioned by God; He does not give me my pain, He comforts me when I need it. My loving wife and daughter both tell me that pain is not what stops me from doing things. It is the fear of pain that does. Mt prayers for God is to give me the courage to continue, to not give up.

My thoughts and actions are all aimed at making life pleasant for others; I do not anger at a person’s self-centeredness. I pray that God eases them of him of his burdens so he may be happy as me. I pray to comfort others, and as long as God allows me to do this, I am happy, pain or no pain.

I praise our Lord for all the good things in my life. And they are plentiful.

_{© Russell Kendall Carter}