pat loughery

I found this quote in tomorrow’s reading (I don’t know what day of the week it is when I pick this book up early in the morning, sue me… :)) from Celtic Daily Prayer.

It speaks well of the desire for integrity – for the private and public life, the inner and outer life, the “spiritual” and “social” life to be the same (and to remind us that they ARE the same anyway; it’s a false approach to think of them as separable).

 I want singleness of eye, a purity of intention, a central core to my life that will enable me to carry out all my obligations and activities as well as I can.  I want, in fact – to borrow from the language of the saints – to live ‘in grace’ as much of the time as possible.  I am not using this term in a strictly theological sense; by grace I mean an inner harmony, essentially spiritual, which can be translated into outward harmony.  I am seeking, perhaps, what Socrates asked for in the prayer from the Phaedrus when he said, ‘May the outward and inward man be one.’  I would like to achieve a state of inner spiritual grace from which I could function and give as I was meant to in the eyes of God.

There are time when one seems to carry all one’s tasks before one lightly, as if borne along on a great tide.  And in the opposite state one can hardly tie a shoe-string.  It is true that a large part of life consists in learning a technique of tying the shoe-string – whether one is ‘in grace’ or not.

I believe most people are aware of periods in their lives when they  seem to be ‘in grace’ and other periods when they feel ‘out of grace’, even though they may use different words to describe those states.

This quote is from Gift of the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh, and quoted in the book Celtic Daily Prayer (highly recommended).

There are times in our lives where everything “just clicks”, right?  And other times when nothing works as advertised, and we can’t figure out what’s wrong or what to change.  A wise teacher once spoke to me about seasons of life – life has its changes, and sometimes it’s winter whether you want it to be or not.

Integrity is doing life whether or not it’s just clicking – not giving up or giving in, but intentionally pursuing integrity, pushing forward, digging deeper.

David Wilcox writes, “All the roots grows deeper when it’s dry“.