pain and spirituality

[percival]

After Inverness, I was convinced that attending Mass was too painful for me.

But then, four things got me thinking again:

- Jack Kornfield: you should choose a spiritual path and stick to it. Explore it fully, and don't flit from
practice to practice

- Ezra Bayda: you need to face your pain and not run away from it.

- seraphimsigrist's remark that it's the bread that counts, not the paraphernalia

- my parents asking me whether I was still going to mass

So I've decided that I will try to face mass again - in Spain, hopefully an early morning mass.
Some of the most pleasing and spiritually uplifting masses I've attended were masses where it was just the liturgy - no sermon, no music.

I want to recapture that.

Prayers most welcome - I don't want to disconnect from God because I'm afraid of certain forms of worship / meditation.

Comments

[ducklet.livejournal.com]

There are so many ways to worship God! At Quaker meetings, we worship God through silence: seeking, praying, listening.

A colleague of mine goes to a Catholic mass where they sing glorious Gregorian chants.

I'm not sure I would say Find one path and stick to it -- I would say Keep seeking until you find the path that you can not leave, the right one for you (like a spouse).

I think there are so many different ways to know God, to pray to God, to worship God, and each of us needs to find the way, the community, the style that works for us.

Of course, I'm obviously no expert !! Even so, I pray that God will guide your steps and lead you to the path that's meant for you.

And even if you do all your exploring and end up right back home where you started from, you'll have a wondrous story to tell!

Blessings to you,
ducklet