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    Simple Ways: Towards the Sacred
    Simple Ways: Towards the Sacred
    Simple Ways: Towards the Sacred
    Ebook114 pages50 minutes

    Simple Ways: Towards the Sacred

    By Gunilla Norris

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    About this ebook

    In Simple Ways acclaimed spiritual writer and teacher Gunilla Norris has distilled a lifetime of seeking and reflecting into a beautifully worded, lucid, and practical primer for prayer, meditation, and mindful living. Divided into four illuminating sections, she offers us a wide range of accessible ways towards the Holy in our daily lives: Towards the Sacred with Our Bodies; Towards the Sacred in Our Dwellings; Towards the Sacred with Our Everyday Things; and Towards the Sacred in Our Gratitude. No matter what our spiritual background, these ways are completely available to any of us, as long as we make conscious choices in our daily routines to embrace them. A profound and poetic celebration of our search for the Sacred, Simple Ways invites us to discover that the meaning of our lives can be found and experienced exactly where we are.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSPCK
    Release dateMar 29, 2012
    ISBN9780281067145
    Simple Ways: Towards the Sacred
    Author

    Gunilla Norris

    Gunilla Norris lives in Rhode Island. Old and Singing is her fourth book of poetry. Her second book, Joy is the Thinnest Layer, won the Nautilus gold prize for the best collection of poems in 2017. Gunilla is also the author of several books on the spirituality of the everyday. Visit her website: GunillaNorris.com.

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      Book preview

      Simple Ways - Gunilla Norris

      INTRODUCTION

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      For many years now I have written about spirituality in the every-day. It is the every-day in which we live. Being human we often long for something more transcendent than the ordinary, but then we quite often miss that which is numinous and extraordinary right under our noses.

      Spirit is everywhere, even in the darkest hells of human creation. As the psalmist wrote, Where can I go from your spirit? … If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. That God’s Presence is everywhere is understood by many religions. We may be shaped by our cultural and familial upbringing and by specific faith traditions—but they do not ultimately define our relationship with God. It is a personal experience. We must show up for it, and we do so reliably through prayer and meditation and in the living of our daily life. If we could describe this as a relationship, a capacity to fully attend to God’s Presence in the present, then we can meditate and pray anywhere and at any time.

      My way has been a householder’s way, opening myself as much as possible to that which is near me in order to experience God’s Presence there. It is an undramatic, ordinary path, and it is completely available to anyone—even to those who do not believe in God, but who nevertheless have a faithful reverence for Life.

      To pray with, that is, to reverently be with, requires a kind of dual awareness—that of the concrete, touchable world, and that which is untouchable and yet shines through the material world. We are embodied and we are spirit. So, too, are the places we dwell in and the things we use. Could we be more careful and aware of the world and our selves, we would without a doubt find that we live in a holy environment, and that the meaning of our lives can be found and experienced exactly where we are.

      We have bodies, we have dwelling places, we have the things we use, and we have an inherent capacity to wonder. The poet Rainer Maria Rilke urged the young poet Kappus to try to love his questions, for then he might gradually, without noticing live along some distant day into the answer. Could we understand prayer and meditation to be a natural condition of questioning, of openhearted wondering, which can lead us to God—the unanswerable answer? I believe this is true and have given myself to this understanding. But each of us must discover the best way for themselves.

      What does it mean to wonder? It means to fully experience without mental conclusions. To wonder is open-ended and full of attention. It allows for fresh nuances, even when we seem to experience the same thing many times. To wonder is to be alive with curiosity and spaciousness and with such courtesy toward the given that it has the chance to become a gift to us. It also invites us to give ourselves back to life and so paradoxically to receive more abundantly.

      There is no need to read this book sequentially. Whatever the reader finds here that feels right could be a place to wonder, to experience, and to deepen. It can be thought of as a railing of sorts, such as staircases have. Contemplative traditions of the past created rules to live by. The medieval meaning of the word rule was railing—something to hang on to in the ups and downs of life. I hope these contemplative ideas could be such railings for the reader. But we know we can’t get anywhere if we continually change railings. There would be too many staircases and never a landing. Should one of these simple ways appeal to you, stick to it. Continue to question, to wonder, and to use it for some time. The Considerations for the Heart offered in this book, or ones you pose that you like better, could be practiced for a month, a year, or a lifetime. If a question you have been with for some time loses its appeal, try another and continue with it in a steady and stable manner. Just one simple question fully lived can bring us in time into that mystery which

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