by: Jane Bishop Halteman

October 26, 2015

Back in the day at my former church, I led a weekly contemplative prayer gathering that often focused on spiritual practices.  One night, as we looked at the practice of enthusiasm, we learned that the word is derived from the roots “en”—in or within—and “theos”—God.  Enthusiasm means having God within or being one with God. 

“People with this gift carry a special kind of energy.  They bring warmth and feeling to their relationships and vigor and freshness to their activities,” according to the Spirituality and Practice website, which describes enthusiasm as the experience of things as ever new, and ever renewed in God’s ever-beginning Creation.

Mystic Hildegard of Bingen counseled her spiritual directees to be “juicy people,” folks filled with wonder and curiosity, with lusty appetites and high spirits.

Take a few minutes to consider how God might be calling you to be enthusiastic using this prayer exercise, “God in My Breath,” which is a brief version of one Anthony de Mello presents in Sadhana: A Way to God. The intention is to bring God within—en theos.

Close your eyes and practice breath awareness for a moment, then reflect on the fact that the air you are breathing in is charged with the power and the presence of God.   Notice what you feel when you become aware that you are drawing God in with each breath.

While you breathe in, imagine your lungs filling with divine energy.  As you breathe out, imagine you are exhaling impurities, fears, negative feelings, apathy, boredom.  Picture your whole body becoming radiant and alive through this process of breathing in God’s life-giving Spirit and breathing out impurities.  Sit a while with this awareness.  

Take a look at the enthusiasm represented in the photo collage which appears with this post, and then do an enthusiasm examination of yourself.   Spirituality and Practice suggests considering these questions:  When do you feel filled with God? When do you feel most alive? What are you passionate about? Do you always feel free to express your enthusiasm? If not, what tends to stifle this spiritual energy? How would you like to experience enthusiasm?  Have you ever experienced enthusiasm as a faith practice? 

Do you have friends who sometimes are like cheerleaders because they spur you on to greater things through their enthusiasm?  How might you be that kind of friend to others here at KRMC, in your neighborhood, at your workplace?

I love these comments by Kay Redfield Jamison on exuberance, a close relative of enthusiasm:  “Exuberance is an abounding, ebullient, effervescent emotion. It is kinetic and unrestrained, joyful, irrepressible….exuberance leaps, bubbles, and overflows, propels its energy through troop and tribe. It spreads upward and outward, like pollen toted by dancing bees, and, in this carrying, ideas are moved and actions taken.”

by: Jane Bishop Halteman

October 19, 2015

In the last four years since I moved to South Bend, IN, I have become infatuated with the St. Joe River.  Located for the most part in southern Michigan, the river also winds its way through several northern Indiana towns including South Bend, a city which takes its name from its location at the river’s southernmost bend.

The banks of the St. Joe offer a quiet place for personal meditation and soaking up seasonal beauty.  I love the many riverside vantage points I’ve discovered around town and the ever-changing look of the river as the year unfolds month by month.

The St. Joe is faithful in all seasons as its banks proudly display sprouting buds in spring, green leaves in summer, the bright colors of fall foliage, and snow-graced limbs in winter.  The river’s moods are as plentiful as my own as the St. Joe floods or recedes, steams or freezes over, rushes along or ambles lazily.

The river nourishes fish, and birds, and animals and offers rest and relaxation to those who choose to sit by its welcoming shores or navigate it in one way or another.      

Its way of being in the world delights me…it listens well, it carries on despite the circumstances in which it finds itself, it’s always there for me, it reminds me on a regular basis to let go of the flotsam and jetsam in my life.  And it always invites me to take one more contemplative photo!

A few weeks ago, when I suddenly realized how massive my St. Joe River photo file had become, I created this YouTube video as a salute to my favorite local retreat space and as a reminder that I regularly feel a deep connection to the Creator through creation.

In what ways does the Divine’s gift of creation offer you delight, solace, courage, companioning?  As you are nurtured in this way by the Divine, do you also find yourself more able to live into prospering healing and hope for those around you?  In the words of Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, founders of the Spirituality and Practice website:  "We have to care for our own souls in order to have the energy and strength to care for our families, our neighbors, and the earth."