Godfulness: Mindfulness for Christians: Recent Episodes
Fr. John Auther, SJ
If we study the lessons that mindfulness provides us from a Christian perspective, we begin to tap into the rich tradition of being aware of God at all times, of finding God in all things. Godfulness is a podcast that helps people to find that their lives are full of God and to find how that fills them with peace.
Why is it important to embrace Godfulness in our lives? Godfulness allows us to be aware of God and live the life God wants us to live--a life with broad horizons and a glorious destiny.
On this, the second to the last episode, we focus on paying attention to how the Lord surrounds us and how the Lord is deep within us. By living both of these realities, we can be more aware of God during our day.
As we continue to review the past episodes of the podcast, we highlight three spiritual practices that we have presented in previous podcasts. They are very helpful for us to have a healthy spiritual life where mindfulness of God is possible.
As we move towards the end of the podcast, this episode reinforces what we have seen before. It encourages us to choose a technique that is helpful to stay aware of God during our day.
To maintain an awareness of God as we go through our day, four activities are very helpful.
Since our lives are made up of activities for the good of others and ourselves, of blessings and of potential encounters with God, our lives offer us a real chance at holiness.
Tp be aware that we are doing God's will during our everyday lives allows us to discover how close God is to us. The wisdom of De Caussade helps us to see how we can know that we do God's will and to rejoice in that all day long.
Why do we seek Godfulness, a mindfulness and awareness of God throughout our day? In this episode, we review the temptations to stop and, then, we re-dedicate ourselves to pursuing a life where being aware of God is important.
In this last episode dedicated to the different sections of the Examen, we look at how looking to the near future can prepare us to be aware of the ways God will come to us then.
In the fourth part of the Examen, as we look back over our day, we pray in gratitude and repentance to the Lord. This prayer helps us to live out the next day with greater awareness of the ways that God comes to us.
In this episode we show how we can become very aware of God's activity in our lives if we work with God to review the last few hours of our day, With the Lord guiding us, we will find ways that we did not that the Lord was acting in our lives. What a blessing that is!
Through the Examen and the conscious decision to find God more in our days, we are able to be more grateful to God and more sensitive to the ways God is active in our days. We thus can respond to God better each day.
There is an ancient practice of looking back over our day to find the trace of God's activity.. We introduce it here and talk about how it can help to highlight for us the consolation that God is offering us every day.
In this episode, the use of a technique we've talked about before is shown to be helpful in both daily life and quiet prayer. One sign of its effectiveness is the sense of physical relaxation that pervades us as we focus on being aware of God.
The second method to quiet the racing mind and staying more aware of God close to us during our days is to take 15 or 20 minutes everyday to pray deeply and quietly. Some methods that might be useful can be found at this link:
Contemplative Prayer | prayerfuljourneys
Our minds race from one thing to the next during our days, thus leading us to believe that the fulfillment of our happiness is in the next thing to do or to think or to experience. We need some way to slow our minds down and be more aware of the presence of God in the here and now.
if we use a word or phrase steadily through the day, we become ready to face difficulties and also to recognize and be grateful for blessings that happen during our daily lives.
One very ancient technique is to use a word or phrase to turn our attention away from the thoughts or temptations that can bedevil us.
As we use our watchfulness or vigilance (nepsis) we gently replace thoughts that lead us from awareness of God to thoughts that are rooted in gratitude to God for the blessings we have from God.
We introduce the term "nepsis" from Greek Orthodoxy to present a way to allow us to reject almost immediately thoughts or images that lead us away from God and to welcome thoughts and images that lead us to God.
This episode concentrates on finding consolation throughout our day by using the everyday blessings and interactions as ways of finding God's love and God's challenge to love more.
We look at the definition of consolation and how it can help us to stay aware of God's goodness in our lives. We see how we can use simple truths of our faith to recall the goodness and presence of God.
When we find ourselves troubled or uninspired during our day, two strategies can help us to encounter the presence of God again: speaking to God honestly and offering what we are doing to God. These simple actions can renew our awareness of God's daily nearness.
We look at Consolation and Desolation in our spiritual lives and talk about a strategy to stay aware of God's love in those moments of difficulty (desolation).
Our life of awareness of the blessings that God gives us is really a conversation with God. Trying to stay aware of that ongoing conversation may be difficult but it helps us to grow in goodness.
We look at how Brother Lawrence in The Practice of the Presence of God helps us to be aware of God throughout the day. There is so much peace waiting for us in his approach.
We have almost two paradoxical movements in Godfulness to achieve: to be actively open to God and then to be passive in listening and aware of God.
When we begin to be aware of how much of our lives and activities are based on God's initiative, we begin to see our lives as responses to God. The little tasks of every day are seen as our participation in the plans that God has to let us live out our love for God, others and ourselves.
When we discover the treasure that we carry with us all day long, we experience our lives differently. All day long, then, we can reflect on that treasure and be more and more aware (mindful) of what God is doing for us.
In order to have a real sense of Godfulness, we need time every day to be still with God. We need time to invite God into a place of prayer inside of us, and then we will be more aware of how God is with us outside of our prayer time. Follow this little method to be with God in peaceful prayer.
Our experience of God changes as we move from a gratitude for blessings to a gratitude to God for those same blessings. To go through our day with this gratitude to God changes how we view God and how we view our day.
In this Introduction to Godfulness, I explain what I mean by Godfulness and how it is related to mindfulness. I also lay out the sources that will help guide this 32 episode, 16-week, podcast series. I recommend a book and lead us through an exercise that can be helpful to understand what Godfulness might mean in our lives.