Evangelicals on the Ignatian Way

Bad Buddhism - Bad Christianity

 

 

For today's post, I want to go down a very different road than I normally do.

Here is a comment from Len Sweet (with which I wholeheartedly agree).

"Too much of today's pop Christianity sounds like bad Buddhism. Christianity is not a vague, amorphous, ethereal religion... Christianity is and has always been a religion of incarnation... it is inescapably material, physical and cultural" (Viral).

I read a lot in the area of spirituality, spiritual formation and spiritual direction. There is a significant part of contemporary Christian spirituality that is incorporating Buddhist practices in to the spiritual life. I think Sweet is spot on in his assessment.

As a side note, in recent weeks I have found similar comments and concerns in N.T. Wright (New Testament scholar), Robert Roberts (philosopher who specializes in the philosophy of the human person/psychology), and Baron von Hugel (spiritual director, teacher and author).

This is not a post against Buddhism, although I need to make a few statements about what Buddhism actually believes (I find that so many Christians have no idea about Buddhist teaching). I am not critiquing Buddhism simply repeating core tenets. 

Neither is this post about personal interactions and relationships with Buddhists. In all things, Christians are to love and respect those who differ from us, while at the same time, have the freedom to assess, critique, dialogue, debate, and witness for Christ and His Way. How we do that is important, but not the concern here.

This post is about Christians who find Buddhist spirituality attractive and useful. This is at least "odd" because the gulf between Buddhism and Christianity is vast. They are not even close in their worldviews.  They are fundamentally, essentially and non-negotiably different. 

If the central beliefs of Buddhism are true, then Christianity if false. The opposite is also true. If even the essence of Christianity is true, then Buddhism is a deeply flawed and deficient way of life. 

In the prevailing climate of pluralism, relativism and tolerance, there is the tendency for Christians to have an uncritical (even naive) borrowing and intermingling of other religious faiths in to the Christian faith. The result is that missiologists/anthropologists refer to as syncretism (or hybrid versions of faith). This is becoming more common in our time.

 

RESOURCES
By the way . . .

If you want more of an overview of the Buddhist worldview (core belief system) read  the chapter in James Sire, The Universe Next Door.

Or the chapter in God is Not One: The  Eight Rival Religions That Run the World, by Stephen Prothero.

Both Sire and Prothero are worth reading in their entirety.

If you would like to see a comparison and contrast of the Buddha and Jesus Christ, read Ravi Zacharias - The Lotus and the Cross (very short) and set as an imagined conversation between Jesus and Siddhartha (who became the Buddha).

ABOUT GOD:
There is no comparison between their views of God. Buddhism does not believe in a personal, conscious Being we name as God. Buddha is not God. The Buddha was a person who achieved "enlightenment." The word Buddha means "enlightened one." Christianity is personal, Trinitarian, Christocentric and relational when it comes to how God is understood. The Apostle Paul prays that we would be enlightened about this reality (Ephesians 1:18).

 

ABOUT THE HUMAN PERSON:
There is no comparison between their understanding of the nature of humanity. In Buddhism - your sense of individuality and personal self-existence is an illusion. You must transcend this illusion through a type of meditative experience designed to pierce the illusion and connect you with the undifferentiated ALL. You are a drop of water in the ocean of All that is. Christianity believes in personal identity, the dignity of being made in the image of God, the glorious love of a personal God for his creation.

 

ABOUT SPIRITUALITY:  
There is no comparison in their understanding of spirituality. How can there be? The two main poles of spirituality are God and the human person. Spirituality is the experience of the person who encounters God. If the fundamental ideas of both God and the human person are so different, then spirituality (the connection of the person with God) will inevitably be different.

So Buddhism is world-denying, world-escaping, excessively interior in its preoccupation, withdrawing from the mundane and rather disembodied. Although, a bit whimsically, why is the Buddha (see the image above) so often pictured with an enormous belly? Apparently food is exempt from being an illusion.

Christianity is wonderfully incarnational, "embodied," earthy, grounded, rooted, world engaging, world transforming and in all this, experiences God and the glory of God incarnate.

The glory of God is the God who loves His creation, who weeps over what sin has done to it, and in great sacrifice becomes incaranate in the world for the sake of its redemption.

The primary spiritual discipline of meditation in Buddhism is for the purpose of emptying the mind of thought, ceasing to think and transcending rationality to the higher reality that everything is an illusion, including your personal sense of self. You move to the experience of being one with everything. And so the core belief. All is god. "(g)od" is all. All is one. To belief otherwise is to believe in an illusion.

Biblical meditation is a filling of the mind with truth that delights and transforms the one who meditates on this truth. Biblical meditation is a deeply personal, relational connectedness with the transcendent God who loves, visits, speaks, engages and recreates us in to the marred image of Christ. To believe otherwise (or not to believe at all) is to be deceived.

The practices of silence and solitude, quiet and rest, meditation and contemplation look quite different in these different ways. These practices are quite biblical, but not so well known. I think, because modern Christianity has not done so well with these practices, Christians look elsewhere and borrow uncritically from Buddhism (and other places), and don't realize that an alternative worldview is smuggled in with the practices.

 

SYNCRETISM AND REDEFINED FAITH:
What we have in the USA is what Sweet calls "bad" Buddhism. Much like American appetites that cannot stomach real Chinese food and so we greatly reinvent it to make it more palatable for our consumption, the Western mind cannot connect with real Buddhism. So Buddhism has been morphed (reinvented) to be more understandable and attractive (palatable for the western consumer) who would not be at all interested in the real fare.

By the way, when you actually study Buddhism and its expressions around the world, what you discover is that very few who live in countries where Buddhism is the official religion, even believe or practice "philosophical" Buddhism. It is simply an unworkable religion (that really isn't even the right word for Buddhism). Most Buddhists are more animistic in belief and practice.

So when a well known "evangelical" (probably former evangelical is more accurate) author writes a book on Christian spirituality and has generous references and a positive use of a variety of eastern religions and their advocates, along with a similarly generous use of secular psycho-therapeutic perspectives on the human person . . .

And that book has little Scripture in it . . .
Christ is barely mentioned . . .
the cross and resurrection are neglected . . .
sin is a non-existent category . . .
and there is bare mention of interpreters, authors and teachers within the evangelical tradition . . . 

This is syncretism and its product is a sadly deficient, distorted (and I guess I should say) deceptive spirituality.

In the long run, it is not bad Buddhism I am really concerned about. 

It is bad Christianity.

While I am FOR generous orthodoxy, I am against naive heterodoxy.

And I am always FOR, a robust, relational, biblical, incarnational, sacrificial, missional spirituality. I am for all those things because that is what JESUS CHRIST was for. 

Brian K. Rice  
Evangelicals on the Ignatian Way  
Leadership ConneXtions International

You Have a Story

With my travel schedule and writing commitments, my blogging has been intermittent for a few weeks. My intention (the the road to Heck is paved with them) is to be more consistent. Toward that end . . . 

I have been spending quite a bit of time working on Volume One: Conversations. I spend about two hours every morning writing and editing. this workbook.

Today I was working on the discipline of Spiritual Autobiography. I added quite a bit of material to my first draft. The introduction part of that discipline is - You Have a Story.

Here is a pdf of part of that entry.

I hope you'll use it in a "sort of" devotional way to think about the story God is writing that is your life.

Download YouHaveStory

Brian K. Rice  
Evangelials on the Ignatian Way  
Leadership ConneXtions International  
www.lci.typepad.com

Learning Environments as a Means of Transformation

 

Most of us have a few themes that haunt our thoughts. They don't ever go away. They are relentless, gnawing, interrupting, intriguing, insistent, persistent . . . and they are at the core of who we are and what we do.

Change is on my short list. But I have lots of questions about this theme. And they are never far from my awareness. 

How do people change?

How does transformation take place?

Why is change so hard?

Why do some people relapse so fully back in to old ways of living?

If the Bible (the Word of God) is so powerful, than why doesn't it seem to have more impact on those who hear?

Why do the statistics tell us the "average" born again Christian is not very different from the "average" NOT BORN AGAIN Person?

Is there anything we need to do differently if we are to see genuine, lasting, totally radical, from the inside out change set in?

Here is my core assumption (the same thing is said in some differnet ways).

The Word of God is powerful and effective.
The Gospel does change lives.
The Bible is sharper than a two edged sword and it cuts, pierces and divides.
Truth does transform.
The Spirit of truth does give enlightenment.

I simply assume that. And here is my second assumption.

The means by which we transfer this powerful, effective, transformative word to those who listen - it is these means that are the problem. We have settled for woefully inadequate pathways by which the beautiful Word of God will travel from His heart to the heart of the receiver.

The primary methodologies we prefer to use in the church are the problem. They are lacking. I actualy think they are "sub-biblical" and come more from modernity than they do from the Scripture.

We have specialized in Enlightenment born philosophies and methodologies of information distribution that are fundamentally misguided. The result of our long use of these ways.

Well, J. I. Packer tells us: The church in North America is 3000 miles wide and 1/2 inch deep. We are not going to get deeper by useing the same methods.

It turns out the Bible has different ways and the church knew those ways long before it succumbed to modernity. Next week I'll share a few ideas about those ancient ways.

Would you be surprised to find out the Ignatius knew these ways well and in fact, he took them several steps further than any one before him.

Brian K. Rice  
Evangelicals on the Ignatian Way  
Leadership ConneXtions Intl.  
www.lci.typepad.com 

 

God's Love: Antibiotic Not Aspirin

 

See if this metaphor is helpful.

I think we often misappropriate the themes of God's love, mercy and grace quite often.

We talk about them so much, so easily and so casually - they almost serve as an incantation, a panacea, a placebo . . .

God's love is not formula.
It is not sloppy agape.
It is not cheap grace.
It is not slogan.
It is not a word to be bandied about. 

When we engage with God's love in this way, it is a non-transformative love.

Not the wild, fierce love of a majestic, holy, awesome Lover that turns sinners in to saints and rebels into friends.

This hit me recently in a few conversations. I think some people are using God's love as an aspirin to calm the fever of what's gone wrong in their lives. Pop the aspirin of God's love and it will give you some short term relief from the fever. This is just the cultural spirituality of our age.

But aspirin doesn't deal with the deeper infection. A shallow experience of God's love gives only a temporary relief. It does not deal with the deep source of disease/disturbance. God's love can and will transform and heal, but not when we take it like an aspirin. We need to swallow it like a strong medicine and powerful antibiotic that goes to the heart of the Sin-Infection. Find this image here.

That means we face what is seriously wrong in us. We don't skim over it with a casual, "well God loves me" and so I don't have to think about this stuff any further. Of course you have to think about it. And much more . . . 
 

Face it.
Understand it.
Name it.
Confess it.
Turn from it.
Repent of it.
Hate it.
Flee from it.
Wrestle with it.
Fight against it.
Stand firm and refuse it.
Crucify it.
Put it to death.

These are the means of grace.
The pathways of life.
The journey of transformation.

It will only happen by God's love. But not love as a magical aspirin you swallow and presto - you are okay. The love of God (truly encountered) gives you the courage and the hope to deal with all that has gone wrong in you and around you. And there is a lot that has gone wrong. Love walks with you to the deep, dark corridors where Sin-Disease festers.

That kind of love is Amazing Love . . .
A deep, deep love . . .
A river-wide, ocean of love . . .
A purifying flame of love . . .
A holy cross of suffering love . . . 

Brian K. Rice  
Evangelicals on the Ignatian Way  
Leadership ConneXtions International  
www.lci.typepad.com

The Practice of the Presence of God

 

I am always working through the classics of spirituality. I decided to re-read The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence.

This time I read the edition that has a forward by Henri Nouwen.

It also has a very nice preface by the translator, John Delaney that explains who Brother Lawrence was, describes his influence and talks about how the content of this book was established.

This book was published after his death. It was a recollection of letters and oral sayings from those who remembered what Brother Lawrence said to them. It was published in the late 1700s.

I've read it a half dozen times now, and every time I do, I enjoy the simplicity of Brother Lawrence. For example . . .

"All things are possible to him who believes
more so to him who hopes,
still more to him who loves.
and most of all to him who perseveres
in the practice of these three virtues." 
 

"My God here I am, all Yours, 
make me according to your heart."

"God has infinite treasures to give us
and still we are satisfied with
a brief passing moment of piety."

"It is necessary, however, to put our complete trust in God, putting aside all other cares, even certain devotions which, though very good in themselves, are often engaged in for the wrong reasons. These devotions are only means to attain the end."

This next one reminds me of Ignatius' encouragement to live with a wide open generosity toward God.

"God knows what we can do.
Let us begin -- perhaps He is only waiting
for a generous resolution from us.  

Here is a comment from Brother Lawrence about a woman who was dissatisfied with her rate of spiritual growth.

"She appears to be full of good will
but she wants to go faster than grace.
One does not become holy all at once."

 
And one more:

We must know before we can love; to know God we must often think of Him; and whenwe come to love Him we shall also think of Him very often, for our heart is where our treasure is! Let us ponder this often and deeply.

I am moved every time I read this little book. The simplicity of devotion and love for Jesus, from this simple man is striking and necessary. 

Where Brother Lawrence talks of practicing the presence of God, Ignatius uses the language of "finding God in all things."  

Brother Lawrence spent his life in the monastery and mainly wrote to those who were contemplatives in the monasteries. Ignatius wrote for those who would find the world to be their home and who would need to learn how to find God in all the missional activity of the world. 

Ignatius is the one who helped me learn how to Practice the Presence of God in the World.

May you and I both, this week, have this experience many times.

In Christ.
 

Brian K. Rice  
Evangelicals on the Ignatian Way  
Leadership ConneXtions International  
www.lci.typepad.com

Running Ahead and Lagging Behind

Margaret Cropper was a gifted writer, the autobiographer of Evelyn Underhill, a close spiritual friend with Evelyn and herself, a woman of great spiritual vitality. In a letter to Evelyn, Margaret remarked:

"how oddly my writing runs ahead of my experience."

To which Evelyn replied:

"Yes, I too arrive several years later at the experience of things I said."

 

I notice this in my own life as well. Maybe it is because I am also a writer. I write every day. I jounral every day. I blog every day. And I spend almost every day working on my books. Maybe this understanding of experience lagging behind our words is especially true for writers.

But I think is true for all of us... including the larger majority of non-writers... those people who do their thinking in their head. Non-writers think about things long before they actually live in to them. 

As a side bar... because our memory is so fleeting and faulty and because our world is so distracting, I think those who choose not to write or journal are at a disadvantage in an ability to sit with thoughts over longer periods of time... but this is a degression I won't follow any further at this point.

The reality of ideas running far ahead of experience is the BANE and the PAIN of all those who have a vocation of public speaking. It is pointedly so for those who are called to the ministry of preaching and teaching. Those who must week after week, serve up a new offering of ideas to an audience - this is almost a CURSE upon us.

When we are  honest, most of us who do this are HOPELESSLY and HELPLESSLY seeing our ideas run far ahead of our experience. 

We speak of our ideas and belief,
our  ideals and aspirations,
our desires and longings,
our firm convictions . . .

but we are far slower at actually living IN TO these realities and actually have them settle down deep and soak in to the receses of our spirit.

This leads to another SIDEBAR idea about J. I. Packer's note that the North American church is 3000 miles wide and 1/2 inch deep... which is really a statement about those who lead, teach and preach to that audience. We can't take people to depths to which we are not already going. Speed of the leaders/teacher comes to mind.  Time to reel this idea in.

All this is why I (and perhaps you as well, for I assume that many of the readers of this blog have a vocation of writing and speaking) must daily linger with, revisit and repeatedly engage with familiar things.

For while they are familiar they are not yet experience or reality.

So God teaches me patience.

Patience with the questions (Maria Rainer Rilke)

Patience with the process.

Patience with the unfinishedness.

Patience with the lagging.

Patience as His Spirit settles down in one pasture while I would rather skip my way through another green field of ideas elsewhere.

May you also be patient and stay within shouting distance of what you think, speak and write.

Brian K. Rice  
Evangelicals on the Ignatian Way  
Leadership ConneXtions International  
www.lci.typepad.com

The Glory of God, The Imitation of Christ and Missional Spirituality

Here is a major "change of pace."

For this post, I am providing a PDF that is an 11 page essay/reflection on the Glory of God, the Imitation of Christ and Missional Spirituality.

It is an essay that is mainly a substantial biblical/theological reflection with the implications drawn out for both spiritual formation and spiritual direction.

At the end, I show how Ignatian spirituality pulls together all these themes.

Download GloryofGod

Next week - on opting for a future . . .

 

Brian K. Rice  
Evangelicals on the Ignatian Way  
Leadership ConneXtions International  
www.lci.typepad.com

 

The True Mystic

 

 

Ordinary Mystics

Daily duties, burning bushes and trees full of angels.

 

I am drawn to the Jesuit way of spiritual formation because it is so incarnational. It is a rooted, get your hands dirty, love the world in action as Jesus did, way of encountering God.

A mystic, is by definition, one who encounters God.

So the question then is - where is God?

Well, God is everywhere.

This is not saying God is everything. That is Buddhism, or pantheism. God is everything. Everything is God. Christian theism knows there is a real (and vast) distinction between God and creation. But God is everywhere, present with all that he has created. We live in a God soaked reality.

Macrina Wiederkehr, in one of my favorite books, A Tree Full of Angels: Seeing the Holy in the Ordinary, writes:
 

  You live in a world of theophanies.
Holiness comes wrapped in the ordinary.
There are burning bushes all around you.
Every tree is full of angels.
Hidden beauty is waiting in every crumb.
Life wants to lead you from crumbs to angels,
but this can happen only if you are willing
to unwrap the ordinary by staying with it
long enough to harvest its treasure.

Now, our problem is one of awareness, alertness, attentiveness, of noticing, and discerning. We are not good at these things.

So there is a place for silence and solitude, so we may hone these spiritual faculties and skills. I enjoy daily silence and solitude as I meet with Christ.
 

But it is a mistake to think that God is only found in the secluded withdraw from the world and in the silence of the "cell."

 

The Jesuits (via Ignatius) knew that burning bushes are everywhere. And some of the brightest of burning bushes are found in the most lowly of places and most broken of people. 
 

To find the God of love, go to where the God of love is... and that is... with those who are most in need of that love and grace, of hope and healing, of renewal and restoration...

And be with them in the sacrifice of loving service. There you will encounter Christ in the deepest ways of love.

 

 

 

Karl Rahner, the great theologian and spiritual director, the one who relentlessly spoke of the ordinary mystic and the way of contemplation in action said this:
 

True mystics must always be ready to abandon their high contemplation, their myustical silence, in order to give bread to the hungry;  they know that the great feast of blessed union with the mystery past all grasp can ultimately only be the fruit of the bitter weeks of daily drudge and its duties.  

Karl Raher, Is Christian Life Possible Today?

 

The dailly drudge and its duties.

Real life.

That's where Jesus is.

That's where you will find Him today and His love will find you.

By God's grace . . . may your daily duty be brilliantly illumined with His burning bushes.

 

Brian K. Rice  
Evangelicals on the Ignatian Way  
Leadership ConneXtions International  
www.lci.typeapd.com

p.s.

I just had to include this fun image of an ordinary mysic.

If you don't recognize the person, you've been in your monk's cell for too long. 

Ancient Future Faith

 

 

Ancient Future Faith

When the past makes a lot of sense
and the future doesn't seem as scary

 

This is what the LORD says:
“Stand at the crossroads and look;
ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is,
and walk in it,
and you will find rest for your souls.
But you said,
‘We will not walk in it.’ 
Jeremiah 6:16
 

The other week I read an author (I’ll keep him anonymous) who basically said much of (and maybe “most of”) what Christianity has believed and how Christianity has been practiced in the past is now irrelevant and even a hindrance to faithful missional service in the world. RADICAL new ways of understanding and living the faith are needed.

And of course, this writer believes he is wise enough to stand as the judge, jury and executioner on 2000 years of Christian faith, and discerning enough to be the useful guide for the church’s future

When I read this author, I am struck by how lifeless his writings are, even though he tries to be passionate and to stir up the reader with his theology/spirituality. Intellectually edgy – yes! But spiritually impoverished.

I am throwing my lot and making my way with another group of Christ followers who believe in an Ancient-Future faith.

I love this language.

It is evocatively rich for me. And it is wisely faithful in its strategy.

I was first introduced to this “idea” in the writings of Robert Webber’s book, Ancient Future Worship.

We are always “rooted” in a specific historical-cultural context. We live in the NOW.

We experience the PRESENT. We are called to be faithful to Christ TODAY.

But the TODAY in which we live is anchored to and shaped by the ANCIENT

But while we live in TODAY, we are anchored and shaped by the ANCIENT and we have an eye toward the FUTURE. My today only makes sense in light of the Ancient-Future.

Karl Rahner, the Jesuit theologian may have been a source for Robert Webber. Rahner, in 1967 said, “The contemporary Christian is . . . the person who preserves what is ancient and anticipates the true future.”

This is the way set forth in Jeremiah 6:16. These were the words of the Lord to His people when they were in a time of looming crisis. They must be rooted in the ancient ways, as they are in the crisis of the present. And now they must figure out creative new ways of living out those ancient ways so they may move in to the future as a faithful people of God.

I found this crossroads image on this delightful blogsite.

What is truly sad is God’s people said, no to this. “We will not walk in it.” We are not interested in the ancient ways. We will make our own autonomous, self-generated path in to the future. They did and they walked into disaster and destruction!

Jeremiah was called the “weeping prophet” for a reason!

I love the spiritual richness, the theological substance and the practical outworkings of the classics of the ancient faith. They are called classics for a reason. They have stood the test of time.

What that means is they have provided meaning and purpose, they have given birth to faith, hope and love, they have comforted, rebuked, taught and trained generation after generation of those who love God.

My task, as Karl Rahner stated, is to imbibe their wisdom and to innovatively contextualize and “flesh it out” in my TODAY. How I do that will have both continuity and discontinuity with the PAST. How I do it will look different from how you do it.

In part, simply because the PAST is so vast and sweeping that we are all selective in what we appropriate, adapt and truly live in to and out of. 

I have the time and interest to read widely and then at times to go deeply in parts of that tradition. As you know, I an especially keen on the worthiness of the Ignatian Way. I am greatly indebted to that ancient way as I seek to be an Evangelical innovator on the Ignatian Way.

Standing with you at the crossroads of our exciting times.

Brian K. Rice  
Evangelicals on the Ignatian Way  
Leadership ConneXtions International
www.lci.typepad.com 

 

"Vocational Mystics"

I have always loved biographies and autobiographies.

I especially enjoy those of leaders, as well as the great spiritual writers and read several such books every year. Two of the more significant ones this year, for me, were The Pastor by Eugene Peterson and All is Grace by Brennan Manning.

I also have a biography/study of Vincent van Gogh I have been just waiting to read (hard to find the time for this luxury), At Eternity's Gate: The Spiritual Vsion of Vincent van Gogh by Kathleen Erickson.

Ignatius is one of my primary Historical Mentors (an idea from Bobby Clinton's work on mentoring) and I have now read over a dozen books about the life of Ignatius and I have two more sitting on the shelf waiting to be read. I also have several older, out of print biographies on Ignatius on the Kindle.
 

Ignatius is such an inspiration because of the way these following things flowed together in his life:

 

organizational, strategic and empowering leadership

spiritual formation and his work of spiritual direction

missional service to the world

life long learning

Those four themes are at the heart of Leadership ConneXtions International and the leadership development work we do around the world. So, when I read Ignatius, I am constantly inspired as he models the way in these qualities and, models the way in terms of what their synthesis looks like.

HOWEVER . . .

a vital caveat must be front and center on those things mentioned above. Here is that qualifier.

Everything Ignatius did flowed out of his inner world. And Ignatius inner world was aessentially a heart that was transformed through intimacy with Christ. Once his interior world was so shaped, it then infused everything he did.

In one sense, before he was anything else (leader, director, teacher, learner) he was a mystic.

And all that I mean by that word is "A mystic is one who encounters and experiences the Presence of God."

It is the presence, the work and the Word of the revealing God that is encountered and experienced in relational, affective ways that lead to the transformation of life.

The transformation of life is:

the renewing of the image of God within us,

the flowering of the fruit of the Spirit, which is simply the moral quality of God's own life becoming ours,

the reordering of everything in our life so that it is centered around Christ, surrendered to His will and directed toward His purposes.

Such relational intimacy and inner transformation is always the gift/grace of God. At the same time, the Scriptures are unanimously affirming of the responsive engagement of the individual who receives and responds to the initiating work of God.

Ignatius lived in this reality on a daily basis and it is what created a "spirit that moved within him" and which ultimately was attractive to a generation (and in fact successive generations).

In other words, if you are called to be a leader, teacher, director, pastor, missional servant in the world, banker, nurse, carpenter, or anything else . . . you are first called to be a mystic. 

Imagine a world full of missional mystics, who are finding God in all things, and especially, in their chosen, bestowed vocations!

Imagine you being such a person.

May God give you the desires of His heart on these things.

And perhaps reading a good biography or two, of those who have gone before us and who have become who we long to become, may be a companion for you in 2012.

Brian K. Rice  
Evangelicals on the Ignatian Way  
Leadership ConneXtions International  
www.lci.typepad.com