Dear Folks -
More often than not I feel that the audio version of what I say in the Ordinary Life Gathering exceeds the written version that is below. Thank goodness for people like Susanna Hooper and Richard Wingfield and John Watson and others who make it possible to get audio versions of the talks. Susanna has just upgraded the website to include instructions for subscribing to the audio version on iTunes or simply downloading the talks you want. Check out
http://www.ordinarylife.org/ol_weblog/resources.html
This week I talked about how redemptive it is for us to be able to do the difficult work of holding the contradictions of life within us. Key words in spiritual work are "awareness" and "inclusivity." We have to know the laws of life and how they work so that we can break them.
Much love,
Bill Kerley
audio will be available soon...sorry for the delay - the toddler may have misplaced the chip! ;)
Click here to Download 20090201.pdf
Read moreDear Folks -
Richard Rohr, the person I call my "spiritual teacher" - that's why I
quote him so much - calls the Sermon on the Mount "Jesus' Plan for a
New World." The values of this world are very upside-down from those
of the culture in which we live. So, for at least this week and the
next, we are going to talk about the beliefs and "new laws" of the
world as Jesus saw it.
For starters I want to recommend that you do something, especially if
you want to feel hopeful about our future. Go to the following link
and listen to the story. It will take you less than five minutes and
will touch your heart.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99478226
One of the beliefs that matters is that everybody belongs and that
everybody matters. In our sea of affluence we can forget those who
have so little. I am going to take advantage of the fact that Dr. Don
Thomas, our connection with AIDS work in Malawi, is in town this week.
He and I are going to have a dialogue in Ordinary Life this week about
the current status of the work in Malawi and about how to address the
issue of poverty in a world where three billion people live on less
than two dollars a day and two billion of those have no access the
clean drinking water.
Much love,
Bill Kerley
Click here to Download audio 20090125.mp3
Read moreDear Folks -
This week in the Ordinary Life Talk I gave I tried to explore what it might mean to apply the phrases to ourselves that we are "the salt of the earth and the light of the world." It certainly does not mean that the ego should be inflated by this. The ego must decrease and the Self must increase. The main goal of spiritual work is not so that the ego can 'become something or someone." The main goal is what has to happen so that we can become a transforming influence in the world. The talk closes with the true story of a man playing a violin in a subway in Washington.
Much love,
Bill Kerley
click here to download 20090118.pdf
click here to download 20090118.mp3
Read moreDear Folks -
Did you know that you can subscribe to the podcast of Ordinary Life on
iTunes? Go to this site
http://www.ordinarylife.org/ordinary_life_podcast/
on the page you will find a link to "subscribe to this podcast." I am
so grateful to Richard Wingfield and Susanna Hooper for so faithfully
tending to such matters.
This week in the talk I gave I began with the importance of our asking
open and honest questions. So many of the questions we ask do not fall
into this category. If we do ask such questions, we just never know
where our spiritual work is going to take us. This leads to sharing
the experience I had in Albuquerque attending a conference on the
Enneagram. What I hoped to illustrate is that each of us has a barrier
that can easily keep us from living in the here and now. When we are
present we discover that all we need is to live the abundant life is
already present. The question for spiritual practice is this: are we
here?
Much love,
Bill Kerley
click here to Download 20090111.pdf
click here to Download 20090111.mp3
Read more