SUNDAY LECTURE | Praying Naked

ORDINARY LIFE - Thoughts and Ideas to Help You Live a Happier Life

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Summary of Ordinary Life for August 13, 2023

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Dear Ones -

Registration for the day with Suzanne Stabile is now open. To register click here.

The experience is being called:

The Path Between Us:
The Enneagram and Relationships

She will be with us from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. on Saturday, September 30. She will also return for the Ordinary Life hour that Sunday.

If you are unfamiliar with the Enneagram, it is a personality typing system that is used by most spiritual directors to aid in spiritual growth and understanding of one’s Self.

I have asked Brooke Summers-Perry to come and use the Ordinary Life hour on Sunday, September 10 and do a good introduction to the Enneagram. You will want to be sure to attend this time. There is, of course, no charge for this time.

I called the time in Ordinary Life this week -

Praying Naked

I got the title from a story I heard one of my teachers tell decades ago. What I mean by the title is that in doing the religious/spiritual work we are attempting, there are likely some things - ideas, beliefs, etc. - that we need to remove and put down. There are also some practices that it will be helpful to take up.

This week was my way of introducing the teachings I will be offering based on and in response to what we know as “The Lord’s Prayer.” This prayer is one of the most familiar things about Christian rituals that most people think they know. My contention is that we do not know it - except in a superficial way. My hope for these teachings is that they equip us to make the journey into deeper awareness with hope, joy, and compassion. I close by reading the prayer translated into English from Aramaic, the language Jesus actually spoke. This translation is the work of Neil Douglas-Klotz who has devoted his life to the study of the prayer. You might want to use it as part of your daily spiritual practice.

That’s a brief summary of this week’s time in Ordinary Life.

The audio version of the talk has some significant differences from the text I spoke from. You can find the text of the talk, the presentation slides and the audio version of the talk using the links below.

Our podcast, “In Between,” can be accessed through the Ordinary Life web site.

If you would like to know how to make a contribution to Ordinary Life, click here for video instructions.

Be well and much love,

Bill Kerley

In order to read or download the text version of the talk, click here.

In order to view or download the presentation slides, click here.

In order to view or download the announcement slides, click here.

To listen to or download the audio of today’s talk, use the player below.

To watch the video of today’s talk, use the YouTube link below.

WEEKLY PODCAST | In Between.138

This conversation starts out with my asking Bill if he’d ever bought about writing a book and whether we should write one together. Wouldn’t it be fitting, friends, for Bill, the consummate recommender of books, to write a book? I am sure he’s written tomes if we were to amass all of the documents prepared for Ordinary Life over the years!

So here is the statement of intent signed this 16th day of August (for you, the 17th, but we had to do some pre-contracting) in the year 2023: Holly and Bill will co-author a book.

There. I said it.

Here is a question to ponder: What keeps you moving, inspired, and growing while you wait for things to get better, what we’ve referred to as the not yet? What gives you a sense of presence? I am not kidding when I say one of those things is baseball. The emotional arc of a single baseball game is an exquisite experience that belongs only in those nine innings. And then you do it again the next day, for six months out of the year. I love it. Of course, books give both of us so much joy. Between poetry, history, fabulous fiction, spirituality, and magic trick instructions, reading is a pathway to presence and growth. It also helps us to comb our lives for the moments when we realized we had changed.

What delights you these days? What makes you present to change?

SUNDAY LECTURE | The Joy, Freedom, and Terror of Unknowing

ORDINARY LIFE - Thoughts and Ideas to Help You Live a Happier Life

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Summary of Ordinary Life for August 13, 2023

* * *

Dear Ones -

Registration for the event with Suzanne Stabile should be open within a few days. I’ll let you know or you can check for yourself on the Ordinary Life Website. To do so, click here.

The title of her time with us explains it all:

The Path Between Us
The Enneagram and Relationships

She will be with us from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. on Saturday, September 30. She will also return for the Ordinary Life hour that Sunday.

If you are unfamiliar with the Enneagram, it is a personality typing system that is used by most spiritual directors to aid in spiritual growth and understanding of one’s Self.

I have asked Brooke Summers-Perry to come and use the Ordinary Life hour on Sunday, September 10 to do a good introduction to the Enneagram. You will want to be sure to attend this time.

I called the time in Ordinary Life this week -

The Joy, Freedom, and Terror of Unknowing

Though we value advancing in knowledge and technique in almost every other area of life, there is a resistance to new insight, information, and knowledge when it comes to the religion we embrace as well and to new understandings of how and why we have become the persons we are. There are, however, new insights and information in both arenas. In this talk I mostly spend time talking about the reactive ways we have adapted to our experiences of growing in the face of feeling either overwhelmed or abandoned - to both.

That’s a brief summary of this week’s time in Ordinary Life.

The audio version of the talk has some significant differences from the text I spoke from. You can find the text of the talk, the presentation slides and the audio version of the talk using the links below.

Our podcast, “In Between,” can be accessed through the Ordinary Life web site.

If you would like to know how to make a contribution to Ordinary Life, click here for video instructions.

Be well and much love,

Bill Kerley

In order to read or download the text version of the talk, click here.

In order to view or download the presentation slides, click here.

In order to view or download the announcement slides, click here.

To listen to or download today’s talk, use the audio player below.

To watch the video of today’s talk, use the YouTube link below.

WEEKLY PODCAST | In Between.137

We return to some of the pieces we did not get to in the last two Sundays, namely our cataphatic and apophatic list about God. We, too, are in the process of unknowing what we know and wanting to be transparent and open about that. The two lines seem to repeat themselves, audibly and inaudibly:

“There is nothing to hang on to. We are held by everything.”

What does it look like to let go and allow ourselves to be held at the same time? And how, as you will hear us talk about, do we put it into relatable language? Two things we learned in this podcast:

1) James Hollis is a prolific writer. His most recent book is A Life of Meaning: Relocating Your Center of Spiritual Gravity (2023).

2) The parable of the boat and the stormy sea is paired with the story of Jacob wrestling the angel in the liturgical calendar. They have similar meanings. When we wrestle — with the dark night, with the angel, with the stormy sea — and then let go, we discover peace. We are transformed.