May 19 – May 24, 2019 Richard Rhor Meditations

When the Spirit is alive in people, they wake up from their mechanical thinking and enter the realm of co-creative power. (Sunday)

I believe all of history has been the age of the Spirit. Creation just keeps unfolding. (Monday)

The Holy Spirit shows up as the central and healing power of absolute newness and healing in our relationship with everything else. (Tuesday)

The work of the Holy Spirit in our lives is to reveal to us the truth of our being so that the way of our being can match it. —Wm. Paul Young (Wednesday)

We continually experience the Holy Spirit as both a divine counterpart to whom we call, and a divine presence in which we call—as the space we live in.—Jürgen Moltmann (Thursday)

The goal of the spiritual life is to allow the Spirit of Christ to influence all our activity, prayer as well as service. Our role in this process is to provide conditions in our lives to enable us to live in tune with [Christ’s] Spirit. —Richard Hauser (Friday)

Practice: Litany of the Holy Spirit

And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Comforter and Helper to be with you forever, the Spirit of Truth. . . . You know this Spirit, for it abides with you and will be in you. —John 14:16-17

Many years ago, during a hermitage stay in Arizona, I had a particularly strong sense of the Holy Spirit, the One who is fully available to all of us “if we but knew the gift of God” (John 4:10). I slowly composed this prayer litany—imagining many names and movements of the Spirit—to awaken and strengthen this Presence within us.

Pure Gift of God
Indwelling Presence
Promise of the Father
Life of Jesus
Pledge and Guarantee
Defense Attorney
Inner Anointing
Homing Device
Stable Witness
Peacemaker
Always Already Awareness
Compassionate Observer
God Compass
Inner Breath
Mutual Yearning
Hidden Love of God
Implanted Hope
Seething Desire
Fire of Life and Love
Truth Speaker
Flowing Stream
Wind of Change
Descending Dove
Cloud of Unknowing
Uncreated Grace
Filled Emptiness
Deepest Level of Our Longing
Sacred Wounding
Holy Healing
Will of God
Great Compassion
Inherent Victory

You who pray in us, through us, with us, for us, and in spite of us.
Amen, Alleluia!

What names for the divine Comforter and Helper would you add? What would it feel like to receive the gift of this intimate companionship?

Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See (The Crossroad Publishing Company: 2009), 168-169.