Sunday, December 31, 2017

Living Our Spiritual Choices


The New Year’s holiday is traditionally a time to pause and consider our Life’s journey. In my blog posting “Reflections and Resolutions” (1/13/2017), a set of questions was offered for reflecting on where we have arrived at this point in our life, and where we need to go next.

Similar questions can be considered in the pursuit of our spirituality. Each day we continually face choices. These choices provide us with opportunities to demonstrate whether our religious faith consists of simply re-verbalizing scriptural and pastoral words that we have been trained to speak, or reflect a genuine and substantive religious path. Perhaps we might ask ourselves:

·        Given the choice to be kind or cruel to another person, do we choose kindness – regardless of how that person chooses to treat us?

·        Given the choice to listen to or talk at another, do we choose to listen deeply to them regardless of our own story waiting to be told?

·        Given the choice to extend a helping hand to someone in need or to ignore them, do we choose to offer help regardless of any test of “worthiness?”

·        Given the choice to tell the truth or to lie, do we choose to tell the truth even as we find a way to avoid being unnecessarily hurtful?

·        Given the choice to let people live their life or to interfere and push them to live the life we would prefer for them, do we choose to extend to them the freedom to be who they truly are – as long as their life does not tangibly harm us or unduly thwart our own choices?

·        Given the choice to provide opportunities to others or to shut them out, do we choose to extend our achievements so as to also advance their aspirations?

·        Given the choice to share credit for our successes or claim credit solely from our own efforts, do we choose to acknowledge all those who helped us in our life travels in ways both large and small, directly and indirectly, known and unknown?

·        Given the choice to welcome strangers in our midst or to isolate them from our company, do we choose to extend hospitality to those who may find their way into our presence?

·        Given the choice to be cautious in our judgment of others or to judge them based upon our flimsy knowledge of their full story, do we choose to strive for compassion regarding their circumstances while acknowledging our own shortcomings?

·        Given the choices to love or to hate, to trust or be suspicious, to see what is before us or to be blind to it, to adapt to change or to resist it, which do we choose?

How we live our life and the actions we take, in concert with the lives of others, matter far more than what we say. Our choices may be difficult to effect given our particular circumstances, but they are likely clear in the conclusions we should reach. We are called to live our life well. Whether we do so or not is our choice.

©   2017   Randy Bell               www.OurSpiritualWay.blogspot.com


2 comments:

Jane Kniffin said...

The Quakers and other religious folk call this "self-examen."

Anonymous said...

Thank you, Peace!