January 17: Regain Contact with the Source of Being

Gregg’s Reflection

For decades I was so busy doing—proving myself worthy, trying to overcome “not good enough”—that I had little time for silence or deep prayer. Honestly, I didn’t believe God heard or responded to my prayers. The lie that I had to perfect myself was hardwired in me, and every attempt to prove worthiness failed. I was confronted daily with the ways I fell short.

I was Mr. Busy Man - my schedule left no room for the prompting of the Spirit. Work, church responsibilities, family activities, and sports kept me moving. Doing nothing felt wasteful, so silence had no place in my life. But the deeper truth was waiting—I was running from loneliness.

My spiritual director, Mark Ritchie, once told me, “In running from loneliness, I create all types of activity to distract me.” That was me.  I mistook adrenaline for aliveness, productivity for purpose. To regain contact with the Source is not to achieve something new, but to remember what has never been absent.

When we sold the business, I realized how much I yearned for deeper relationships with friends and family. We built our off-grid log home as a gathering place to foster that depth. Slowly, I learned that being matters more than doing.

Scripture

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

Psalm 139:13

The human spirit is the lamp of the Lord that sheds light on one’s inmost being.

Proverbs 20:27

Ancient Quotes

In the ground of the soul, there is a light that is uncreated and uncreatable; it is the same light with which God sees Himself.

Meister Eckhart, Sermon 12 (DW 52), in Meister Eckhart: Selected Writings, trans. Oliver Davies, p. 202

Modern Quotes

There is within us a secret center where God lives, a point of nothingness that is untouched by sin and illusion, a point of pure truth.

Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, p. 158

I suspect that we too often have lost contact with the source of our own existence and have become strangers in our own house. We tend to run around trying to solve the problems of our world while anxiously avoiding confrontation with that reality wherein our problems find their deepest roots: our own selves. How can we come to a creative contact with the grounding of our own life?

Henri Nouwen, Nouwen Society Daily Devotional, 8/6/21

Journaling Prompts

• What pulls you away from your Source?
  
  
• When in your life have you felt most connected to God?
  
  
• What simple action could help you reconnect with God today?
  
  
• How will you nourish that connection?

👉 Go deeper into this week’s theme:
Read the full Week 3 reflection: Being vs Doing