Fools then we shall be, to the worldly wisdom first our own: so that we might hope to love.
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Members of Prayerbuddy live ordinary lives in the world, but with a difference: They share rich wireless presence with each other day and night. Within this unceasing presence to one another they are interrupted together -- six times each day -- to pray an ancient monastic Divine Office as it is practiced at the Monastery of Christ in the Desert.
Thus supported by a digital network that gives sacramental substance to the Holy Spirit -- a new form of sacramental that is uniquely enabled by God's gift of digital networking -- members of Prayerbuddy labor together to learn to pray without ceasing.
In addition to the disciplines of presence and the ancient monastic Divine Office, members assist each other in wise disciplines of the interior life: being patiently attentive to one another in daily life, meeting for spiritual conferences, and engaging in Lectio Divina and other classical practices.
Prayerbuddy is based upon ten years of research in Computer Supported Spiritual Development, but it's not about technology. It's about the habits of heart that free a person receive participation in the love that is Christ.
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Where Fools Alone Dare Tread
The Wise Folly of Christian Love
I look around me, as I'm wont to do, and I notice: I notice a society that has established self-love as the noblest aspiration; that sizes up the person against a doorpost, then pencils him in dollars.
I want to blame, and so I ought. But whom?
I might blame another, for that would be easy; but that would be false: for I am to blame.
I am to blame: Because within my own heart I possess -- no, even more: I give birth to -- the very faults I abhor around me; but if God's home within my own heart is ramshackle, I cannot expect the social order to be more welcoming.
Worldy wisdom then lies within me, ever more than without; and if I am to do justice, I must become a fool: to the wisdom that is worldly, within me as without: so that my wisdom may be God.
Then fool I shall be: I shall join Prayerbuddy.
For here we are fools: A community of lay people who pray together -- who interrupt our days together -- every third hour, from morning 'til night; who read and write our daily lives together; who meet face to face together; all the better to irritate one another: to grow patient together, to focus ourselves on God together: so that we might help each other break our disordered attachments within.
So that we might learn to love just a little bit, because a little bit of this love is enough: enough to create the universe: enough to redeem it.
Perhaps then the love we pursue isn't ordinary; or perhaps it is very ordinary: perhaps it's just not worldly. The thing we name love is a characteristic of the thing that gives matter being -- the indemonstrable cause that tunes the strings of string-theory -- the nature of which it is human nature to know, and more: it is our nature to harmonize our desire, in tune with this cause: because it is the essence of our nature to touch the joy from which creation comes.
The cause of which creation we name love, and God; and even more particularly, as regards our participation in this love, we know the perfection: a man named Jesus.
Fools then we shall be, to the worldly wisdom first our own: so that we might hope to love.