A Way Of Life
The Humility to Love
Introduction
Members of Prayerbuddy have chosen to follow an interior way of life,
one that seeks to form the habits of humility that free a person to
love. Members work to form these habits through the practice of
timeless, classical spiritual disciplines that are exercised daily in
community.
The life of a member of Prayerbuddy is thus focused on the heart, and
his or her principle labor is interior discernment of spirits. But the
Spirit sought by a member of Prayerbuddy isn't an ordinary spirit;
rather, it's that which gently breathes the most radical kind of love --
the love by which creation has being -- and which we know by faith to
name Christ Jesus.
Principles:
The Good I Will, I Also Abhor
The love we seek is at home in poverty, humiliation and meekness: a home the world abhors.
Christianity true is Christianity abhorrent: at least to worldly
tastes. And thus to us, perhaps especially. Except for something not
at all ours: a faint glimmer of grace.
Love is A Habit, Not A Feeling.
A feeling may or may not accompany love, but the love that we pursue
is not itself a feeling, as though its object were me. No, this love is
radically different: it's not about me at all. This love is an act of
the will whose object is the good of another person.
Therefore, wanting to be cooperative with grace, indeed docile before
grace, so that love finds us welcoming -- habitually welcoming -- even
when we may not want to be, we have adopted wise spiritual practices
proven through the ages; and we form our hearts into a habit of love by
doing these things over and over and over again. Even, or perhaps
especially, when we don't want to.
We use technology -- radical, bleeding edge technology -- to enable anew and enhance these classical practices.
- The Liturgy of the Hours: Prayer 6 times daily, in community.
- Life Blogs: Reading/Writing One Another's Lives in the Community
- Lectio Divina: Meditative spiritual reading.
- Spiritual Direction: Someone to listen with you for God's call.
- Spiritual Conferences: Regular face-to-face spiritual conference and community gathering.
- Way of Life: Participation in composing this living document of the community's way of life.
Freedom to Love Comes Through Commitment.
In order to make these practices fruitful -- to make them habits of
love serving not me, but a person outside of myself -- we do them in the
context of commitment: an act of will to give oneself to the good that
is God, and to that good for another.
Our commitments follow a timeless, wise form -- codified in a
monastic context by St. Benedict about the year 530, who in turn drew
from even more ancient wisdom that preceded him -- that has been proven
fruitful through 1,500 years of trial and experience.
- We Commit to Listen to God and Neighbor: Discipline.
- We Commit to a Spiritual Community: Stability.
- We Commit to Reform Our Ways.
The Pursuit of Radical Christian Virtue.
In Summary: You die with Christ; Christ dwells within your heart; you
then love as God asks you. In this you touch freedom and joy.
- Humility
- The model of a contemplative heart: The Mother of God.
- The Beatitudes
- Theological Virtues
- Cardinal Virtues
We Do This In Everyday Life.
We live these practices in real life. Not with material perfection
-- because then we would fail humility! -- but aided by grace, with
perfection of desire.
Our practices:
- Amidst Family Life
- In Marriage
- In The Workplace
- As A Single Person
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