Chapter Nine- A Rule of Life: Sacred Rhythms by Ruth Haley Barton Summary: Ruth Haley Barton’s book Sacred Rhythms is a book that offers insights and helpful tools for living a spiritually full life. The final chapter of Sacred Rhythms focuses on planning and critically evaluating ourselves and our role as Christians. In this essay, I will, first, summarize the final chapter of Ruth Haley Barton’s book Sacred Rhythms, which is titled “A Rule of Life” and, then, I will reflect oh what I have learned and benefited from while reading this chapter. To begin, Ruth asks the reader a question; do you have a financial budget? She informs us that having a financial budget is a much more efficient way to manage ones earnings than merely guessing at …show more content…
Today’s world is filled with technology and this technology, while helpful, has its downfalls. One of the major downfalls of technology is its overbearing presence. In order to develop a full plan for spiritual transition, we must include a time of solace that removes the distractions of technology and life from the picture. One we have a clear head, we can move forward towards deepening our spiritual life. Finally, Ruth ends her chapter by calling us to practice these tools in order to deepen our spiritual lives. We can begin the process of having our own “rule of life” by, first, “attending to our desires”. By attending to our desires, ,we can locate wha cravings we have for spiritual transition and begin there. Then, we can analyze our experiences with spiritual transition in the past. By looking to the past, we can make an informed plan for the future. Lastly, we can begin developing a plan. By thoroughly and honestly thinking through these steps, we should be enabled to contrive our own “rule of life”. …show more content…
In the final section of the chapter Ruth leads us to ask four questions. They are the following: how do you attend to your desires, how can you acknowledge the mystery of spiritual transition and your powerlessness to bring it about, how can you listen to your experiences with spiritual practice, and how can you begin to develop a plan. By contemplating on these questions, I began to see the shape of a spiritual plan for my life. I often times attend to my desires by the way of seeking an orderly fashion to achieve the reward of the desire efficiently. Spiritually, however, I hadn't thought much about the kinds of desire that I have prior to reading this
Nancy Ammerman writes Sacred Stories, Spiritual Tribes: Finding Religion in Everyday Life to convey her findings of studying spirituality and religion in the ordinary life of her sample population. The inspiration for this book came from previous data about Christians and the “Golden Rule,” the concept of treating everyone how you would like to be treated (3). In order to understand this concept better, Ammerman decided to study religion and spirituality in everyday life. Her population included 95 people from the Boston and Atlanta areas. These participants came from “Catholic, liberal Protestant, conservative Protestant, African American Protestant, Jewish”, Mormon, Wicca and Neopaganism as well as an internet chat group (11). Unaffiliated participants were also
Let us not confuse or conflate the spiritual with the physical: they are inseparable, but they are not interchangeable. Do not allow wishful thinking to lead to delusions. To grasp the idea of prosperity and self-worth
In chapter 6 Short explored the different types of space and how the environment has changed as the world has developed. Sacred space is a beautiful concept that Native Americans and indigenous people of other countries are well known for. They had a spiritual connection with the earth, that most of us do not have today. They believed that humans, animals, plants, and places were bound together in a web of connections. The indigenous people were strong in their beliefs and rituals.
Snodgrass, J., & Sorajjakool, S. (2011). Spirituality in older adulthood: Existential meaning,productivity, and life events. Pastoral Psychology, 60, 85-94. doi: 10.1007/s11089-010-0282-y
Entanglement in modern, worldly life is easy, but simultaneously complicated because while we live as part of the fray, we lose touch with that all important connection to God, thereby also losing touch with the chance to experience a happier more fulfilling life. And for the spiritual seeker whose desires a better life, the journey from living a worldly life to a Christian life, requires a death of the mindset of the old worldly self and a resurrection of the more Christ-like self, the blueprint of which is competently exemplified in Author Anthony L. Walker's motivating and empowering book, Transformation. By examining Christian based principles, author Walker, provides true inspiration through his work with his guidebook, within which he posits, that everyone should realign with God for a better life and salvation. Albeit, while the path set forth to living a Christian life is never easy in a world driven by materialism, separatism, and selfishness, he makes understanding
I love it when she states in step 7 don’t let life get in the way of your spiritual well-being--connect to your inner wisdom and create a personal practice”. A lot of people use life situations as a means to become more careless or mean, instead of using life’s situation as a tool to become smarter or mentally stronger. As I read this book it gave me a confirmation that if I think about myself before I think about others that it doesn’t make me a bad person or even a selfish person but rather makes me a person who cares about my self-being. She says that we should focus more on our lives then our personal goals and careers. If people spent more time focusing on their lives instead everything else there would be a lot happier people in the world. Many people are focus on things that aren’t important at all or they focus on their career or goals but have a life full of drama and upset. Your life is your foundation and your goals and career are what’s being built on your foundation. If you stack tons of things onto something that doesn’t have something steady to stand on them eventually it’s going to collapse. People need to focus more on living happy and learning that it’s ok to care for
This quote that was said by Ruth had a significant meaning and also a purpose for it being put in the book.
Technology let people both connect and disconnect with religion in many ways. For in our busy and stressful lives it can be a way for people to escape and go to gather themselves. Religion for many, or maybe that one day a week is often a time of peace and a chance to reflect while trying to better yourself. While technology might be what is supposed to improve our lives and ease of our jobs it also adds more levels of complexity that many still like
One highlight from Abingdon Old Testament Commentaries: Ruth, by Judy Fentress-Williams is loyalty. In the book of Ruth, Ruth states, “Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God” (Ruth 1:14). Ruth says this to Naomi after Naomi tried to push her away. The commentary states that Ruth said this to Naomi as they were moving from Ruth’s homeland to Naomi’s homeland (Williams, chapter 1). I think this is significant because it shows that Ruth is actually following Naomi and not leaving her behind or abandoning her. This verse is a pivotal event in the first chapter which makes it even more significant (Williams, chapter 1). This is when the setting begins to change. It starts off in Moab and then they both travel to the land of Judah. It also
...s nature. One angle on this is that abstracting the moment from spirituality, namely, to focus on the temporal moment involving worldly affairs, is to prevent spiritual inwardness to be reached. Another angle is to understand that with spirit it is possible to understand the future with an immediate sense of its possibility to go about life as an earnest task, which means that one does not need to be anxious about the future and idly waiting for it to come in order to understand human possibility.
A Spiritual Application is discussed as well as we discover the meaning of spirituality
Introduction The lady stood behind me in a worship service, and she tapped me on my shoulder, and she asked politely, “so I’ve read your book, now what do I do?” In so many ways, she expressed the concerns of anyone that’s searching to reconcile the balance sheet of one’s life, whose experienced the constant withdrawals from people and circumstances without leaving deposits. And we often through depleted accounts still look for ways to bargain with no get-up-and-go. Secondly, there are others that are softly whispering in response to the book were saying “so much information, can you help us navigate through the material?”
We have to work together to create a better living environment. And one day in the future, we live happily every single day, eat all the food we love, stay with people we love, enjoy every day and enjoy our life.
For the wise people like the saints who meditate in isolation in the woods or the people who create aims, targets they want to ful...
Ganga and Kutty stated (2013) spirituality refers to a path of life that enables people to seek reason of their existence and helps people explore challenges. Ganga and Kutty (2013) conducted a study on adults to see if spirituality had positive effects on their life, meaning did their life have purpose or value. Each participant partook in a study that asked questions about their life and purpose. The study consisted of a daily spiritual experience scale, it was a point scale that consist of 16 items to be rated on a 6-point scale. The results concluded that spirituality has positive effects on their life when seeking their purpose. Each participant felt that he/she had a purpose and that their life was valuable and meaningful (Ganga and Kutty, 2013). According to Ganga and Kutty (2013), spirituality is a way for people to discover the meaning of their life. Spirituality is a personal adventure to understand answers to the questions they seek to find about their spirituality and purpose in life. It says spirituality is a set of beliefs and practices that concludes with life changing paths that make a person’s life meaningful. Spirituality has been viewed as an important factor when realizing the purpose of life. Ganga and Kutty (2013) expressed spirituality enhances our emotions, thoughts, beliefs, relieves stress and it finds meaning and purpose of one’s life. I believe