By John Warren

 

I spent a weekend on a spiritual retreat at the Malloy Spiritual Retreat Center called The Walk to Emmaus. It is not a walk per se, it is a spiritual walk that guides the participants in reflection of their lives that helps you re-center your priorities in life and help you over hurdles and stagnant places and lets you leave old baggage you have been carrying behind.

It is a life enriching experience. I would encourage anyone seeking such a thing to give me a call.

I have been reading Wake Up Happy by Michael Strahan. He talks about the power of routines.

He says, “Don’t limit yourself. And I tell my kids, “Don’t let anyone limit you.”

It’s one of the great things I learned from my dad. The word “if” was not part of his vocabulary; it was always “when.”

My dad never said, “If you get a college scholarship . . .” or “If you get drafted by the pros . . .”

It was always when.

“When you get a scholarship. . .”

Just by the words he chose, he made it seem like these things were supposed to happen.

But self-talk can only take you so far there comes a time when the rubber must hit the road.

Gretchen Rubin author of the Happiness Project says that one of the “secrets of adulthood is that what you do everyday matters more than what you do every once in a while.”

The power of the Walk to Emmaus happens after the weekend experience when you go home. That’s where the routine instilled by the weekend rearrangement takes place.

Saint Frances of Assisi spoke to a daily routine of how we react to what happens with us in our everyday world in his prayer. This is a great daily guide if you would follow it’s lead. And I am saying “when” these things happen not “if.” Actually just replace the word “where” with “when.”

“Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace;

where there is hatred, olet me sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith,

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood, as to understand; to be loved, as to love; for it is in giving, that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned. And it is in dying, that we are born to eternal life.”

 

John Warren is Senior Pastor at First United Methodist Church, 502 North 6^th Street in Orange.