Today on Soul School I am sharing a version of a presentation on prayer that I gave to the inmates at Federal Prison FCI Schuylkill who (voluntarily) attend ongoing LIFE Ministry(Christian)classes.
My book on prayer is called LIFE AS PRAYER:
My book was inspired by Brother Lawrence and this book:
The Letters of Brother Lawrence
BIO:
Brother Lawrence was a man of humble beginnings who discovered the greatest secret of living in the kingdom of God while serving as a brother in a monastery near Paris. For Lawrence his life was involved the art of “practicing the presence of God in one single act that does not end.” Lawerence often stated that it is God who paints Himself in the depths of our soul. We must only open our hearts to receive God and God’s loving presence. For nearly 300 years this unparalleled classic (which is mainly a collection of letters from him and remembrances of him) has given both blessing and instruction to those who can be content with nothing less than knowing God presence in all God’s majesty and feeling God’s loving presence throughout each simple day.
Life As Prayer: Revived Spirituality Inspired by Ancient Piety
(on the life and legacy of Brother Lawrence’s habit of “practicing the presence of God”)
How can YOU find an enduring sense of God’s presence with you? Learn about 16th century Brother Lawrence and how his understanding of God’s presence continues to enrich lives today.
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Both your wine and your life must be able to to breathe!
Full and aware breathing can inspire your creative muse and enrich your life in so many ways.
minute 1:00
I excitedly announce two upcoming interviews:
• Daniel J. Lewis interview (a virtuosic creator who’s received national awards for podcasts he produces).
• Sarah Bessey (Jesus Feminist author) Interview (discussing her new Out of Sorts book).
WINE SEGMENT: Letting wine breathe!
minute: 5:00
In wine terms “aeration” is the process of bringing air into wine.
The term dumb (i.e. “dumb wine”) refers to a wine that has little flavor or fragrance.
• Swirling wine mixes it with air and allows it to both breathe and speak! • Flavor and aroma and the beauty and richness of the wine emerges as space for air gets in (just like us).
TIPS to make a better speaking wine:
(If buying excellent wine isn’t an option….which is most of us!)
Option 1.
Use a blender.
Option 2.
Use a hand blender (this is a method I use)
Option 3.
A cheap and simple solution:
Pour wine into a bowl and whisk it with a fork or whisk (like you would for scrambled eggs).
minute 5:50 Sparking your muse
• Aeration of the soul
• (a short recording) Insights from the middle of my retreat time at the Jesuit Spiritual Center in Wernersville, PA.
Forgetting how to breath.
My asthma and stress; and tightness of breath and soul.
8:30
Sprit of God = breath of life
9:30
On slowing down.
9:50
The fantastic 4-7-8 second breathing exercise I learned to get your breath (and life) back.
Creating space and breath for the Creative muse/your soul to truly thrive
13:00
The Scriptural inspiration, history, and meaning of “Breath Prayer”
(as a Christian devotional practice)
Luke 18:9-14
9 To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable:10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.11 The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector.12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’
13 “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
14 “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
minute 15:00
Breath Prayer: A simple cry for help and connection
• How to do “breath prayer”
• My important adaptation to breath prayer (that helps me identify as a loved child of God).
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Life As Prayer: Revive Spirituality Inspired by Ancient Piety
Learn about 16th century Brother Lawrence and how his understanding of God’s presence continues to affect lives today.
It’s a fact: the plants that produce wine grapes don’t come from seeds. You can’t “sow grapes”. More on that soon.
And later, Student of Jesus blogger and disciple-maker Ray Hollenbach and I talk about the fruit of the spirit (debunking the most common myth about it), and a little bit about the Vineyard church he is a part of, and what his “Deeper” seminars and workshops are all about.
Wine segment:
Wine grape plants don’t come from seeds, so how are vineyards created?
There are two main ways commercial growers get their fields ready for a grape harvest:
The first way is to plant seedlings taken from healthy and mature grape vines. This means that a harvest of good grapes for wine is 4-5 years away. Booo.
The second way is to use an older and mature vineyard and graft in (attach) new plants into the vine.
They prune down the top of the plant. They chop it nearly down to the ground, and expose some of the top to the vine stem. Then, they graft living plants into it. The grafting process means that whole new varieties of grapes in just one year, using the original root system to obtain all the necessary nutrients. Grafted in plants can also inoculate older vines against certain diseases with disease resistant pants (usually hybrid seedlings) that make the whole system healthier.
It can cost $150, per plant, to graft in new vines and it’s done in a precise sort of way with notching the root stem, adding in plants and sealing them together so they merge.
(how to graft plants and trees)
Grafting plants has been done for thousands of years. In the bible, the church is compared, by the apostle Paul, to a wild olive plant grafted into an olive tree. The first audience hearing Paul’s words would understand this word picture: the church is an introduction of something very new. Something able to impart a whole new vitality into the current understanding of religion and closeness with God.
22 But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!
Spark my muse is The podcast for curious creatives types, wine newbies, and those willing to put up with my occasional silliness. Thank you so much for sharing your time with me.
This episode is brought to you by:
Life As Prayer: Life As Prayer: Revived Spirituality Inspired by Ancient Piety
Today’s wine segment!
I open dozens of bottles of wine per week as a manager of a wine tasting room at Spring Gate Vineyard. We use a simple tool, I hadn’t seen before to make it quick and simple with very high levels of success.
BASICALLY only the cork should get screwed. No broken corks, no puncture wounds–for you!
Cork screw is also called a wine key, or a waiter’s pry.
There are a few tools that are poor choices for opening bottles….
There are the best tools which may include some you may want to avoid.
These (affiliate) links will get them for you at a good price.
• Basic lever corkscrew – very inexpensive, small and portable, comes on an army knife. (There’s a better option below…keep reading.)
• Electronic one – large, slow, overly complex for my taste. It can be glitchy, run out of power…
• Winged or butterfly…It has arms that go up as you twist it down into the cork…Easily can cause broken corks when not done right. (Tip: hold the arm down tightly until you get it firmly pinned down to the cork and begin twisting straight down.) It’s slow, and has higher failures.
• The rabbit style. Large, more complicated than necessary. Table mounted options. If you have the room, like a full bar in your house…go for it.
• Air pressure bottle opener. It uses a needle CO 2 80 bottles…meh.
What’s the best tool?
The 2 lever waiter’s corkscrew!
It’s portable,fast, and low tech. The secret is the double hinge. It only takes about three rotations. (TIP: Go straight down and use the lever to pull the cork straight up. Don’t crank the cork to the side. First you use the top lever and then you switch to the bottom one.)
Here’s a video of the same tool I use at work and how to use it. Skip to minute 1:00.
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