Good Morning Digital Neighbors! Happy Friday ADD Irregulars, WSN Revelers, and all you Patrons, Lurkers and Lost who may have found their way here.

For most of this week I have been slow tumbling prayer. One of the real fruits of prayer, meditation or contemplation is to equip us for the life to come. On Ash Wednesday I mentioned to the home crowd art Mass that for 9 months our bodied are prepared for a life outside the womb. The one things that mattered most to us in the womb was the umbilical cord which is the first thing we lose when we are born. It is our life line in the womb and totally useless outside of the womb. Gestation is preparing a body for us to be engaged in this wonderful world. Everything about pregnancy and gestation is in preparation for the the life to come.

Just as a body is prepared for us, so this thing we call a spirit or soul is something to assist in the life to come. That does not mean that we are just souls in the afterlife, there is a body once again to be with us, something like this one, and something not like this one. The Resurrection and the Transfiguration are glimpses beyond this reality.

The soul-spirit is something that can grow, mature and blossom in this life to bear fruit in goodness. But its real purpose is prepare us for life beyond the grave, to behold the Luminous, to embrace real, enduring, overwhelming and unimaginable Communion that pushes us to the loss of self without the abnegation of our person. But the communion we are promised is not just with the Luminous-Divine-Mysterium but with all these other souls that may know or not even have a clue that their personhood is is the strange dance of body & soul.

For the non-seeking types (which are legion) some things occasionally prick their souls, stir the spirit or give them this brush with something under the hood. Nature, music, the arts (that point to beauty, not the self-loathing, oversexualized, ugliness of much of modern "art) and a few other things awaken this transcendent hidden part of humanity. Those moments are amazing and can sadly be missed and discounted without ever wondering what just happen, without ever asking what did I just experience?

Religion is supposed to be the superhighway to awakening the soul. For some it is, many still miss the point participating but rarely seeking beyond the surface and the corrupt use it as a means to build their kingdoms here disregarding the soul entirely. Spiritually is the answer for many, which is good and personal, but often misses the communal dimension of religion. My main gripe against people who proudly declare that they are spiritual and not religious is the danger to be just a navel gazing as the religious types who repeat content of faith without much reflection. Blaming religion is easy for many of the pasts atrocities, but the culprit is humanity en masse, the powerful and the mob are a dangerous combination and a doorway to the death of many.

The wrestling is what matters to me, the tension between curiosity and discomfort when one starts seeking. The real challenge is that our survival instincts from the days before cultural-personal awakening make us avoid discomfort. We can comfort ourselves to death, but we get to boredom and emptiness long before death. Distraction can keep the boredom at bay, but cannot completely fill the void unless we sink into addiction. Once we become an addict, and it can be any number of splendid things, our precious IT is our pseudo-consolation taking our hand to personal ruin.

Religion-Spirituality-Interior-ness allows the soul to seek beyond this life. Prayer is the road to trying to interact with this Beyondness that many believe has revealed Him or Themselves in some way or another. Prayer is seeking to change us and not Him/Them, prayer is awakening us to the Hidden One and hopefully making us more engaged with this life, even those who are still sleep walking and oblivious to the soul and only think prayer is a means to will fulfillment rather than will transformation.

Spiritual gestation - it is underway for all of us. It is profoundly enriching in this life and unlike our umbilical cord is something that equips us for the life beyond the grave. Another ramble, and not terribly on point, but hopefully it made some sense to you Seekers and Readers. I am so thankful for my fellow Disciples of the Master that I know here, I am ever so grateful for other children of Abraham that I have met here, I am delighted to know so many others who are spiritually stirred and sharing the fruit of their interior-ness with us. Happy Friday friends.