Vocare Guided Meditation
The Nourishing Vocation Project
Near and Now: Vocare Spiritual Practice
Encountering God: Experiencing the Holy in Everyday Life
Vocare
Vocare is an ongoing spiritual practice designed to help you discern and embrace your multiple vocations so that you can more intentionally live life on purpose. Vocare invites regular reflection upon values, openness, call, attentiveness, regret, and the experience of God’s presence.
Focus
You are invited to focus on when, where, and how you experience the holy in everyday life. We can readily imagine that we may experience God’s presence or a sense of the transcendent in spaces and encounters that we might name as “religious.” But the holy is not confined to prescribed or idenitified religious contexts. As Barbara Brown Taylor says in her book, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith, “earth is so think with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars.” Use the time between the guided questions for your own reflection and meditation. Bring to mind an experience from your own life when you experienced the holy in everyday life. Is this an experience of the holy that was a one-time occurrence, or is it ongoing or repeated? How has this particular experience of the holy in everyday life shaped your life and its horizons?
Guided Reflection
Opening Prayer
Still my heart and mind, O God, that I might meet you in the ordinary experiences of my everyday life. In the name of +Jesus, Amen.
- What life values are present for you in this experience of the holy? Are they your most important values?
- How does this experience of the holy invite or compel you to be open? How easy is it for you to be open to this?
- What voices are calling to you through this experience of the holy? Are these voices that you want or need to listen to? Why or why not?
- As you consider this experience of the holy in everyday life what holds your attention? Is this where you want or need your attention to be?
- What regrets does this experience of the holy bring to mind for you? What do you do with these regrets?
- Where and how in this particular experience do you experience God’s presence?
Closing Prayer
Fill me with anticipation, O God,
that I might recognize you where I least expect to find you.
Help me to search for you in even the smallest things
and to believe that nothing is too insignificant to reveal your presence.
Work through me that others might encounter you in who I am and what I do.
In the name of +Jesus, Amen.