No Problem: Turning the Next Corner in Your Spiritual Life

By Robert J. Wicks

With total book sales of more than 200,000 copies, spiritual teacher Robert J. Wicks brings his characteristic warmth and insight to his newest book, an "inner workshop" for the soul. He shows readers that personal transformation is attainable through a simple, day-by-day process of identifying and turning the next corner of his or her spiritual life.

For Robert Wicks, forward motion in the spiritual life is "no problem." All it takes is the right perspective and a little bit of knowledge--both of which he provides through his book's three-part structure: twenty lessons, three doorways, and thirty daily exercises. Wicks's twenty lessons are bite-sized and practical, and he shows how the two great commandments (love God, love others) and the parable of the Good Samaritan form doorways to spiritual riches. In part three, Wicks provides the tools and coaching for readers to conduct their own inner workshops. In these thirty spiritual exercises, Wicks invites his readers to acknowledge, accept, and start where they are, employing simple practices and assuring that God's grace will carry them around the next spiritual corner.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ave Maria Press
• Release date: Mar 24, 2014
• ISBN: 9781933495651

Robert J. Wicks

Psychologist and popular speaker Robert J. Wicks is the author of more than sixty books for individuals and professionals, including the bestselling Riding the Dragon. He speaks internationally about resilience, self-care, and the prevention of secondary stress to audiences from the US Congress to Walter Reed Army Hospital, from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine to Harvard Children’s Hospital, and from the Princeton Theological Seminary to the NATO Intelligence Fusion Center in England. Some of Wicks’s presentations include speaking at the commemoration of the Boston Marathon Bombing at the Boston Public Library; a keynote for the American Medical Directors Association; a course in Beirut, Lebanon, for relief workers from Aleppo, Syria; and the psychological debriefing of relief workers evacuated from Rwanda during the genocide in 1994. He also regularly speaks at the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress. Wicks serves as a professor emeritus at Loyola University Maryland, and has taught in universities and professional schools of psychology, medicine, nursing, theology, education, and social work. He earned a doctorate in psychology from Hahnemann Medical College and Hospital and has received honorary degrees from Georgian Court, Caldwell, and Marywood universities. In 1996, Pope John Paul II awarded Wicks a papal medal for his service to the Catholic Church. He also received the first Alumni Award for Excellence in Professional Psychology from Widener University and the Humanitarian of the Year Award from the American Counseling Association’s Division on Spirituality, Ethics and Religious Values in Counseling.

Book preview

Gentle, wise, and sensible advice from an experienced spiritual guide to help you find God in all that you do, and in all that you are—and will be.

James Martin, S.J.

Author of The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything

"In this thin but rich book, seasoned psychologist and spiritual guide Robert Wicks takes us on a healing walk through the spiritual malaise of much of modern life. No Problem is filled with fresh insights to help us around and over the gritty road bumps of everyday life. This is spiritual writing at its best—firmly grounded in the wisdom figures of the past and present and psychologically informed with the best of holistic thinking."

Donald Cozzens

Author of Notes from the Underground

"From the opening lines of No Problem, Robert Wicks identified what seems to be my eternal struggle: allowing my faith to become more than the words I profess and pray, allowing it to infuse my life with the joy and hope that is at its core. I found myself not wanting to move through the book too quickly, but savoring the daily reflections the way they were meant to be read. This book is perfect for anyone who tries daily to live the faith in the fullest sense but too often gets caught up in the chaos of life around us."

Mary DeTurris Poust

Author of Cravings

Related books by Robert J. Wicks

Streams of Contentment: Lessons I Learned on My Uncle’s Farm

Prayerfulness: Awakening to the Fullness of Life

Everyday Simplicity: A Practical Guide to Spiritual Growth

Crossing the Desert: Learning to Let Go, See Clearly, and Live Simply

Riding the Dragon: 10 Lessons for Inner Strength in Challenging Times

Simple Changes: Quietly Overcoming Barriers to Personal and Professional Growth

Seeds of Sensitivity: Deepening Your Spiritual Life

Snow Falling on Snow: Themes from the Spiritual Landscape of Robert J. Wicks

Bounce: Living the Resilient Life

Scripture texts in this work are taken from the New American Bible, copyright © 1991, 1986, 1970 by the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C., and are used by permission of the copyright owner. All Rights Reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

____________________________________

© 2014 by Robert J. Wicks

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews, without written permission from Sorin Books®, P.O. Box 428, Notre Dame, IN 46556-0428, 1-800-282-1865.

www.sorinbooks.com

Paperback ISBN-13 978-1-933495-64-4

E-book ISBN-13 978-1-933495-65-1

Cover image © Thinkstock.

Cover and text design by Brian C. Conley.

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wicks, Robert J.

No problem : turning the next corner in your spiritual life / Robert J. Wicks.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 1-933495-64-2 (978-1-933495-64-4)

1. Spiritual life--Catholic Church. 2. Spiritual formation--Catholic Church. I. Title.

BX2350.3.W53 2014

248.4’82--dc23

2013044718

For the Carmelite Sisters of Baltimore.

Thank you for modeling for me what it means to be simultaneously contemplative, relational, and relevant in a challenging world.

Life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived.

—Gabriel Marcel

Contents

A Brief Introduction: Create an Inner Workshop

Part I: Twenty Lessons in Personal Inner Formation

1. Live (Don’t Only Say) a Simple Prayer

2. Rediscover the Lost Virtue of the Desert

3. Look Outward Too

4. Appreciate the Strength of Inner Simplicity

5. When Invited, Enter the Doorway to Awe

6. Cultivate a Reflective Spirit

7. Avoid Spiritual Alzheimer’s

8. Honor the Spirituality of Letting Go

9. Mine the Wisdom of Spiritual Sadness

10. Adjust Your Inner Lens

11. Discover Both Your Gifts and Growing Edges

12. Expand Your Rituals of Reverence

13. Welcome the Softening Place of Humor

14. Establish a Little Rule of Your Own

15. Understand the Important Role of Death . . . While You’re Still Alive!

16. Be More Attuned to the Power of Your Attitude and Self-Talk

17. Practice Faithfulness . . . and Let God Take Care of the Residue

18. Savor Some Silence Each Day

19. Emulate the Right Persons to Follow the Path of Grace

20. Take a Different Route to Self-Knowledge: Intrigue

Part II: The Call and Three Doorways

Where the Twenty Lessons Are Leading Us

Part III: Developing Your Own Inner Workshop of Virtue

A Month of Simple Questions and Exercises

Conclusion: A Few Final Words of Encouragement

References

A Brief Introduction: Create an Inner Workshop

Peter France, the former host of the popular BBC radio program The Living World, relates in his book Patmos that this Greek isle has long had a remarkable healing impact on people. He notes:

It changes people. . . . In the age of myth, Patmos was a place where the veil that separated the everyday from the eternal was thin. Some feel it remains so [today]. . . . [Spiritual father] Christodoulos traveled to Constantinople to ask the emperor for permission to create what he called a workshop of virtue on the island. . . . There was a sense of the numinous here, a presence even I felt as a prompting to awe.

The question this book will ask is the following: What if such a workshop could be created or strengthened within us so we could move forward in the spiritual life with the tools we need when we face the challenges of the unknown future? However, for this to be possible, we must be willing to do inner work with discipline, complete honesty, and openness. As spiritual mentor and psychologist Jack Kornfield notes in his enchanting book, After the Ecstasy, the Laundry, to sustain a spiritual practice demands our steady attention. The first task, then, in almost any spiritual voyage, is to quiet ourselves enough to listen to the voices of our hearts, to listen to that which is beyond our daily affairs . . . [to] step out of our usual roles . . . [and] to become receptive and open.

Crossing new spiritual thresholds in life takes great faith. It is a little like walking down a familiar street and being aware that we must eventually turn the corner and not know what we will find there. But what we need most is not simply knowledge, as important as that is. While passion is also required, that too is not enough. Beyond these, the development of an inner workshop calls us to a radical change in attitude. This change in attitude is expressed well by the twentieth-century French philosopher Gabriel Marcel, who said, Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived. How often do we hear from our coworkers, our family and friends, and even in restaurants and stores the phrase, No problem! What if we were to start thinking about our spiritual lives in this way? Imagine the inner space that this might create, allowing us to see our inner lives as blessed gifts to be fully enjoyed and freely shared with others.