Tag Archives: faith

How to become a fifty year old Christian — 2017

A life in the Spirit, Spiritual direction, , , ,

The speech travelled with me around our network in 2017. This version was for Marlton Pike. 

How does one get to be a 50-year-old Christian? We always say a 50-year-old-Christian is our goal in our work of redemption– since if someone makes it that far, they are probably out of the woods. All week we have been thinking about Jesus going through the suffering of being in the wilderness as a thirty-something. But each decade has it’s own perils. We find ourselves in a new wilderness being tempted in surprising ways all along the way of Jesus.

What if you are a twentysomething? I loved watching the precious little story called Brooklyn. A twenty something Irish woman moves to New York and meets a twentysomething Italian man. Every scene is like being a twentysomething. The wonder and tragedy of new things. Discovering. Being wrong about yourself and others. Learning. Confused. Passionate. Brave. How does one end up at 30 holding hands with Jesus?

What if you are a 40-something?  I also loved watching The Revenant. It was a wonderful  parable. But I also liked being surprised by Leonardo DiCaprio who I never really liked beyond What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. But there he was in his early 40’s, showing courage, showing depth, showing some mature acting — like he looked at himself and realized there was more to life than being a movie star. He said a very fortysomething thing in an interview in Variety:

“I knew this was going to be somewhat of a silent performance; that’s part of what was exciting. But more than anything, I think I learned a lot about being an actor on this movie. It has a lot to do with trust. Trusting the people you’re working with, giving yourself over to a unique process, and trusting that if the people you’re working with are committed like Alejandro, you can focus on being in the moment and rely on your instincts and trust the journey.”

With such major interior things to face in our 40’s and all the temptation to just become your craft, how does one find Jesus and not just oneself in the silence?

That’s the question for tonight.  But I felt God was telling me that not only do I need to look to the long term, even while waiting for my life to end right now, I need to look out for others. Faith is an every day, long term journey. It is an ongoing relationship that develops like the seasons.

So when we look at each other tonight, I think we should try to develop an outlook that asks: where is this person going? How does this beloved person get to 50 or 60 or death with their faith intact? Whether they are the youngest child or a 40 something with a lot of responsibility — they are on the Way of Jesus, they may have just got on the road or just gotten back on the road. How do they get to the end? Or in our organic terms, how to they get to the water of faith, where they are swimming in an ocean of grace with confidence? How do they endure all the temptations and suffering and stay planted in the love of God?

Since I have already been a little kid and made it past fifty with my faith still growing, I want to tell you about how I got there. The telling is not just for nostalgia. This is more of my testimony about how I managed to have a lively faith when I hit fifty. Actually, I think I probably just got started when I hit fifty and that feels good. So I am going to give you one thing from each of my five first decades that I think was significantly helpful along the way of Jesus.

0-10 – blessed with affirmation.

So start at the beginning of my faith. I think I was unusually blessed as a child. By the time I was six or so, I think I had learned enough lessons about Jesus to sustain me my whole life. My parents dropped me off at the Baptist church to go to the 5-6 year olds class without ever making their own connection, but I did.

My family never taught me one thing about God, never mentioned Jesus at home at all. Their own spiritual life was taboo, another secret like so many they had. But one Christmas, my mother and father gave me a present that was not from Santa, but had their name on it. It was a nicer Bible, and more importantly, in the Bible was a bookmark, a gold-looking chain of the Ten Commandments — a bit like this one from E-Bay but much better in my memory. It was a treasure. I never used it as a bookmark. I hid it from my sister like it was gold. And I treasure that rare affirmation of my faith to this day.

That is one thing that will get you to fifty as a Christian: The child in you receives affirmation for their faith. We come to Jesus as a child whether we are young or not. If it did not get to you in kindergarten, you’ll have to go there somehow and be touched with the assurance that the little-child-you-are can fit with God. You belong and you are loved. So touch that child in you. Touch the child in each other. Tell them they can have faith in Jesus  and God is with them.

10-19  blessed with an identity

The next decade of my life was filled with facts, fears, fun and all the stuff adolescents get into. Some of you here are in the middle of that right now – we have ten to twenty year olds here, in this meeting. One of those people lives with me who I love very much. It is an exciting time of life. If you don’t know what you are doing, that is normal. Hang on to Jesus and he will get you through.

For me, personally, I had to learn the facts of faith and make a decision about them in the middle of some very poor examples of church. The Christians I knew did a lot of fighting. Their bad example often made me wonder what I was into. But I had met God as a child and that was hard to shake. You can imagine how hard it is for people without the affirmation I got as a child when they get next to adults who are not faithful – who fight, divorce, sin. Here they are trying to decide what identities to put on, how to make love, what jobs to do, whether they are worth anything, and their parents and other adults do the weirdest stuff.

Somehow, I not only got some intellectual facts about Jesus — I did some reading and listening, I also got some personal experience of praying and feeling like the Holy Spirit was with me. That was crucial. By the time I was escaping my little town and my dysfunctional family to go to college, I decided that the main fact about me was that I was a Christian. For me, entering my dorm hall and introducing myself to a whole new world was a chance to come out as a full-on Christian. I used the little note board on my door to put a card up with my theme verse: “For me to live is Christ, to die is gain.”

I was going through that door Jesus opened. My inner world looked to me a bit like the picture, here. But I had latched on to a  great teenager verse. You can get an eighteen year old to die for the country, too. Somehow, Jesus became my commander. Help young people know the facts of faith and make a decision about them. And don’t despise that demanding, critical, clueless teen in yourself or others.

Taking on the identity of a Christian as a teen was a crucial launch pad for the rest of my life. By the time I was twenty, the next thirty years were already in motion. That is one of the reasons we need to be a church for the next generation. Our friends at Rutgers are making the decisions that will decide who they are at fifty. Will they be following Christ or following their passion, like Leonardo DiCaprio? Will they be following the economy like their schools have been training them to do? Will they be Americans first and Christians privately? Before they can clearly think about it, the road is already opening up before them. Is it the broad way that leads to destruction or the narrow way that leads to life?

The child needs some affirmation for their faith.

The teen needs to act on the facts and choose to identify with Jesus.

Among many things, the twentysomething needs to find a place to belong, especially if they are going to keep following Jesus.

20-29 blessed with community

In my twenties, I stumbled on to something that was surprisingly life saving: intentional community. Not only did I marry a great believer, who has been organizing me for good ever since, I ended up living in an Acts 2 community. It kind of happened naturally, as well as being inspired by Acts 2. A group of us spent a lot of time together because we all worked in a burgeoning youth ministry. We got tired of commuting to our relationships, we said, so we started moving in together.

Here is the first house we lived in. It still looks terrible. I planted that tree. Before long there was a statement of formation and twenty people in three houses, welcoming in Cambodian refugees and unwed mothers. Our focus came to be hunger. We decided to live simply so others could simply live. It worked great. And it made me face up to myself every day.

Being a part of the community made me a visibly serious person – mostly to myself. It made me disciplined for righteousness. I got habits of the heart solidified. I am still simplicity-minded. Still communal in nature. Still adept at welcoming in the stranger. I learned that all just by being together with people who were on the same track, praying and working together with Jesus.

There is no such thing as a solitary Christian. If you are going to make it to fifty and beyond, you will have to do it together with the others. A great spouse is good, but you need to be a part of the body and the body needs to be part of you.

30-39 Blessed with integrity

The twenties are great. People will try anything. Hopefully they try it with Jesus. Thirties, not so easy. I had young children. Plus I had some screws that had always been loose that finally started coming out altogether. In your thirties you develop psychologically and relationally, or you try to stay a twenty-something as long a possible. I always connect that difficult process to Joseph in Genesis who must have been about thirty when his earnest mentality and natural charisma propelled him into the management of Potiphar’s household. He is confronted with a big choice — “Should I have sex with Potiphar’s wife, who wants me, or not?” He decides not to do it, which ultimately lands him in prison. But his reasoning is basically, “That’s just not me. I am not going to surrender my righteousness for an orgasm, or anything else.” To get to fifty with your faith, it takes acting like that. Integrity.

The thirties have a lot of decisions like that. Who am I going to be? How will my family function? How do I make a living? What does all of this serve? All these requirements cause a lot of us some huge new understanding. I had some really foggy months psychologically, relationally, with my choices, in our marriage, in my thirties. But things started to come clear.

One thing for me is that I had to realize that not all my desires were going to be met. Also, my ideal future might not materialize. What’s more, not every direction I felt like going was possible. Even more, I’m not that great; I have problems to solve. I settled into: I am connected and I am responsible and that is good even when it does not feel good. Fortunately, I already had some faith built up. The hope God gave me really was like an anchor for my soul. If you are in your thirties, stay the course on the way of Jesus and don’t get drawn into bed with a lot of people who don’t follow God. Hang on to your integrity. And help someone else in the same turmoil.

40-49 blessed with something to do that is worthy of my best

The 40’s may be one of the most tempting ages of all. A lot of people veer off the way of Jesus then. Their childhood faith, if they had any, doesn’t satisfy. Their twentysomething convictions seem juvenile. Their thirtysomething development may seem unfinished or unsatisfying. They start bumping up against their limitations, for sure. They really need to know God. You may have gotten to forty and realized that a lot of what you have built so far has been in service of a substitute dream and you are just too proud to change or too lazy. So by the time you are fifty, nothing is there. This is very common scenario, so beware.

When I got into my forties, I had already taken a leap out of my past that totally revolutionized me. I really grew up a lot in my late thirties when I moved to PA and took the leadership of a struggling traditional church. Being that kind of pastor, in essentially a foreign land, created a huge learning curve. I soon realized that the move was just a first step and felt moved to try my best.

This is a big thing I learned in that decade about how to get to the end: I need to do the best I can with the best God had given me. I need to respond to what I have been given. I faced a temptation: I could pile all I had into succeeding at something or I could labor in obscurity and possible failure while following Jesus. That’s when Gwen and I decided to move to Philadelphia and see if there was a circle of hope here. There was.

The turmoil and challenge of the thirties, the good hard work of the forties is a great prep for the launch pad of the fifties. At least that is what I learned. I wish someone had encouraged me, since I mostly learned in the school of hard knocks. It is good to be fifty and faithful. It is kind of like the last couple of stations on the factory that is making RVs I used to work in. It started with a chassis and now we can drive the spiritual car. There will still be glitches to fix, but it will probably get us to the end.

Destiny

Our destiny is to swim in an ocean of grace, free and joyful, like some big spiritual whale singing songs to God that echo is the depths. We need to imagine ourselves getting there. I want to give you a moment to do that. Whether you are 1-10, 11-20, 21-30, 31-40, 41-50 and beyond, imagine yourself where God is taking you — not so much the place, but the condition, the feelings, the stature, the faith. What is it like for you to be fifty or more and faithful to what Jesus has called you?

Just as our previous ages are always with us, so is our age to come, because the Holy Spirit is with us. So rest in the great love, that grace. Where are you going?

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Today is William Wilberforce Day! Honor his conviction and world-changing action at The Transhistorical Body. 

FFF #15 — Resilience: The faith factor in climate action

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Posting every Friday at noon is how I act in solidarity with young climate strikers all over the world who want their elders to save their future. 

There is general agreement about what needs to be done to combat climate disruption:

  • Mitigation: reducing emissions.
  • Adaptation: preparing infrastructure to endure the changes.
  • Resilience: deepening the capacity of people to cope with trauma and build a new way of life.

The third response in the list is even weaker than the previous two.

In his book Transformational Resilience, social systems theorist Bob Doppelt says, “No response to the climate crisis will…succeed unless individuals and groups of all types around the globe understand how trauma and toxic stress affects their minds and bodies, and use skills to calm their emotions and thoughts, learn from, and find meaning, direction, and hope in adversity.” The hard scientists and social scientists are doing great work. But people are the problem. If you think their view matches the often-maligned “anthropocentric” worldview of the Bible, I agree with you. The fate of the earth has been given over to humans to steward in collaboration with one another and God. But love rarely rules. So things often die.

Personal resilience

I’m enjoying reading Sarah Jaquette Ray in A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety as she tries to work on the missing link in climate action: the “personal resilience” of people. What she means by “personal” and “resilience” would be interesting to debate. But you probably get the gist of it. It is the same strength, vision and hope you need to call on when you realize you actually matter and you need to do something important with the skills you have in your present context. When you look into 2022 you may not automatically sense a lot of strength, vision and hope. You may be tempted to go with feelings of despair that lead you to withdraw and merely survive.

Some of you Bible readers, however, probably automatically dialed up Romans 5 when you heard “personal resilience;” you could feel the Holy Spirit drawing you to fearlessness when it comes to 2022:

We have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.
And we boast in the hope of the glory of God.
Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings,
because we know that suffering produces perseverance;
perseverance, character;
and character, hope.
And hope does not put us to shame,
because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts
through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

Sarah Jaquette Ray is a Buddhist evangelist, but I think she can align with Paul’s point of view. (Besides, divvying up the spoils between rival religious/political parties should probably be consigned to “pre-climate change.”) She gives some useful suggestions for building resilience (or faith, if you like) in the face of the blooming catastrophe we face. Here are three of them, in brief.

Don’t measure so much

As good consumer capitalists, we hardly do anything unless we think it is a good deal, from buying a washing machine to making love. So when we look at what we should do in response to the huge work of fighting climate change, we shy away from the effort because we can’t guarantee the outcome. You might not do your part because you can’t see your effort resulting in enough impact to justify the cost. But it has often been said in response to such thinking, “If you expect to see the final results of your work, you simply have not asked a big enough question.”

I admire people who can stick with their big questions and stop “counting beans” to measure whether their good is producing the best and most good. I am more with Paul, who knows his vision is limited but knows he serves in an eternal arena.

We do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. — 2 Cor 4:16-18

Fixing our eyes on what is unseen is a big enough question, in itself! Thanks to God, the eternal has been planted in history in Jesus and planted in us by the Spirit so we have strength beyond our own to call on when we face our troubles.

Redefine action

Sarah Jaquette Ray is dismayed to see the movement of climate action in bondage to the left-brain. She says, “Many people want to be problem-solvers and to fix things right NOW. They want less feeling less thinking, less talking and more action. But urgency and its sidekick, non-thinking, result in unintended consequences that can undermine our goals.” Resilience needs the right brain, too.

Our sense of inefficacy may have more to do with whether we think we make a difference than with assessing the difference we make. We may have an “instrumentalist’ view that says the only actions that matter are the ones which make immediate, impressive, large-scale change. If we view ourselves more realistically, accepting our limits, we often gain more energy to do what we can. Our problem is rarely that we have no power or influence; it is that we don’t use the power or influence we have because we think it is not enough.

Christianity has unwittingly taught an “instrumentalist” theology for ages. I think the Bible always starts with “You matter” and THEN gets to “So act like that.” But that truth is often turned around so people think, “I’d better do the right, the best, the most things so I can matter as much as I ought to.”

This Bible passage was often misinterpreted in that way when I was coming up

So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews, Greeks or the church of God — even as I try to please everyone in every way. For I am not seeking my own good but the good of many, so that they may be saved. – 1 Corinthians 10:31-33

I think Paul is in the middle of a big discourse grounded in “You matter” when he writes those lines. So it follows that he says, “If you do anything, do it to the glory of God and you will be fine. You have nothing to lose. Love everyone, build the common good and anything else will follow — you are brothers and sisters with Jesus no less.” Even though I think that is the core of what he is teaching, I don’t know how many times I have been hit with, “You are making someone stumble” as the takeaway I should get. Don’t do anything that could be wrong! A lot of us never do anything because it might be wrong or not right enough! Doing the good we can with the Spirit we have is enough — and who knows, it might lead to more!

There are starting points in climate action everyone can do. Express dissatisfaction with the status quo. Bear witness to a crisis — don’t turn away;  know about it and speak about it. Help people on the front lines. Give money. Build community. Talk about the good action that is happening  — e.g.: a friend posted a picture of a smokestack near his house belching black smoke the other day on FB. You get the idea. Listening to the voice that tells you “You don’t matter” and doing nothing is the sin, not failing to do something spectacular.

Go slow enough

Urgency and action without mindful deliberation and contemplative depth does not serve the mission of climate action.  Resilience takes time. Sarah Ray quotes the writers of the workbook Dismantling Racism as they teach that a relentless sense of urgency makes “it difficult to take time to be inclusive, encourage democratic and/or thoughtful decision-making, to think long-term, to consider consequences” (p. 29). Likewise with climate action, the urgency of problem solving can run over the human and community development which is crucial to solving the problem.

Dee Dee Risher (a Philly hero) writes in The Soul Making Room about how pausing to turn into gratitude slowed down her action-oriented, anxiety-driven life enough to help rejuvenate her strength.

Gratitude is the great demon-vanquisher. We cannot be grateful and carry emotions of fear anxiety or anger. Our wiring is not capable of it. Moreover, gratitude changes our place in the chain of being. Gratitude by its very nature makes us a recipient. We are not the giver. That weight is off our shoulders. Gifts are bestowed upon us and we recognize them. We do not have to produce or be worthy. Instead, moments come into our unsuspecting and outstretched hands. Our job is simply to unwrap them.

In the cause of slowing down for gratitude, some Bible verses should not be made into songs. Like this one:

But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. — Matthew 6:33-4

The old song I linked helped me remember a bit of the truth. But it was so sweet so short! Our seeking is long and slow. Righteousness is incremental. What’s worse, verse one of the song (the one most of us will remember) ends with “all these things will be added to you” when it would do better to lead us to check our anxiety about not getting what we imagine we need or deserve. We need to do the best we can to trust God with the trouble at hand instead of thinking about three years from now.

The good things the people of Earth are doing in 2022 to combat climate change may or may not be enough. We know what needs to be done but people will always be the problem with doing it. Will we build one another’s capacity to cope with the trauma and learn how to build a new way of life? Will we find resilience and trust? I think Jesus followers have profound answers to that question and the means to answer it with faith, hope and love.

Who Are You? — In honor of Teresa de Jesus

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Tomorrow is the day we remember Teresa of Avila (1515-1582). Visit The Transhistorical Body for more.

The famous Teresa was a reformer from the center of Spain, along with her protégé, St. John of the Cross. Those two wanted to return their monastic order to the ways of the hermits who founded it near Elijah’s Well in Palestine, on Mt. Carmel (see 1 Kings 18). They were responding to the radicals of the Protestant Reformation, which was like an earthquake in the Roman Catholic Church of their time. They ended up with an offshoot of the Carmelites, calling themselves the “barefoot” or “discalced” Carmelites.

Mariko’s emphasis on pilgrimage last night at our congregation on Frankford Ave. helped me remember many good times on my journeys with Jesus. While on pilgrimage in Kent over a decade ago, we stayed in Aylesford Abbey, the site of the first convocation of Carmelites in England in 1240. A yard full of elementary kids were there when we arrived, which was right in line with the order’s traditional love of children.

Teresa and John in Avila

I am Teresa of Jesus

When we were in Avila a few years ago, Gwen and I went to the house where Teresa got started on her remarkable, influential ministry. For some reason we were the only pilgrims at the site and had a great museum all to ourselves. It seemed mysterious and important. Holy. On the stairs there was a mannequin of a little boy, replicating one of the moments of ecstasy that popped up in Teresa’s prayer. One day, as she was preparing to ascend the stairs leading to the upper rooms of the convent, she met a beautiful child. He asked her “Who are you?” She replied, “I am Teresa of Jesus. And who are you?” To which the child responded, “I am Jesus of Teresa.”

Biographers say the encounter with the Child Jesus, affected Teresa so deeply that whenever she set out to organize one of the eighteen (!) new houses she founded, she always brought a statue of the Lord as a child with her. She did a lot of teaching on contemplative prayer and encouraged everyone to leave their hearts open to visions and mysterious connections with God. But she didn’t want people to seek them or to rely on them.

Who are you?

In Carmelite spirituality there is an ancient custom of choosing a name which uniquely expresses a member’s personal relationship to the mysteries of the faith. Thus there are people like Teresa of Jesus, John of the Cross, and Elizabeth of the Trinity. In honor of these ancestors in the faith, I have been pondering what name I should have.

If the risen Lord were to ask you today, “Who are you?” How would you answer? If you were a Discalced (or another kind of) Carmelite, what new name would you choose for yourself? What mystery of the faith has been central to your life-journey in Christ?

When I pondered these questions in Teresa’s honor, I realized I have been blessed with so many ways to connect with God it is hard to choose something central (and Teresa cobbled together another name for herself, as well, since she couldn’t quite decide either). Rod of Jesus works for me, too. Rod of the Silence. Rod of the Road. Rod of the Pioneers. But mainly, I think, Rod of the Church fits, as in Ephesians 3.

The mystery of the body of Christ in action probably moves me most. It is so fragile and yet so powerful, like the sculpture our group made in the forest last Saturday.

I have never been diverted from my passion for the church’s work of restoring people to their rightful place, redeeming the creation, fulfilling what is left of the Lord’s suffering as a living organism of many harmonious parts.  Maybe that is why I have a hard time figuring out a name – I would prefer to be named by my brothers and sisters as they recognize Jesus in me, Jesus living through me to contribute what I have been given to share.

“Who are you?” How would you answer? At the Men’s Retreat last weekend one of the answers we offered the men is “You are the treasure God found when he was plowing his  field in you. You are the beloved of God.” That might be the best place to start in order to see how you might be described in relation to the other wonders of God.

My faith is eroding: One thing you can do right now.

A life in the Spirit, ,

 

“I think I am losing my faith—and I don’t know what to do about it.” I wish people would say that more often; they mostly just feel it until the feeling pushes them over the edge. Blame it on Trump. Blame it on unreconciled relationships. Blame it on dumb churches and their leaders. Blame it on science. Blame it on yourself. The blaming does not really help the feelings. The person struggling with the feeling still ends up with an internal struggle that has big consequences whichever way it goes.

If you feel some of these things, you are not alone. All sorts of people, from every corner of the planet, from every strand of the Christian tradition, from every conceivable segment of society are feeling it with you. They are once-religious people who for any number of reasons now find the very ground of faith eroding beneath their feet. Some are panicking, many are reverting to the defense systems they relied on as a child and trying to find other things to hope in.

The terrors that taught us as children don’t really go away. So when we get pushed to the edge it is terrifying. It is one thing to question the institutional Church or to poke holes in the religious systems people have put in place or even to critique the Bible and how we interpret it. Those are all sustainable losses. We can endure such things and still hold on to some confidence that God is and that God is good. Even if on some days, those assertions are all that remain of our fragile faith narrative, they can be enough.

But what do you do, when with all the sleepless wrestling and the furrowed-brow prayers and the ceaseless questions and the best-intended efforts, even that fragile bit of faith seems out of reach? What happens when the very reality of God (or of a God who is good) seems too much to own? How do you keep going in the middle of a full-blown spiritual collapse?

Encouragement for the eroding

These mysteries of faith can’t be “solved” in a blog post. They can’t be “solved” as if they were a “problem” at all, can they? Most people of faith need to move beyond faith that solves problems into faith that is more about love – and we all know that love causes the delicious problems of being human as much as it solves them. So I have just a few beginning things to say which I hope will encourage people who are in the thick of some spiritual trauma. All the linked blog posts scattered around the page might help, too.

You may be at a point where your loss of faith feels unsolvable. At that point, living in faith often isn’t a matter of just being more determined or more “religious.” Jesus followers can become desperate while they are reading the Bible, when they are praying, after they are done volunteering and when they are trying to believe in the middle of a church meeting. They may be as devout and engaged as ever, only these pursuits no longer yield the clarity, confidence and comfort they once did.

I’ve met people who feel a barren, spiritual dryness. I often tell them that feeling is actually a sign of their faith, not merely their loss of it, since others, obviously, have already adapted to a barren spiritual landscape and feel it is normal. These dried-out people almost always feel burdened by a sense of failure – a secret feeling they dare not share or often dare not admit to themselves. They are grieving, feeling helpless about regaining what they’ve lost, and angry at themselves for not being faithful enough to conjure up belief that used to be easier. And they are often angry with God, too.

So what can you do right now?

If you’re in that place right now, I won’t pretend there’s any easy way out or a simple path back to faith. I can’t even promise that you’ll ever find your way back, at least not to what you used to call belief. It may be a very different experience for you in the future.

Sticking with prayer, Bible study or church attendance might provide anchors for your faith until the storm passes—but they might not. You might like to try psychotherapy to see if there is something in the way of your growth you don’t know about, or to provide some heavy-duty support while you are growing – maybe you aren’t up for that.

Maybe the process should be more about what’s right in front of you, for now — about what you can see and hear and touch and smell and taste. Maybe the best thing you can do right now is to experience all of the things that you can know, and simply receive them with gratitude: a delicious meal, the evening breeze, some music that moves you, the laughter of your best friend, the depth of a relationship, the smell of your baby’s head.

Maybe just accepting these great, pure, measurable gifts and presently cherishing them is all the faith you are able to have right now, and that will have to be OK. Maybe that’s as close to proving God’s goodness as you can get. To simply live and to find gratitude in the living is itself a spiritual pursuit; it is on the holiness spectrum. And as you do this, you may find that this contentment is a pathway back to the hope you’ve lost. It may clear the road to God that has been cluttered by sadness, disappointment, doubt, and your worn-out religion.

But maybe you shouldn’t worry about whether the gratitude gets you somewhere right now. We’re good at turning simple goodness into a means to an end – gratitude is not a result to achieve or another religious exercise to evaluate. Try receiving the goodness and pleasures of this day and allow them to speak to you and surprise you. People have often found the beginning of a new season of faith there.

As you are working at finding a new center, keep noting when you feel guilty. Guilt is good for turning us from bad behavior, but it needs to be checked when it makes us feel like a worthless person. Talk back to that voice in your head that tells you you’re terrible and don’t worry about what you think people are saying about you. You’re the one walking this road and you understand it in ways they never will. Maybe most of all, don’t worry about God. God is big enough to handle your doubts, fears and failures and knows exactly what you’re going through and why believing is such a struggle right now.

You may have indeed lost your faith or you may have just lost your way a bit. Either way, this might be a good time to breathe, to look around and to find joy in what is right beside you and all around you as your journey continues. If that is all the faith you can muster right now, let it be.

Suggested by John Pavlovitz

The still points: Finding home in the midst of change

A life in the Spirit, , , , , ,

Things change. The world is a transient experience. We are lonely for home – someplace we can feel anchored, someplace certain, someplace where our roots feel secure and stable.

While we are meditating on that, someone plows into our pizzeria or we just hear about ten such things from the 24-hour news alarm. While we are trying to secure our place in the world as the church, our constant failure and dislocated relationships scare us and discourage us until we worry that our fragile connections will deteriorate and we will be alone again.

How do we deal with this lonely, rootless experience we have as humans? The main thing is our lifelong movement toward the goal of oneness with God. That pursuit causes deeper integration, a new instinct for being rejuvenated in solitude, and the capacity to pray. But I think there is even more. There are attitude shifts and decisions we make that provide us with “still points” where we feel secure in a world that keeps shifting. We need to find the “clefts in the rock” where we feel covered.

still point

How can we find these points and overcome the nagging rootlessness that often makes us so lonely? Here are four suggestions.

The still point of faith

So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. – Colossians 3:1-3

When our faith is out of our minds and hearts and also into our bodies and habits, the symbols we use, the language we speak, and the time we share all provide thin places where we experience the security of the cleft, where we feel covered with God’s hand. They all lead to the great still point.

There is something beyond time and history, beyond what shifts in its impermanence. There is something that can’t be debunked by investigation or made obsolete by new discoveries. That something is a Someone. That Someone is known as we journey into the realm of faith, hope and selfless love. That journey in mind, heart and step will help dispel rootlessness if we persevere in it.  Our friends in recovery know this well, the first three steps of the twelve steps are all about facing rootlessness and coming home. #2 says: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. It takes working the steps to find the still point.

The still point of commitment

I was overjoyed when some of the friends arrived and testified to your faithfulness to the truth, namely how you walk in the truth. – 3 John 1:3

Much of our rootlessness can be overcome by committing ourselves to certain people, values, things, and projects and then refusing to be unfaithful to those commitments. We need to give up on “hang loose.” Otherwise our lives end up characterized by infidelity, broken promises, broken words, cheap commitments, and hastily withdrawn loyalties – and acute loneliness.

Permanence adds a missing ingredient to the words love, friendship, promise and loyalty. It brings the element of timelessness. Teilhard de Jardin, the philosopher-scientist-Jesuit, spent much of his life frustrated with his church family. He was occasionally encouraged by his friends to abandon them. However, he would always dismiss the temptation with the simple statement: “I can never leave because I have given my word.” His commitment gave him a still point.

The still point of history

But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, a wild olive shoot, were grafted in their place to share the rich root of the olive tree, do not boast over the branches. If you do boast, remember that it is not you that support the root, but the root that supports you. – Romans 11:17-18

I think it is great that we can swipe our cheeks and find out from what part of Africa our ancestors derived. The DNA science gives us a small sense of having roots. Maybe it is good that archaeologists become more clever every day and uncover the truth (or fiction) behind ancient texts. They help us feel like our faith has a secure foundation.

We all feel better when we stand within our tradition and know our history. The newest person who comes into our church or any church does better when they refuse to think their history with the group begins when they make their covenant. They are grafted into a long history and are supported by the roots. They are not losing themselves when they adopt certain traditions and add their energy and voice to steering the future. In a real sense they are transhistorical, alive in Christ wherever Jesus has been honored throughout history. That sense of history provides a still point.

The still point of community

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God. – Ephesians 2:19-22

Finding home is more than finding a building, a city, or a country where we feel we belong. That’s just part of it. It is finding a heart or a community of hearts where we find enough safety and warmth to dare to be faithful and loving, to be true — like when Adam first saw Eve and said, “At last, bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh!” That wasn’t just sexual attraction, that was comfort to his heart. He found in Eve what the rest of creation did not have for him.

We go through life needing to find that home. Jesus demonstrated how we find it when he was sitting with his disciples one day and his family came to the house looking for him. No doubt Jesus loved his mother and his family, but he did not immediately get up and go to them. Instead he said” Who is my mother? Who are my brothers and sisters?” Pointing to those around him he said, “Here are my mother and brothers. Anyone who does the will of God, that person is my brother and sister and mother.” He is not disrespecting his mother, he’s just teaching us that home is deeper than blood. Faith makes a family than transcends all the ancestries that divide us.

One of the great scandals of being a Jesus follower is contained in that moment. Jesus respects his origin as a man, but he is king of country that transcends and unites all other identities. Many people would fight even the hint that their personal identity does not make them who they are and should be defended at all costs. Yet Jesus persists in knitting together a new family sharing a renewed blood, heart to heart, bone of bone. In another incident a woman shouted out to Jesus, “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you!” Jesus answered, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!”  Yes I had a wonderful mother, but I am more than my biology.

Our community in Christ is bound together by something beyond blood, ethnicity and geography and will outlive them all. Our new home in faith is an answer to the loneliness, it is the great still point, the shelter from the storm, the cleft in the rock, that can root out our rootlessness.

Already today I have confronted my weakness, been in an argument, heard about a car disaster, read a distraught email, found myself confused by problems in various structures, lost something, and the Facebook news reported that Texas A&M had also scheduled a white supremacist rally for next month. It is 9:00 am! I am going to reread this post and see if I can’t find that still point I long to live in, sensing God’s sustaining glory in the cleft of the rock.

Is the movement finally starting? Keep praying and pushing.

Leadership, Music, The Mission, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

When Donald Trump was elected, I hoped it was the final straw to break the power of delusion choking so many people here in the last days of the Empire. There is some evidence this week that my hope was not in vain. The Spirit of God is moving among us and in our region and people are waking up. Things are happening that remind me of the stories I have heard about Jesus appearing to Muslims in places where it is illegal to even entertain the thought of becoming a Christian. People who can’t trust and are afraid to think are meeting Jesus personally in ways that change them forever.

Acts 2:17

The movement of the Spirit in our church never really ground to a halt, but it seemed to slow so much, we began to wonder if we were missing something or doing something wrong. Our “flywheel” was slowing down and we realized we had better get behind it and do some pushing so the engine of our mission would get back to speed. We have been doing that and things are changing.

But there is only so much pushing one can do. The movement of the Spirit in a group or society is a mystery that is more about prayer than technique. So I have been praying for us and praying for our region, country and the whole desperate world. And I am not alone. Many of us have been drawn to pray and we have even started groups to do it together.

Evidence keeps popping up that something is starting. I almost don’t want to talk about it, lest I be wrong. But it is hard not to appreciate the possibility.

Cell mates of all kinds

For instance, my pastor, Rachel, could not contain herself last week and had to share the good things happening  in our cells:

  • She visited our Spanish-speaking cell and sensed the presence of God so strongly it made her “choke back tears.” The members were opening up about their lives, sharing real struggles and then praying for each other and reading the Bible together. For some of them, it was all brand new.
  • At her own cell, her host “shared a growing sense that Someone is leading her into a future that she doesn’t know yet, and she is actually excited about that, because she’s discovering that God has better things in store for her than she had for herself. She’s being surprised by hope.”
  • Then on her walk home, she ran into three of Jimmy & Zoe’s cell mates who looked like something good had just happened to them. They had just prayed with two friends who asked to receive Christ right there in their meeting.

A deluded millennial

About the same time, I was looking around YouTube for this video when I ran into this one by Steve Bancarz. I understand about zero why anyone would listen to a YouTube personality or how they get a following. But here is this guy who apparently made a living selling “new age” philosophies through his website. Then he had this remarkable experience with Jesus, gave it all up, and started his new internet business: debunking his old one.

I almost never get through a fifteen minute video, but this one intrigued me. When it was done, I felt it might be a scam. But evangelical outlets like Christian Post and Charisma have been telling the story too. His experience is like ones reported by Muslims, in which Jesus came to him and convinced him to change. I think his fundamentalist connections are serving him well as he gets over his drug use. It should be interesting to see how he moves on. Is this how Jesus is going to penetrate the despairing, enslaved, avoidant and cynical millennials?

A burned out evangelical

Movement from outside and in
Ocean waves and brain waves

Finally, I have been reading an “earth” book I keep recommending to people who don’t have faith, or who are interested in the new atheist arguments: Finding God in the Waves. It is about a Christian who lost his faith but who also had a life changing experience with God at the beach one night. He became “Science Mike” on the podcast from the group known as the  Liturgists  who say, “We create art and experiences for the spiritually homeless and frustrated.” (I have not listened their podcast, I admit).  Gungor is also a “Liturgist;” you can click his name and get a ticket to hear him on August 1 at 1125 S. Broad.

In Finding God in the Waves, Mike describes how science convinced him faith is not only possible, but preferable. Here is a quote about what he found most convincing:

“Trying to describe God is a lot like trying to describe falling in love. And that’s a serious problem for people who doubt that God is real…The unbelieving brain has no God construct, no neurological model for processing spiritual ideas and experiences in a way that feels real. This is why Bible stories and arguments for God’s existence will always sound like nonsense to a skeptic. For the unbeliever, God is truly absent from his or her brain. …

[Unlike how Christians tend to view solutions to doubt] neurotheology treats doubt as a neurological condition and would instead encourage people to imagine any God they can accept, and then pray or meditate on that God, in order to reorient the person’s neurobiological image of God back toward the experiential parts of the brain.…This insight was the most significant turning point in my return to God. I now knew I had to stop trying to perfect my knowledge of God and instead shift toward activities that would help me cultivate a healthy neurological image of God – secure in the knowledge that this network would help me connect with God and live a peaceful, helpful life.” 

It all amazes me. The desperate immigrants and illegals, the millions who are deluded by spirituality without Jesus, the science-laden who think their disciplines exclude the possibility of God, all of them popped up in my own experience with a story about Jesus coming to them in a way they never expected. And now they are joined around our own table in an odd way, celebrating the life, death and resurrection of the Lord.

Pray and push. Move with the movement. I can tell you are doing it, so all I can say is that I am with you as you pray and push. I am with you as we celebrate how Jesus transforms people who never expected to meet Him.

Thank God my faith is not all in my head.

A life in the Spirit, Poetry, , ,

Last Sunday we welcomed Jesus to raise us up with him. It seemed like a lot of people at the meeting really meant it when we shouted “He is risen indeed!” But I suspect others weren’t into it, or just watched me shouting. Their “mind” had the upper hand. They did not engage their body at all. Maybe they didn’t even come to the meeting. Why bother? They keep their “religion” in a private space in their head. Whatever love might be in that head, in concept, is left unexpressed. In fact, some other love is probably the object of their de facto worship, although they might not notice.

Welcome morning

That’s OK. Today is another day. And this week, as well, is loaded with opportunities to live in the spirit of Anne Sexton’s poem:

Welcome Morning by Anne Sexton

There is joy
in all:
in the hair I brush each morning,
in the Cannon towel, newly washed,
that I rub my body with each morning,
in the chapel of eggs I cook
each morning,
in the outcry from the kettle
that heats my coffee
each morning,
in the spoon and the chair
that cry “hello there, Anne”
each morning,
in the godhead of the table
that I set my silver, plate, cup upon
each morning.

All this is God,
right here in my pea-green house
each morning
and I mean,
though often forget,
to give thanks,
to faint down by the kitchen table
in a prayer of rejoicing
as the holy birds at the kitchen window
peck into their marriage of seeds.

So while I think of it,
let me paint a thank-you on my palm
for this God, this laughter of the morning,
lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn’t shared, I’ve heard,
dies young.

Hello there

for some people, it is all mentalIt may embarrass some people to hear the poet say: “in the spoon and the chair that cry ‘hello there, Anne’ each morning.”  It is so something, so immediate, so heartfelt! So many of us have our faith stuck in a mental construct; we’re arguing about principles in our head and fearing we don’t have it all right yet so we better not commit. Our silverware is certainly not talking to us! Others of us are trapped in a “worldview” that is a bit more human, but is still a philosophical construct by which we compare and contrast who we are with others and from which we draw a politically sanctioned identity, so we think sorting that out is about all the meaning we get — and all we do is sort. We would certainly think twice before we announced to the public that we were overcome with joy this morning at breakfast! It just wouldn’t fit the self-concept.

Last week, during the holy week, the commemoration of Jesus’ last week, when history is offered a restart, we were invited to put our mental dialogue in its place and find joy in our own pea-green house, in our own bodies, walking alongside Jesus, who is God ennobling and redeeming our true selves as the author of creation and its restorer. Like him, for the joy set before us, we endure the cross.

Move with my loves

If you have a mental faith, Holy Week probably seemed like a lot of time spent on redundant material. If you are training your body to move with your loves, you may have awakened every day, like Anne Sexton, and said,

“So while I think of it,
let me paint a thank-you on my palm
for this God, this laughter of the morning,
lest it go unspoken.”

circle of hope, philly, philadelphia, south jersey, churches, love, hope, Jesus, Christian

On each day of the holy week we made a special, communal, concerted effort to “paint a thank-you on” our palms, and so get our bodies moving in the direction of our salvation. We moved through darkness into light, not just in our thoughts or beliefs, but in our hearts and time with those we love in the creation we feel. And so we trained our hearts for joy and opened our days to grace. We were saved, not in theory, but in fact.

There were words and thinking, of course, but, as I am prone to saying, “It does not really matter what happens, it matters that I did it.” What I do ends up being the liturgy of my loves. Thus Sexton’s poem is so profound because she realizes that even her breakfast is charged with God’s presence and should she fall on her knees by her table it would be an appropriate action that would unleash the joy stored up in the meal. How much more profound was the “breakfast” of Holy Week, as we knelt before our common table of grace and looked forward to the joy of Easter morning: these birds, these seeds, this realization that I am welcomed into eternal joy, and this “God, this laughter of the morning!”

God help us, we do not coerce anyone to do what we plan as Circle of Hope, so I am not trying to get you to come to meetings! We would not risk driving you into another bout with all the shoulds the mental overlords have caused you to resist as you rebel against their science and social construction. But, again this week, we are offering a lot of ways to express your loves with people who love you. We have a lot of ways to cooperate with the reorientation of our desire towards true joy. Just being with your cell or making it to the Sunday meeting might get the ball rolling or keep it rolling —  if you don’t just think about it, of course.

[The original post appeared at Circle of Hope.net]

Jesus the great disrupter of homeostasis

Doing Theology, Psychological growth, , , ,

These are some thoughts that have been developing in me ever since I studied Matthew 13 in preparation for our training on Saturday. Jesus keeps disrupting me with them. I hope he will bless you in the same way.

Jesus is an artful, courageous-but-loving disrupter of homeostasis.

The Lord’s goal is to help people, like us, who are prone to resisting change to keep changing in God’s direction. We’re working on being disrupted by Jesus so we can be  disruptive with Jesus in a world stuck in its ways.

Jesus has lovingly stirred me this year. He is artfully refocusing us all. The newness feels good.

The pearl of great price by Daniel Bonnell

Jesus comes to us breathing the air of eternity and moving with the rhythms of the Kingdom of God. As a result, He inevitably disrupts our sin-soaked sense of reality just by showing up and being himself.

When we meet Him, this “Pearl” of truth and love often seems like a shocking discovery.

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it. (Matthew 13:14-6)

“Why did I not see that Pearl before?” we ask.  We have reasons. Even though our spiritual lenses are foggy, the Ultimate Disruption to the fragile equilibrium we protect still comes to us like wind and moves us. We find Jesus to be of greater value than anything to which we are tied.

Sometimes we feel caught in a web, or writhing like a fish in a net, trying to move but surrounded by people who tie us up.

They judge us foolish, even irresponsible for selling out for the Pearl.

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Matthew 13:47-50)

by Fiona French

We are surrounded by people who don’t “get it” about Jesus and feel threatened or bored by his demands. That’s not OK, but it is realistic. When the church brings in its net, it is a mixed catch.

I don’t think we are “ashore” yet. The Lord ended His story looking into the future. So things are not all sorted yet. I am sailing through time with a lot of God’s beloved, unfinished creatures. I am mixed up with people who resist and wonder why I’m trying not to resist with them. Soon the net will be full and brought to shore. Until then I’m in a mixed bag, fin to fin with “fish of every kind.” The final judge of what gets thrown out is God, not me.

Our new normal in the kingdom of God always has a bit of instability to it. For one thing, none of us is personally complete. For another, we are in a net with some bad fish, and everyone in the net is trying to get loose. For another, we are all on the way somewhere and the journey is not over.

The promise Jesus offers to those with ears to hear is that everything is happening in “the kingdom of heaven” and the mysteries of our time will be sorted by God in the end. I take heart in that promise when I resist not knowing what is coming next.

We have the stability of knowing our end and of knowing the One who will bring everything to its end. Ultimately, we have a great equilibrium which the world cannot offer. Even so, we have a hard time hanging on to our treasure.

The world nets people every day and sorts them out into its baskets. It is especially judgmental about people who judge it for doing that. If they are sorting you out, don’t stay their basket; they don’t have the right to keep you anywhere. Even if their latest law promises to make everything right, don’t let their judgments delude you.

Jesus asked them, “Have you understood all this?” They answered, “Yes.”  And he said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.” When Jesus had finished these parables, he left that place. (Matthew 13:51-53)

A healthy homeostasis is anything but staying the same.

Healthy homeostasis is being a stable organism which allows newness in while retaining the necessary oldness.

With us, there is a constant movement in and out. There is a permeable “in” and a flexible “out,” like our cells work. Jesus gives a profound version of this truth. He says His kind of “scribe,” who knows all the new laws of the kingdom of God He is revealing, brings out the old and the new. They discern the treasure. The old is new and the new is old.

What these scribes understand is we are constantly being formed, yet constantly at home in the kingdom. People who are locked up in their past, who cling to the church of their 20’s, or who build walls around their country or children don’t “get” Jesus, like people did not recognize his true self in his own home town. Did the following scene get played out in you life somewhere along the way, yet?

Finally, He came to his hometown and began to teach the people in their synagogue, so that they were astounded and said, “Where did this man get this wisdom and these deeds of power?  Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas?  And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all this?”  And they took offense at him. But Jesus said to them, “Prophets are not without honor except in their own country and in their own house.”  And he did not do many deeds of power there, because of their unbelief. (Matthew 13:54-58).

polar bear in disrupted homeostasis
Nazarene clinging to their homeostasis?

Jesus the great disrupter of the homeostasis went home to Nazareth. They did not see him as a pearl. They judged him as some kind of “fish” they could understand, caught like them in the “net” they called home. If his deeds of power did not come from where they understood, “They must not be real.” If he came from that family system, “What makes him think he is anything but from that family system?” Their resistance quenched the Spirit.

Jesus followers are always working on meeting the status quo as change agents and always interested in feeling deeply at home in eternity, moving yet rooted. We are brave enough to be ourselves in Jesus. But we are always going to be coming up against the kind of resistance which keeps people in bondage and quells miracles. It is difficult, isn’t it?

How do you see the incident in Nazareth?  On the one hand, the writer definitely blames the people for their unbelief: “He did not do many deeds of power there, because of their unbelief.” He seems as frustrated as you might be about people who are poking you with the fin of their faithless ways. On the other hand, it is at least possible that Jesus did not do miracles in Nazareth because the questions the people were asking were the exact questions he needed to excite in them.

They didn’t need a miracle, he astonished them just by showing up as his true self.

“Where did this man get this wisdom and these deeds of power?“ That’s a good question. “What is this newness? Why do I feel this strange feeling? Why am I so irritated?”  They were going to get plenty of chances to see works of power, including a resurrection, but maybe, for now, their questions were leading them to seek for treasure and eventually see it right in their own home town.

The presence of Jesus disrupts us enough to dislodge us from our sin-soaked homeostasis. If we understand who he is and what he is talking about, then we can reconfigure around a new love and an eternal truth in the kingdom of  God. It is amazing how our frustrations with the past and our questions about the future combine to lead us to the kingdom of God.

Brigid Day — celebrating great women of faith

The Mission, , ,

February 1 is always a great day to celebrate great women of faith. Thank God for Brigid and for you!

Here are some pieces from the past that celebrate Brigid of Ireland and women like her of today.

2009 — Today Is Saint Brigid’s Day

2014 — Nineteen Flame-tending Women to Start

The mustard seed — faith you have, not faith you don’t

Doing Theology, ,

Here’s another Bible problem for you. What’s with faith-as-small-as-a-mustard-seed moving mountains?

We sing:

Si tuvieras fe como grano de mostaza
Eso lo dice el Senor
Tu le dirias a la montana
Muevete, muevete 
Esa montana se movera, se movera, se movera

Shouldn’t that little song come with a little warning label? Shouldn’t it say something like: “We don’t really think this is true!” Or “No mountains were injured in the performance of this song!”?

Why does Jesus say,

“I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you” (Matt. 17:20)

if He doesn’t really mean it?

Continue reading The mustard seed — faith you have, not faith you don’t →