Tag Archives: meditation

Take hold of your anger so you can let it go

I have talked to many Christians about their anger. Many of them could barely tolerate the subject because they were ashamed of their lack at self-control. I’ve concluded they felt that way because they had concentrated on talking themselves out of it. They were looking for their thoughts to align with God’s and then expected such an alignment to fix their anger problem. They really wanted to stop being a time bomb their mate was afraid they were going to set off. They understood their problem. But they just could not get their problem to listen to reason.

Pixar boils it down to this.

You might carry some anger

If the description above resembles you or someone you know, I hope you won’t hold it against them. They may have grown up in a church that was so convinced the Bible was God’s gift to solve all their problems they were obsessed with learning and applying the words correctly. They might have been so into the interpretation of the words they stopped listening with anything but their minds. Chances are they have been angry at themselves for being such a terrible listener and apply-er!

I have often preached, as I am about to, that the people who wrote the Bible were a lot deeper than the Bible. John, the beloved disciple of Jesus, plainly says he did not scratch the surface of what Jesus said and did at the end of his profound Gospel. The Apostle Paul apparently spent 14 years  listening and meditating before he was sent on his missionary journeys and wrote his wonderful teaching. They experienced deep transformation that went way beyond words.

Here is one thing Paul learned from God (not merely the Bible) that applies to letting go of your anger.

Not that I have already obtained all this [new life], or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. – Philippians 3:12

He wrote that line because he was taken hold of by Jesus and he was moved to take hold of Jesus. He did not apply a loosely understood set of words to write his letter and he was not teaching his readers to do that. He believed the Holy Spirit would take hold of his readers just like he was, and they would be able to let go of the past and live a new life with new goals just like he was.

If you are so angry your children are afraid of what you will do or say to them; if you can’t get along in your work or it makes you so frustrated you can’t resist venting about it; if you are angry in advance about what you suspect someone will do to you much of the time; if you use intoxicants to “take the edge off” because you are perpetually on the edge of anger; Jesus is reaching right into that place, Spirit-to-spirit, to save you. Take his hand and good things will follow.

When anger comes up, take hold of it

Lots of people want to be saved and have taken all sorts of steps to reap the benefits of faith. But many of them have done it via words and thoughts, not by Spirit and experience. They say to me with frustration, “I have done the right thing. I study the Bible every day. And I am still this way.“ You may have grasped the content, but not the hand of Jesus.

When it comes to anger, when we pray (which is mostly too deep for words), anger will likely come up if we have it, unless we are committed to repressing it. If we let our anger surface, acknowledge it — you could say “grasp it,” then we can let it go.

Some people I’ve heard lately want the Spirit of God to fulfill promises on their behalf and take care of their anger. They say things like, “I did what the Bible says to do. I cast my anger on God because God cares for me. So why was I still furious as soon as I saw my wife?”

There are a lot of answers to that question which go beyond what I am trying to do here.  But one answer would be. “I think you may have really just cast your anger back into the place where you usually keep it, and you expected Jesus to guard the door for you.”

What we need to do is let the anger out when we are with Jesus. We need to see it as best we can. And then we can let it go. The mindfulness people do a nice job at getting to this idea, only without Jesus in the room. Here is a nice meditation one of them suggests. I think Jesus wouldn’t mind sharing that YouTube with you. When I looked for a Christian variation designed for the same purpose, it was mainly a collection of words we were supposed to think about. I’m not even going to show it to you.

When you let the anger up it might be like a hot ball. One person described it as a dark slimy mass. Another envisioned a heart with chains around it struggling to beat. It might feel terrifying to intentionally look at your anger and feel it, to take hold of it like it takes hold of you. But you can do it.

You could get with your therapist or spiritual director and they might help you experience the feeling of anger when it is not just a reaction. You could start by talking about what you’re feeling with anyone who will listen, which might be your spouse if you let them. They might help you remember the earliest times you experienced anger coming at you or coming from you and how you formed the habits you formed for defending against it or using it. You might learn why you protect it, or dominate with it, or love it, or are afraid of losing it.

Sunset at Sea — Renoir, 1879

Then let go of it

I think we have to grasp the self-defeating emotional habits and thoughts we carry before we can let them go. It might be a gentle process like loading our anger on a little boat made of fallen twigs carefully putting it in the stream and watching it float away. Or it might be more aggressive like wrestling with an opponent through the night until something new happens.

We need to apprehend our anger before we can set it loose. The translation of Philippians 3:12 which is most accurate, in my opinion, includes the word “apprehend.” It reads something like, “I want to apprehend what apprehended me.”

The sentence reflects how Jesus apprehended Paul like He was chasing down a terrorist that day Paul was on the way to Damascus to do more crimes against the Lord’s fledgling community of followers. For the rest of Paul’s life he relished being imprisoned by Jesus, stolen from the world of sin and made a slave to righteousness. What a guy! His deeply spiritual and helpful sentence has the feeling of his exhilaration: “You’ve got to grab it!” You probably won’t share his excitement unless you open up to being grabbed in the deep places you organized to defend your heart when you were very young, or when disaster struck.

See if you are angry about being apprehended after reading what I just said. See what parts of you are off limits to being touched by the Spirit or by love. Anger is usually a first line of defense against what we fear or hate. Is there anything don’t you trust Jesus to handle with you, something your anger is trying to handle instead? Ask him yourself, and you will probably be well down the road to letting go of your anger.

I know people who are angry with their spouses about how they are angry with them. But they all love and depend on their spouse! They would like not to be angry at all. They would like to stop having arguments with people in their heads. It makes no sense. When you notice that irrationality, that’s the part of you that needs to be grasped and ultimately let go. Just withdrawing with the feeling back to safety or detonating it for the same reason will not work for good.

When you are contemplating with God and anger comes up, welcome it. It is not just a distraction, it is you. You may not know everything about it: “Why I am like this? Where did this come from? Why don’t I want to deal with it?” But if you listen in the quiet you may grasp a lot more in your soul than you understand with your words. You probably know a lot about your anger you would rather not handle.

Grasp what you can so far, maybe even put your hands around that ball and look at Jesus looking at it with you. Shame, fear, loss, disappointment, all sorts of deeper emotions may start to rise. That’s OK. They may move you to let the ball go and let Jesus heal you.

Maybe you will see that hot ball of anger float away when you let go of it, blown by a spiritual breeze until you can’t see it anymore, like Renoir’s little boat (above) out in his spiritual sea. Then turn back to Jesus to see how he looks and what he wants to do. Let him do it. Lay hold of him.

I hope some kind of embrace comes to your mind when you turn to Jesus — He loves you, angry or not, after all. You’ll get to feel that love more when you’ve taken hold of your anger so you can let it go. You’ll undoubtedly feel more love from others, too, and they will feel more love from you, for sure.

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Today is Harriet Beecher Stowe Day! Few, if any, American women have had more influence on the United States than she had. Meet her at The Transhistorical Body.

Group meditation: A development story

The men have jumped into our newly-formed spiritual direction group. Month by month our capacity to listen to God with and for each other is growing. We are encouraged and challenged. We are also learning we are as different in character as we are together in purpose, and that seems just right.

Chronos and Kairos

Some of us are more tuned into linear or “chronos” time. (Chronos and Kairos in Greek Thought). If you are an engineer or scientist of some kind, you’re probably prone to emphasizing sequential, goal-oriented and, perhaps, scarce or developing time — maybe you are even wearing a chronometer! Your orientation to time might be as it is because you are more attuned to left brain processes, along with much of the Eurocentric world (Left and Right Brain Thinking). I’m not sure this always follows, but maybe you will be more aligned with an “apophatic” approach to meditation (Apophatic and Kataphatic Meditation). I told the group I would be in big trouble if I were not linked with people who lean this way, since I pretty much lean the other direction.

Let’s not make an “either/or” distinction, here. But the “other direction” is being more tuned into “kairos” time. I think fewer people “land” here these days (pun intended). The disposition seems out-of-date. Not too many of us are farmers, but if you are, you probably tune into the seasons and see things according seeds sprouting and crops ripening “when the time is right.” Like a farmer, you may feel an immediacy about time, like “right now,” like “It rained last night and it is the right time to plow.” You might have expectations of time based on intuition or your experience. You might orient this way because you are more attuned to right brain processes. Maybe you are more of an artist, an ardent listener, or a seeker of timeless things. Or maybe you are searching like the mother in Everything, Everywhere, All at OnceI don’t agree meaninglessness is at the heart of the universe like that movie does, but I respect their right brain pursuits. I’m not sure this always follows, but if you’re built in this way, you might have more of a “kataphatic” approach to meditation.

Le prophète Isaïe — Marc Chagall (1968)

It started with a story

All those thoughts and links above come from the story I now carry about how our group gathered. I enjoyed listening to the interplay of all those dispositions as we prayed, sang, and took each other seriously. Several of us offered a story about a loss we had commonly experienced. We were in varying degrees of being unsettled or moving on. It was moving to share such a profound subject with someone, in which our deepest loves and suffering were surfacing.

I won’t tell you the substance of our dialogue, of course. But one of us named what they were doing to themselves as a “purity test.” This jogged another person to describe a scene in the Bible in which God purified someone’s mouth with a live coal during a vision in the Temple (later noted as Isaiah 6). This caught my attention because I had just that day been singing along with an old song on YouTube about that scene:

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty, and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said,

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”

The [doorposts] on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. And I said, “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”

Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. The seraph touched my mouth with it and said, “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.” Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!”

Of course Isaiah’s story has been repeated for centuries and music has been written for the angel’s to sing! If we have not had such an experience ourselves, yet, we long to!

Left brain folks focused on the prophet’s lips

Everyone had their own way to enter into our mutual discernment.

Some were more “left-brained.” If you have a linear mindset, which is characteristic of left-hemisphere processes, then what is past is lost and what is not yet realized can be disappointing in that you don’t have what you need.

The specificity and constraints of language are instigated in the left brain, so it is no wonder some people noticed and were most were moved by which words were spoken in the story above: “Woe is me, I am lost,” and then by the Lord speaking, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” The left brain is where wild thoughts go to be tamed and abstractions go to become projects.

We were listening together, and some people leaned more into apophatic mediation. It is a wordless and imageless way. As you become empty of what distracts or upsets you (usually the energies of left-brained processing), you become one with the love of God you seek. When teachers help us to do this, they often start by helping us find a centering word or phrase that supersedes the din of our inner dialogue and the many voices that lead us to judge ourselves and which assign us self-improvement projects. That kind of meditation helps us stop our endless self-examination and self-centeredness (An example from Martin Laird).

Right brain folks having their own revelation

Others were more “right-brained.” If you tend to experience the world with your heart and senses first, your instinct is to seek the thin places and turn into them.

The experience of the prophet in the temple was eternal; it has that sense of “kairos” even if you just read it for the first time a minute ago. It happened in God’s time, so much so, it feels fresh to people reading about it 3000 years later. It is a promise, not just history. As our group met, we made a thin place and we entered into that eternal now. Our thin place experiences do and should have a staying power like Isaiah’s. I was very happy to be reminded that. Even though I felt the loss of my previous spiritual experience, it was good to accept how amazing it was for the season it lasted. Whatever touched eternity in it could not be lost. What is gone is still beautiful in kairos time; it flowered in is season.

As we were listening together, some people leaned more into kataphatic meditation. It is a image-rich way to pray. As you connect with the eternity of this present moment, you become united with the Creator in creation. The experience of God’s grace grounds you in the One who was and is and is to come. When teachers help us do this, they often start with a story or a metaphor, not a principle or a manual. Visual, musical, or literary art, a statue, a tree, a sunset, etc. are all aids (like the icon, below) all help us connect. Jesus is the best example of this kind of mentoring. He leads us to know God beyond our arguments for or against such knowing. He helps us to become an “I am” in love with “I am” (An example like Ignatius of Loyola).

Both/and “Trinity” by Andrei Rublev (ca. 1411). Click for info.

We are both/and beings

Obviously, we all have left and right hemispheres to our brains, barring some catastrophe. But if you are an American or under 35, you are probably more oriented to the left brain.  One of the reasons we love the character Data so much in Star Trek: Picard is because he is succeeding in developing his right brain, too; he is becoming fully human, like we want to be.

By nature, we are both/and beings, right and left, spirit and material, time-bound and timeless. If we live in love, we can be a big help to each other as we find our own way into wholeness. We often see ourselves best when someone who loves us sees us. When we seek God together, we rarely end up oriented the direction we began. Our various starting points often combine to lead to a startling and encouraging new place.

In our group the other night a deeply felt problem, a focus on woe and a snippet from a story about a vision left me moved to turn again today and find joy in the presence of God in me and around me. I hope my story helps you find the hope in your own.

How did SHOULD get into my meditation?

It is wonderful to watch the Evangelicals catch up with the rest of the Church when it comes to experiencing that personal relationship with God they always talk about. I had to desert them, for the most part, to have one.

I spent my first years of faith with the Baptists as they fought with the charismatics, who scared the pants off them (recent example). I felt a little guilty about my thrilling charismatic dalliances, because I was taught people like me were following feelings not facts and undermining the authority of scripture, thinking the Spirit was going to begin something already settled. The way I looked at, and still do, the Evangelicals arrested their development because of their Eurocentric and Enlightenment-dominated theology. They had to have the Bible front and center and had to interpret it in a way they considered “literal.” Only their “literal” was a pseudo-scientific, supposedly “innerrant” set of principles that still resemble a textbook to me. I suppose that’s why so many of them are still fighting about textbooks.

But I think a lot of Evangelicals are now catching up with last century’s main spiritual movement. Their development  parallels the translation development of a familiar Bible verse I was taught as a youngster — Proverbs 23:7 in the King James Version (KJV):

For as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he: Eat and drink, saith he to thee; but his heart is not with thee.

My preachers regularly skipped the meaning of this Proverb to concentrate on the first eleven words, which I was assigned as a memory verse: “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” I got the idea, being male and all, that what we think is paramount. When CBT was invented, Evangelicals liked psychotherapy a bit more, since the modality was all about think-> feel-> behave.

But when boomers go looking for their memory verse in the new Evangelical Bible, the New International Version (NIV), they can’t find it. It has disappeared into a much more accurate rendering:

Do not eat the food of a begrudging host, do not crave his delicacies; for he is the kind of person who is always thinking about the cost. “Eat and drink,” he says to you, but his heart is not with you.

The extricated bit the preachers emphasized in my youth has appropriately become part of the previous sentence. The readers have begun to find out, like the Bible really says, that true discernment is all about the heart and right relationships, not just about how excellent one’s thoughts are.

The staying power of should

The Evangelicals are, more and more, turning toward developing hearts. But as they do, they often bring their heresies with them and undermine the process.

I stumbled on an example of this undermining when I explored the  Pause app. It is part of John Eldridge’s latest reinvention as a spiritual director. The app is a generous free gift that encourages us to buy his book and other things, as most apps do. I have friends who are enthusiastically using it. As with most Evangelical things, it is wordy and teachy. But the heart of it is good: Please pause and center in on God with you.

I decided to try the app to see if it is a good thing for my tech-connected spiritual companions. Normally I feel like relating to God through a machine is dangerous. But that is arguable. Even though I was holding my app fears at bay, I did not get far until I ran into a problem that made me not want to run into any more.

I had a Bible isssue. The whole thing is coming from the Bible, assuming it is the essential way God is revealed and our primary means of forming a relationship with Him. The Bible does not teach itself as that, especially in the passage in question. But I love the Bible and I think studying it is fundamental to following Jesus. So what does the Pause app give me? The New Living Translation (NLT). It is the revised Living Bible from the 1970’s. I had one of the originals with a cool handmade leather cover. I tried to find it so I could take a picture but I think I threw it away when I downsized since I hadn’t cracked it in 30 years.

The very first entry centers on a beautiful key passage from Ephesians 3 which opens up an expansive picture of all it means to know God through Jesus Christ. The NLT says:

I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth. I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God

Pause and let God speak to you through that! It is a wonderful statement and very accessible writing.

The NLT has merit, but I don’t think it is a good translation. It gets rid of things that might trouble postmodern sensibilities and adds things that fit modern evangelical preferences. Maybe it is still more of the paraphrase it started out as. I found it hard to meditate on it because I love relating to the Bible writers and couldn’t get over disputing what the translators considered revelation. I was also concerned about those less suspicious than I am.

I also had a heresy issue. This is my main reason to write today. Perhaps I learned to attend to clauses too well since one in this sentence bothered me:

And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is.

For one thing, nobody else translates the verse this way. The Greek implies to me a great celebration of the already but not fully realized place we stand in Christ, where we are one with God and growing into our fullness. Paul knows he and his readers have an eternity of revelation to relish; we are incomplete. But he also believes we are already risen with Christ, living in Him right now, and are fully entitled to know and love Him as we are known and loved. We don’t need to wait until we are dead or deserve it.

This most offending sentence includes the word SHOULD: “[M]ay you have the power to understand ” (as if you don’t ), “as all God’s people should.”  I was too irritated by the ever-present Evangelical “should” inserted, at the very beginning of the app’s program, no less! I could not even get started! I don’t think that “should” can be construed from the Greek. The paraphrasers just had to get it in there. I don’t think Paul is looking at his readers ruefully as if they should get their act together. Nor does he think God looks at him that way.

l am particularly sensitive to the overriding should my Evangelical directees bring to their development. They got the point. They get arrested by it. When they look inside they see guilt. They are always an aspiration, never acceptable, never enough. Their hope is often based on getting better, thinking better, behaving better, not on pausing to experience being better by being with Jesus, as Paul is praying they will know.

“How I Got Over:” Mahalia Jackson helps us do 2022

Singing is one of the most integrative activities we can do. It uses heart, soul, mind and strength to express our desire and open us to receive good things from God and others. When we sing in a group (and we will again, some day) it is often a unitive experience. So let’s sing with Mahalia Jackson . I think she can help with 2022.

When Jackson was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997 in the category of “Early Influences,” even their watered-down bio said her “voice hit audiences with the force of a hurricane.” That hurricane did not just emanate from her birthplace of New Orleans, it came from God and her own suffering. The opposite of a storm that knocks down, Mahalia is a storm that lifts up.

As such a faithful and troubled woman she is a great guide to yet another troubled year. Trouble and faith go together. We are all suffering the pandemic and the uncertainty of our politics. And Black people, in particular, are still suffering the burden of needing to “get over,” as institutions highlight their struggle and this week the media reports the instant barrage of defamation hurled at any prospective Black, woman Supreme Court justice.

Mahalia Jackson performing How I Got Over in the March for Jobs and Freedom on Washington DC.

When I remembered Mahalia Jackson last week on her death day (January 27) [song link], I was once again moved by her iconic rendition of “How I Got Over.” She most famously sang this song [song link] after Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington in 1963. And she’s been singing it in my head and heart since last Thursday, which I greatly appreciate.

She wanted her music to be for everyone. She told a reporter, “I have hopes that my singing will break down some of the hate and fear that divide the white and Black people in this country.” That’s a work for Jesus. People try to do it without Him, but they rarely get very far. Jackson took songs other people just sang and she filled them with spirit and The Spirit in a way that made them a force for good, and a force for change. When I listen to her, even now, after she’s been dead for fifty years, she changes me. She does me good.

A transformation meditation

That experience of transformation is why I wanted to remind you of her today and give us all a chance to lodge her song “How I Got Over” into some sturdy place in our memories. We can come back to places where we have met God again and again. Those places comfort our troubled souls; they give us a place to stand when we are under attack; and they create a solid place from which to launch into whatever will require our courage and passion. This song is such a place for me, maybe it will be for you, too.

Here are some annotated lyrics. My idea is to expand what the lyrics could mean for us and lead us into meditation as we face what we will face today. I think Mahalia Jackson intends to lead us through our deep struggle into a place where we give thanks. Just like she got over and is getting over, she wants us to  “get over” into our re-birthplace in Jesus. Let’s use the song for all it is worth.

How I got over
How did I make it over
You know my soul look back and wonder
How did I make it over
How I made it over
Going on over all these years
You know my soul look back and wonder
How did I make it over

I don’t speak Jackson’s vernacular or sing well in her musical style. So what? I don’t think she cares, and neither should I. She is turning my heart toward wonder. That’s what she cares about and so should I. All day I am tempted to attend to the forces and voices that put me under their malign control; this song is about turning away from those powers and seeing what is good. The question is, “How did all this life happen and how does it keep happening? How did all this good happen? How did the Lord bring me to this place where I would be meditating on this song and looking for meaning and hope?” It is a wonder.

Tell me how we got over Lord
Had a mighty hard time coming on over
You know my soul look back and wonder
How did we make it over
Tell me how we got over Lord
I’ve been falling and rising all these years
But you know my soul look back and wonder
How did I make it over

When Jackson turns the subject to “we,” I think she is first referring to the Black struggle which she felt as an abandoned child in the Jim Crow South of her youth and then felt in new ways after she joined the “great migration” to Chicago where she struggled to survive. She’s singing about the terror of facing down white supremacy and the capricious violence of the United States as the Civil Rights movement progressed. “How did we get here telling our story on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial among all these politicians and movie stars? How did we stay so resilient and faithful though all our struggle, all our falling and rising?” It is a wonder.

It is a rich stanza full of Bible imagery. Jesus is falling and rising as we observe the stations of the cross on our way to our own death and rising with him. In like manner, the song alludes to the promise we will “get over” the Jordan River and into the promised land. Jesus is baptized into, identifies with, our sin and death in the Jordan. Like the Israelites passed over on dry land, we follow Jesus through death into life, a death now made impermanent by his gracious work. “How did we make it over?” Only by the Lord’s grace. It is a wonder.

So Mahalia unveils the wonder and invites us into it.

But, soon as I can see Jesus
The man that died for me
Man that bled and suffered
And he hung on Calvary

And I want to thank him for how he brought me
And I want to thank God for how he taught me
Oh thank my God how he kept me
I’m gonna thank him ’cause he never left me
Then I’m gonna thank God for  old time religion
And I’m gonna thank God for giving me a vision
One day, I’m gonna join the heavenly choir
I’m gonna sing and never get tired

We can use a song like we use an icon. It gives us a musical vision of Jesus and we experience that connection heart, soul, mind and strength. It is worth singing this song with Ms. Jackson enough times to feel it more than think it, sink into it and sense all the nuances and even beyond them — “Jesus brought me to this place, taught me, kept me, never left me.”

When she thanks God for “old time religion” it is not just religion that used to be popular but isn’t; I think she means the Spirit-filled experience that transcends time and culture. We are one with the first disciples of Jesus. Being in God’s presence gives us a vision beyond the boundaries of our humanity. As a result, we can let loose our innate imagination and  be part of the choir of all beings who see the face of God, however dimly, in this darkness. Let your tiredness lift as you tell it all to Jesus who walked with us and on our behalf in history and walks with us now.

Meditation that leads to connection is good for whatever ails us in this hard time! Sister Mahalia has led us to the altar, now she calls us to worship

And then I’m gonna sing somewhere ’round God altar
And I’m gonna shout all my trouble over
You know I’ve gotta thank God and thank him for being
So good to me, Lord yeah
How I made it over Lord
I had to cry in the midnight hour coming on over
But you know my soul look back and wonder
How did I make it over

Tell me how I made it over Lord God Lord
Falling and rising all these years
You know my soul look back and wonder
How did I make it over

We are joining with the huge crowd John sees gathering from the four corner of the earth in the age to come.  From that place, we are looking back on all the trouble that is now over, all that crying in the midnight hour we had to endure. Looking back on what we’ve already gone through creates wonder — if we celebrate how we are alive and don’t fixate on how we’ve been dying. Try it. Maybe you can start a vision history in your “wonder journal.”

The Bible has a lot to say about the “midnight hour.” The first born are killed in Egypt before the slaves are set free at midnight. Paul and Silas are singing hymns to God in prison about midnight before they are miraculously released. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a great sermon about “A  Knock at Midnight.”  Through the vulnerable moments, sleepless, anxious moments, tell me Lord, “How did I make it? How can I believe I will make it right now when I still feel scared and ashamed, and when I am still threatened and scorned? But I do believe. Help me where I don’t.”

Mahalia puts on her new self like she belongs at the coronation.

I’m gonna wear a diadem
In that new Jerusalem
I’m gonna walk the streets of gold
It’s in that homeland of the soul
I’m gonna view the host in white
They’ve been traveling day and night
Coming up from every nation
They’re on their way to the great Coronation

Coming from the north, south, east, and west
They’re on their way to a land of rest
And then they’re gonna join the heavenly choir
You know we’re gonna sing and never get tired
And then we’re gonna sing somewhere ’round God altar
And then we’re gonna shout all our troubles over
You know we gotta thank God
Thank him for being so good to me

Rest in the “homeland of the soul” might feel hard to grasp, but we know what she is singing about. A little bit of that rest seems fleeting and even paltry, but how odd it is that such a little bit goes such a long way! We can’t forget about it and we long for rest for our souls all day.

I don’t know what I love more, the picture Jackson paints of the age to come, or the picture  I imagine of her in her diadem. Some people hear the lyric as “diamond dress,” which is also great. Everyone has traveled a long way, but here we all are. We are looking good, feeling happy, and dancing down the street in the New Jerusalem [like a NOLA funeral]. If you can’t sing this song, just play it, and let yourself move at least a little during this part. Feel at home in your new self and feel the energy of renewal remaking you. God is good to you. It is a wonder. “Maybe I should strut like the wonder I am!”

Now Mahalia goes into the part that probably made her famous. She started out calmly, but as the song goes on, she can’t help feeling it. She is not just performing it, she is inhabiting it. She is an incarnation and, as such, an invitation to everyone to enter in with all the gifts, services and energies we bring.

You know I come to thank God this evening
I come to thank him this evening
You know all, all night long God kept his angels watching over me
Early this morning, early this morning
God told his angel God said, “Touch her in my name”
God said, “Touch her in my name”

I rose this morning, I rose this morning, I rose this morning
I feel like shouting, I feel like shouting, I feel like shouting
I feel like shouting, I feel like shouting, I feel like shouting
I feel like shouting, I just got to thank God, I just got to thank God
I just got to thank God, I just got to thank him
Thank God for being so good, God been good to me

I put this song up in some chat the other day and someone said, “That is a long song!” We’re mainly used to 2 1/2 minute pop songs and jingles. I said, “She can sing it all day and I will sing it with her.” Turning into “I just got to thank God” is a lot better than resenting some fragment from a 70’s song stuck in the crevices of my brain. Turning into thanks, feeling gladness well up, and letting it loose with a shout, a dance, a hug, or some tears is the kind of integration we need to open us up to wonder.

An angel wakes up Zechariah and Elijah in the old Testament. But I think this final picture Mahalia paints is about how we get over. Just like an angel apparently woke Jesus up from his slumber in death, just so will we be awakened on the last day. And as long as we are in the age before death, that is every day. Every day is as good as our last day. Every day of life is gift. We are raised up into it. Relying on an angel to follow orders to “Touch her in my name” is a wonder. I want to live constantly touched by God.

I pray for us all to wake up today touched by Mahalia Jackson who is much like an angel sent to open us to new life. She was a struggling, Black woman who went with her gift in faith and kept turning away from her trauma, and then turned others away from theirs. I hope this meditation helped you turn away from yours and into wonder.

Help for the meditation-challenged

https://soundcloud.com/user-738022116/11220-hope-for-the-meditation-challenged-3800-marlton-pike

In January, I tried to help people work with their desire for a helpful meditation practice from a Christian foundation. I shared this speech with a couple of friends today and i thought it might prove useful for you, too.

If you would like the transcript, here it is. There were many visuals, so you’ll be missing that element.

Help for the meditation challenged.                               1-12-20

So I hear it is rather sexy when your husband is spiritual. At least that is what someone told me not long ago. She was kind of dishing on her mate, which was not totally nice. Because she hadn’t really told him that if he prayed, she would find that arousing. She thought it would give him more substance. Some spiritual abs would be nice. Or so she thought.

It is no surprise that her husband was a bit meditation-challenged. It is kind of a secret people keep that there is not as much prayer going on as people would like. Maybe you thought I was going to say there is not as much sex going on as people would like, that too. In a lot of intimate areas we feel like things are lacking. So this speech is all about hope for the meditation challenged. Before I am finished I hope you’ll get some encouragement to keep going, get going or get going again on that aspect of prayer, that multi-faceted personal connection we get to have with God.

A friend wrote to me a couple of weeks ago to thank me for Circle of Hope Daily Prayer [Here is a picture of today’s entry for Circle of Hope Daily Prayer :: WIND, which is designed for people who are new to faith or new to Circle of Hope. Circle of Hope Daily Prayer :: WATER, is designed for people who are along the road in their spiritual development]. Being contacted by my old friend in this way was kind of out of the blue, since I did not even know she knew about our blogs and she lives about 3000 miles from Pennsauken. She said she was thankful for the resource because she is “meditation challenged.” What she specifically meant was she could not read the Bible and get all the stuff out of it that Circle of Hope Daily Prayer can get.

That is one big reason the body of Christ is supposed to rely on each other. Some people can figure out the Bible better than others, some teach better than others, some put together resources better than others, some pray more than others. Nobody is supposed to have a life in Christ alone – it is unthinkable and probably impossible. So she was relying on us and wanted me to know she is grateful.

Our daily prayer blogs are designed to be so simple a newbie could dig in right away on some level and deep enough that the most mature among us won’t mind joining in with others who use the resource. Which resource is not a requirement, by that way. [slide] But why would you go by a plate of snickerdoodles with a sign that said, “Please eat one,” and not do it? The Daily Prayer is just a nice little spiritual meal to feed your heart soul mind and strength that someone made for you — why not eat it?

Growing in one’s capacity to pray is sexy, and the offerings of our Daily Prayer blogs are like a plate of cookies. What could go wrong, here?

Prayer is for everyone who follows Jesus, even if you don’t think God is very interested in your ongoing dialogue. So  if you are new to faith or very experienced, prayer, and so our daily prayer blogs, are for you.

The blogs are good for the meditation challenged. When I say meditation a picture might come to your head about someone who meditates. I am not even going to put one up so it does not get stuck. I would rather you, yourself, come to mind, so the picture is of you thinking and feeling with God. You might be thinking and feeling about God and that’s meditation too. But the goal of meditation in Christ is oneness, communion, integration, love. Meditation is turning toward God who is with us. I’ll briefly talk about how a lot of meditation is taught as turning away from anxiety as the main role of the practice. But Christians turn away in order to turn toward. Our meditation has an object: our loving God and our true selves.

Sometime meditation sounds complex, but maybe it is not. We all meditate on other things besides God, too. I meditate on my wife, Gwen. I wonder what she is thinking, how she is feeling. I fondly remember her and love her even though she is across town, or making snickerdoodles downstairs. In that case the fragrance of Gwen comes to me and I remember what it is like to be loved by her and feel close to her. We do similar things with God. The Daily Prayer blog leads us through a simple format, which I hope will inspire you.

We always start with the Bible. Of course you don’t need to start with the Bible to pray or meditate. I turn to God on the train and I don’t need a format to do so.

We start with the Bible when we are in our disciplined time for meditation because we are not turning into nothingness or just considering how we feel or how we intend not to feel. We are turning to love and truth and opening to it. So this morning we started with a Bible reading on Daily Prayer :: WIND.  See that orange “Today’s Bible reading.” We had a section of the Bible that worked with the theme of today’s entry, but I want to give you this Bible reading to go with what I am trying to offer for the meditation challenged..

The mind at peace

If you understood what I was saying earlier, you’ll probably agree that this is one of the sexiest verses in the Bible

Those of steadfast mind you keep in peace—
in peace because they trust in you. Isaiah 26:3  Say it.

“Steadfast” literally has to do with being “Sturdily formed.” We’re talking about how minds are formed, and we hope they will be sturdy.

Don’t just think of “mind” here as your brain or your reasoning ability or even your thoughts. When Jesus says to love God with your heart, soul, mind, and strength, he’s piling up words to describe us, not creating thick boundaries between categories. So you could say, those of steadfast consciousness, attentiveness, connectedness or mind you keep in peace, Lord, because they trust in you.

Your mind is steadfast, your inner life is sturdily formed, when it is turned toward and attentive to your trustworthy creator and your friend and brother, Jesus. We’re talking about an active trust. Meditation is an active trust which forms a character of steadfastness, secure vision, hope, all with a heart of love born of being heart-to-heart with the great lover who we love back, heart, soul, mind and strength

In this one line about meditation from Isaiah, you can see some very basic things. And each one of them makes a difference as to whether you will get to that peace you crave.

  • We are having a relationship. It is because they “trust in you.” We are talking to God.
  • It assumes a mind that is one’s own. You have an interior life that can be kept in peace.
  • We’re talking about “those of steadfast mind.” We are imagining people in a place and time and in a body.
  • It is all in the present. The time is now. I’d say an eternal now connected to the Creator of our now.

Trusting and staying is water for the soul. Learning to trust God is swimming in the deep water. Turning into trust, determining to stay — that is meditation.

So we start with the Bible because it is arrogant to try a variation before you’ve learned the basics. Trying to meditate before you’ve been attentive to what our predecessors have taught us  kind of like putting your bear on your bicycle before you’ve taught her to pedal. You just saw that the Bible teaches about the pedaling of meditation before it just throws you on a spiritual bike. That doesn’t mean we won’t need to get used to how a meditation bike feels. But it does mean we have some trustworthy guidance as we pray.

So the next section of Daily Prayer is all about more guidance and getting a feels for things. Here is the Meditation section from today’s Daily Prayer: WIND entry

As far as this speech about help for the meditation-challenged, here are some of my thoughts for meditation.

Meditation is not just mindfulness, which is basically being in charge of your own relaxation. Mindfulness is a big term, and a popular one these days, so it can mean a lot of things. Have any of you received any mindfulness training at work? Have your kids received any training in school? A lot of what we mean when we say meditation could coincide with mindfulness, since settling down is settling down as far as humankind goes. But the godless techniques most people are probably teaching your children need some unpacking. Because even though they present themselves as conviction-neutral, they have some assumptions behind them.

I think most mindfulness training is more in line with Dom Peringnon philosophy rather than in line with Jesus. Check this out https://youtu.be/RJnbkl_WX5s  The first gobsmacking version of this I saw said “Life is what we create each day out of nothing.” A lot of mindfulness teaching goes this exact direction.

Now let me go off on this for a minute. Mindfulness claims to offer a multipurpose, multi-user remedy for all occasions. So it oversimplifies the difficult business of understanding oneself. It fits neatly into a culture of techno-fixes, easy answers and self-hacks, where we can all just tinker with the contents of our heads to solve problems, instead of probing why we’re so anxious or dissatisfied with our lives in the first place.

In particular, almost all mindfulness training is grounded in the Buddhist doctrine of anattā, or the ‘no-self’. In most mindfulness teaching, what the Bible just taught about a mind steadfast on God  is not “right understanding.” In Buddhist teaching, there is no God or self, just a collection of factors, the experience of which is impermanent. So life is what you create out of nothing every day.

Like their Buddhist predecessors, contemporary mindfulness practitioners teach that nothing is  permanent or personal – thus we’ve come to handle conflict by saying, “No worries” and “It’s nothing personal.” Whereas Jesus followers know that everything matters and it is all personal.

Mindfulness exercises repeatedly draw attention to the transitory nature of what is being observed in the present moment. Explicit directions (‘see how thoughts seem to simply arise and cease’) and visual imagery (‘think of your thoughts like clouds drifting away in the sky’) reinforce ideas of transience, and encourage us to detach ourselves from getting too caught up in our own experience (‘You are not your thoughts; you are not your pain’ are common mantras). These things are not all bad, of course, unless you think they are what meditation is in total, instead of just the first steps of turning toward God.

With its promises of assisting everyone with anything and everything, the mistake of the mindfulness movement is to present its impersonal mode of awareness as a superior or universally useful one. Its roots in the Buddhist doctrine of anattā mean that it sidelines a certain kind of deep, deliberative reflection that’s required for unpicking which of our thoughts and emotions are reflective of our true selves in relation to God, which are responses to the environment, and – the most difficult question of all – what we should be doing about it. How we should relate to God and others. [Aeon essay]

Mindfulness is taking over the meditation landscape and teaching everyone basic Buddhist doctrine — although Buddhists object to the watered-down version, too. I tried out a mindfulness app on the trolley the other day. I had discovered such apps are multiplying. You probably already knew about all of them. Americans can commodify anything. I tried this one called Headspace. Very nice. Its main competitor is Calm. And there are Christian versions, too. One is called Abide. I did not try them all because I don’t want to. But I am trying to understand them – someone asked me to record Daily Prayer so they could listen to it.

Andy Puddicombe came back to Britain to create Headspace after being a Tibetan monk for 10 years. Here he is getting his head shaved for his commitment ceremony. When he was twenty he lost friends in an accident and found peace in Asia.

The BBC calls him: “The former monk who runs a 100 million dollar meditation firm” with Rich Pierson, who is responsible for the technical side. Here is Rick holding the app up in China. Puddicombe’s 2013 TedTalk has been viewed 3 million times. [Which seems like a lot until you know that Justin put out a video for Yummy on Jan 4 and it had 40 million views as of yesterday morning]

Here is a little come on for Headspace. https://youtu.be/pDm_na_Blq8. Not all bad. But one takeaway is that it all happens on the train to make you present to yourself in your moment. But not necessarily present to God or anyone else.

If you don’t have time for Headspace’s ten-minute meditations you can pick up an app from Dan Harris, the Good Morning America anchor, called 10% Happier. He’s devoted to getting in two hours of meditation each day in short bits while he is being fabulous.

You can see I am skeptical of commodified, Buddhist mindfulness that could masquerade as Christian meditation. So let me briefly get to the last section of where a Daily Prayer entry leads:  Suggestions for action

Just do it. Don’t give up, God will show up if you learn to show up. I think one of the main reasons people never get into daily prayer of any kind is they don’t think they can do it right or don’t think God will do it right.  Will God show up if I show up? Will my expectations be met? We’ll have to risk it to find out. I say yes, God will show up. I have lots of stories about that, but I’m about out of time.

Don’t start with your expectations, find God somewhere and start there, but never stay there. Everyone, whether they follow Jesus or not, have a sense of God, they carry the image of God. There is some experience, knowledge, intuition, capacity that draws us to know God and be our true selves. Feel OK about starting where you are. Turn toward your fullness.

Let’s try it. It is like getting on the bike and feeling it for the first time like my granddaughter Hannah did not long ago.

This is a very simple exercise. Try to be mindful and centered in your place. Breathe deeply and notice your breath. It will settle you down. Now just let your self wander through the last hour with Jesus and note the different things you have experienced, thought or felt. If one particular thing sticks out, focus on it. Got one? Let it mean what it means: encouraging, convicted, enlightening, disgusting, hope-building, confusing. Trust God for it, however you understand that. Let your trusting experience of it make you steadfast, more connected, loved, truthful and trusting.

This group meditation in song helps too. This weekly meeting is a suggestion for action.

Thou wilt keep [them] in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because [they] trusteth in thee. (KJV)

Turning: The basic skill of spiritual survival and growth

Turning is the essential soul-behavior we are all learning if we are still growing in faith and spiritual capacity.

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Shaker round dance

I’ve come to believe the Shakers were teaching the lesson of turning and dancing it out when they used the song that became their famous contribution to American folk music.

’Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free
’Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
’Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gained,
To bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come ’round right. — Shaker song written and composed in 1848, generally attributed to Elder Joseph Brackett from Alfred Shaker Village.

[Judy Collins sings it] [Aaron Copeland dramatizes it]

It is hard to say exactly what Elder Joseph had in mind as he wrote the song. But it was probably the Bible. In the Darby version, Luke 11:34 says:

“The lamp of the body is thine eye: when thine eye is simple, thy whole body also is light; but when it is wicked, thy body also is dark.”

The goal is to be “simple,” to “turn ’round right.” So in Proverbs 20:27 the NRSV translates: “The human spirit is the lamp of the Lord, searching every inmost part.” Call that spirit “conscience,” or our “moral sense,” or the “person,” it is the part of us which discerns spiritual realities, distinguishes right from wrong, and perceives the light of God by which we find our way. If we have an eye for that light, if we can see it, if our perception is not bent, then wholeness is our destiny, then we are a healthy human. Otherwise, we are divided within and consumed by our own complexity as well as the myriad neon lights of the world’s attractions. To live in the light of the God-lit lamp of our spirit, we need to turn from the dark and into the light.

It is hard to “turn ’round right”

I am honored to explore many souls with people who are turning into the light. They all have a lamp and many of them want it to be lit by God. All of them are having a difficult time turning. Like me, they have a demanding voice nattering in the ear of their souls which can preoccupy them with lessons from the dark. They don’t like it, but the narrative seems very familiar. And much of the teaching bombarding them tells them the dark is just who they are, it is where they belong and there is no one but them to “lighten up.” That is discouraging.

But the Bible encourages us to see things through the unalloyed lens of our love relationships with God. At the very beginning of John’s mysterious revelation, the subject is turning: “Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking with me. And having turned I saw seven golden lampstands…” (Revelation 1:12).

And even though Jesus had to tell his right-hand man he was going to go through a dark time, the Lord was sure he could turn,

“Simon, Simon, listen! Satan has obtained permission to sift all of you like wheat,  but I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”  And he said to him, “Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death!” Jesus said, “I tell you, Peter, the cock will not crow this day, until you have denied three times that you know me.” (Luke 22:31-4)

In the famous story of the prodigal son, the younger son comes to see his situation and turns home. The longing of the father causes him to turn his eyes toward the road. The older son turns his head to see what the music is all about and his father pleads with him to turn toward a new perspective. I think one of the basic skills of opening to grace and truth is turning until we “turn ’round right.” Turning is cooperating with our true selves on the dancefloor of love.

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The two-screen method of turning

Last spring I enjoyed a CAPS workshop with Dr. Scott Symington. He taught a metaphor he has been teaching his clients about turning. He calls it his “two screen method.” His idea is right there in the Bible, but his metaphor is well-tuned for people who relate to screens all day. See if it helps you to turn.

Imagine your internal world as a media room with two screens. All possible thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations show up in this room on one of two screens. Your chair is facing the primary or front screen. This is where positive and life-giving thoughts, feelings, and images show up. It’s the home of joy, contentment, and connection. It’s looking into the face of a loved one, attending to the present moment, being in the flow at work, laughing with a friend, feeling spiritually connected, and expressing the best parts of who you are. It’s all the inner activity that gives you a sense of well-being. When you say to yourself, “Today is a good day,” it’s a sign you’ve been connected to the front screen. Consciously or unconsciously, we’re all trying to stay connected to the front screen.

The challenge is, off to the side is another screen competing for your attention. This is the place where the threats, fears, anxieties, unhealthy temptations, and potentially destructive thoughts and feelings show up. You will be in a conversation, on the way to work, or trying to sleep when suddenly the side screen lights up and your internal eyes reflexively swivel over to take a look. Scrolling across the screen, there’s an anxious thought or unsettling image.

If you sit there and watch the side screen for too long, you risk locking into it like a kid with a video game. It doesn’t take much exposure before you get caught up in the worries or seduced by the destructive urge or mood. This happens because the side screen uses your preoccupied attention and reactivity as an energy source. Under the spotlight of attention, the destructive mood or anxious feeling intensifies. The images become more colorful and pronounced. The sound gets louder. Before long the side screen is an IMAX with Dolby surround sound, and you don’t feel you can or want to turn back to the front screen.

Image result for home dog squirrel gif"Let’s be clear. We can’t control what shows up on the side screen. Nor can we control the reflexive swivel of our attention when the unwanted thoughts and feelings first come into awareness. You will suddenly find yourself gazing at an anxious idea or depressive image scrolling across the screen. It’s what you do next that’s important.

You’ll be tempted to watch, analyze, debate, fight, or run from the thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations announcing themselves on the side screen. All these responses may be natural, but they keep the side screen shining brightly. The more you try to avoid or resist an anxious feeling, the stronger it becomes. The longer you study the worry or entertain memories of past failures, the more anxious and down you’ll feel—and so on.

Turning from the side screen

To be free—to get the relief you’re seeking—you need to relate to the side screen in a new way that deprives it of your attention and reactivity. If you remove the spotlight of attention and purge the system of reactivity (efforts at resisting the unwanted experience), you pull the plug on the side screen’s energy source, causing it to fade into the background.

The Two-Screen Method shows you how to put these ideas into practice in two steps: striking a new relationship with the side screen, and staying anchored to the front screen.

Ideally, you want to cultivate a relationship with the side screen that is defined by acceptance and nonresistance. When an anxious thought or feeling announces itself—like, “I’m going to make a fool of myself”—your internal eyes will automatically dart over to the side screen, where the image of yourself being horribly embarrassed might be playing. As soon as you realize you’re on the side screen, with your new awareness you are guided by the motto “accept and turn.” You accept the hard feelings or unanswered questions, while gently turning your attention back to the front screen.

As you plant your attention on the front screen, you allow the side screen to run its tape in your peripheral vision. You accept the distracting stream of thoughts and images, as well as the emotional heat emanating from the side screen. You accept the experience of being heckled or taunted from the sidelines — “You’re going to fail. You’ll be a laughingstock. You suck.  You never get it right. You can’t get love.” Acceptance doesn’t mean you like or agree with the content of the side screen. The thoughts and feelings displayed there may be bad for you or contrary to what you believe or what you want to have happen. Acceptance is about letting go internally, focusing on what you can control, and responding to the unwanted thoughts and feelings with wisdom. You move into acceptance and nonresistance, even though it goes against your instincts, because that kind of action unravels your reactivity. It’s the turning that cuts off the side screen’s energy source, ultimately foiling the anxious feeling or destructive mood.

In short,

1) First step: Reshape your relationship with the side screen; de-energize the problematic thoughts and feelings by meditation. When we turn our eye to our inner parts we present our lamp to be lit as we experience our thoughts and feelings with God. Meditation increases our ability to be in the present moment, while accepting and not resisting the thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations coming into awareness—especially the debilitating or unwanted ones.

2) Second step: Learn how to stay connected to the front screen, using one or more of the main anchors that can hold your attention as you’re turning away from the side screen: meditation, healthy distractions (like going to your cell or finishing a book—the Shakers used dancing), and loving action (call a friend and be one, or serve the cause).

The side screen will frequently exert a strong pull on your mind. During these times, it’s often not realistic to say, “Don’t watch!” unless you have another home for your attention with some sticking power. That’s where the front screen anchors come in. These anchors give you a safe place to secure your attention while the side screen storm is passing through. But this is not all they do. The front screen “anchors” are all those great gifts caring people have given you to make you healthy and loosen up the joy you long for. They help you take the energy that is normally consumed by the side screen and redirect it to activities that cultivate a sense of aliveness and well-being.

‘Tis a gift to be simple

These are great suggestions, but as the Shakers and everyone who wrote the Bible knew, “’Tis a gift to be simple.” We can turn into grace, but grace was there before we turned. We don’t manufacture our own health by practicing the two-screen method! But turning will always be the crucial test of the maturity we need to live into our fullness and not sink into sin and death.

In the middle of dire times, John heard a voice and turned to see lampstands burning. On the eve of his worst moment of turning away from his salvation, Peter was assured he would turn back and strengthen others who were facing their own sifting. When we are eating with the pigs or sulking in self-righteousness, our loving, patient Parent comes to us in a vision or with a personal plea and lights our way to return home.

Staying anchored to the main screen will take some determination and time. But hopefully this simple metaphor will be something to remember and something to do when the side screen lures you into thinking you are looking into the mirror and all is lost or hopeless. Jesus still came to find you just as you are and is leading you into who you will be.

Intensity: How to be in a movement, not a moment

So how was the meeting of the church yesterday? Was it about as exciting as the Eagles’ rout of the Bears? Did you skip it because you thought it might not be worth driving to? Are you out of the habit?

Maybe prayer has even slipped out of your schedule and you replaced it with caustic remarks about people who “drank the Kool-aid” and keep acting excited about things you “got over” a long time ago. Maybe you chalk up your boredom to your “meeting fatigue” or “lack of bandwidth.”

I don’t mean to shame you if any of this is true about you. I just want to be honest. Christianity is intense – all the time. It is a life and death matter – all the time. Most of us have a moment of that intensity here and there, or we would desert Jesus altogether. But we need a movement, not a moment. And if we expect to reveal Jesus to the world and work with the Spirit as God transforms it, we certainly can’t do it with a few moments of intensity.

Earnest expectation

In Philippians 1:20 Paul says, “I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death.” Many translations  says he has “earnest expectation” and hope.  He is intense. The Greek word has the idea of a head that is outstretched, as if waiting in suspense, eyes peeled, ears open.

We can all relate to this sense of expectation. My grandchildren were afraid and delighted to be going to race go-carts the other day. You may have a job interview lined up. The baby might be due. For Paul, he is writing while awaiting trial before a Roman court. It could be that the delusional Nero will give him a death sentence. What was Paul’s expectation? That Christ’s glory would be seen in his body whether he lived or died. That was his EARNEST expectation.

Paul’s intense desire was that Jesus, in whom he lived and who lived in him, would have free rein of him so he would prove to be the best vehicle of transformation he could be. If dying proved to be a better strategy, then so be it. Really! He wrote that to the church in Philippi, “For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” That’s intense.

Paul did not come equipped with his courage or will. We humans have those capacities, but they are mostly moments, not movements. His courage came from the Spirit of Christ who made him alive, even if he died. He was not talking about achieving an ongoing integration of Christ “into his life.” This was not post-therapy, post-intellectualizing Paul telling us how he ended up enlightened. Jesus is his light and he is confident Jesus will shine through what he is and does whether he lives or dies.  That is basic Christianity. It feels intense to us.

If the Sunday meeting does not provide us a moment, we might feel like we have no movement. If a person feels like they are too intense, we might want to put the brakes on their movement, since it feels like we are getting run over. I supposed we are getting run over — meanwhile, Paul appears to like getting run over. Being a vehicle for God’s glory is his definition of wonder-ful.

How do we get into the movement and stop living off the “crumbs” of the spiritual moments that don’t add up to enough?

1) We need to pray

Pray for yourself. Pray for others. Pray for the Congo. Intercession is crucial if anything is going to happen. If things seem flat, maybe we are not praying! But even before you get to interceding, practice the turn into the movement of God’s Spirit.  Work on the meditation that gets you out of thinking your courage and capacity makes it all happen.

2) We need to relate rightly

If you are talking about people instead of to them; if you’ve decided you can’t talk to them so you are just avoiding everyone, you are starving for connection and it is wrecking you. The moments of love you get may hurt, since they just point out how much more you need. Those moments might make you mad, since they seem to be depriving you or demanding of you. You need to be in the movement.

I wish our leaders told us every week that the Sunday meeting is not just about the speech or the songs; it is about the relating, the being together in the Spirit, the relationships built and the plans being made. What happens before and after the scheduled events should be just as important as what happens during them.

3) We need to do something. Trump is president.

The fact that the populace (or at least the system) elected a liar who would rather have a strong-man government like Russia’s demonstrates that the world needs saved. What are you going to do about it? Get depressed? Be resentful? Withdraw? Join in and make as much money as possible while the doors are open to exploitation? Get as mean and divided as the powers are promoting? Conform to an even more debased way of thinking? I wish I did not have to even list those things, but people are doing all those things.

Many people are doing just the opposite, of course, but temptation is everywhere. Black Friday background checks for gun purchases soared last week while we were calling for “buy nothing” day. While we are calling each other to Turn Up to Bail Out, the Ku Klux Klan claimed a surge in new members. Some of us are overwhelmed. We would never have done anything to get into prison like Paul did and if we did get there we might have gone crazy instead of converting the Praetorian Guard.

The main thing Paul does is demonstrate the glory of God in his body whether he lives or dies. He does not have a plan to save democracy or depose Nero. He is part of a movement of God’s Spirit that is way more than the present moment. He trusts in it. He is confident in it.  He is not waiting for a moment or disappointed because he missed it. He lives in an eternal now with Jesus.

The main thing Paul expects the followers of Jesus to do is demonstrate the presence of the risen Lord as the body of Christ. How we do that is discerned moment by moment, but we are always in the movement. If the powers that be try to kill us, that will make Jesus even more obvious.

I, for one, would not be a Jesus follower if Christianity were not intense. That’s why it is hard, sometimes, when I think the meetings feel a little dead, or I run into loved ones who are more resistant than resplendent with glory. But then, like today, I often remember Paul’s letter to the Philippians and note the contours of my cell — and maybe even pen my own letter, of sorts. Jesus is with me.

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There is hope: But you’ll need to die to enjoy it

I’m still savoring the memory of Cynthia Bourgeault’s book, Mystical Hope, laying in my lap, a tear trickling down my cheek and a smile broadening across my face in deep relief and joy. I had just reached the part in which she quoted a little piece of a Thomas Merton cassette (!) speaking to his novices.  As I read it, I laughed out loud, since he used an image that was very similar to one I had received in prayer during a rich period of my thirties — an image that has sustained me ever since.

“God is near to us at the point that is just before final destruction. Take away everything else down to that point of final destruction, and the last little bit that’s left before destruction, a little kernel of gold which is the essence of you–and there is God protecting it…And this is something terrific. …[We] don’t normally get into that center unless we’re brought to the edge of what looks like destruction. In other words, we have to be facing the possibility of the destruction of everything else to know this will not be destroyed.”

Merton sounds a bit like he is inviting his novices to jump off a cliff, doesn’t he?! And I suppose he is. I suppose I jumped. But he is also inviting relative beginners into a life of prayer, like my three previous posts have been doing. It is a life that leads to the place of surrender and revelation he describes in the quote above.

Meditation “puts us immediately in touch with that ‘little kernel of gold which is the essence of’ us and allows us to begin to recognize it and trust it.” So much religion these days relies on a “good offense” or a “good defense.” On the one hand we are taught to release our preoccupation with death and suffering in order to experience blissful, mindless oneness with all life. Then on the other hand, many Christians offer something equally deficient when they promise an overcoming hope that seems hollow in the cancer ward, or when the baby is born with disabilities, or when the house is destroyed and a lifetime of memories seems washed away. Deeper than having a good defense or good offense  and more in line with the Lord’s example, on the other side of suffering is hope. Bourgeault says, “Only if we are still hanging on…only in the measure that we fail to yield completely into the mercy of God, will hope fail us. If we are willing to take it all the way, it will take us all the way.”

Jesus went beyond destruction to hope.

Isn’t this the journey Jesus took all the way? When he was arrested he told his disciples to put away their swords because he, like us, needed to pass through his own powerlessness and hopelessness. He was not going to hope in some nuclear arsenal of angels or call on a victory-making God. When he was in the garden praying and meditating (as the disciples fainted), he found that “protecting nearness” at the center of reality. How he went “to the edge of what looks like destruction” is an example for us. It is the Lord’s death as well as his resurrection that is our salvation.

In the wonderful old movie Babette’s Feast, the wonder centers around a sumptuous meal that reveals many secrets. It is like another last supper, only this one is full of old Danish people facing death, gathered full of faith and full of their regrets. The General gets up and names the wonder that is happening among them, the same wonder that is seen when Jesus, the living truth, yields himself faithfully into the Mercy. The General says, “Mercy and faithfulness have met; justice and peace have embraced.” And all the joys and regrets become one in love as the Alpha and Omega is present in fullness.

There is hope

On All Saints Day, we look toward the people who have gone before us for the assurance that this wild thought is true: if I move over the edge of destruction, God will still protect the golden kernel of the true me. If I dare to meet the living God, my fallen, scarred, angry, abandoned, intolerably vulnerable self, my old self might die, but I will live. We get this assurance not only from our ultimate example, Jesus, but last week we celebrated Rosa Parks, who could have quoted Albert Camus: “In the middle of winter I discovered in myself an invincible summer.”

There is hope.

Or look much closer; look at Mike Escott’s covenant blog from the love feast last Saturday. He has gone through so much and is going through much right into life, right now:  “There had always been an emptiness inside me and after my mom passed, I fell into the grips of addiction. When I moved to Philadelphia to get sober, I was fortunate enough to meet Jimmy , in what will always be a “God shot” to me….I was immediately drawn to Circle of Hope and I now realize I was also being called to Christ. This journey brings me joy and deep connection. At times Circle Of Hope is all I felt I had, but the fellowship, my Cell, and my growing relationship with Christ have filled me and helped me to thrive again.”

There is hope.

God is protecting that golden true self at the heart of each of us, calling us to meet in that Spirit-open place where life moves us and draws us. The everyday way to living comfortably and securely outside our present-oriented injuries and fears and into our eternal now with God is the listening, feeling and releasing prayer of meditation. It is a new way, as Bourgeault says, “beyond linear, discursive thinking” into “inspired visionary knowing where Christianity finally becomes fully congruent with its own highest truth and its mystical treasures can be received into an awakened heart.”

If all that beautiful teaching from Merton and Bourgeault seem a bit much to you, just listen to Jesus and see where he leads. Or meditate on Rosa Parks when you pray. Or appreciate the love that guards Mike, even when he has just been called back from far away.

There is hope.

More on Mystical Hope
Previous: Mystical hope in a deteriorating world
Swimming in the Mercy: The experience of hope
Anxious and tired: Prayer that turns us toward hope
Next: Hope: The quality of aliveness right under our noses

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Anxious and tired: Prayer that turns us toward hope

The notion that God is absent is the
fundamental illusion of the human condition.
Thomas Keating

If Cynthia Bourgeault is right (and my own experience says she is), then the way beyond egoic thinking is the way of meditation. She says, “Meditation, more than any other spiritual practice, nurtures the latent capacities within us that can perceive and respond to divine hope. In the classic language of our tradition, these capacities are known as the ‘spiritual senses.'”

That little paragraph might have seemed so weird it drove you right back into you egoic thinking! So hang on. All “egoic thinking” means is we humans have the capacity to stand outside ourselves and look at ourselves. As far as we know, we are the only species who can do this. Tigers don’t think, “I have a quick temper.” And whales don’t say, “I am really glad to be going north; I’m a cold-water kind of whale.” And tigers and whales don’t write children’s books where tigers  and whales seem cute when they reflect. Humans can imagine these different realities, looking back and forward, dreaming and visioning. It is a great thing about us.

we are drawn to meditation

Egoic thinking is great…until it’s not

The downside of this reflexive capacity, Bourgeault says, “is the tendency to experience one’s personal identity as separate — composed of distinct qualities, defined by what holds one apart from the whole.” So we all have an anxiety streak running through us because we really need and want to be together, not separate. The ego can’t get enough: praise, security, accomplishment, etc. to overcome that dreadful sense of being left out or thrown out and failing at being a full self. You can see how quickly we have all been driven into sin by this innate anxiety. And you can see why Jesus calls us to see our true selves, look at ravens and lilies, stop worrying and “strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness” as the means of becoming free of what is depriving us of joy.

Art often captures the turning of meditation
Field of Lilies – Tiffany Studios, c. 1910.

Meditative prayer is a way of discovering and nurturing the latent capacities within us that can perceive and respond to “the Mercy” I talked about last week. It is a primary way to experience the “mystical hope”I talked about the week before, the hope which is near and not the outcome of all our striving.  The centering prayer that Bourgeault teaches is “a basic, no-nonsense method of self-emptying — simply letting go of thoughts as they arise — to help practitioners break out of their compulsive attachment to thinking and entrust themselves to the deeper stillness of God.” [Here is Martin Laird’s take on it.] The essence of this kind of meditation is not keeping a perfectly clear mind. The essence is recognizing the moment when one is distracted and willingly turning back into the stillness of the Mercy, toward hope; turning toward the meeting place we have inside as an act of faith and honor; letting go of our own stuff and holding a space open for all God gives and all God is.

We need to get beyond self-awareness and its evil twin: self-centeredness

We have a “self” awareness that is beyond the egoic capacity that makes us human — we also have spiritual awareness. Meditation leads us out of ego-centered consciousness and into a space where we meet God. And so many of us know almost every feeling better than the feeling of communion with God! Someone has said we can also get to this meeting place by having a near-death experience or by falling deeply in love. I do not wish you the first short cut and do wish for you the latter. Meditation is the everyday path. It is the discipline that helps us “die daily” as Paul says he does, and helps us be one in love as he hopes we will be. The prayer of meditation puts a stick in the spokes of our outer awareness and leads us into the warmth and abundance of our inner awareness and into hope in the Mercy.

It is a hard world right now. Maybe you are pretty numb like a newscaster was saying she was after she was confronted with Donald Trump’s and General Kelly’s icky relationship with the family of La David Johnson. Or maybe you are feeling like the pastor who wrote to Christianity Today to voice how tired he is of trying to get into the white man’s church and how determined to separate into a black world until someone approaches him for once. If it were not a hard world, we’d probably make it one. So it is time to pray.

Have you listened to Jesus saying this to you lately?

“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens,
and I will give you rest. 
Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me;
for I am gentle and humble in heart,
and you will find rest for your souls.”

Basic to that easy yoke is the prayer of meditation. We keep turning to it in our anxiety and fatigue and it keeps turning us toward hope.

More on Mystical Hope
Previous: Mystical hope in a deteriorating world
Swimming in the Mercy: The experience of hope
Next: There is hope: But you’ll need to die to enjoy it
Hope: The quality of aliveness right under our noses

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Nature Deficit, Information Surfeit

As if I could really get more inefficient, I have a new commitment to walking. Last week when I was going to see Dave in the hospital, I rode the train to 5th and Market so I could go to my bank (which Wells Fargo closed), so I ended up traipsing all over the place figuring out how to make my deposit. It was good for me. There are many advantages to traipsing. For one thing, I discovered a bakery that had “communal table” in their title and bought my cell the largest loaf of bread I have ever seen in my life. But the best thing about traipsing was being out in the sun, being with people, getting exercise. It was good for my soul.

How the world is not good for us

In the latest Newsweek, Andrew Weil verifies scientifically what most of us know instinctively. The modern world is not really that good for us. We experience what Dr. Weil calls, “nature deficit” and  “information surfeit.” As a result, a lot of us are depressed. Depression is a “disease of affluence.” In general, people who live in places that are furthest removed from modern standards have the lowest rates of depression. Amish people are ten times less depressed than the “English” who live in Philly. The human body was never designed for the postindustrial environment. We were not designed to be indoors so much, to eat industrially-altered food, to be isolated with our machines swimming in a deluge of electronic info. We all know we should be running around in groups hunting mastodons or sitting around in groups sorting seeds. Instead, we are vainly trying to adapt our brains and bodies to do what they can’t really do and they are rebelling by making us depressed.

Playa Samara, CR

My favorite solution to this dilemma is moving to Samara beach in Costa Rica and increasing my vitamin D intake enormously via my new-found skill of wind-surfing. Given that I sense God’s call to maintain my part of his mission to the megalopolis, I need to exercise some other options and so do you, probably. Let’s maintain ourselves well so we have the brain-health to be creative lovers in the Philly region! The church, as it turns out, is right in line with the scientists in this pursuit. We Jesus-followers, knew a lot about positive psychology before UPenn’s Martin Seligman and others popularized it sans Jesus.

How to encourage our mental health

1)    Practice meditation. We do this in our meetings sometimes. We’ll have an Advent day retreat to teach it and do it. As an every day discipline, meditation is a strong antidote to the brain-poisoning modern world. Our brains overeat mental junk food. Meditative prayer helps us develop concentration and the ability to attend to ourselves and to God. Rather than multi-tasking our way through life, we learn to be aware in the present moment.

2)    Sleep in the dark and get out in the sun during the day. Walk somewhere! Our sleep rhythms are impacted when we spend all our waking hours in artificial light and extend that into the dark. If the city lights are getting through your blinds at night, get some blackout curtains. Better sleeping means less depression.

3)    Stay social. This is a gift the church gives big time, since we make community a priority. It is a powerful safeguard to emotional well-being. The way of post-industrial society is toward more atomization all the time. We are often locked up in machines or relating through them. It is isolating and dangerous.

4)    Cultivate silence. Listen to pleasant sounds. Again, the church is good for this. We often practice silence together. Sometimes our music is beautiful; at least it is human and allows us to experience some natural sounds that relate to who we are most deeply. Some noise-cancelling headphones might be nice to have if you live in a  noisy neighborhood. Making regular field trips to places where you can hear the wind blow or listen to running water is a good idea. Fortunately, we have Fairmount Park. Just sitting by one of our rivers can absorb a lot of sound and cultivate some inner silence.

5)    Discipline your devices. The mobile internet so many of us have now dilutes our attentiveness even more. Info overload cultivates ADD. There has to be some limits to the amount of time we spend on the internet, with email or on the phone. Some of us have more capacity to work the machines than others. All of us, however, need to be the masters of our machines and not vice versa.

On another walk the other day, I passed by St. George Cathedral and the doors were open. It was time for daily mass. I had never been in the building so I decided to check it out, even though I was a bit afraid that I was interloping. They did not kick me out and I had a few minutes of quiet, listening to the priest chant the mass. I felt invigorated, like I had been hunting mastodons and stumbled upon a beautiful waterfall. The city is full of healthy things to do. The church is a big help.

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