Tag Archives: silence

Seven mistakes that could neuter your faith (2016)

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

Faith feels kind of fragile. This is a message from 2016, but I think it still works for this year, when passion is blunted and fear is high. 

Don’t struggle with prayer

Epaphras, who is one of you and a servant of Christ Jesus, sends greetings. He is always wrestling in prayer for you, that you may stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully assured. — Colossians 4:12

Epaphras struggled in prayer, wrestled. It was hard. If we do not learn to pray, our faith dies. In every era of life, the struggle is different. When we suffer, it is especially hard to pray and especially fruitful.

So how do we learn how to pray? A father from the Desert was asked by a novice “Abba, how do I pray?” The father answered, “Pray and the prayer will teach you everything.”

That’s a good piece of direction. Here are some more specific hints.

  • Establish a minimal daily routine. Reaching consistency is the most important goal.
  • Get warmed up to pray. Use a book or an app, maybe. Look over your notes from Sunday. Read the Bible or the writings of great guides – they whet your appetite for prayer.
  • Create a praying atmosphere. Use icons, candles, incense, prayer beads. They all contribute to decreasing distraction and increasing Holy Spirit awareness.
Artsy prayer corner
  • Involve both the spirit and the body. Kneel or stand, bow your head, raise your hands, lay prostrate.
  • Set reasonable expectations. In a society that enjoys instant gratification every day, one can abandon prayer after a couple of “failed” attempts. Prayer takes patience.
  • Don’t obsess on mystical experiences. It is important to discern among the spirits. Visions and experiences need to sit and prove themselves. Our pride can deceive us. We can turn prayer into an achievement or a competition
  • Remember that prayer is more than your “quiet time.” It is linked with repentance, humility, charity and fasting, etc. It happens in community. It is being in the presence of God all day and staying in dialogue.

Prayer is an encounter with God, is building up a personal relationship that needs nurturing and perseverance. The more we communicate the closer we become to any person and to the person of God. The conversation becomes more rewarding every time.

You have already been doing some evaluation by going through the list above. Make a plan to implement the element of the list that moved you the most — or maybe the one that seems to be the greatest struggle.

Let your sharing erode

 We were not looking for praise from people, not from you or anyone else, even though as apostles of Christ we could have asserted our authority. Instead, we were like young children among you.

Just as a nursing mother cares for her children, so we cared for you. Because we loved you so much, we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well. – 1 Thessalonians 2:6-8

The Thessalonians have a tight community and they are experiencing the kinds of things people in community fear. Some people take advantage. Other people hold back. A few people try to hold things together and end up feeling burned out. There is always a pull towards isolation and tepidity. We’re made for that by sin. If we let our sharing erode our faith could die.

Paul writes his letter so that the new life of his church plant won’t get wrecked by the unconscious erosion of their sharing – not just of money (although that is a big thing in Thessaloniki) but of love and the kind of covenant keeping that makes family out of strangers.

He uses his own sharing as an example. When he came to town, he was purposely dependent on them. He could have been in power, but he was like a child. Likewise, they were dependent on him. He was like a mother and they were defenseless children. Why? It was love. Love moved him to share the good news of Jesus which is all about God’s love moving Jesus to share eternal life. What’s more, love moved Paul, just like God, to share this life personally. Paul’s message wasn’t about love, it was love in the flesh.

After a while, sharing money or sharing life in community can feel wearing if they lose connection with passionate love – a love so deliberate it comes from heaven in Jesus or walks from Syria to Greece in Paul. When is the last time you shared in an extraordinary way? How long has it been since you checked to see if your passion is fairly represented in how you share your money? Celebrate the joys, if they reflect your answer. Pray for courage and confidence if the answer presents a challenge.

Be threatened into silence

“What are we going to do with these men?” they asked. “Everyone living in Jerusalem knows they have performed a notable sign, and we cannot deny it. But to stop this thing from spreading any further among the people, we must warn them to speak no longer to anyone in this name.”

Then they called them in again and commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John replied, “Which is right in God’s eyes: to listen to you, or to him? You be the judges! As for us, we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.” – Acts 4:16-20

It is interesting to wonder what is going on with Peter. When confronted in the courtyard the night of Jesus’ trial, he denied he was a Jesus follower three times! After he received the Holy Spirit, he performed a miracle and refused to stop talking about it when the same court that condemned Jesus ordered him to do so. Not long after, however, when he travelled to Antioch, to Paul’s church of Gentiles and Jews, he “began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group” (see Galatians 2:11-21). Even the boldest among us can be threatened into silence. It neuters our faith. We become hypocrites who supposedly have a faith with public principles, yet we are afraid of the consequences of being public.

These days, people are afraid to say something on Facebook because they might look like the kind of person who would say something on Facebook! If they talk about Jesus or their church, they are afraid someone will judge them for being too into themselves, or too aggressive, or too something, so they are shamed by the very thought of being shamed by the latest judge.

But if you can’t talk about Jesus like you talk about your latest vacation, or your family, or the various causes that heighten your passion, hasn’t your faith become of no consequence? What does it mean if the Lord is not the most consequential person alive from the dead?

Pray: Give me boldness to speak about what I have seen and heard of You.

Maybe you should imagine frightening situations — like telling your parents you are a Christian, or telling some significant person about what you now believe. You might rehearse talking about it in front of the mirror – that might lessen the terror when you actually encounter the real-life situation. Sharing your fears with others might help, too. Talk to them about what you felt and decided when you read today’s reading.

Write down your story of faith so you can really see it. Then you won’t need to invent it on the spot when you feel like you have an antagonist looking at you skeptically. Hold up your story to God as an offering and say, like Paul, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Stop making new friends

“Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you,  leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift. – Matthew 5:23-4

In the long run, worship and prayer easily become very singular, personal, private. You are probably reading this alone and it never crosses your mind to share the experience with others. The U.S. is so steeped in individualism, you probably rarely think or asking for help or sharing personal things. The reading for today speaks into such a situation – the Jewish people having a long, insular faith devoted to staying free from outside influences.

Jesus suggests the worshiper leave the scene of the sacrifice as it is being enacted when he or she realizes the real impurity must be expiated relationally. They remember how they have wronged someone and must make it right. The work of the altar is about reconciliation. And that is not just healing a breech between a person and God, but healing the breech in a divided heart so prone to ignoring sins against love.

Our faith is neutered when we stop making friends with new people because we busy at our altars – doing church, satisfied in prayer, happy for therapy, stabilized enough to make money and buy insulating comforts. Whole churches effectively close their doors because they are busily grooming the relationships they have already domesticated. None of the New Testament writers recommend anything but pushing into new relationship territory. Jesus would have us love our enemies – just because we can.

Pray: Remind me Lord when I come to prayer and ignore my sins against love.

Obviously, when Jesus says “be reconciled” he is talking about people who have something legitimately against us, not just that they are upset and we should feel responsible. We are to be free to love with abandon, we are not abandoned to repairing every breech.

Dare to think beyond the security of your present life with God and the people of God. Who should become your new friend? Where should you go looking for a new friend?

While we are at it, let’s look at our church as a whole. Are we allowing people to become our friends? Do we think of them, even as we are worshiping, or would that seem like a violation of our space?

Put the church on the other side of a boundary

In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness….

[E]ven if I am being poured out like a drink offering on the sacrifice and service coming from your faith, I am glad and rejoice with all of you. So you too should be glad and rejoice with me. – Philippians 2:5-7…17-18

Who is God? Look at Jesus and you can see. There He is making himself nothing, finding a way to express self-giving love in the most redemptive way possible. Who am I in Christ? Paul often says “Look at me. I am the chief of sinners being used by God. Here I am emptying myself, pouring myself out like Jesus.” Both Jesus and Paul are demonstrating the joy of knowing and expressing their true selves. Even though Jesus is making himself a slave and Paul is in prison for his faith, they rejoice.

People who have grown up with this message often hear it upside down, as if this selflessness was a demand, not a promise. They have been so required, they have never chosen, and have a grown up faith that is full of boundaries. They are still pouring themselves out of their false self, not out of the inexhaustible joy in the Spirit. God and God’s people end up threats who will steal life, not give it.

These generalities don’t fit every person, since people are not standard. But the idea is worth pondering. If you are putting the church and its work on the other side of a boundary, if you have to “set a boundary” so you will feel comfortable or safe, what does that mean? Could your faith be more a reaction than an action? Isn’t it being neutered if the very thing that should give it life seems to be stealing it? Jesus and Paul don’t seem to be losing the promise and holding back even though their circumstances are dire.

Pray: Help me to get out of myself and into the Body.

Consider what script is running in your head about the church, in particular. Note your resentments and fears, your disappointments and resistance. It does not matter if they are legitimate or not. But they could be neutering your faith.

Try crossing your boundary. Volunteer to give your spiritual gift in a practical way. Go to the Sunday meeting four times in a row with the intention of pouring yourself into them, “on the sacrifice and service of someone’s faith.” Or do that thing you have been intending to do as a representative of God’s people and don’t tell a soul, just do it whether anyone notices or is there to judge it or not.

Look liberal and act conservative

Read Colossians 2:16-23

These rules, which have to do with things that are all destined to perish with use, are based on merely human commands and teachings. Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.

One of the things that neuters faith, hope and love the quickest is imposing a new holiness code. Paul is against it. He respects the Law of Moses and the interpretations that grew up around it. But Jesus shows it to be the mere tutor it was, not the standard it pretends to be. Likewise, he tries to undermine the latest teachings of the latest lawgivers who find a reading in the stars or a vision by which to order everyone according to their new rules of purity. He calls is “delighting in false humility” and being “puffed up with idle notions.”

There are so many good things that are, in essence, disconnected from the head, who is Christ, but are very connected to the latest political theory or scientific realities. We can look “liberal” like we are into the latest thing, while we are very conservative, practicing the oldest of deceptions. Wearing nonexploitive clothes, drinking the right coffee, eating farm direct produce, biking, practicing the right kind of yoga, not vaccinating your child, being fit, not bathing, having a beard, voting Green, not voting, protesting a lack of diversity, judging inappropriate speech – the younger one is, the more rules there seem to be! There is a new holiness code, but Jesus did not make it up!

Pray: Help me see beyond the shadows to Christ.

Good intentions are the shadows of the real good to come, which is connected to the head, from whom the whole body grows as God causes it to grow. Take a moment to be freely and securely connected to the head as part of the body of Christ, free of any false criteria that condemns you.

Take a brief inventory of (not a condemning look at) your “identity.” What parts of your “lifestyle” are really based on the rules of people? Can you name a few rules you can safely live without in the light of Jesus? Get rid of some “shoulds” that could lock you up.

“Trust” the leaders instead of being responsible

I can’t impress this on you too strongly. God is looking over your shoulder. Christ himself is the Judge, with the final say on everyone, living and dead. He is about to break into the open with his rule, so proclaim the Message with intensity; keep on your watch. Challenge, warn, and urge your people. Don’t ever quit. Just keep it simple.

You’re going to find that there will be times when people will have no stomach for solid teaching, but will fill up on spiritual junk food—catchy opinions that tickle their fancy. They’ll turn their backs on truth and chase mirages. But you—keep your eye on what you’re doing; accept the hard times along with the good; keep the Message alive; do a thorough job as God’s servant. – 2 Timothy 4:1-5 (The Message)

Timothy was Paul’s apprentice. He was young, but he was put in charge of leading one of the churches. He faced a lot of things that make many people his age run from responsibility: hard work, opposition, people without a stomach for the truth. The main thing that neuters faith might be that people want their leaders to have faith for them, even force it on them, provide them a weekly mirage of it, be a larger than life example of it to enjoy vicariously.

A church should be devoted to apprenticing responsible leaders. There should be about one in every ten people. That means if sixty groups or missions got started this year, the ten founders in each one would all need a leaders the church produced. The generative capacity of the whole church will be neutered if we are not able to do that.

You might not need to be a group or mission leader, but you do need to be responsible to give what you have been given. It is not the leaders’ church. You do not attend “Rod’s church” (someone called it that). It is the Lord’s church. And, as Paul warned Timothy, “God is looking over your shoulder. Christ himself is the Judge, with the final say on everyone, living and dead. He is about to break into the open with his rule, so proclaim the Message with intensity; keep on your watch.” We would like this judgment to somehow be non-threatening, but it is a threat. We don’t get to live someone else’s life; we are responsible for the one we have. We can’t “trust our leaders” and let them decide everything and do everything; we need to be our part of the team.

Pray: Help me keep my eye on what I’m; accept the hard times along with the good; keep the Message alive; do a thorough job as God’s servant.

Maybe you do not have the stomach for this “solid teaching.” Or maybe you are surrounded by people whole have weak stomachs, so you feel kind of embarrassed to eat a rich diet. It doesn’t matter; we need to eat the bread of life and not turn away when Jesus offers us his body and blood. We are called and honored with good work to do. We must not make the mistake of being untrustworthy.

Are there any responsibilities you have been given as part of the body that you are shirking and letting one of the leaders do?

Contemplation: Be still. Become aware.

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

When things were not working out for you, did a well-meaning person ever counsel you to “Walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor 5:7)? That’s a popular snippet of the Bible which people use as an encouraging piece of self-talk: “Settle down. God is not done with you yet.” If you take their counsel, you might develop a new conviction: “I am moving ahead, hoping for the best. I am walking by faith, not by sight.” That is good.

the way of contemplation

I think there is something even more immediate that scripture is teaching. I have learned it through the prayer of contemplation. “Walk by faith, not by sight” is also about becoming aware of the unseen things God is doing in the present moment. It is not just looking ahead, it should also be looking in. “I am walking by the Light of the World, not just by the light of day, by faith, not sight.”

Prayer amounts to faithing. Just call walking by faith “faithing.” Faith is an action not an idea; it is relating, not just thinking about principles. And prayer is the basic place we faith. Prayer is how we develop the sense of being guided by the Holy Spirit of God and learn to see and react with more than just our physical senses. God is with us, right now; prayer helps us be with God right now.

When I say “contemplative prayer” you might think of mindfulness techniques that people are teaching to jr. highers to help them settle down. That’s a beginning, but that’s not the prayer of contemplation. The prayer of contemplation includes the techniques for reducing anxiety, but it is more. Contemplative prayer, and any spiritual discipline, disposes us to allow something to take place. The main thing that happens is love. If you find something else in the silence, you might be in the wrong place. Contemplation makes us available for relating to God. We don’t always pray in order to get God to do something for us; contemplative prayer is not about making something happen, necessarily. We are making ourselves available for communion with God. We are becoming open to experience Love, heart to Heart.

It is like this: A gardener does not actually grow plants. She practices skills that facilitate growth that is beyond her control. Prayer is like that. A sailor does not produce the necessary wind to move the boat. He appropriates the gift of wind by exercising skills that can get him home. Prayer is like that.

The basic skill of contemplative prayer that facilitates growth and appropriates gifts is inner silence. There are two practices that are very important to exercising this skill: stillness and awareness.

Stillness

When we attempt to be silent, we need to consider how to face the inner noise with which we struggle. Sometimes we do noisy things when we pray, too, of course; we are embodied spirits, after all. But at the center of us is the silent place where God is simply giving himself to us and we are communing spirit to Spirit. We long to carry this silence with us in the midst of the noisy world and be content that we are in Christ and Christ is in us. We want to feel at home. One of the early teachers of the church said, that in this center, we are constantly being called home, away from the noise that is around us to the joys that are silent. He said, “Why do we rush about looking for God who is here at home with us, if all we want is to be with him?”

Martin Laird, a teacher from Villanova who wrote a book called Into the Silent Lands, tells a story about a prisoner who was accustomed to cutting himself or burning himself so that his inner pain would be in a different place: on the outside of him. This suffering man had come upon some people whose mission was to teach prisoners to pray and turn their prison cells into monastic cells. The prisoner learned from them, and after several weeks of meditating twice a day he said, “I just want you to know that after only four weeks of meditating half an hour in the morning and night, the pain is not so bad, and for the first time in my life, I can see a tiny spark of something within myself I can like.” That is the home we are talking about.

contemplation in Rittenhouse
Stillness in Rittenhouse Square

Awareness

Our sense of separation from God is often a matter of our broken perception. We can’t feel God. We have an idea of what we should feel and we don’t feel it. Contemplative prayer is the place we let go of our perceptions and become aware of God with us, as the scripture guides us:

  •  My soul, wait in silence for God only, for my hope is from Him (Psalm 62:5).
  • I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you (Jesus in John 14:20).
  • I have been crucified with Christ and yet I am alive; yet it is no longer I, but Christ living in me (Galatians 3:20).

From the perspective of our everyday life on planet earth, we are separate from God. But from the perspective of our inner awareness, we see Christ with us. When we pray, we are not merely becoming aware of our thoughts and feelings (although that is good!), we are learning to be aware of God and to be with God who is with us.

It is like this: A man was taking his dog to a field where the animal could run and he ran into another man walking four dogs. They got to the open field and let their dogs go so they could enjoy running around in a big free space. But one the dogs was off to the side running is relatively tight circles and did not join in with the other dogs. The man asked his new friend, “What’s with your dog?” The man answered. “Before I got this dog, he had spent years living in a cage. He was used to getting all his exercise, just as you see. He has the field, but he is trained for the cage.” I did not see this dog do this personally, so I can’t prove to you that dogs do this, but I do know myself and many of you. We have the wide open field of grace and freedom to romp in but we run in the contours of our former cage. The prayer of contemplation is retraining our hearts to roam the wide open spaces of eternity freely.

  • My heart is like a bird that has escaped from the snare of the fowler (Psalm 123:7).

Our minds tend to run in the obsessive tight circles of our mental cage. We believe we are separate from God, and we were. So now we need to become aware of something else. I heard something shocking from a friend not long ago. When he was a child his father sang a little ditty that he thought was funny: “Charlie Wilkins is no good. Let’s chop him up like so much wood.” I know this little boy as an old man and you can still see that putrid song playing in his head. Just like that, we may believe we are condemned by God. So now we need to learn freedom. Prayer is the training ground.

When we think about things, we have a cage of thoughts that guide us. Contemplative prayer helps us go beyond that cage and enter into the wide-open fields of silence where we don’t merely think about things, we commune with God. We concentrate attention in our heart to the place of knowing, the place of awareness that is not full of the cacophony of our mind and surroundings but is full of the Spirit of God. It seems like we are just sitting there doing nothing when we pray this way, and that is exactly right and exactly good. In that nothing of ourselves and our surroundings we enter the silent land of our true being with God.

This post tells you more about how to practice contemplative prayer. But we don’t need perfect techniques to pray as much as we need to access the skills that are built into our beings by our loving Father. Be silent and turn your heart to God whether you think you know what you are doing or not. Take a step of walking by faith, not by sight. You’ll have a good time with God.

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Psalm in the morning fog

Poetry, , ,

The fog was so deep the other day I could not even see the lake out my back window. As I prayed, I remembered another morning I shared with God as an elementary school boy. I wrote a psalm about it and decided to share it with you. I am thankful for all the ways God has been near to me from an early age until now. I look forward to new revelations in the new year.

I ran across the familiar playground
in the fog
until I reached the backstop in the far corner
and waited.
Others would soon have the same idea.
But for now I was all alone
feeling the warm, silencing muffle of the cloud,
the mystery of aloneness in Creation’s embrace,
the surprise of finding a unknown door.

I need muffling
but I am longing for sunshine.
I need silencing
but I am waiting for others to arrive.
I need waiting
and here is my psalm:

I will trust in this small wait,
this little silence,
this brief appreciation of the fog,
of you in the fog, of me in the mystery
because you are trustworthy —

certainly not because I expect great vistas again soon
when the pesky fog lifts,
and not because I will keep anxieties from crowding out your embrace
in the silence,
or because I won’t fill my life with people before it is too late
as I wait;
it is because you are trustworthy.

And even as a child in the fog
my moments with you taught me your presence
and all about my ultimate safety,
no matter what happens next.

Prayer: walk by faith, not by sight.

A life in the Spirit, , , ,

“Walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor 5:7). We often think of this as waiting for God to do something in the future that we would not normally expect — “I am moving ahead, hoping for the best. I am walking by faith, not by sight.” That is good.

Faithing

SONY DSC

When we practice the prayer of contemplation, “Walk by faith, not by sight” is something more immediate. It is about becoming aware of the unknown things God is doing in the present moment. Prayer amounts to faithing, walking into what’s happening with faith as a sense guiding us,not just seeing and reacting with our physical senses. God is with us, right now; prayer helps us be with God right now.

When I say “contemplative prayer” you might think of mindfulness techniques that people are teaching to jr. highers to help them settle down. That’s a beginning, but that is not the prayer of contemplation. The prayer of contemplation includes the techniques for reducing anxiety, but it is more. Contemplative prayer, and any spiritual discipline, disposes us to allow something to take place. We are not doing something to get a result; we are not making something happen, necessarily. We are doing something to allow communion with God to be our condition.

It is like this: A gardener does not actually grow plants. She practices skills that facilitate growth that is beyond her control. Prayer is like that. A sailor does not produce the necessary wind to move the boat. He harnesses the gift of wind by exercising skills that can get him home. Prayer is like that.

Basic contemplative prayer

The basic skill of contemplative prayer that facilitates and harnesses is inner silence. There are two practices within this skill set that are very important: stillness and awareness. When we attempt to be silent, we need to consider how to face the inner noise with which we struggle. We do many noisy things when we pray, too; we are embodied spirits, after all. But at the center of us is the silent place where God is simply giving himself to us and we are communing spirit to Spirit. We long to carry this silence with us in the midst of the noisy world and be content that we are in Christ and Christ is in us. We want to be at home. One of the early teachers of the church said in this center we are constantly being called home, away from the noise that is around us to the joys that are silent. He said, “Why do we rush about looking for God who is here at home with us, if all we want is to be with him?”

Martin Laird, a teacher from Villanova who wrote a book called Into the Silent Lands, tells a story about a prisoner who was accustomed to cutting himself or burning himself so that his inner pain would be in a different place — on the outside of him. This suffering man came upon some people whose mission was to teach prisoners to pray and turn their prison cells into monastic cells. The prisoner learned from them and after several weeks of meditating twice a day he said, “I just want you to know that after only four weeks of meditating half an hour in the morning and night, the pain is not so bad, and for the first time in my life, I can see a tiny spark of something within myself I can like.” That is the home we are talking about.

rittenhouse square parkOur sense of separation from God is often a matter of our broken perception. We can’t feel God. We have an idea of what we should feel and we don’t feel that. Contemplative prayer is the place we let go our perceptions and become aware of God with us, as the scripture guides us:

  •  My soul, wait in silence for God only, for my hope is from Him (Psalm 62:5).
  • I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you (Jesus in John 14:20).
  • I have been crucified with Christ and yet I am alive; yet it is no longer I, but Christ living in me (Galatians 3:20).

From the perspective of the created order we are separate from God. But from the perspective of being aware, we see Christ when we look inside. When we pray, we are not merely becoming aware of our thoughts and feelings (although that is good!), we are learning to be aware of God and to be with God who is with us.

Retraining the heart

It is like this: A man was taking his dog to a field where the animal could run and he ran into another man walking four dogs. They got to the open field and let their dogs go so they could enjoy running around in a big free space. But one of the new friend’s dogs was off to the side running is relatively tight circles and did not join in with the other dogs. The man asked his new friend, “What’s with your dog?” He gave him an explanation. “Before I got this dog, he had spent years living in a cage. He was used to getting all his exercise, just as you see. He has the field, but he is trained for the cage.” I did not see this dog do this personally, so I can’t prove to you that dogs do this, but I do know myself and I have seen many of you who are reading this. We have the wide open field of grace and freedom to romp in but we run in the contours of our former cage. The prayer of contemplation is retraining our hearts to roam the wide open spaces of eternity freely.

  • My heart is like a bird that has escaped from the snare of the fowler (Psalm 123:7).

Our minds tend to run in the obsessive tight circles of our mental cage. We believe we are separate from God, and we were. So now we need to learn something else. I heard something shocking from a friend not long ago. When he was a child his father sang a little ditty that he thought was funny: “Charlie Wilkins is no good. Let’s chop him up like so much wood.” I know this little boy as an old man and you can still see that putrid song playing in his head. Just like that, we may believe we are condemned by God. So now we need to learn freedom. Prayer is the training ground.

When we think about things, we have a cage of thoughts that guide us. Contemplative prayer helps us go beyond them and enter into the silence where we don’t merely think about things, we commune with God. We concentrate attention in our heart to the place of knowing, the place of awareness that is not full of the cacophony of our mind and surroundings but is full of God. It seems like we are just sitting there doing nothing, when we pray and that is exactly right and exactly good. In that nothing of ourselves and our surroundings we enter the silent land of our true being with God.

Next time I will tell you more about how this is done. But, like I said, we don’t need to perfect techniques to pray as much as we need to access the skills that are built in to our beings by our loving Father. Be silent and turn your heart to God whether you think you know what you are doing or not. Take a step of walking by faith, not by sight. You’ll have a good time with God.

[Another version of this post]

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Slow, reflective, imaginative: the spiritual discipline of Lent

A life in the Spirit, , , , , , ,

These are a few basic thoughts distilled from our Ash Wednesday ritual. Lent begins on March 5 this year.

Slow down

We need silence to find the spiritual place where Jesus is with us in our suffering and we are with Jesus in his suffering. Lent is the season of silence and solitude — and suffering. Some people will even “give something up” to cause some small suffering to give space where they can experience something more than their usual anesthesia, avoidance or denial. Ash Wednesday is the beginning of our yearly, disciplined journey of repentance and renewal, the beginning of the concentrated season of self-denial and self-giving that feels like suffering but points us toward joy  Wednesday we enter the great forty-day fast with millions of other Jesus followers – those living and those who have gone before. God bless you as you take your steps along the way of Jesus this year!

The interior journey too
The interior journey too

Let’s go as slowly as possible. We need to be quiet, thoughtful, and restful. We must not be impatient. We must not worry if we don’t feel or understand things right away — there are no expectations of Lent except that we seek after Jesus, explore the meaning of his death, and die with him. Paul shares our goal: I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death,  and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.  Lent in not the imposition of some demanding God, but in solitude God’s presence will be compelling. One of Job’s friends has it right when he says: God is wooing us from the jaws of distress into a spacious place free from restriction. Let’s see how much we can cooperate.

Reflect

Examine yourself; admit the truth about yourself to God; sense the conviction of God’s Spirit pointing out what is self-destructive or what amounts to an alliance with evil. Lent begins with an honest self-assessment. We pause to consider whether we have strayed from home, whether we have gone our own way, whether we are squandering our inheritance, whether we are feeding pigs in some way. The discipline of Lent dares us to be aware of our prodigal sides. We are looking for an awakening like the child in the Lord’s parable: “I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.”

We consider whether our lives sadden the One who gave them. When Paul teaches us about sin he says, “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.” Do not break God’s heart. Do not break up with God, who loves you. Do not turn your back on your lover. Do not live in fear as if you are not loved. Do not hold on to condemnation when you are freed from it. Do not violate the Spirit of love. Ash Wednesday is all about seeing God’s grief and sharing it. Lent is a season for turning back to love and rebuilding it.

Imagine

We have become so unrelated in the world today that the early church rituals like those associated with Lent: ashes on our foreheads, fasting, communal spiritual disciplines all seem quaint to many of us. People of the past seem so tied up with God and one another! They were not anonymous or autonomous. They did not keep their distance. They did not know how to be absently virtual.

mourning, transforming black pines
mourning, transforming black pines

For instance, it is said that very early in the history of the church, it had become a regular practice to have people who had been caught up in serious sin to come to the community of the church seeking a way to re-enter the fellowship in good conscience for the main celebration of the year: Resurrection Sunday (Easter). They would be sprinkled with ashes and then sent off in “exile” from the church, “into the wilderness” with God – they are sent off with the expectation that they would be restored. Their forty-day period of repentance was called their “quarantine,” from the Latin for forty. It soon became common for friends to come with the penitents to receive ashes in solidarity with them and to express the truth that we are all sinners. The leadership of the church finally saw the wisdom in what was going on and encouraged everyone to repent and fast in preparation for the resurrection. By 1050 a pope had made it a requirement.

It makes sense to me to use this tradition as one with all the other Christians throughout history who have gotten the same point. – we need a time to be sick with sin and to get well — to let ourselves experience the grief of being separated, the desperation of our sorrow, the difficulty of having been far away in sin. We need to hope to be restored by Easter. We need to get into the truest story there is: we are the child of the grieving father; we were dying; we need to come back to life. The essence of the discipline of Ash Wednesday is to acknowledge that sin, brokenness and oppression. The call is: Remember from dust you are and to dust you will return.

We are so disconnected from nature and the seasons of the year nowadays. Even in a hard winter we expect to get our unseasonal fruits and vegetables, to travel without restriction, to go about our business as if nothing is happening, surrounded by our artificial environments. The people of the past seem so primitive, forced to live according to the changes around them.

Moving the couch toward the bonfire
Moving the couch toward the bonfire

For instance, in the villages of medieval Europe it was common to mark the beginning of Lent with a huge bonfire in the village square. The fuel for the fire was all the detritus left over in everyone’s house after people were cooped up all winter. In any number of ways people would use the fire to symbolize that winter was soon to be over, the fire was a statement of passion in direct confrontation to the numbness of the cold. It was time to look forward to spring.

Simple, physical symbols like that help us on our spiritual journey through time. Lent is a yearly season for spring cleaning. Ash Wednesday is the day to light the bonfire to burn what needs to be cleaned out. May your garbage be turned to ash. May we rise from our ashes. May we be transformed in a furnace of God’s Spirit burning in us and refining us. May sunrise come to your heart and spring touch your bitterness.

Let something burn. Let it go. Be freed. Be received. Use Lent for spiritual housecleaning. Turn around and remember who you are. Let yourself go. Let something grow. Let the consuming fire of God’s Spirit transform you. Have a vision of what can be.

Go slow. Begin with reflection – the Holy Spirit will help you. Proceed with imagination —  Jesus has made us each a new person.

Related articles

Mental Health Care: Nature Deficit, Information Surfeit

A life in the Spirit, , , , ,

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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The Common Loneliness — Francis Day 2010

Poetry, ,

On Francis of Assisi Day, 2010

It could have been that Francis
crawled out into the bushes of La Verna to die
like an old alley cat —
scrawny from fasting
and disappointed that his dream turned so human.

Or it could have been that Francis
longed so much for home, he couldn’t resist.
Like the prodigal son,
he came to his senses
and gave in to seeking the meal his holy memory could taste.

Either way, he ended up in the wilderness
and the mountain was a lonely silence,
like nothing but a frightened man
with nothing to offer but emptiness.
And yet he had to keep going, step by step, up the hill.

Either way, he ended up alone,
experiencing the pain both of separation and union —
like a young man leaving home
and like a father letting go,
and he aware of it all, yet powerless before it.

It could have been that Francis
did very few of the things people recalled.
But what believer is not so lonely
with disillusion and desire
that they would dare to disabuse us of their own story?