Nugget for Reflection - The Prayer of Silence

Companions,

The wise tell us that God abides

In silence.

That God speaks in the silent serenity

of the heart.

Let us not speak of silence,

Rather, let silence speak to us

of God.

 

Together,

let us enter through the door of serenity,

the silence of our hearts.

 

The chatter of our tears, our angers, our anxiety,

the chatter of our desires and curiosity,

of our projected plans and unfinished work

falls away in serenity

and makes space.

An open space

to a new heart,

Created in the silence of prayer.

Created in the prayer of silence.

 

A heart that is free,

peaceful, quiet, and calm.

A heart that is one.

 

A heart so large and wide

that it embraces the God of all and the all of God.

The God who in silence speaks all languages.

The God who in silence speaks in all creatures.

The God who in silence speaks one word.

The God who speaks of Love.

 

Source: Benedictine Monks of Weston Priory

Getting Out of God's Way

I think too much.  And I often catch myself looking for "rules," magic formulas for being acceptable or belonging or being "good."  And I am often distracted from action by a thought or a phrase or a word that sets my mind going.  I wear out my mind way more often than I wear out my body.  I have been aware for a long time that God wants more from me than my over-active head,

I also don't really know much about how to play--spontaneous, completely-in-the-moment enjoyment of just about anything that does not require processing, planning, or productivity.  The one activity that has been consistently a source of relaxation is reading fiction--not even "good" fiction, but murder mysteries, fantasy, science fiction (yes, I know, that's "in my mind" again...God's working on this!).  I also read some books over and over; I call this "babysitting reading," because it helps me stop thinking so much and working on who I think I should be.

I'm recovering from being addicted to working on myself--trying to change those things that I can't accept or that I perceive as getting in the way of who I think God is creating me to be.  This includes processing, looking for answers in self-help books, other people's stories, even "prayer" that focuses too much on me and not enough on God or those for whom I know I am directed to pray.

It's been coming to my attention that these patterns (and probably many others) have a lot more to do with the self-image that I cherish as my identity than with being truly free for God to do with me as God desires for God's purposes.  That self-image includes many labels from the past, many from the culture around me, and some from wishful thinking.  I've tried to let go of many of these (which has required much thinking!), and to surrender others that I cling to for God to do the removal. And God has granted much relief. 

But I still notice myself trying to figure out where God is going with me, what will be the results of this or that action, why things happen (in my life and in the world).  What if I just show up, stay present in the moment and in all of my being (body and emotions as well as mind), and trust God to be God (instead of trying the do-it-yourself way, such a temptation to try to be God rather than being God's creature)?  It's a scary thought, but it also looks like it might be way less of a burden than trying to think my way out of....whatever.

I want more than anything to love God and be present to God for whatever God wants to do with me--and no, I can't think my way into loving God more, either.  God, help me love you and STAY OUT OF YOUR WAY.

A Nugget for Reflection - Being Still with God as healing

From an excellent book I am enjoying a great deal, Listening for the Soul: Pastoral Care and Spiritual Direction, by Jean Stairs.  I will be posting a review once I have finished reading it, but this quote jumped out at me this morning:

"Quieting down and focusing long enough to listen to the voice of God within us and within our noisy circumstances is perhaps one of the most important things we can do for ourselves and others at a time when we feel held against our will by the force of hurried living.  It is the apparent incongruity with the whole direction of modern life that make contemplation profoundly healing.  No longer should contemplation be an optional item on a list of things to do, but it should be seen as the breath of life for us and others." (p. 42)

I will be posting more quotes from this book!

MUST.SLOW.DOWN

I thought I had slowed down quite a bit, as I have crafted/am crafting a container for my life that includes a lot of silence and stillness.  But I have been hearing lately in prayer (and as I pray about signals my body is giving me, yes, I'm getting older but I think there is also a message here...) that I need to slow down even more.  Lately this includes noticing when I am gobbling books on spirituality or theology, or when I have spent too much time on Facebook or other electronic connections, while not paying attention to things in my "container" that need to be done.  I am also noticing that multi-tasking and trying to accomplish work too quickly is feeling more and more contradictory of what I know about what nourishes my health (spiritually as well as physically). (Excuse me while I take some calls and answer some emails....)

As I look back, I see many little lessons that have pointed in this direction.  Many years ago, I used to walk to work in DC and noticed that I was rushing through the blocks and then waiting impatiently for the pedestrian signal to change.  I experimented a few times with walking at my natural pace (much slower than when I rushed) and discovered I actually got to work more quickly and less exhausted, as well as enjoying the walk more and noticing things I missed when I was rushing.  And I remember a number of times when, because I did not allow enough time to get things done, I rushed and lost or broke or failed or even fell and hurt myself.  I also get anxious when I know I have to rush, and am learning to allow more time; and sometimes I get places early and calm but I used to (and sometimes still do) get there rushed and on the verge of late and not as present as I would like to be.

I have stepped away from a number of activities over the past several years, from volunteering and from church committees and from being part of a lot of organizations.  I always struggle with whether I am being irresponsible and putting pressure on other people to step up to do things I am not doing (and if that is true, I am sorry and would like to hear about it).  But I also know that when I have too many commitments outside of work and the ministry of spiritual direction, I am not being fully present to the activities I do out of a sense of "should," so I don't do them well or with intention, and then I am also frazzled with the things I am called to do.  So I have to balance, over time, what I feel called to do (and these activities are not about making me happy, sometimes I am called to do things I really don't want to do) and what other people would like me to do, with protecting the quiet time I need to be the spiritual director I believe I am called to be, present and attentive and as free of my own "stuff" as possible when I meet with people.

How do you balance taking the time you need to be present and attentive to your soul and to God with your responsibilities to other people?

Jesus OR? Christianity???

I read one of Brian McLaren's questions last night in A New Kind of Christianity, and it brought together a whole lot of ideas I have been thinking about for quite a while, for myself personally, and as a spiritual director.

"How does spiritual formation in the way of Jesus differ from religious education in the way of Christianity?" (p. 170).

A few years ago, I was listening to a directee share about difficulties he was encountering with participating in institutional Christianity.  And I have had many of the same difficulties.  Then he asked me, "so what keeps you connected to Christianity?"  The answer popped out of my mouth so fast, both of us were startled:  "It's Jesus!"  I have continued to reflect on the deep truth of that answer for me and for who I believe God is calling me to be.  My own journey as a follower of Jesus began during a prayer group (40 years ago last month), when my inner being felt overwhelmed by love that I knew, without any doubt, was that of Jesus for me.  That experience of deep, unconditional, unmerited and consistent Love has been the "touchstone" of my journey as a Christian.

Lately, I (and many other people) are finding that it can be embarrassing to identify as a Christian:  there are so many ways that some Christians and some churches are demonstrating hate, judgment, rejection of anyone who is different, scandalous/abusive behavior, greed....the list could go on.  I looked for a quote I have heard attributed to Mahatma Gandhi, "I like your Christ.  I do not like your Christians.  Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."  (The attribution to him is disputed, but it is still a good quote!)

So, back to McLaren's question:  how do I become more like Jesus?  How do I "live Christ," or, as Paul said, what does it look like to say "I have been crucified with Christ and yet I am alive; yet it is no longer I, but Christ living me."  (Galatians 5:19b-20)  I know I can only to do that, only one moment at a time, and only by the continuing grace of God.  I do need the fellowship of other followers of Jesus, in the church I attend, in the church as "the body of Christ" (locally and globally, past, present, and future), and with other seekers who yearn to know God deeply, whatever that looks like for and in them. 

When I focus on Jesus and who he calls me to be, the many problems I have with the institutional church and with "Christians" whose behavior makes me cringe (as I am sure my behavior does for others at times!), become the background, not the foreground, of what it means for me to be a follower of Jesus.  What if the goal of church could become, as McLaren says on the same page, "not simply to pump knowledge into people, but to train them in the "way of love," so they may do the "work of the Lord," empowered by the Holy Spirity, as the embodiment of Christ."?

What do YOU think?

Rubber Meeting the Road, on days when being faithful is hard

I am being reminded in prayer (again) that the reason I am blogging and developing my spiritual direction practice is because I feel called to these ministries.  I get tangled up in worrying about whether I will be successful or if I may have made a mistake in discerning my calling, or maybe no one really wants what I have to offer (an old voice in my head, the tape of which I sense God trying to erase).  I am not writing this today because I am trying to elicit responses, but because I need to be reminded that my only criteria for "success" is whether or not I am being faithful to what I believe God wants me to do.  I need to speak this truth for myself and as a witness, today, for anyone who reads this, to the challenges of setting aside all other criteria.  Doubt, distraction, fear, anxiety, all compete for my attention with the still, small voice I trust is coming from God. 

I believe that God is affirming my call in many small ways, drawing my attention to books I need to read, ways I need to reach out, prayers I need to pray.  I also am connecting to a number of people, my pastor, my spiritual director, spiritual friends, other spiritual directors, who affirm what I am doing.  I have to trust one moment at a time and keep responding to the guidance I receive in prayer and from others.  How seductive it is to long for approval, numbers, acclaim, "success" in the way the world defines it, and how utterly distracting it is from who God is calling me to be when I move toward those markers.

The quote below is one I have returned to over and over since one of my spiritual directors, many years ago, gave me her copy of Evelyn Underhill's The Spiritual Life. I need to read this again often at this stage of my journey:

"Our place is not the auditorium but the stage—or, as the case may be, the field, workshop, study, laboratory—because we ourselves form part of the creative apparatus of God, or at least are meant to form part of the creative apparatus of God. He made us in order to use us, and use us in the most profitable way; for His purpose, not ours. To live a spiritual life means subordinating all other interests to that single fact. Sometimes our positions seems to be that of tools; taken up when wanted, used in ways which we had not expected for an object on which our opinion is not asked, and then laid down. Sometimes we are the currency used in some great operation, of which the purpose is not revealed to us. Sometimes we are servants, left year in, year out to the same monotonous job. Sometimes we are conscious fellow-workers with the Perfect, striving to bring the Kingdom in. But whatever our particular place or job may be, it means the austere conditions of the workshop, not the free-lance activities of the messy but well-meaning amateur; clocking in at the right time and tending the machine in the right way. Sometimes, perhaps, carrying on for years with a machine we do not very well understand and do not enjoy; because it needs doing, and no one else is available. Or accepting the situation quite quietly, when a job we felt that we were managing excellently is taken away. Taking responsibility if we are called to it, or just bringing the workers their dinner, cleaning and sharpening the tools. All self-willed choices and obstinacy drained out of what we thought to be our work; so that it becomes more and more God’s work in us."

Believing Impossible Things at the Same Time

I have been reading Richard Rohr's The Naked Now:  Learning to See as the Mystics See, and last Friday and Saturday I joined a sold-out crowd of other spiritual directors, ministers, and seekers, to hear him "unpack" his call to spirituality that is contemplative and non-dualistic.  I  (and many others) sense he is on to something as he writes and speaks about the need for both dualistic and non-dualistic thinking, about the importance of contemplative practice for moving beyond the "pigeonholes" of duality.

Duality is either/or, comparative, labelling thinking, that we need as we grow up and discover who we are in the world around us.  We can't know what "short" is unless we know what "tall" is; we can't know what "up" means unless we learn what the word "down" means.  We need these words and many others to try to make some sense of the world and who we are in relation to that world.  The problem with duality comes, as Richard says, when we confuse words with reality: we become imprisoned in the illusion that our words are adequate to describe the essence of things.  And the tragedy of dualistic thinking is that we use it to label and judge and distance people and groups and values, so that we believe we are "in," they are "out," we are "right," and they are "wrong," we are "good" and they are "bad."  These distinctions can help us feel superior, safe, better about our selves (that we know deep down are really not that different from the "other").  But they are also terribly limiting...how do we transcend the boxes in which we find ourselves trapped?

What if that was what Jesus was trying to teach us when he said things like "anyone who wants to become great among you must be your servant, and anyone who wants to be first among you must be your slave" (Matthew 20:25, referring back to the story of those who "unfairly" received the same wage for working one hour as those who had worked all day, verses 1-16)?  And the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) is full of sayings that are so hard to understand that most of us for most of Christian history, have thought, "oh, that's nice" while we bypassed trying to hear what Jesus was calling us to: a life that goes beyond the labels of words, the categories that make us comfortable, the fuller, more abundant life that God was calling us to in that ultimate paradox of God becoming human, as a BABY (how fragile, how risky, how very strange).

Jesus the teacher of non-duality, trying to get us to transcend (go beyond the limits of) our labels and categories and comfort zones: what a concept!  And how hard it has been for us to "get it."  So hard, in fact, that his ultimate act of non-duality was to accept crucifixion as a consequence of his love for us, and then, THEN, come back to life after his disciples thought their world had ended.  And we have had such a hard time understanding the deep implications of this, that (among other ways of trying to understand), Catholics have focused on the crucifixion (using the crucifix for all images of the Cross) and Protestants have focused on the resurrection (the "empty" Cross).

I'm not saying I really "get" the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus more than anyone else.  But it's where words fail me and I have moments of utter awe and glimmers of how great Jesus' love for me, you, the world, was/is, to take his commitment to us to that extreme, that I move, a little, out of the boxes and categories into an experience, even if it's just for a split second, of just how much God loves me--and you, and the world.  And that's also where contemplative prayer, just sitting and focusing on God, brings me, beyond the words to the deeper reality that words can never adequately express.  That practice, which is simple but never easy, has become the "place" to which God keeps drawing me back, to reach the deepest parts of my being, beyond words.  I long for companions with whom to share this practice; will you join me, once in a while?