Cross in the Woods

At the worlds largest crucifix. 55 ft high made from a redwood tree with a 7 ton crucifix.

rain falls like tears
from your great eyes
consolation
as big as a redwood
seven ton love

Discernment by Consolation and Quadrilateral

The Wesleyan Quadrilateral seems very logical. It is even very helpful. One thing that I am wrestling with is what happens when one or two voices doesn't agree. For instance the scripture says that I can trust God for my daily bread. The tradition of the church has affirmed this in various ways. But my own experience tells me that my checkbook is empty and that the store doesn't give away bread. My reason tells me that I shouldn't trust God.

In order for my reason and experience to be trusted it must be subordinated to the truth of scripture and the higher reality of God in the face of the reality of this age. My experience must be deep and practiced. In comes Ignatius' rules for discernment. As I practice following the consolation I learn to hear the voice of God. I begin to have an experience I can trust. As I come to recognize the voice of God and the accompanying consolation, come to know God. Then God's ultimate reality will become a factor in my mental equations as I reason.

Tonight I was off on another shopping trip when I was struck suddenly by desolation. This time I recognized that this happens often when I am spending money, and the sense of desolation is surely not proportionate with the cause. I struggled to know why this caused me desolation.

Was it that I shouldn't be spending money?
- no, Elaine was convinced that helping Foster buy a Lightening McQueen bike with his birthday money was in God's hands. A lady even gave us a $5 off coupon in the parking lot on our way into the store.

Was it that I didn't trust God?
- I think that is part of it. I think God may have allowed the desolation to teach me that financial security still has quite a hold on me, but at the same time I don't think that God wants me to go on an unbridled spending spree. That seems so contrary to the witness of the gospels (the prosperity so-called-gospel excepted).

Was it that I was spending so much money on toys for me? Again this year a new computer, feeding new toner to our fancy printer, the iPod touch that I got free with the computer, perhaps all my toys made Foster's toy distasteful to me.
- Elaine reminded me that we do give a lot of money all year long, not to mention the substance of our lives. Even so this one stuck with me.

The Wesleyan Quadrilateral helped me track down when my honeyed consolation turned to desolation. What was God telling me? To trust him, and get my eyes off of myself - whether it be my lack of money or my toys - and put them back on him and others.

Now to test the theory and build my experience. Elaine was driving and pulled up to the drive through at Taco Bell to order me dinner. Unexpectedly the guy on the other side of the speaker asked, "Do wanted to give a dollar to help end world hung--" YES! "--er." And just like that immediately consolation flooded me. Such a small thing, and again the feeling was disproportionate to the cause. We followed the consolation giving a bit more.

Remembering this will give me some thing to stick into my reasoning next time we're out shopping. The quadrilateral is, I think, most powerful when positioned within the Rules for Discernment.

Band of Brothers or On The Lost Arts of Holiness

John Wesley had this idea. He would put the members of the Methodist society into bands. A band had half a dozen people of the same gender, so you’d have like a band of brothers or a band of sisters. These bands were a component of the grand schema to foster a spiritual formation that would create holy Christian, well advanced toward perfect love. The bands created a mutual spiritual direction and accountability. Here we have a practice that we have largely forgotten. Wesley Tracy notes that the Wesleyan tradition has also forgotten (Spiritual Direction and the Care of Souls 122).

I am struck by the concept. It seems in our efforts to create viable small groups the revitalization of these Wesleyan methods would be a good idea and not just for Methodists! The questions that Wesley prescribes for bands to consider are relevant and pointed for today (Spiritual Direction and the Care of Souls 121).

1. What temptations have you met with?
2. How were you delivered?
3. What have you thought, said, or done, of which you doubt whether it be sin or not?
4. Have you nothing you desire to keep secret?

As are the questions Foster offers for group examen.


I think these questions could fit well into the structure of inductive bible study that we engage in on Sunday nights. The fellowship and connection having been established, it would be a powerful time to explore the deeper life through this group direction.

I love the full on integration intended in the Wesleyan societies, especially including families. I am thinking it would be cool to incorporate some of Wesley’s order for family devotions, which expand on the one from the Book of Common Prayer, with the notable addition of the blessing the parent gives to each child and is never withheld no matter how bad they have been (Spiritual Direction and the Care of Souls 123).

Listening to God

Vibrations.

Words uttered before time,

Out side of time

Strike the ear of my soul

At just the right time

In the nick of time

You are speaking to me

In the tone of the air

In the timbre of the soul

An angelic voice

Sweet and crystal
Clear bell tone

I hear you around me

Penetrating me - Pervasive

But only gently persuasive

The vibrations pass through me

Like gamma rays

And unseen ways

I hear you when I listen

When I miss you

When I don’t resonate

The crystal goes dead

The tone of my life dying
On my own senses relying

I hear you play your song

On the strings
Of other souls

My heart follows along

Resonating, joining
Undulating, harmonizing,

Strengthening in harmonic bends

As the feedback loops our souls
Back onto you

If we were in charge?

What would the country look like if we (Christians) were in charge? If we had our way with everything what would it look like?

In an interview with The Minnesota Independent, Jeff Sharlet uses her association with the Assemblies of God to paint Sarah Palin as a militant Theocrat.

They actually don’t think they’re theocratic. And they have a way of getting out of that: Theocratic would be if I was a clergy person and sat down and studied the Bible and said, Okay, I’m going to pass this law because in my wisdom, I have seen this in the Bible.

That’s not what they do. They turn themselves over to the spirit. The movement she’s a part of is really holy ghost-powered. What they say is, they’re just being a vessel. A term that a wonky theologian might use is “theo-centric.”

I hope my man Barack Obama, as a man of faith, a man of prayer, would also listen to God. Does that make a person crazy or a theocrat? Does that mean that one has to be militant and intolerant?

Apparently the Assemblies of God is getting a lot of press off of Palin. From the way the A/G is portrayed I wonder 'am I'm in the same church?' I happen to be an Assemblies of God pastor and a democrat supporting Obama. How does that fit the caricature painted in the media? Rich Tatum wrote an introduction to the Assemblies of God for Christianity Today to answer some of the media imprecations.

democrats.com show a video clip from Sarah Palin speaking at a Master's Commission service. Master's Commission is a discipleship program for college age kids to give hands on training for ministry. democrats.com then applies this quote:

If you read the Vision statement (under About), you'll see:

To see young men be men who are not afraid to lead and are violent in their pursuit of righteousness

What exactly does that mean? What kind of violence are the young men being trained and encouraged to engage in?

The website that they reference is not the Assemblies of God Master's Commission but a different discipleship program from Christ Church Kirkland. They seem to have a very different theology. I hope that the wording in their vision statement is simply unfortunate.

Are voices like Sharlet and the "aggressive progressives" at democrats.com right? Is there much to fear?

Perhaps there is some temptation.

We would like things to line up with the Bible, wouldn't we? The temptation is to make the laws of the land the same as the laws of God for living. To make the holy life the only legal life. The religious right is already advocating moral legislation like this. What would it look like taken to the extreme?

Last night Elaine and I watch V for Vendetta. Would the world in which the characters live be what we Christians would create? Would the Koran be banned, owning one a criminal offense? Would homosexuality be made illegal? Would homosexuals be rounded up, imprisoned or killed? What of Justice and Mercy?

Oh God, save us from our distorted view of righteousness. Your ways are higher than our ways, your thoughts are greater. Only you can rule in righteousness with out corruption. Help we, who are progressive, to love mercy even more than change. Help we, who are Christians, to keep love before all else.

Detachment at the Dealership

The loan specialist from Wells Fargo looked at us, his eyes and knit brows conveyed something like, “you’re crazy.” I imagine he thought of us as his own kids and was offering us the help and advice he would offer them.

We had gone to our local car dealership to see what we had won. They had sent out cards to all the postal customers with a prize, we could win a car, at flat screen tv, or a gas card (we won the gas card, odds - 1:1). It was just for fun. We decided while we were there we’d price out some vehicles and see what it would take. Our ’98 Grand Caravan has 194,000 miles on it, so the thought of replacing it has crossed our minds.

As they worked hard to get us into a used Impala, the reality of our budget became clear.

“So basically your ideal monthly payment would be zero…”

“Well that would fit our budget.” Elaine replied. The loan officer shook his head.

“Your van has nearly 200,000 miles on it. You are on borrowed time. What are you going to do when it breaks down. It is really time to think of another car,” he said with a fatherly tone in his voice.

“Well,” Elaine started, “You’re going to think we’re crazy, but God has given us the last four cars we have had, so we figure when this one goes, he’ll give us another one.”

“God’s just going to give you a car?!” And just as if he was frustrated with his children the loan officer found a way out of the room and threw his hands up, no doubt thinking how irresponsible our attitude was.

Well, look at what we make as pastors. There is just no way we could afford a payment and full insurance on a new car. We are completely dependent on God’s provision. He got us into this mess, he’ll get us out of it too.

Mary Albert Darling in The God of intimacy and Action, writes that asceticism when done well helps us to get beyond the things that distract us and allows all the things of the world to “hang lightly on us.” Detachment is a powerful thing. I appreciate that I don’t own the house we live in, it belongs to the church, it is God’s. In a way our car is the same. He gave it to us. It hangs lightly on us. I would like to get the odometer to a quarter of a million miles, but when it finally dies we know God will provide.

Thomas A’Kempis also strikes this chord.

When a man desires a thing too much, he at once becomes ill at ease. A proud and avaricious man never rests, whereas he who is poor and humble of heart lives in a world of peace. An unmortified man is quickly tempted and overcome in small trifling evils; his spirit is weak, in a measure carnal and inclined to sensual things; he can hardly abstain from earthly desires. Hence it makes him sad to forego them; he is quick to anger if reproved. Yet if he satisfies his desires, remorse of conscience overwhelms him because he followed his passions and they did not lead to the peace he sought. True peace of heart, then, is found in resisting passions, not in satisfying them. There is no peace in the carnal man, in the man given to vain attractions, but there is peace in the fervent and spiritual man (Imitation of Christ book 1, chapter 6).

In our experience at the car dealership we tasted both of the conditions A’Kempis speaks about. We were poor and in a place of humility by the grace of God. We are also carnal, and test driving the cars felt good. The assessment of our budget left us feeling depressed - the hopelessness of ever satisfying those desires on our own power.

We are learning detachment to our things and our desires just as Father Fillaret learns it in this clip from the Russian film, “The Island”

The Atonement and Spiritual Direction

In Moon and Benner's book, Spiritual Direction and the Care of Souls, they give a section to Spiritual Direction from various traditions. Gary Temple offers an interesting description of Spiritual Direction in the Episcopal tradition that has me thinking.

I find it interesting that the "snake belly low"* Episcopal churches in America have, in their focus on the Atonement, left out spiritual direction all together (83). Every Thursday I hear from one local Methodist pastor whose congregation has Baptist roots. He has a hard time getting them past their salvation (a product of the blood) to see the importance of sanctification (spiritual formation). He notes that the most cantankerous trouble makers in his congregation often pray "Thank you that you have covered me with your blood," and yet it doesn't seem to amend their lives.

I come from a tradition myself that has a high view of the Atonement, or I should say a tunnel vision view of Atonement. I, too, have seen a reticence among the more evangelistic of my colleagues to see any importance for ministry beyond the salvation altar call. Certainly spiritual direction to many of them would be a foreign concept and a waste of time.

However, Temple offers the way out (94). Couch your high view of the Atonement in a high view of the Incarnation. Now you can appreciate the work of Christ's life as well as his death.

*This was the term used by Anglican retreatants at the Abby while I was on retreat in describing the vast variety in the Anglican Communion, from High Church to low - snake belly low.

Book of Common Prayer: Swiss Army Knife

If the Word of God is a double edged sword then the Book of Common prayer is a Swiss army knife. It is packed with applications. It has every type of service in it that a pastor may need to have, order and liturgy. But in addition it has gadgets that no Episcopal home should be without.

The Catholic Breviary takes four volumes, but packed into just a portion of this volume are the liturgies for the Daily Office, the psalter and a daily lectionary. For the home discipler, there is a liturgy for family or individual devotions and a catechism. You can use a table to figure out when Easter will be, or find a prayer that will collect the thoughts of the day (your pick of modern or high English).

The Anglican church has taken the formation of its people seriously since 1549. The Book of Common prayer, or BCP as those who pack them as folded knives into their pockets call it, has been a powerful tool for seekers and spiritual guides. As Thomas Merton says, liturgy can make it easier to be sincere. Some times even the fastest and loosest among us need a little structure and stricture. The Book of Common prayer has them in abundance.

My copy of the Book of Common Prayer was given to me by Ray Orth a Lutheran Pastor who often fills Episcopal Pulpits. It was given to him by a bishop who plucked it from a pew.

9/11 reflection

These are times of global social crisis in which many people feel insecure and alone. Our reflections lead to the conclusion that we find security in community. if we seek first the Reign of God and its justice, ours security needs will be met (cf. Matt. 6:23). Both security and community arise from faith and from the praxis of solidarity that replaces unjust relations and institutions with just ones. To be genuine and avoid condescension, solidarity must be humility-in-practice. Like the gospel, Ignatius assigns humility a central role in our lives. For only in its soil can love take root, grow and bear fruit. To be authentic, however, humility must be solidarity.

-Dean Brackley, The Call to Discernment

Prayer for beginners

Has my time of prayer been a success? How would you answer that? I remember times of sweet consolation, I remember striking out across my grandparents back yard in the dew of the evening, making my way out into the fields: a stop at the creek, a hike by the pasture and a soak in God’s presence in breeze blowing through a stand of elms. I remember finding God in the sunset, and being knocked on my back by the Spirit’s breath. Fathers Barry and Connolly suggest that such touchstone experiences with God, where God is more real to us than the dew soaking our shoes, provide us a standard to recognize authentic spiritual experiences when they come along (The Practice of Spiritual Direction 104).

It is important for us, as we begin our journey into prayer, to recognize that those times don’t always come. They are gracious gifts, and prayer need not be accompanied by them to be authentic or successful. Still it is tempting for us to seek or even manufacture such experiences to feel we are succeeding at prayer.

When I wasn’t on the farm, I didn’t have the same kind of experience with prayer. When I would go to the prayer room on my dorm floor, I could spend some time in prayer, but I couldn’t work myself into a frenzy of powerful prayer the way some others could. I felt my prayer life was weak, and wanted more. I have found my personal times of prayer hit and miss, and when it is more miss than hit, it is easy to fall out of practice.

So what kind of prayer do we recommend to other beginners? Perhaps the “just do it” isn’t the best advice for prayer. The trainer is at the prayer closet door giving the person a pep talk and opening the door and sends them into battle. The door closes and the darkness and solitude envelops and the pray-er goes says everything he wants and all the nice things she can think to say and in three minutes the time in prayer has become a chore.

Paradoxically a form of prayer can help us pray more effectively from the heart. We Pentecostals tend to believe that if our prayers aren’t spontaneous, they are “vain repetition.” But when the beginners, the disciples, asked Jesus to teach them to pray, he gave them a form. The Lord’s prayer is a great place to start, as beginners we can look to each line and find wealth of meaning. Praying the psalms has been a great experience for me these last few years. That is another form called “The Divine Liturgy.”

Thomas Merton has said,

If we compare the sobriety of the liturgy with the rather effusive emotionalism of books of piety which are supposed to help Christians to ‘meditate,’ we can see at once that the liturgical prayer makes sincerity much easier. The liturgy takes man as he is: a sinner who seeks the mercy of God. The book of piety sometimes takes him as he is only on very rare occasions: on fire with exalted and heroic love, ready to lay down his life in martyrdom, or on the point of feeling his heart pierced by the javelin of mystical love. Most of us, unfortunately, are not ready to lay down our lives in martyrdom most days at six o’clock in the morning or whenever our mental prayer may occur, and most of us have little or nothing to do with javelins of mystical love.

I have found that praying the liturgy of the divine office has given me freedom - freedom to invest meaning into the psalm-prayers rather than working myself into an insincere good feeling. To be sure there is a danger for the novice to make this into law. “I must pray all seven hours every day or I fail” (it is strange that doing anything in this spirit is called by our culture doing it ‘religiously’). I have come to appreciate the benefits of catching a single hour in a day, and have learned not to berate myself for missing out.

Other forms of prayer are also good for the beginner to learn, such as centering prayer or the prayer of examen. Tom Trask, at our ordination service, rightly noted that there is a world of difference between saying prayers and praying. Forms of prayer that help us to listen and get us beyond saying our peace to God help to bring real praying to our prayers and to our work.

Sky-Rocket

Mental prayer is therefore something like a sky-rocket. Kindled by a spark of divine love, the soul streaks heavenward in an act of intelligence as clear and direct as the rocket's trail of fire. Grace has released all the deepest energies of our spirit and assists us to climb to new and unsuspected heights. Nevertheless, our own faculties soon reach their limit. The intelligence can climb no higher into the sky. There is a point where the mind bows its fiery trajectory as if to acknowledge its limitations and proclaim the infinite supremacy of the unattainable God.

But it is here that our 'meditation' reaches its climax. Love again takes the initiative and the rocket 'explodes' in a burst of sacrificial praise. Thus love flings out a hundred burning stars, acts of all kinds, expressing everything that is best in man's spirit, and the soul spends itself in drifting fires that glorify the Name of God while they fall earthward and die away in the night wind!

...The contemplation of 'philosophers,' which is merely intellectual speculation on the divine nature as it is reflected in creatures, would be therefore like a sky-rocket that soared into the sky but never went off. The beauty of the rocket is in its 'death,' and the beauty of mental prayer and of mystical contemplation is in the soul's abandonment and total surrender of itself in an outburst of praise in which it spends itself entirely to bear witness to the transcendent goodness of the infinite God. The rest is silence.

- Thomas Merton

Smells and bells

I love smells and bells! I am not the organized type, I buck structure, perhaps that is why high liturgy has appeal to me, it gives me something I normally lack: discipline.

We protestants are quick to judge Catholics, we grew up with ideas about them. When I first went to some services, I was amazed that any Catholic could be nominal. I found the smells and bells powerful reminders of the mystery. Personality wise they appealed to my imagination and creativity.

But nominal Christians should never surprise us, nor should they cause us to cast nasturtiums on a tradition. They are in fact in every tradition where the culture allows them to comfortably call themselves Christians (the persecuted church has few of these). The practice of infant baptism brings the person in to the church, they can claim that affiliation forever if they wish, and never go to church (not that the church or priest is happy about them doing that). Parents bring their children to be baptized because of cultural tradition and as a form of fire insurance, just in case there is a God, and cross their fingers to the promises they make to bring them up to love God.

Perhaps coming from the outside, with out those cultural impediments allowed me to experience the forms of worship with awe and wonder. Perhaps my experiences with the Spirit allowed me easily to see the forms as full of life, rather than empty religion.

I told the retreatants at the Abby with me, that I wanted to plant a pentecostal church with all the smells and bells. I think they all ready had an inkling that I was crazy.

Taking over the world

I had a dream last night where I was conspiring with some others to take over the world. The discussion started with creating an advertisement for a product every one would want to buy, but the product didn't really exist. Rather their intense desire that could not be fulfilled would render their will ours. Then we thought of creating a wave generator on Antarctica that would hijack the waves of every broadcast radio and TV implanting a subliminal message. When we controlled the world we could finally create a just distribution of wealth. We just had to conspire to supplant the sinful nature of humanity.

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius begin with a focus on sin in the world. Can we choose to meditate on the injustice and sin that controls this world? Can we look with unblinking eye at our own sin and the systems that we participate in? Can we do this with out hopeless despair and condemnation, but rather find in it the grace of God to live and supplant the system of this world?

Brackely suggests that the role of spiritual formation espoused by the exercises are to bring us into the Reign of God (The Call to Discernment 26). As Dallas Willard notes, this is a Divine Conspiracy to bring the world into the kingdom of God.

All of the great roles of the director as listener, mediator, doctor and the rest my friends and mentors in this class all come down to one thing, making the Kingdom and the King real in the lives and practice of the directees. It is the selfless subversion of the greatest order.

Perhaps being a spiritual director is like being Che Guevara to some one, inspiring them to the revolution, or that could just be the ad for the proletariat green viva barista t-shirt talking!