Spiritual Direction Resources

Flying Jesus Day

I believe …
Jesus Christ…
was crucified, died and was buried;
he descended into hell;
on the third day he rose again from the dead;
he ascended into heaven,
and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty;
from there he will come to judge the living and the dead.

I think Ascension Day brings completion to our meditation on the Paschal Mystery.  This is the work of spiritual formation. It is the stuff of discipline that brings us to transformation. With Christ we were crucified, died and were buried.  We have died to ourselves and have new meaning brought to our every little death.  We also enter into the Paschal Mystery when with Christ we can safely descend into the hell of our past pain and traumas.  I remember reading Parker Palmer talk about the mystery of depression.  He quoted Annie Dillard saying we are invited to ride the monsters all the way down off the rim of the world to find God.   Then the Paschal Mystery invites us to look up.

I love to gaze at the sky.  I love a clear blue day with a few high cumulus clouds.  They give me a sense of how high is the sky. I realize that I am looking through literally miles of air. There is a height to the sky. I was telling a group of kids in chapel this yesterday and a girl interrupted me laughing and said, “You’re wearing green slippers.”

“No,” I said, “They’re shoes.” Imagine thinking my immensely cool Toms were slippers!

I went on to tell them about how I love to look up at night at the stars. I mean, if you think you get a sense of distance from the clouds, imagine how far you are seeing when you look at the galaxies! And to think that is where Jesus went. I mean where do we always think of heaven as being?

Again the girl laughs at my slippers.  “But we’re supposed to be looking up not down at my slippers (I mean shoes),” I quipped. Then I remembered what Dallas Willard said about the Jewish conception of the heavens.  “So why did Jesus go into the heavens?” I asked.  “So that he could send us the Spirit and show us that he would always be near us, because the heavens start way up at the stars and galaxies and come right down under my green slippers.”

Ascension takes the Paschal Mystery and leaves us looking up. We learn to let go and yet live in a spirit of expectation. “This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11b NIV).  In about 10 days we get a glimpse of that Paschal reality as our guarantee, the Holy Spirit, is shed abroad in our hearts.

A Blessing For My Neighborhood

It is a cool day, yet the air is thick with dew. The clouds drift to the east in patches of light and dark. They are surprisingly fast. Only a slight breeze stirs the tops of the trees that line the street. A jumble of cars park under the trees in front of close fitting houses. The rain threatens, but children continue to play in protest, bouncing basketballs down the sidewalk or threading bicycles between cars. The porch on a day such as this is an attempt at comfort in the midst of confusion. The confusion of jumbled parked cars mirrors the jumble of clouds drifting off in the eastern sky. Even the direction is wrong; the clouds seem to be running away from their home in the sunset. The birds seem angry at one another as they chatter in the branches, trying to assert their territory.

A car with the horn of a train blasts at a couple of preschool children playing at the end of a drive way. The woman driving echoes the blast,

“Where the f*** is your mama?!”

“I don’t know,” the by replies take a step toward the road.

“Get the f*** out of the road!” The woman blasts back. “What’s wrong with you! These two are playing in the f***ing road!” she blasts in the direction of an unseen neighbor. And she is gone, apologizing to the other drivers, and cursing the children.

Is there something in the close fitting houses, in the oppressive clouds, in the unrefreshing breeze that is affecting us today? Is something external making birds and neighbors alike flare with anger? Or is it something within? Do we overflow with pain and contempt, heavy with it like the humid air?

Father, I offer this blessing for my neighborhood. May the streets here lined with trees and close houses be filled with joy. May the chatter of birds and squirrels mix with the giggles of children. May neighbor smile at neighbor and feel the knots of brotherhood constrain their hearts. May the transforming power of Christ lift the oppression that hangs over my street like the dense cloudbank that threatens rain. Tear open the sky! Bless Bay City.

My Holy Week

"I may never pass this way again."

I kept telling myself this as I went from church to church. When I am attached again to a congregation, how would I be as free to hang out with other churches?

 Maundy Thursday, I missed my chance to go to St. Alban's healing service.  The kids swimming lessons kept us too late.  So we had communion at our community dinner. That was great, but we should have had a foot washing.

Good Friday, I felt the sorrow and needed a service. (I have been accused of being a church addict this week.)  We missed the noon time services, but I ran into Pastor Isaac Chung from Westminster Presbyterian at Populace Coffee, and they were having a 7:00 Tenebre service that Ella and I went to.  Ella was very impressed with the progressive darkening of the sanctuary and our leaving by our lighted candles.

Saturday I spent with the folks at Trinity Episcopal church. This was the first Easter Vigil service I have been to.  It is similar to praying vigils at the monastery.  Communion and the word made this service awesome and got me dreaming of doing a vigil service that actually lasted all night.

Sunday morning was busy. I went to the sunrise service at Carroll Park.  This is put on every year by the youth at First Presbyterian. The service started at 6:45.  I loved watching the clouds light up with reds as the sun rose in the East, while the moon hung large and orange in the West. Another great feature of this service was the family friendly nature, with an egg hunt, donuts, and hot chocolate and coffee to drive away the chill.

Since it was still early I headed back to Westminster for their 8:00 service. Then home for breakfast where I discovered that the daughter of our church planting partners was in the hospital in Midland receiving an appendectomy.  Elaine grabbed some flowers from the flower bed and we took off for the hospital on our way to church.  The kids went with Grandma, and met us at church.

Sharing Holy Week with so many congregations as a stranger made me really appreciate the body of Christ in its vastness and diversity.  All these disparate people were celebrating the same reality of the resurrection.  I am grateful to be a part of such a body and rich tradition.

Hosanna!

This Palm Sunday I was struck by the power behind this word.  Hosanna is a cry meaning "save now, I beg you!"  That this cry of desperation is also the cry of exultation the crowds shout, appropriating Psalm 118, as Jesus enters the city hit me.

Sunday night I went to the College and Career Connection at CCC with much stress. I am underemployed and finances are getting to a place of hopelessness. Yet, here I am to worship with a bunch of fiery brands for whom worship is a thing of righteous abandon.  Hosanna became for me the cry of abandon it was for the crowd that day Jesus rode into town. Save me I beg! For you are the King!  You are the one who owns the cattle on a thousand hills! You have all provision and can supply my family's every need! You are worthy to be king of my life! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!  Blessed is the Kingdom come!  All of that is wrapped up in the cry Hosanna! 

What a way to start Holy Week!

The dessert and the Paschal Mystery

See what other thoughts on Lent are on the MSFL blog.

Sister Ginny, my spiritual director, suggested that I spend some time in the dessert with Jesus.  She sensed in our conversation that it would be a good picture of where I am emotionally.  I have been mourning some deaths lately. I lost a dream job at the local coffee shop, where I was roasting and making sure the coffees were of highest quality. It wasn't for a bad reason, either, the owner just grew to appreciate how much he wanted to continue to do the things he hired me to do.  Still, I loved that job and mourn its death.  I also mourn my sense of direction, or at least clarity of what I am doing.  I am waiting.  Elaine and I are part of a church planting team here in Bay City now, but what do I do while we wait to get started?  And where do I find meaningful work to support my family? I am in the desert.

I am reminded that Lent is an invitation to the desert. We are invited to spend 40 days with Jesus in the wilderness, just as he spent 40 years with the Israelites as they wandered. We are invited to do this in preparation for our baptism into his death and resurrection, our entry into the Promised Land.

This is not an easy place to dwell, the desert. It is a wild place, where shadows of crosses spread across the sand and snakes ply their schemes. The scenery in this wilderness is uncomfortable to look upon, and yet that is precisely why we are here to gaze on the things in the desert places. We are entering into the Paschal Mystery. This is the mysterious way God takes death, the death of God’s son, Jesus, and makes life, eternal life for all people. We are invited to enter into this mystery with the deaths in our lives. Not only the big deaths of loved ones, but we enter also into the mystery with the death of our dreams, our youth, or a job. We are invited to gaze into the mystery and let God transform our deaths into life.

We are reminded of the story of the Israelites who complained on their way through the wilderness. They grumbled saying they wouldn’t eat the food that God gave them – that they wouldn’t take another bite, they would just lie down and die. God in his justice answered their prayer. The last bite they would have to take would not be manna but a bite from a snake. Then they would indeed lie down and would die.

Moses prayed, asking God to save his people. The Lord told Moses a strange thing. He told Moses to make a copper copperhead, a serpenty-serpent as fiery red as the burning of their bites and fever. Anyone who looked on this image of suffering, this thing that had become death in the eyes of the people, would be saved. They had to stare death in the eyes to receive their healing.

“And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,” Jesus says, “so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life” (John 3:14-15 NRSV). This is good news for our spiritual formation. Lent invites us to put away our triumph for a time and recall the suffering. It invites us to participate, to fellowship in the suffering of Christ.

Centering prayer is a good practice for this reason. We can begin by closing our eyes, and breathing deeply the dessert air around us. Borrowing form the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius, we can enter into the story for a moment, turn our eyes to the cross, feel the desolate wilderness, lock eyes with death. Then as we kneel at the foot of the cross comes the most important part of centering prayer. We must let go of our agenda. We must let die all of our desires for what we want from God. We are in the wilderness, away from all that distracts and calls our attention. Even our good desires and good thoughts of God must give way so that God can do as God pleases in our hearts. We must even look over the shoulder of Jesus on the cross and turn our gaze on the awful abyss of mystery: God. Lent is an invitation well suited for dwelling there for a time. Don’t hurry. Lock the eyes of your soul on God, through the suffering, and pour your love on God.

The erotic foundations of Love

This month we are talking about love over on the Spirtual Formation and Leadership blog.

Love is a many splendored thing, so the crooners tell us. We are familiar with the Greek thoughts on the subject, three classifications: Eros, Phileo and Agape. Agape is the unconditional perfect Love of God. Phileo we know as the brotherly love, the best Peter could muster when Jesus asked if Peter loved him. Eros has a dirty, unacceptable quality in our minds equal in essence to lust. I submit that this descending valuation of love isn’t true to the God who is love, nor perfectly helpful to our spiritual formation.

Poor Folk

Poor Folk by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This book is a collection of letters between a poor civil servant and a ruined ill young woman with an unfortunate past. The charm of the story lies in what is not said. What happens when the two are together? How do the emotions, just hinted at in the letters, drive the story? The final letter is left unfinished. How does the story end? The possibilities excite the imagination and carry the reader away into Dostoyevsky's world. Even without his characteristic lush descriptions of place and people, even without any dialog, Dostoyevsky's genius shines.



View all my reviews

New schools

This morning we brought Foster and Ella to their new school.  It brought back memories and anxieties from the first days of new schools in my childhood.  I remember the first time I visited my classroom in Northfield, being pegged as a nerd.  O the days clinging white knuckled to the doorframe of the girls bathroom, straining against being pushed in!

On our way up the stairs to Ella’s class, she exclaimed, “This is better than my old school! We didn’t have an upstairs.” I remember the embarrassment of being in a bigger elementary school for half of fourth grade and after three or four weeks still afraid of going to the library by myself, afraid I’d loose my way.  I remember the teacher’s exasperation when I asked if my friend Dean could accompany me.  What a blessing it was to have some ready made friends from church at that new school!

I hope Foster and Ella find friends quickly and no bullies.  Foster had a substitute teacher today.  Unfortunately nothing was prepared for him.  He had no locker or desk. The substitute did her best to find to find a temporary place for him in a class of thirty.  I can only imagine how his regimented methodical mind adapted to a world with no place for him or his things.