My deepest longing for growth in Spirituality fall into two categories: disciplines I have tried, love and have fallen out of practice, and experiencing true intimacy with others on the journey.
Borrowing some from
Rolheiser, I would define Spirituality as what we do to sort out and express the divine madness in our souls. The restless longing of the dreamer, the quixotic refusing to accept the surface reality, the madness given by the gods by which we hunger for more, for meaning, for completion. Spirituality seeks to express these longings and fill them with something Divine.
At the beginning of the television series
Heroes, Mohinder Suresh asks what it means to be in the image of God,
"Where does it come from? This quest? This need to solve life's mysteries though the simplest of questions can never be answered. Why are we here? What is the soul? Why do we dream?
Perhaps we'd be better off not looking at all. [But] that's not human nature. Not the human heart. That is not why we are here."
It is indeed maddening to seek transformation into the image of our creator. A Holy Madness is appropriate for all who lay themselves down on the operating for this intense surgery. To be conformed into the image of Christ is to be made into the Human of Design, to be the kind of person who looks out for others, the kind of person who is not only holy as his maker is holy, but is also to be the kind of citizen that would make a truly just world possible. It would be making a world the way God had intended it.
This formation into the image of Christ is not an undertaking, but rather an in-working. In John 21 the disciples fished all night and caught nothing, but a word from Jesus and their own effort to cast the net and haul it in was met with the grace of 153 large fish
(Thompson 8). We can work all night long and get nowhere, but how blest our work can be when we do just those actions Jesus has directed us. We clothe ourselves with him as we hear his voice. We put flesh on the word, we incarnate it, this is the way of spiritual formation.
I have heard the voice of Christ calling me to cast my net in the waters of certain disciplines. Those disciplines that I have loved and have fallen into disuse comprise a surprise longing which Calhoun unearthed for me. I went to her Spiritual Growth Planner sensing a longing for community, but found I was missing my Love. I have had wonderful experiences praying the hours, or walking in the fields at my Grandparents’ farm talking with Him. As I went through Calhoun’s assessment I felt that holy madness, that longing to be open to God, laid bare. Deep with in me there is some feeling that I have been holding back. As Foster points out
(4-5) this will take replacing the habits of sin with new habits, those disciplines I love so much, and allowing God’s grace to move on me.
The other area of longing is that sense of community that I was aware of as I went into the assessment. I long for my worship to be met and underscored with the intimacy of those around me. I want to move my relationships past acquaintance to mentoring, discipleship, and spiritual friendship. I long to know people and be known. I want to share authentically what Webber’s dinner guest called “a good story!”
(Webber 15). Not just with words but by participating in God’s story with the people around me.
The disciplines I find myself longing to repeat and those to be practiced corporately draw on the well of tradition. For people in Assembly of God circles, tradition means death. Tradition is what we threw out. It is the obstacle to saving and fresh experience. Tradition is religion and religion is no religion at all but rather something to isolate us from God. All the while we have our own tradition. Birthed out of beautiful and effervescent experience of our grandparents, quickly our tradition became a substitute for the reality and a check against anything new and creative. Truly this is the story oft repeated. The story has itself become tradition as one Church has given birth to gossamer denominations. Tradition gives form as a gift to people, some where along the way they drink the life from the form and nothing is left but an empty shell. The empty form of tradition goes along until someone give it back its soul, or moves on to a new form.
“In reappropriating the best of Christian tradition, we discover a feast for hungry hearts. Indeed, I might caution against a temptation to gluttony! The sources are rich and need to be taken in small bites” (Thompson 14).
To discover God, true life, through the wonders and mysteries found in that richness, is indeed a fearful thing. That is not to say I’m particularly anxious about it, except for the loss of every moment I’m not immersed in his crushing depths, but I have this feeling down in the deep that persuades me that to truly find him means to die. I meet this feeling not with timidity, but with eye burning resolve. Come what may, I want your depths lord. My prayer echo’s that of
John Donne:
Batter my heart, three person'd God; for, you
As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow mee,'and bend
Your force, to breake, blow, burn and make me new.
I, like an usurpt towne, to'another due,
Labour to'admit you, but Oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in mee, mee should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weake or untrue.
Yet dearley'I love you,'and would be loved faine,
But am betroth'd unto your enemie:
Divorce mee,'untie, or breake that knot againe,
Take mee to you, imprison mee, for I
Except you'enthrall mee, never shall be free,
Nor ever chast, except you ravish mee.
If it brings more glory to you that I burn in hell, put me there immediately. If my life can bring you more glory then may I live a shining life in your presence.
My soul within me cries to you, my chin quivers and my eyes burn hot with tears! Oh to know you more dearly! Oh to give you more pleasure and glory, even if that were to mean my own death or separation from you! Thank you that it doesn’t, that you want to be near me. That final thought breaks the dam and my tears fall, weeping, washing away tradition's stone, filling her again with soul and life.
