Study cave proving successful

Called convention and District Council took me away from my studies and consumed my attention. Needless to say, coming back I felt the stress of the final paper in my masters studies hanging over me. Sunday night my family graciously helped me transform my basement church office into a study cave - cleaning it, assembling a new desk chair, arranging a number of candles and stocking the fridge with a case of redbull.

This has done me good. I have been making strides in the last couple days. I have nearly completed my literature review and have a good start on my challenge section. At this pace I am pretty comfortable, unfortunately graduation feels like just another distraction as we plan to leave for the Spring Arbor area tomorrow night.

I'll be bald by the time I get my Masters

Elaine was noticing today that my bald spot is much advanced. I think my forehead is growing too. It's not surprising. My body doesn't handle stress well. That's what the doctors have told me every time I go to figure out why I'm fatigued all the time. It's like I'm constitutionally lazy. I want to sleep... a lot. I was telling Fred how much stress I've had, and he asked if I take naps. I laughed. He thought I was laughing at the idea of taking time for a nap, but Elaine told him it was because I take one almost every day.

The ironic thing is that if I'm not under stress, I feel worse. I lay around all day and feel tired with out any reason to it. Then I get nervous. I have that constant nagging feeling I'm forgetting to do something.

At least with my schooling I know I'm getting something done, but lately the nagging feeling is worse. I'm glad Elaine is preaching this week!

She put a poll on our new a/g ministers network asking when we take our days off. So far two have voted for Friday, but she says my vote doesn't count since I'm stuck at home with the kids. "Well, I'm not doing work," I say.
"But you're more frustrated at the end of the day than before," she reminds me.

True but what am I to do? I don't have another day. Besides, the kind of things I'd really like to do, she wouldn't much want to be with me. I'd love to spend the day with Steve and Roderick in Saginaw or go off to a monastery for a retreat. I'd feel mean leaving Elaine stuck at home with the kids.

Oh, well, Elaine says I'll be cute bald.

Spirituality meets pavement

Of all the spiritualities Rolheiser talks about, it is the spirituality of sexuality that has stuck with me most. Through it, I have seen how I can refocus my madness, my eros, into a life giving laser, by offering my relationship with my wife as a true sacrament. Through it I can truly embrace every one, by focusing all my sexual energy on her, I am in a real way focusing it on God. By becoming one with her, I am in a real way becoming one with the cosmos. Crazy stuff! I also like how when I’m not becoming one, when I am feeling acutely the isolation of sleeping alone, even when she’s beside me, I stand in solidarity with the poor and the lonely, the cast offs, and Jesus himself. Though not in the same chapter, Rolheiser talks about taking into oneself the tensions of mystery. I like that.

My spiritual rule would step up my discipline in the contemplative arena. Especially since its fall and I have given up mowing my labyrinth, I need now more than ever to engage in the contemplative. I have greatly enjoyed praying the hours. I need to discipline myself to get back into it. I have always like meditation and contemplation, it fits my personality, but I have been greatly challenged by action. Our forays into social justice have been exciting. I wrote a bit about my environmental goals for blog action day, and I am excited to see where the projects our ministerial have started in the school will go. I also would like to help out a the soup kitchen again regularly.

I always have had a dream of having a coffee-shop while being a spiritual director. I’m not sure God’s dreamt it the same way that I have, but it is interesting that in many ways I’m already doing it. The coffeehouse we’ve started with high school kids has given me many opportunities to interact with them about their spiritual formation. My great goal for taking my masters in Spiritual Formation and Leadership is to learn how to lead people from zero to mystic. What I have already learned is that there is indeed great hope to change people, the church, and the world, and that Hope resides in me as I change myself.

Transparency and vulnerability

What discipline is required for the future leader to overcome the temptation of individual heroism? I would like to propose the discipline of confession and forgiveness. Just as the future leaders must be mystics deeply steeped in contemplative prayer, so also they must be persons always willing to confess their own brokenness and ask for forgiveness from those to whom they minister.

Vulnerability and transparency can help keep me from the temptation to be spectacular. I need to take my journaling in the form of this blog more seriously. It is a discipline that puts myself out there for comment. That isn't always easy but it is humbling.

Henri Nouwen - "In The Name of Jesus"

Yesterday I received some materials for my master's course. One was this amazing little book. I read it in one sitting, so the truths about Christian leadership are resonating in me right now with a multitude of harmonics. It will take some time for me to fully appreciate the melody. There is one note, perhaps a chord, that is really sticking with me tonight.

Nouwen cites one temptation to Christian leaders as being relevance. Relevance is certainly a word we hear a lot about these days, so my interest was piqued. He takes relevance out of its buzz context and talks about our personal desire to feel relevant - to feel that we have something to offer.

I recognize how I often feel small when my perceived relevance isn't having any real impact (that's not really very relevant is it.) Nouwen declares that I can give up this worry. To the world, I am completely irrelevant. That is how it should be. That is not to say that the Church or the gospel should be irrelevant. But I am irrelevant. Anything I have in myself in no way useful to the world. I must rely on God. Nouwen give a powerful weapon to dismantle our habit to seek relevance: contemplative prayer. O how I love this! This is why I long to identify with the Christian Mystics of old. O to only love Christ, and focus all through that lens!

I have been dealing a lot lately with discussions of politics, both church and state. I am trying to hold on to my Love in all these. In that spirit I keep longing for a less pragmatic stance by my brothers in Christ. I feel affirmed and challenged by these words:

"Christian leaders cannot simply be persons who have well-informed opinions about the burning issues of our time. Their leadership must be rooted in the permanent, intimate relationship with the incarnate Word, Jesus, and they need to find there the source for all their words, advice, and guidance. Through the discipline of contemplative prayer, Christian leaders have to learn to listen again and again to the voice of love to find there the wisdom and courage to address whatever issue presents itself to them. Dealing with burning issues without being rooted in a deep personal relationship with God easily leads to divisiveness because, before we know it, our sense of self is caught up in our opinion about a given subject. But when we are securely rooted in personal intimacy with the source of life, it will be possible to remain flexible without being relativistic, convinced without being rigid, willing to confront without being offensive, gentle and forgiving without being soft, and true witnesses with out being manipulative.

"For Christian leadership to be truly fruitful in the future, a movement from the moral to the mystical is required."