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.

The Church and all its Blemishes

We've been talking about this over on the Spring Arbor Spiritual Formation blog.

Renovation of the Church: What Happens When a Seeker Church Discovers Spiritual Formation by Kent Carlson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read Renovation Of The Church against the backdrop of resigning as pastor of my church. Kent Carlson and Mike Lueken brought me to much introspection and healing, in the face of that transition, with their theology of church. I identified with their struggles and could feel the pain of their transition. A few times their words stopped me in my tracks and brought tears to my eyes as they spoke straight to the wounds in my heart.

After eight years at our church it was becoming clear that our vision of a church that embraces life in the kingdom wasn’t being embraced. We faced the heartbreak of a congregation that would rather cease to be than come to new life. I struggled with my fruitfulness at this church. If Jesus said that Father is glorified in my bearing much fruit (John 15:8), I want to bear fruit! Renovation challenged me again in my struggle, was my expectation of what fruit looked like too tied to measures and metrics? Was it pride that made me want to leave when I felt rejected?

In the midst of the pain inflicted by the backlash to what turned out to be our final push to vibrancy, I held dark thoughts about the dear saints in our pews. It was a healing corrective to hear that the church was to be a messy place, that we aren’t called to make a sect of the in-crowd. They reminded me of my opportunity to bless those who curse you.

As I mentioned earlier to Rob, this reminded me of Ronald Rolheiser’s comments on Sarx in The Holy Longing. The flesh (sarx) that Jesus tells us we must eat to be his is the messy troublesome flesh of his body, the church. We must participate in the imperfect masterpiece, or as Switchfoot pens it, “the beautiful letdown” that is the church. Mike writes, “Our hearts grow bigger for God by worshiping next to they guy who hates to sing, doesn’t know the words and things the tune is lame. We are spiritually better off being in a community with both the committed and marginal” (107). Over the years I have found it difficult to worship where I don’t trust that guy next to me to be longing for intimacy with Jesus.

Last night I went to the Christmas Vigil service at an Episcopal church a few blocks from our new home. I sat behind a couple of young ladies who were clearly there because one of them belonged to the family filling that pew. Their sidelong glances betrayed their mild disdain for what was happening in the service. I remembered Mike’s words and I silently blessed them from behind. In the midst of those who might have been there only to satisfy relatives or admire music and the memorial poinsettias, we did together hear and respond to the Gospel!

I write this on the first Sunday that I haven’t been the pastor of a small church in eight years. I am still mourning the loss as well as enjoying the freedom. I greatly appreciated Kent and Mike in their honesty and transparency. In their story I know I am not alone in my pain or my joys. I rejoice to see Oak Hills as an example that what we’ve been wanting and talking about for so many years is possible. It is a great joy for those of us dreaming of spiritual formation in the church. I also can’t help but appreciate a couple of guys who have so fully imbibed Dallas Willard’s thoughts, they can’t help but spill out on the page. That makes them feel like old friends to me.

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Parents as Spiritual Directors

Then little children were being brought to him in order that he might lay his hands on them and pray. The disciples spoke sternly to those who brought them; but Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.’ And he laid his hands on them and went on his way.[1]

Who would doubt Jesus’ sincerity about wanting children to come to him? Yet the actions of many in the church imply that we don’t believe children can really access the depths of relationship with Christ. There are challenges associated with the spirituality of children, to be sure, but against them stand the very nature of God and ancient practices that can assist children on the way.

Challenge

When I was a teenager I was delighted to be ministering to children. I felt called to children’s ministry as a child and as a teenager I was already realizing the dream.  However, one Sunday morning shook my convictions so violently that, for a time, I abandoned the thought of ministry to children. A new pastor had just taken over the children’s ministry that I had been running with some friends. I was helping her this particular Sunday when she invited the children to respond to a salvation message. I saw many children finding places of prayer, asking Jesus to be their Savior.  Instead of producing joy, this event rocked me to my core.  Many of these children were already saved and had in the weeks and months before been finding places of prayer to deepen their relationships with God and seek the baptism in the Holy Spirit.  I was immediately faced with the question: Can children understand this spiritual life? Is the richness of relationship with the triune God available to them?

Today, I am the father of five-year-old Foster and seven-year-old Ella. This challenge comes home to me as I attempt to use all of my training as a children’s pastor to help them find their own experiences of God. Ella is naturally more interested in the things of God. Foster is younger and is at a stage where “Jesus things” are boring.  Exploring Foster’s spirituality with him is even more challenging. I have come to believe that the wealth of spiritual relationship is for them, yet those questions from my teen years spur me on to study how that spiritual growth happens.

My Philosophy of Spiritual Formation

Definition
I define spiritual formation as the process of being formed by God into the very image of Christ as we are immersed in the streams of a wide orthodoxy, diving into intimacy with others and the Trinity. Or as Robert Mulholland succinctly expresses it, Spiritual formation is the “process of being conformed to the image of Christ for the sake of others." To put it in terms more familiar to the church, spiritual formation describes how discipleship happens.

Jesus said he came to bring life and life to its full (John 10:10). Living in the kingdom of heaven means living that eternal kind of life now. There is within us the desire for the depths of relationship with Christ that make this full, abundant life possible.

Deep calls to deep
at the thunder of your cataracts;
all your waves and your billows
have gone over me. Psalm 42:7 (NRSV)

Resting

As I was reflecting on the structures and systems of my church, and where I could begin implementing strategy, I leaned back in my chair and heaved a sigh. Mindy Caliguire caught my emotion and stooped to talk to me. I explained that I served a small church that had no real systems in place with which to contend. I went on to relate how we’ve tried implementing classes and other creative forums to use for spiritual formation but have seen few people come out to them. I know it means continuing to talk about vision, but, I told her, I have been preaching this stuff for six years now. When will it take hold?

I could hear in her response that as she was listening to me, she was also listening to the Spirit. With prophetic force she commanded me to, “Rest.” Then she exempted me from the rest of the discussion about strategy!

This isn’t the first time recently that God has been speaking to me of rest. I spent five days in silent retreat at St. Gregory’s Abby in October. While there I had a powerful emotional response to Psalm 6:2. “Give me strength, I am completely exhausted.” I was surprised then because I didn’t realize that I was exhausted, yet I sobbed in sympathy to this word.

I find this ironic, and am struggling to understand what God is saying to me. Often I consider myself lazy! Why would I need to rest? I find myself tired often and I do sleep and nap, whenever I get the chance!

I get my class work done, and Sunday’s preparations never fail to come together by God’s grace. There is certainly a lot to do, and our finances are so tight I can’t even think about them, leaving them in the hands of God, my wife, and the back of my mind. Life is stressful to be sure, and my body doesn’t handle the stress well. Yet, is that an excuse for merely getting by?

Spiritual Lessons from Kung Fu Panda

Kung Fu Panda offers some lessons for spiritual formation for those with eyes to see. Here are some things to look for:

• Indirection

In Kung Fu Panda, Shifu cannot train Po directly. Po is out of shape and has never studied kung fu. He is not quick to learn. Shifu however discovers that to reach food Po can do amaizing things. So instead of getting Po to concentrate on kung fu, he gets him to concentrate on getting the food.

As Dallas Willard says, the spiritual life burns grace like a jet burns fuel. Without grace we cannot address the things that need transformation in our lives. We cannot address these needs head on. Instead through Spiritual Disciplines we place ourselves in a position where God can pour grace through us transforming us into something new.

• Freedom through discipline

After training, Shifu tells Po that he is free to eat the dumpling. It can't be that easy can it? Po has to use all of his skills to get the dumpling from Shifu.

Richard Foster writes in Life With God,

Again, Spiritual Disciplines involve doing what we can do to receive from God the power to do what we cannot do. And God graciously uses this process to produce in us the kind of person who automatically will do what needs to be done when it needs to be done.

This ability to do what needs to be done when it needs to be done is the true freedom in life. Freedom comes not from the absence of restraint but from the presence of discipline. Only the disciplined gymnast is free to score a perfect ten on the parallel bars. Only the disciplined violinist is free to play Pagannini's "Caprices." This, of course, is true in all of life, but it is never more true than in the spiritual life (18).

A Spiritual Rule in Espresso

Musings on the Parable of the Coffee Shop

The parts to a good espresso:

Roasting, Blending and Grinding

The first thing needed in preparing good espresso is a good blend of beans properly roasted and ground. As the espresso of God I too must be properly prepared and ground.

An espresso bean needs to be roasted darkly. As the roasting process deepens, the bean releases its essence, what we commonly call oils, and they form a dark luster on the outside of the bean. This is where the flavors reside.

I must submit to the fires of roasting. Following Christ means submitting to discomfort at times. I also must submit to those who God has placed in my life, like my wife and spiritual director, to bear God’s word to me.

A good complex espresso should contain a variety of beans to give it a round complex flavor. A single origin espresso can be fun to play with, but nothing has the well roundedness of a blend.

I have to attend to what goes into me. Physically I must attend to my eating. I have to make a
discipline of eating breakfast, that’s been a tough practice, but my metabolism requires it. I also need to eat whole grains and lots of veggies. Likewise there are times when I must refrain from the food I love so much. I need to fast, and Fridays, before our Sabbath begins is a good time for that.

Grinding is critical. The beans must be shaved into uniform particles, and the size of those particles control how long water is in contact with the beans and how well the extraction occurs. Too slow and the water will completely leach the oils and also some of the bitter substances in the bean. Too fast and the espresso will sour, lacking the oils to create a good crema. The grind needs to be adjusted several times throughout the day to respond to changing temperature and humidity.

I need to be adjusted throughout the day as well. I need to practice the presence of God. God is the Good Barista who is always fine-tuning the grind and watching the extractions. I will put myself back in his hand for adjustment through out the day, first by bringing him to mind moment by moment. Second, by praying the liturgy of the hours. The times set aside through out my day give me interaction with scripture, prayer, poetry and meditation.

The tamp

Another key element to a good shot of espresso is the tamp. To receive the high pressure of the espresso machine and still keep the water slow enough to be in contact with the beans for about 30 seconds, the ground coffee has to be packed tightly. It takes 40-50 pounds of pressure to pack the coffee into the filter basket.

Like the particles of coffee I have to be packed into my community. I need them around me. To this end part of my rule is to practice hospitality. For me this means conversations at the coffee shop and dinners at the table. At home it means being open and available to my children and wife. It means creating an atmosphere where it is easy to be good for anyone who comes through our doors. When possible it means extending the bounds of our family to others so that we can live in intentional community. Intentional community has its rules too, like praying the hours. At night we get together and have family devotions and pray the hours. I need to also get back into the habit of praying with Elaine every night, confessing our sins to each other.

Hospitality also means living with responsibility toward the Earth. Taking care of the world is also a way to create sacred space. I want to eliminate my carbon footprint and live the ‘r’s of reducing, reusing, and recycling. This is a part of the wider discipline of simplicity that affects our relationship in community.

As a part of a church, hospitality also means visiting other members and inviting them over.

Pulling the shot

The barista locks the portafilter into the group head and starts the hot water flowing. The pump starts to whir and forces water through tubes that wind through the boiler picking up heat and out to the group shower head where they form channels and saturate the puck. Then a small honey gold stream of espresso forms at the bottom of the portafilter. It runs out the size of a rat’s tail filling the demitasse with deep rust crema. Then after about 30 seconds when all the goodness of the bean is extracted, the barista observes a small pale dot form on the deep rust and stops the cycle.

I need the water of the Spirit flowing through my life. Here are some channels of study I recognize that I find the water of the Spirit to flowing: Poetry, Scripture, Art (both the appreciation and creation), Literature (I read a masterpiece of literature at bedtime) and Meditation (contemplation of people and nature top the practice).

Enjoy

The good barista appreciates the color variations as the shot is pulled. The shot goes from deep rust to blond in tiger stripes. Then the barista will enjoy the aroma and warmth of the espresso as he gives it to the person who needs it. The crema on a good espresso is the hallmark of quality and the celebration of the shot.

I need times of enjoyment and rest in my life too. I need to live in Sabbath rhythms. As a pastor, Sunday isn’t a very restful day, so we have purposed to make sundown Friday to sundown Saturday our Sabbath. We want to incorporate rituals like lighting candles and blessings and meals together.

I also need to take a retreat 4-6 times per year to rest in the presence of my beautiful Barista.

Sabbath also means celebration. Both during the Sabbath time and throughout the week we need to set aside time for romance, getting a sitter, and having time as a couple.

We worship. This is a no brainer for a pastor; I get paid to worship with my congregation. As part of my rule for life, I also want to make it a point to worship with other traditions as often as possible.

Celebration also means music and dancing with abandon, creating and painting, and enjoying good food and great espresso.

Ultimately I am not my own God pulled this espresso for someone, I must be made perfect for Christ who I find in the little ones around me. That is who he hands the hot demitasse off to
after all.

A paradigm for everyday spiritual life

The sun is the light of God found in the cyclical process of awakening, purgation, illumination and union. The swirls of light irradiating from the sun represent the integration of the spiritual life in all things and the breakdown of imposed compartments and dualities. They remind us that God doesn't want to be the biggest part of our lives but integrated in to all of them. God invades our work, relationships, personal and communal life making all of life sacred.

The door is my home with God. The stone by the door is my touchstone that brings me back to practicing the presence. The path from the door is reversed in perspective like an icon to draw the viewer in. God invites me down the path to him, and regardless of how far I wander away from home the mere thought of my touchstone puts me at my front door again.

Stone

Coming Home to Your True Self: Leaving the Emptiness of False Attractions by Albert Haase

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars

Summary

Albert Hasse, lays out the spiritual life as coming home. He describes God as being at home and we returning to find him in the present moment. Using the imagery of the parable of the prodigal son, Hasse describes our need to leave the pigpen of our false self and come to the place of our true self.



Believe

Hasse quotes greats such as Meister Eckhart and St. John of the Cross. He builds his argument on the finding of God in the present moment where God communes with the imago dei in the true self. Meister Eckhart’s quote is central, “God is at home. It is we who have gone out on a walk.” If this is true then it follows that our work is to turn away from those tings that draw us to wander away from home and return to our house. Hasse calls these attention-drawing things the empty P’s according to his alliterative ordering.



Doubt

Hasse’s focus on the present moment can leave us unbalanced with reference to the future. At it’s worst we can spend the present moment lost in the false self, unconscious of the consequences of our actions. At it’s best such and imbalance fails to recognize the power of time to bring change. With out time change could not occur. The proper corrective to an unbalanced focus on the present moment is Hasse’s reference to the cyclical journey of awakening, illumination, purgation and union. One can also take issue with the true/false-self dichotomy as with out basis in scripture. However I find it does a good job in recognizing the imago dei is still within the midst of fallen humanity.



Synthesis

While I have had my fill of alliteration (after Kellemen) Hasse makes good sense in his empty P’s and escape from the pig pen. I found myself of thinking of Innocent Smith as I read about living with disciplined focus in the present moment with awe and wonder. The material is easy to balance and integrate into my spiritual journey.



Application

This book is rich with material, I can see myself returning to it as I teach my congregation about the spiritual life. The things that grab my attention right now are a couple practices Hasse mentions. One is the use of a word with little meat on it to return our attention to the presence of God. I found my mind immediately drawn to the word “stone.” Perhaps it is because of the stone’s lack of meat, or because I see it sitting at the side of the door to my home. I imagine it like some teleporter, that all I have to do is think about it and I am back at my door, ready to engage God in the present moment. The other thing that was very timely was Hasse’s treatment of lent (pp 96-110). His description of a feng shui reestablishing and preserving of relationships gave penance a needed focus to me.




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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.

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.

The Parable of the Coffee Shop

My favorite metaphysical image from Leaper by Geoffrey Wood

The parable of the coffee shop shows that the kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man who goes into a coffee shop and orders an espresso.

As the man talks across the counter, the coffee guy makes his coffee and sets the cup and saucer on the counter between them. But the man doesn't drink it; he keeps talking, so the coffee gets cold, useless. The coffee guy pours it out and pulls another, sets it up. The man still can't stop talking. The next one goes bad too. So the coffee guy throws that one out too, makes another. And this goes on see?

You may think you are the coffee guy in the parable, but your not -- you're the espresso. (It's like that in parables.) You're not for you. You're some one else's beverage. And God, the coffee guy, he's going to keep remaking you again and again, as many times as it takes until you are drinkable. God's pulling the shots, and he's got standards.

If God changes you, you'd better change.

Missions Statement

My mission is to Glorify God and enjoy him forever, ministering to and making disciples of my family and the families of my church, community, and world.

I dream of my future. I imagine the steps I can take to Glorify God and to minister and wait on him for the cues.

I also recognize that his primary way to minister through me is by transforming me. I focus first and foremost on glorifying and enjoying him. He is my love and my life. May I ever draw closer to you my Dearest one!

He has placed in my heart a great desire to build relationships with people that will have the intimacy of family. He has called me to extend the intimacy of my dearest to them. This is a difficult call for me, though I want nothing more and with my whole being.

He has also graced me with a desire to lead children into the depths of his abundant life. My greatest privilege is to work with him to make disciples of my children Ella and Foster, along the dearest wife he could have given me.

He has made me a pastor, so I imagine myself bringing children and families in my church and community to be apprentices of the master of my heart.

He has also opened my eyes to the spiritual needs of children around the world. I relish my reverie when I imagine working on a PhD in cultural anthropology, transforming my mind to learn how to best bring about spiritual formation intergenerationally across culture. I imagine myself living on coffee plantations around the world as I learn how spiritual formation is done in those cultures. I imagine myself later teaching indigenous pastors how to best address the spiritual needs of children and their families.

I also secretly dream of one day doing nothing more than running a coffeehouse and acting as spiritual director. Perhaps one day...

My Spiritual History

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Category Labels

Prominant Disciplines	Moves
Education	Relationships
Turning Points

How to navigate this timeline

Some more random thoughts on Spiritual Reading

Within my ministerial group we have an ongoing debate as to the importance of reading scripture durring a service. The Revised Common Lectionary provides four texts each Sunday. My friend Cliff, an ELCA pastor, is famous for calling us to read all four texts each Sunday.

"Faith comes by hearing," he reminds us, "and God's word will not return void."

Mulholland suggests inspiration has two sides, God breathing the Word to the authors and breathing it again to us a we hear it. The second part requires our attention. Like Joe suggests we must approach it with appropriate postures.

For me this often takes the form of unpacking the scripture, telling the story, or, to say it with it's peculiar title, preaching. Still I wrestle with how to help people attend to the scripture and, with the public reading of it, make it more than just informational or worse a time to zone out.

Perhaps ironically, it was learning to do exegesis that rescued me from informational reading of the scripture. In college I was trying to get through the Bible in a year and I was drying up. My dad sugested that I take the exegetical Bible study methods I had learned and was in love with and really get into the text.

I don't know that I was so much trying to master the text as I was trying to figure out what God was trying to say, and that was terribly formational for me. Exploring what was really intended by the scripture made sure I was hearing the word of God and not the information that reinforced my false self or as Mulholland put it my false word.

It's probably something my dad instilled in me, but I have always sensed the great responsibility to wrestle with the text. If it hasn't my life, how can my sermon change others? It is in the discovery and the journey that I find the ah-ha moment for myself, so I've tried to craft sermons that would bring the audience along the journey in some way. It would be grand if my meager trying would grown into a great wrestling of ancient Olympic proportions - well developed muscles straining...

But then does the Bible have any power apart from our wrestling with it?

If I had lay readers like other churches in the area, I think I'd like to get together with them and talk about the readings so we can get excited about them together.

It seems to me that the acedemic pursuit has well taught me to read informationally, or at least it demands it of me. My approach to a book is different when I have an agenda, and teachers and profs. for the whole of my academic career have seen fit and prudent to impose an agenda on my reading. The call it objectives and due dates and the like. Then they ask me to write a paper of my thoughts justified by the text. So naturally I approach a text, sometimes not even reading (not for this course certainly) just to find a quote or two to back my position. After our study doesn't all this sound repugnant.

The result is I have rarely enjoyed a book I was forced to read. Perhaps the greatest tradgety of my academic career was that I didn't get anything out of Celebration of Discipline the first time I read it as an assignment in class. Fortunately I had some aspiration of building a personal library and didn't sell it back to the book store. I've read it four times since then and what life it has brought!

This isn't the way I approach the novels I read at all. Isn't it ironic that those books that purport to change our lives we read for information and those that merely claim to entertain us can change our lives as we let ourselves be immersed in them. Makes me write the novel version of the Divine Conspiracy.

I keep coming back to the narrative quality of God's revelation to us. I was thinking today as I read Mulholland about the times when I read formationally and when I read for information.

Every night before I go to be I read a good novel to get to bed. I love some Dostoevsky or Tolstoy. Right now I am reading Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo. These stories suck me in, I could be reading for hours. I read slowly (much more slowly than my wife) and I feel like I am part of the story for the time I am reading. I am immersed in it, baptized in the authors vision. I often find I am picturing the events from slightly above, as if I were standing on the desk with Robin Williams (like Keating in dead poets society).

I think that is what it is like to read formationally. As we engage our imaginations (I wonder if that is somehow intrinsically linked to our spirits) we make manifest the story in our inward parts.

moved by the music

Rhapsody in Blue has such emotion and force to it. I thought of how I get caught up in it, and imagine and feel what is going on. (I was drumming my fingers on the coffeetable at the time and actually hurt my middle and ring fingertips badly.) I think perhaps transformational reading catches us away like that. I sometimes find when I'm reading books that have the spiritual force, like Rhapsody has emotional force, I have to stop and get up and walk around. I am so caught up with ideas and energy that my soul cannot be still.

So perhaps formational reading is like this guy: completely amazed at the unforeseeable and unexpected power of this (cute) performance of Rhapsody in Blue.

Informational or formational reading: A simile

Reading for information is like being impressed by this:Reading for formation is like your imagination being set on fire like this:

20/20

Dallas Willard gave us the VIM model for change: vision, intention and means. I think the New Testament’s greatest contribution to our spirituality is in giving us vision. From Jesus we hear about what it is to live the in the Kingdom. The epistles flesh out how to live this life. The various apocalyptic visions give us our blessed and most beautiful hope for the future.

If the Old Testament gives us examples of our struggle with God and his struggle with us, if it shows us the wonder and the demands of the covenant relationship, the New Testament shows us how to live a new transformed life now that Jesus has made the covenant relationship complete. We are faced with the sermon on the mount’s lofty ideals, and the way of love demonstrated by God by giving his Son while we were yet sinners. We hear the command to love and take on the life of Love itself. We are given the promise of marriage and await with bated breath its consummation.

Lebensgeschichte

I would argue that the most significant aspect of Old Testament spirituality is the example of lives struggling with God. “So, says Seerveld, ‘The Holy Scriptures invite us treacherous, deceitful people to take hold of God and pull for blessing. When we finally give up our self-sufficient pride then the Angel of the Lord, whom we know as Jesus Christ, will hold us tight in an embrace of love from which nothing can separate us” (Stevens 61).

In their example we see not only their closeness to God, but their weaknesses that make them utterly dependent upon him. We see their struggles and that is where they are models. No character outside of Christ is so fully formed that we could model our lives safely after them. So we don’t live the life of a Sarah, or an Abraham. We don’t take our neighbors’ spouses or kill our rivals, but we do imitate David as he wrestles with his friend, God.