Need a place for a small gathering or retreat?

Lyric Springs Retreat House is now available for rental!

Check us out here:
Lyric Springs Retreat House

 

Dreams and Goals

Dreams and Goals

-David Bunker
1)      You must continually visualize this uncommon dream in your heart and mind.

2)      An uncommon dream will require uncommon patience.

3)      God is committed to the uncommon dream He is birthing whether you embrace it yet or not.

4)      An uncommon dream is often birthed from uncommon pain.

5)      An uncommon dream will require uncommon faith.

6)      The uncommon dream must be born within you, not borrowed from others.

7)      The uncommon dream will require uncommon focus.

8)      The uncommon dream will require uncommon passion.

9)      The uncommon dream will require uncommon favor from others.

10)  The uncommon dream will require uncommon preparation.

11)   The uncommon will qualify those who deserve access to you.

12)   The uncommon dream will birth uncommon habits.

13)  An uncommon dream creates uncommon adversaries.

14)  The uncommon dream will determine what you do first each morning.

15)  The uncommon dream is often the opposite of your current circumstances.

16)  The uncommon dream will require the miracles of God.

17)  The uncommon dream will always require the assistance of others.

18)   The uncommon dream may require uncommon negotiations with others.

19)  The uncommon dream will require an uncommon plan.

20)  When you announce your uncommon dream, those who believe in you will feel encouraged and energized to assist you.

21)  When you announce your uncommon dream, those who are tempted to oppose you may decide to join you because of your determination.

22)  When you announce your uncommon dream, you make it more difficult to fail.

23)  When you announce your uncommon dream, you will create an instant bond with those who have had a similar dream and goal.

24)  The uncommon dream will require will require careful & wise use of your time.

 

Staying Put to Get Somewhere

Staying Put to Get Somewhere by DAVID BUNKER

I believed the story. Go to school, study hard, get a job, work hard and you will be rewarded. On some fundamental level this is not a lie. However, like all truths, they sit contextually in time and space and this work/job narrative is not merely under attack but has probably not been true for at least a couple decades if ever.

As a boomer these kinds of stories die hard. “Be it Leave it to Beaver” or “Father’s Knows Best”, my early years of TV were the myths poured into a highly porous child’s soul. Years later I can be naively optimistic even to the point where I am abused and taken advantage of. I am a hopeless romantic and yet a practiced pragmatist to my core.

Doctor Phil’s mantra, “Is that working for you?” humorously reflects how my generation thinks about life;

Are you happy?

Are you fulfilled?

Is life working to your advantage?

Are your relationships adding something of value to you and your dreams?

This may not be all that Dr. Phil means in that question but the end result for me goes to the bottom-line.

Why am I here doing what I am doing?

Is it serving my ultimate goals, my ultimate direction in life?

Is this bringing clarity to the journey upon which I have pointed my life?

Oh, that life were so malleable that all one had to do is ask the right questions. Oh, that life was cooperative with us such that all our dreams and aspirations were in collusion with the universe and God was indeed our private concierge, life coach, or personal shopper. We may recoil at those statements attached to God but indeed we do come into the cosmic conversation with some highly untested assumptions about what we “want” out of life.

The past few decades have seen a rise in the Protestant interest in monastic orders. I, for one have been deeply interested in the lives of men and women like Thomas Merton and Mother Teresa but upon a more in-depth study of these individuals one finds an entirely different world beneath the biographies offered in the common parlance of the media and press. These people were not merely great individuals but people formed by commitments and vows. They were highly submitted believers to a rule that for most today would be repressive and indeed absurd and confining.

The paradoxical sense of these individuals’ lives reveals something about mine. Why would a vow of poverty, chastity and obedience seem so alien to me? Why would a lifelong commitment to one place seem not merely odd but dangerous and even wrong?

Once again I ask myself those same seemingly pragmatic questions;

Where am I going?

How do I intend to get there?

And….what is the road I must travel upon to arrive at this destination?

In Dennis Okholm’s most recent work “Monk Habits for Everyday People,” he explores the vow of stability in the lives of Benedictine monks. Okholm, a professor at Azusa Pacific University, teaches a course on spiritual formation and explores with his students the lives of monastic orders. Benedict is an interesting character who preceded the Reformation by a millennium. What is highly interesting to Okholm and to many who are now sensing this renewed interest in monastic orders is the similarity in cultural and historical happenings between then and now.

Okholm goes on to say, “….He was heir to the deteriorating political environment of the Roman Empire’s last days. The fifth century into which he had been born had in common with our twenty first a struggle to make sense of the troubled and torn world that people were experiencing. Rome had fallen and had been sacked several times, by the Goths, Vandals, and Lombards. The dismembered Western Empire, once ruled by the “eternal city,” was not only in political chaos but troubled by ecclesiastical dirty dealings and underhanded ploys to win theological battles over the crucial issues of grace and the divine nature of Christ.”

How much our times were like those times is always a projection but it is clear that Benedict and the monks of his age felt a need to withdraw and a need to preserve. They sensed that the times demanded a much more diligent and severe commitment to the call of Christ and were not convinced that the Church was carrying that call with clarity and power. Sound familiar?

There are many differing groups and contingencies that are engaged in a discussion about where the Church is headed. I would contend that we very well might be much worse off than we naively optimistic baby boomers can tolerate. We want to soften the blow, lessen the pain, and give it to people slowly. It may be that drastic times need drastic measures.

The title of this article was borrowed from a phrase Okholm used in his book on Benedict in which the issue of “remaining in a community” impacted one’s ability to receive and know the full depth’s of Christ’s call on one’s life. How can I grow into the character of Christ when I am always on the move, always looking for that place in which I can spread my wings? Maybe my wings need to be clipped. We have a saying in our community that the “self is communally constructed.”

We are a person comprised of varied peoples. Each day I walk with the same people is one more day I begin to know their hearts. That means I know the shadow as well as the light, the sorrow as well as the joy.
This tendency to run and avoid commitment seems to be a part of our age. It appears that the constant moving not only allows for the devout mask to remain but makes the removal nigh unto impossible. Rowan Williams puts it this way when he says, “The barriers of egoistic fantasy are broken by the sheer brute presence of other persons.” I am only conformed to the likeness of our Lord when I am in relationship with others and the reality of my sin and the beauty of my glory dawn upon my deepest parts. This is real conversion.

The constant search for fresh stimulation is the way a consumer society forms me. I want more. Be it actual goods or even spiritual experiences. Give me more and give me more when I want it. Being steadfast is a concept that is foreign to most of us today. What might it look like for me to remain? To stand firm, to stand beyond fear? To walk truly in faith when my sight is blinded by suffering and sacrifice?

Okholm offers us this pithy insight when he says, “We will discover our true selves as we patiently simmer in communities and relationships to which God has called us. And we will find God there as well, because if we cannot find God where we are, we will not find him elsewhere.”

Okholm says it well, “…the irony is that we must stay in the same community in order not to stay in the same relationship with God.”

As John Henry Newman wisely discerned, “In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.”
Here’s to staying put to get somewhere!!!!!

 

The Jesus Prayer

Lord Jesus Christ

Son of God

Have mercy on me

a sinner

This is a place I’m inhabiting a lot these days…it comes almost automatically in times of stress and fear. It feels good, comforting, centering.

For more about the Jesus Prayer reach into this link.

The Jesus Prayer

 

The Josiah Community

The Josiah Community is a co-housing community we’ve been considering if we move back to Chicago.  It pretty much encompasses EVERYTHING we have ever dreamt about in how we’d like to live.  We struggle about whether or not we are meant to be the catalyst for a community like this or merely participants at this point in our lives.  Perhaps it really does make more sense to come alongside a group of people who already have something going rather than attempting to convince people down here to help plant this in East Nashville.

It is a worthy endeavor.

check it out:

 

2008: The Year of the “Follow-Through”

Be warned….Ang is jumping on a stream of consciousness rant raft…

About 10 years ago (maybe longer, can’t remember now) a friend of our was contemplating marriage and job change and a variety of other things and he dubbed that year, “The year of the follow through.” We all sort of liked that idea so we sat around and talked about what we saw in our own lives that required “follow-through.” It was an interesting night…and an interesting year.

I guess what brings this to mind is my perseveration these days on my “intentional community” idea. For the last several years, probably as long as Dave C and I have been married we have talked about being in an “intentional community” of faith. We had one building for a long time through Metanoia, a now defunct church plant in Chicago. At that time we hoped to all buy houses close to one another, maybe have a communal building in which to worship and work and fellowship, the sky was the limit. We could do anything, we could change the world! We all learned a lot, in fact our friend Dave Fitch actually ended up writing a book which gave a nod to those days, “The Great Giveaway.”

Metanoia did not survive the tumultuous effects of our learning process, however. We were all young. We were torn apart by our callings and our desires….each wanting to live in a different part of the city or in the suburbs, each wanting just a little more liturgy or a little more contemporary in our worship, some wanting more singles, others wanting more families…it was hard, we were young but we did learn. Most of us are still very close friends even if our physical locations are spread wide. In a way this group of friends were the ones we “grew up” with in our spiritual journey. They are family now.

Most of the Metanoia crowd went on to enter the ministry or serve in another church in leadership in some way or another. Dave and I…well, we’ve just been wandering a lot really….still looking for the tribe. One thing we’ve discovered from living down here, being uprooted from everyone and everything is that it’s still the desire of our hearts to live in community. We still want close fellowship and it’s taken us moving far from our friends and family in Chicago to the middle of “nowheres-ville” to discover that.

The hard part is this…how do we find people who are truly serious about this crazy idea of ours? We hear a lot of people say that they think that would be great but we’re missing some follow through here. Now in light of our house being up for sale and a move SOMEWHERE being, well…as imminent as the house selling market will allow plus the fact that the siren’s call back to Chicago is loud we’re still wondering, where will we go and who will go with us?

But maybe those are the wrong questions after all….maybe instead the real question is, “Who will we be…together?”

A lot of fear creeps up on me in this whole thing. Are we too old to start this? Are we too young? How would we support this if we turned away from the work in Chicago? Would God really come through on this? Is this what He wants? Does He care where we live? Do I care where we live?

Mostly I care HOW we live. A friend of mine talks about being a “student of aesthetics” and I like that. I care about the environment of my home-life…I want it to be warm and comfortable and inviting and hospitable and able to support the idea that anyone can come over, anytime…for a cup of coffee or a turkey sandwich or a good conversation or listening to music or watching a football game. I want to live somewhere that makes us “accessible” to a community at large. I have some preferences on the “where” for a whole lot of reasons but none of them are logical. I think logic is over-rated in some cases.

We always hoped that a “Field of Dreams” theology would hold true. “If we build it…they will come…” We’re just not sure now, we’re not sure if we have the strength to build it on our own. A lot of things have to happen before we break ground on “building it.” Most days we don’t even know where to begin…so we begin where we are…we just love people as they come to us and see where that leads.

We can, at the very least…follow through on that.

 

Search String Poetry

I have found that I get the most interesting search string phrases for The Wellspring so in light of that I have decided to compose poetry based upon this. I have added only punctuation and perhaps a line break here and again.

—————

the search string: week 1

what did ponce de leon

find in his journey?

the gift of being yourself

the story of the golden thread

the soul has moments

of escape

the Jonah complex

 

An Old Joke or a Parable in Disguise?

A flood is expected to wipe out a small town and evacuation is begun. A jeep is driving through town and comes across a guy standing on his front porch. “Hop in,” they said, “The flood will be coming in any minute.” “Don’t worry about me,” the man replied, “I have faith that God will save me.” Unable to change his mind, they drove on without him.

Soon the flood waters began to roll in, and a rescue team drifted by this man’s house in a boat. “Hop in,” they requested, “We’ll get you out of here.” “Don’t worry about me,” was the man’s reply, “I have faith that God will save me.” Unable to change his mind, the rescue team continued on without him.

Not long after that, the flood waters had completely covered this man’s house, and he was hanging from the chimney. A rescue crew in a helicopter spotted him and dropped him a ladder. The man refused the ladder insisting that God would save him. Unable to change his mind, the helicopter went on without him.

The water continued to rise and the man drowned. On his way through the pearly gates, he met up with God and exclaimed, “You really let me down! I had faith that you would save me and look what happened!” “Well let’s see,” was God’s reply, “I sent you a jeep, a boat and a helicopter.”

 

How to Paint a Miracle

How to Paint a Miracle by David Bunker

First you take the vapor like membrane between realms
And ever so slowly
Pull it away from the soul
Hold it up to the sun
Make sure it is a day
Clear and warm with light
To the left of the entire sky
Outside the world’s frame
St. Francis is singing
You will not hear the melody
But its colors will resonate
With your outstretched soul
Move your hands away from your sides
And prepare to be stigmatized
From the wounds
Azure blue will pour
Retain this sound
For it is both tragic and glorious
Only the red finch
Was made aware of this revealing
He is so delighted and will
Trumpet your ecstasy
As you arise from this enlargement
Pay close attention to the sounds
Of trees and stones directly in your purview
Tears will flow freely
At first this may feel disquieting
Do not be afraid
Angels are withholding nothing
From this unveiling
As you see
Now you know
It is good
These witnesses
Are sacraments
And along with azure blue
Offer themselves up
The veil is now removed

Our miracle may now be painted

 

Real Laughter

“A person of prayer is a person who can cry from the heart and laugh from the belly”

Richard Rohr,  “Everything Belongs” 

Well,  you knew I couldn’t go too long without posting again from this book.   This one comes to me on the heels of a quote I heard earlier this week from my friend David Bunker…which only makes me certain that it must be true and true for all of us.

“Real laugher is expensive.”