church…

I’m revisiting Rohr’s “Everything Belongs” once again for a number of reasons.  The piece that hit me hard this morning as I am, again, unable to get into town to attend our chosen House of Worship is this idea that there are three things we must having in our ongoing relationship with God.

We must have teaching, community and “sitting.”  Sitting is an experience of the Holy One.  What I love about “going to church” so often IS that moment where I sit in the presence of the Holy One.  I suppose that each of us experiences this in our way if we’re seeking it; a walk in the woods or along a low hanging mist in a field, listening to the sound of a baby sleeping, just being still or even finding it in the eye of an emotional hurricane of life’s daily-ness.

What is most powerful though, I believe is to experience The Holy One not as an individual but IN community and IN the teaching…and there it is… does that answer the question of  “why go to church?”

There’s the piece I’ve seen today…and it makes me sad to realize how scattered my spiritual life has become…I get community, I get teaching, I get the “sitting” but it is so dis-integrated one from another.  I often wonder if in this modern (or post modern or post post modern) world being in the same place at the same time is possible.

so…that’s all I got today…questions…

sometimes it is enough, I think to ask the question…or perhaps more precisely it is that it’s a place to begin…it is enough for now.

 

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

 

Bunker-isms for a parched land…

I am working on getting this David Bunker to write a book.  You see, what you read here today are basically chapter titles as far as I’m concerned.  If you sit in a room with him he can and will elaborate on each one of these.  He will breathe life into them until you feel as though they are sitting next to you sipping a glass of wine and asking you to pass the crackers.  One day, when you sit in a room with David Bunker just ask him about any one of these.  If you don’t get that chance then write him a note and tell him to write the book, yes?

-Replace your career with your life
-Make community the center
-Believe only the submitted and the obedient
-Practice Discernment Constantly
-Serve the stranger not as a strategy but as an act of love
-Losses are rights and entitlements in servanthood
-Let your sacrifice be wise and intentional rather than blind and passive
-Dispute the claims of pathological individualism
-The demands of the market & the ruthless pursuit of profit are not the same as gravity
-Competition generates a vision of massive disorder
-Moral obligation is not a lifestyle choice
-Success is not a moral demand
-The ever deepening cost of success is the annihilation of the self
-Imagine a future that is ambitiously modest
-Launch your criticism from a position of mutual searching
-Find direction in the needs of others
-Rejoice in your sense of inadequacy
-Favor ethics over creativity
-Consciously put on the exclusion of the silenced other
-Make room for regret
-View information as capital
-Regard technology as a principality
-Design your world as if it mattered
-Consider what cynicism excludes
-Morph into a gift
-Abandon yourself at least once to the rules of community and notice your perspective
-Exploit nothing
-Regard encyclopedic mastery as diversion from the essential
-Kill the urge to be mobile
-Resist incessant reassessment
-Beware of philosophical discussions given by non-practitioners
-Negotiate ways of loving better
-Distrust the posture of arrogant certainty
-Suspect your rhetoric

 

The Nurture Corner

Several years ago I attended a weekend “retreat” of sorts for women. It was not so much a retreat as it was a rite of initiation. It was called the “Woman Within” and it was a formative time for me. While not “christian” by design many of the principles were right in line with my faith and that was important. At the same time I was also moved by a number of the principles which were not strictly “christian.” I’ve long been drawn to Native American thought lines and this weekend borrowed strongly from this at times. I didn’t feel that it was against my religion to listen for God in the middle of this. It felt right. It was a safe place and I did some very good, strong and deep “work” there. God led me to that place and it’s set the stage, honestly for the deep moments of joy I have shared with Him since that time. It has made me a stronger follower of Jesus and for that I am eternally grateful.

The hard part came after the work. I was led to a soft, warm place where a very nice woman awaited. I had just gone through a very tough piece of soul work and this was a place apart from the “carpet work” room where I was meant to just…I dunno…emote, I guess. It was called the Nurture Corner although it wasn’t in a corner at all…more like a hallway. It was laden with soft comforters and tissues and bottled water and this nice mature lady presided over it all. It was all very….um, nurturing. Sadly, I was not able to really engage this part of me. I had not yet discovered this very good truth that to be vulnerable in safe places meant that I was restored, rather than humiliated. I didn’t know what “nurturing” in it’s very best context meant.

I did know that I could not be coerced into being nurtured. I had to actually allow that to happen. I had to submit to it. At that moment, I chose not to submit. I just sat there in the near dark with this nice person I did not know and waited til it seemed as though it had been “long enough” to be nurtured. Then I high tailed it out of there and moved on to the next thing.

When I returned home I felt some regret for this. I felt that I really ought to have given my full attention to that process and given myself over to it. In retrospect though, now 14 years later I understand this more deeply. I know now that my choice was probably a good one. It was the right choice at that moment.

As a mother of 4 now, I’m faced with this again, daily. What does it mean to be nurtured and to nurture. I muddle through. I think I do alright but there does seem to always be this sort of wall made of jello that comes between me and whomever I come into contact with. I press through and it presses back. I think, I am still not aware to the feminine, nurturing face of God. I’m always shocked at how adverse we Western Christians are to this idea…the idea that God is not “male” by default but rather a perfect mix of both masculine and feminine.

When I have spoken of this to fellow travelers on this Jesus road, especially FEMALE travelers from my era or earlier I am greeted with a lot of quizzical looks and downright suspicion. I wonder why it is that we cannot embrace the nurturing feminine from God? I suppose centuries of the male dominated mindset will do that to us but still, it is a shame that I feel so outside the circle and so unable to find mentoring in this.

Ironically, I hear the best stuff about this from a couple of male, theologian type friends of mine. This is comforting (read: nurturing) to me and at the same time it brings me sadness. I have prayed for many many years for God to bring a strong woman of God who sees things from all sides to mentor me and so far, I have not recognized anyone. I say, recognized because it is entirely possible that she stands before me and I have not had eyes to see or ears to hear. So, recently I’ve changed the prayer to my being ready and able to submit to this mentoring. In this way, perhaps I will see this tremendous woman when I meet her and I will recognize her through the dust when she opens Scriptures to me as on the road to Emmaus.

 

Making Sacrifice

making sacrifice

it is a simple thing
making sacrifice

choosing the finest lamb
without thought
of tender meals never eaten
of soft wool yet ungathered

binding the legs
as it kicks and bleats
it is easy to overpower
it does not go quietly

spilling the blood
on the altar
it is not clean
nor without stench

lighting the fire
wood stacked high
one upon another
reaching far inside
to place the match
hands soiled
with the oil
and blood
and the thought
of all that is lost
in the honoring
and all that is gained
in the uncertainty
to come

it is a simple thing
making sacrifice

 

Even this?

Several years ago I gave up coffee for Lent.  As the days wore on I found myself fudging…”is it ALL coffee or just Starbucks?”  “If it’s just Starbucks does Caribou Coffee count?”  “Can I medicate with soda instead?”  “What about iced coffee?”

Even this?

The year I gave up meat I wiggled my way through…”Is it red meat or all meat?”  “Does poultry count?”

Even this?

Most of the time I felt a resounding nothing coming back in my head in response to that question…so I continued on and adjusted God’s expectations of me.  I didn’t think He’d mind.

This year my sacrifice is a little more complicated.   Rather than giving up something material, outside of my self I’m giving up a thought pattern…and choosing instead the “good” path as the roads become laid out before me.  I choose to be present, right now, in the moment.  It means giving up immediate gratification…self gratification, really…and it means embracing the possibility that God has it covered.

It’s interesting how it presents this first week of Lent.  I’m surprised at how many opportunities I have to make this choice each day, each hour, each minute…Thoughts come to me and at first I brush them aside, change my focus, recommit…but then I’m worn down and I think, “Does this include….insert thought, word, action here…”

Even this?

To which I hear a resounding, “yes” from Him.  This one He holds high above my head.  This one will not survive a change in expectation.  This one He knows I need…even more than I know…and this one He knows I can do.

Even this…even this…

 

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.”