So I was given the opportunity of a lifetime last week to go to my first U2 concert with great friends in Arlington, TX. I’ve so wanted to put words to the experience, but honestly, they just haven’t surfaced yet.
Here’s some amazing video my friend captured from our sweet spot on the floor. Check it out…
I have neglected you, O blog of mine. I’m writing a synthesis paper for the class I’m taking right now…here are some bits of it, kind of a look at what’s been moving around in my heart over the past eight weeks…
How am I letting you be real with me?
The idea of authenticity has become big for me in this class. If regaining a capacity for love is the way toward real and lasting transformation, it is important that I experience God (who is love) as fully God in my life. That means vulnerability.
I have given thought to learning to be real with others so they can be real with me. But what if I am not allowing God to be fully him/herself with me? Translating this to a relationship with God presses me into an intimacy and vulnerability that I have not often experienced in my life. Saying that I can, by my own defensiveness, prevent God from ‘being himself’ with me is a humbling thought. It places God in a rather vulnerable light. It gives me room to accept or reject the omnipotent, omniscient, omni-present Creator of the universe. It also draws attention to areas of resistance deep within my soul.
“He shares himself with us even when we do not know that he is doing so. Life itself communicates him to us” (Barry and Connolly, The Practice of Spiritual Direction). God is continuously present to us, “lowly and meek, yet all powerful” (Celtic Daily Prayer, morning prayer). The idea that life itself is an implicit communication of God (explicit on God’s end…implicit, potentially explicit, on mine) means that every experience of life – whether we perceive it to be good, bad, or anything between or beyond – holds immense value. But “conscious relationship begins when I choose to listen or to look at what the other is doing” (Barry and Conolly). Here it is again – I have the ability to accept God as fully God in my life…or reject him. It is my responsibility to allow the Presence of God, implicit in all of life, to become explicit in my experience. This only happens through intentional exercises in listening and awareness. Spiritual direction. In this practice we learn to let God be fully God to us by engaging with all our experiences (the good the bad and the ugly) so as to let implicit communication become explicit. Not just in choice moments. “How is God leading and loving me in all aspects of my life?…Nothing is outside of God’s breath” (Moon and Benner, Spiritual Direction and the Care of Souls). We learn to live in conscious relationship. Stepping into such mutually vulnerable ground is not easy. There is pain in it because something has to die. But there is also life – abundant, deep, rich, real life.
We need “…a relaxed, humble attitude in which we let go of ourselves and renounce our unconscious efforts to maintain a façade” (Thomas Merton, Spiritual Direction and Meditation). This attitude is what develops as we receive spiritual direction, and it is a process that must be experienced by directors as well as directees. When the director is willing to engage this grace, it more easily seeps into the life of the directee.
Through my devotional reading of Nouwen’s The Return of the Prodigal Son and listening times with my spiritual director, I am coming to realize that there is a deep-seated resistance to this kind of vulnerability. In meditation on the story of the prodigal son in Luke 5, I found myself deeply relating to the plight of the elder son. I could see the love of the father for the younger son, but when he claims love for the elder I could only ask, “Where is it?” The elder son is the dutiful one who stays home, covering up any inclination to leave, any envy of the younger son’s apparent freedom. His brother comes home, warmly welcomed, and when the elder son protests, feeling more than a little overlooked, his father says, “My son, you are with me always and all I have is yours”(Nouwen 2). The elder son is loved, but he is unable to see it. He has, in perhaps a deeper way than his brother, left home. He expects the love of his father to take a particular shape. He is not allowing his father to be real with him and in that resistance, the elder son is unable to fully inhabit his place as son, beloved of the father. And there are walls that hold him inside this place of limitation, inauthentic presence, and skewed perceptions. Walls that need to be torn down. As this takes place, we begin living into the reality that “we are created and in-breathed to life by the Spirit and recognize God’s love as ‘home’” (Jeannette Bakke, Holy Invitations).
If the supposed certainty we cling to is a skewed perception of God (more than likely it is), ambiguity is a key (the only?) way to allowing God to be fully God with us – allowing walls to be torn down. Not only do we not loose Jesus, we finally find him. This clinging to certainty could easily be a form of resistance to allowing God to tear down the walls that hold us inside (away from a more real and authentic existence). We lose our life…to find it.
There is so much beauty in the world. So much that passes by in a day…completely unnoticed. It’s so easy to muddle through the day on auto-pilot, doing the same things we always do and running through the same habits of thought and behavior and…totally miss the sacredness of the moment.
Responding to emails at work.
Answering the phone.
Washing the dishes.
Shoveling popcorn and sloshing out sodas.
Bosses and customers and co-workers…church gatherings and people…even Bible reading, prayer, journaling, silence… when will I finally stop “dealing with” these parts of life and start interacting with them, appreciating them, seeing the sacredness of daily work and of the people who touch my life?
I want to be a wonderer. In ordinary moments.
Experience is a big thing in the Charismatic tradition – at least as I have known it. And honestly, it’s tiring anymore to hear people who have been in church with us for years measuring a time of worship by whether or not they “got the chills” (a phrase usually attended by a wide-eyed, knowing nod). It would be easy to be reactionary and to discount experience altogether – or would it?
Barry and Connolly say that the disciples’ “experience of [Jesus] led them to raise questions about him and then enabled them to answer those questions” (The Practice of Spiritual Direction 22). If our spirituality is our lived experience of God, then it’s not really possible to discount the importance of experience. Besides that…through the incarnation, God shows that he cares about human life (which is made up of…experiences).
I think what this is helping me to see is that experience leads us beyond gratification (“the chills”) and toward God when it is received with attention and intention. That’s where spiritual direction comes in. A spiritual director, through listening…companionship, helps us to live attentively and intentionally.
“…Many endeavor rather to know than to live well, therefore they are often deceived, and read either none, or scanty fruit” (A’Kempis,The Imitaiton of Christ, 16). Dismissing experience can probably lead to an over-emphasis on head knowledge at the expense of learning to live as Christ. Moon and Benner point out that “therapy is essentially an attempt to help the patient gain or regain his capacity for love. If this aim is not fulfilled nothing but surface changes can be accomplished” (Spiritual Direction and the Care of Souls 209).
As we learn to listen to our lives, ‘experience’ is less defined by the emotions that come and go and more by the Mystery that pervades every moment and leads us toward a full capacity to live well…to love.
Oh yay.
‘Cept I have to wait until it comes out on DVD :(
Okay, so I went to Carlsbad with my parents last week. We helped my brother line some things out…he wrecked his car and there were insurance and rental things to take care of. Anyway. Carlsbad has a wealth of BBQ joints. We picked up some BBQ sandwiches and headed to ‘the beach’ (river area…the one place to find shade in that town!). We found a table and enjoyed our food.
Now…Carlsbad also has BUGS. Lots of them. All kinds of them. Ick.
Naturally I checked very carefully for them before I sat down. And checked frequently as we ate. Then my legs started itching. Still didn’t see any bugs. Itching got worse…I had about 7 bites across the lower half of my legs. They started swelling and by Wednesday morning (during a long shift at the theater, on my feet) it was pretty painful. Everyone had advice. Do this….take that…the pharmacy didn’t have much to offer. By Thursday things still weren’t better and Mom was ready to drag me to the doctor. I begged it off by taking a trip to the local health food store – Faye,the deli manager, is WOW in my book. There have been several issues I’ve taken to Faye and the solutions she offers are rarely very quick ones. They rarely address symptoms. They always take longer than industrialized medications, and they always address root causes.
So back at home…as I slathered my legs with green, smelly goop and sat for an hour….I read Renovation of the Heart and tried to ignore the terrible itching (a cycle repeated four times). Willard was talking in his book about how the point of spiritual transformation is NOT external. It always and ever addresses the deepest heart of matters. It doesn’t seek to eliminate the swelling and itching…it slathers on green goop and seeks to draw out the poison that sets things in disorder.
It takes longer.
It works deeper.
It brings true healing.
They say it’s not the greatest thing to go on “retreat” at home…too many things to demand time and attention, pull you away from retreat-mode. I took a two day retreat this week. At home. But yes, with people coming off and on to do work on the house…with four dogs and a bird to take care of…with driving past the workplace on my way to Cedar Creek for a walk in the woods….there is definitely the potential for distraction. But there was something beautiful about being able to have no schedule. No hurry.
Went on a hike with Mom and a friend. Met over the phone with my spiritual director. Lots of time to read. Lots of time to just sit and do nothing but listen to the silence. I spent an hour or so at Cedar Creek, walking and taking pictures and smelling the pines. Another couple of hours at Two Rivers Park…one just sitting there, one reading James Bryan Smith’s Embracing the Love of God. This was an ‘unplugged’ retreat…so no computer, no tv, no cell phone – I found such freedom in that! When the computer came back on Tuesday night, the difference was tangible. Technology is definitely a bitersweet blessing.
Having an hour with my spiritual director to start the retreat – I’d highly reccommend it!! MJ’s listening and questions help me so much…to listen and learn that God is drawing me into a fuller, deeper, richer existence than the hectic life I so often lead – frenzied by so many things that… s i m p l y d o n o t m a t t e r. As things become more solid on plans for this trip in the fall…yes, it matters in a way…and God does care about the details of my life. But in another sense, all the externals of job stress, saving money, finanacial aid, car, etc. (really, the list goes on and on)…it’s all worthless. What matters most is what is eternal in all of this.
The summer’s been a journey in working through so many thoughts and ideas and conflicts…no one could ever say this decision has been approached thoughlessly! Ha! It’s been thought through and disassembled and renounced and reclaimed until I am, quite honestly, sick of it. MJ’s questions, though…wow, she’s such a grace. God’s using her powerfully to teach me how to listen. In our conversation on Monday, she noted how I’m looking at things in such a black and white way. I go…or I don’t go. And one of the decisions is right…and the other is wrong. Either/or. Just the kind of thinking I am learning to question…and in some ways abandon. MJ asked me… “Barbara, what does both/and look like in all of this?”
I didn’t get it at first (and maybe I still don’t)…Both/and?? How can I go AND stay? It doesn’t make SENSE.
But it didn’t take long for things to start connecting. So much of what I’ve gained so far in this program (MSFL, Spring Arbor University) has come down to the same core and foundation of carrying tension; thinking both/and; living in the overlap…somewhere between two poles.
At some point decisions have to be made. But in a way, though certainly not in every case (hmm, to kill or not to kill…), it doesn’t matter! What matters is how I am allowing the Holy Spirit to work in me and transform my heart in whatever place I am.
Anyone familiar with my journy over the past nine months knows where I’m going with this.
This is liminal space. The in-between is liminal space! In other words…liminal space comes to us on many dimensions. Driving one place to another. Loosing a job and then looking…and waiting. Waiting on a decision until the one more thing comes through. Waiting for the tea kettle to boil. Letting go of expectations and living with open hands while still actively pursuing the path before you. Living in the moment…between past and future. Living in this time and place, where His Kingdom is both here…and not yet. Walking the path of spiritual formation on which I am a new creation and yet sin at work in me moves me into thoughts and actions contrary to God’s purposes. Life is liminal space.
Life…is…liminal…space.
The key is to live liminally…to live in a way that is attentive to those times and places. To turn our heart to his Presence and mercy and grace in the midst of it all and wait.
“I will wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in His word do I hope.”
I keep telling myself this. Late nights and early mornings don’t work well together. But there’s thhat late night urge to write. About nothing in particular, really. Just a longing. Maybe more a desire to reflect.
But then I don’t know what to write.
I suppose I could go rambling on about nothing in particular. Like how praying the Psalms for going on three weeks is creating some movements in my heart that I haven’t yet found words to describe. Like how recent praise at work has totally gone to my head – with frightening speed and ease. Like how I wish school would just hurry up and get here…or how I wish to goodness I could come to some sort of resolution on these plans for the fall. Like how the liminal space in which I find myself is comfortable at times…and at other times just freakin annoying.
I could go on about church…and my desire to find a healthy tension between action and contemplation…ministry and solitude…serivce and silence. I could pick through the interesting detials of the books I’m moving (rather slowly) through this summer…Or how about the weather? Or perhaps the remodeling going on at Wal-Mart…and everyone walking around the shuffled store with dazed and confused looks on their faces (“I think I’m lost…”). The interesting things I stumbled accross on the internet today? The woman I met at lunch who is active in local efforts to fight human trafficking? The fact that I’m actually looking forward to watching the new Harry Potter movie? The new list of retreats available from Pecos Monastery?
I suppose I could just ramble.
But I won’t :)
I’m off to pray Psalm 16 before bed. “The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup…”
Found this on the cap to a bottle of Honest Tea I drank at lunch today…
“To lead people, walk behind them.”
Pulling excerpts from “The Quiet Eye” for a post on the arts council blog (where I work), I found this…
“The way to do is to be.”
Both from Lao Tzu, 600 BC.
Serendipity :)
Starting out on a bit of a road trip with family and couple friends…heading to San Antonio for the Renovare International Conference. Interestingly, I found myself in the car this morning…at the start of this trip…breaking in a new journal…pondering this idea of beginning. Hitting the road and breaking in a new journal. They’re really very similar activities. There is a general knowledge of how the days (pages) will look. There is an awkwardness…changing rhythms…getting used to a new binding or bigger pages. Some of the days (pages) might even look a lot alike – though there will always be those little nuances…unique handwritting on the page, various turnings of my thoughts throughout a day. There is in both a high degree of expectation and a great need to receive and offer grace.
A recent conversation with my spiritual director (MJ) has me thinking a lot about this…and I’m finding that it is so integral to my recent disciplines of slowing. I can’t quite put words to it except to say that there’s something about slowing down enough to notice the many thresholds we cross in our lifetimes…in a year…in the course of a single day. It all comes down to this moment.
Since my conversation with MJ, I’ve actually found myself going back (yet again) to John O’Donohue’s blessing “For A New Beginning”. I think the first time I read it was at the start of my first semester at SAU. It surfaced after that in small ways…then it was big in my mind again around November…and again as I waited for the new year to tick-tock into existence… and again now…as the movements of my journey draw my attention more and more to the inward journey. Yes there is a time to plan and act and move on…but underneath this surface level there is a reality that is continuously flowing…to which I rarely give full and sustained attention.
In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.
As I looked back over the journal I just finished…I could see where some of these beginnings had started to emerge. Maybe these emergings are happening all the time. We just need to slow down enough to notice them…
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