Gathered Together--Community Contemplative Practice

 

Jesus would also die so that God’s children scattered everywhere would be gathered together as one.                                                                                       John 11:52

Reading through the gospel of John for Lent, this verse came in today’s reading. As I read it, what came to mind was the centering prayer time that Pastor Wil is leading each week during Lent. I could see our small circle, practicing centering prayer in community.

There is something special to me about gathering together in person to practice centering prayer or lectio divina or to walk a labyrinth. These are all contemplative practices that can be done alone, but there is something powerful and compelling about being contemplative with others. It’s a completely different experience!

It makes me wonder if John, the mystical gospel writer, was looking to a day when our action in the world would flow from our gathering together as one in contemplation. Practicing silence in community invites the Spirit to speak in ways we may not hear otherwise. Collective silence can draw together scattered minds.

I know I am grateful that my church is offering opportunities this Lent to do contemplative practices in community. It is shaping my Lenten journey in meaningful ways. Gathering together with others to reflect on scripture in silence or to do a twenty-minute sit is countercultural, pushing back at our society’s demand that we must always be doing something. The good news of Jesus tells us that our worth is not tied to our ability to produce. Contemplative practices invite us to live as if we believe that to be true!

Rabbit-Foot Clover

Many years I didn't notice you

growing chiefly in neglected city spots:

sidewalk cracks, patches of overgrown grass,

near derelict buildings. Common as dandelion,

equally overlooked. It took a slow, contemplative walk

for you to get my attention, fuzzy spot of cheer.

I fell in love, took you home, enjoyed you more than

the showiest bloom.

To find you each spring delights me,

your persistence, willingness to grow anywhere,

especially inhospitable places. You possess

strength and beauty of wildness.

I want to be like you.

Forest Silence

The silence of forest isn’t

absence of sound. Rather the sound

belongs. Wind rustling leaves, a

woodpecker’s thrumming, chorus

of tree frogs or crickets, bird song.

 

Nothing out of place.

I breathe.

My feet crunch leaves lightly.

I try to belong, let myself be wild.

Moving Toward Purity of Heart: The Practice of Lectio Divina

Today I talk about a way of reading scripture for transformation rather than information.

Moving Toward Purity of Heart

This week I reflect on purity of heart.

An Advent Prayer

“. . . you’ve hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have shown them to babies. Indeed, Father, this brings you happiness.”   Matthew 11:25-26

Loving God, don’t let me be so wise,

so intelligent, so busy, so practical, that I miss

the miracle before me. Do not let my heart grow numb,

unable to muster awe and wonder and love.

Keep me from the cynics, the complainers,

the rushing-arounders who have no time and

no use for a tree full of joy,

gifts given in love, or the sparkle in a child’s eye.

May I find a silent night, or several,

in which to sit with The Story,

in which to enter it afresh.

Light the Christ candle in my heart today and throughout

this season, that I may be aglow with your love

and presence. May my heart

be a welcoming womb for your Great Gift to us.

O come Emmanuel. Amen.

Life as Liturgy

Last week was anything but routine in my community. Hurricane Irma, which was Tropical Storm Irma by the time it arrived here, blew through on Monday and disrupted pretty much everything for the rest of the week. Lack of electricity, storm damage to homes, businesses shuttered because of no power, schools out for the entire week—and the story was not unique to our city. Our church housed 100 law enforcement personnel who were sent to assist, so going to work (thankfully the church never lost power) was a reminder that the order of the week was not business as usual.

Almost all our weekday events were cancelled because facilities were used to house and feed our guests. The one thing that stayed on the calendar was our weekly Taize service. I was grateful for that anchor because the activities of the week that help orient me to God through prayer and fellowship with my faith family were on an Irma hiatus.

It reminded me how much I crave order and consistency, and how much life anchored by these occasions of prayer and fellowship is an act of liturgy for me. The various gatherings for prayer, study and meals connect me to God and to my faith community.

Liturgy means “the work of the people” and that work occurred by means other than our usual activities. Our church did much of its “liturgy” last week in the kitchen, preparing three meals a day for the men and women who were making us their home base for most of the week. It was inspiring to see the hospitality offered and the dedication and abundance of volunteers.

I was also reminded that God breaks into routine and offers us the opportunity to wake up from the lethargy that can happen when our lives get so systematic that we go through them on autopilot. In the midst of the dis-order of the week, I had a couple of occasions of God showing up in unlikely ways and places. That I could recognize these for what they were I attribute to the regular rhythm of prayer that forms my own personal liturgical practice.

There are those who discount liturgy, seeing it as old and stiff, but I think a liturgical life gives us a framework that grounds us so that we recognize the Spirit where we might not otherwise. Just as a building needs good framing, a life of faith needs practices that provide order and rhythm, but with space for the Spirit to move through and awareness to recognize the Spirit’s movements. 

What are the practices, the routines that provide the framework for your life, that form your own liturgy? 

In Trouble

I will be with them in trouble. . .

                                                                                                Psalm 91:15b

Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16 is part of the lectionary for the first Sunday of Lent. It would be easy to read these verses and focus on God as a protective bubble, insulating us from anything difficult or painful. We would like such a God!

This text actually connects with the gospel lesson for the week, Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness (Luke 4:1-13). In fact, Satan quotes from this psalm as he seeks to tempt Jesus to jump from the pinnacle of the Temple.

But this verse about God being with us in trouble fits my experience more accurately than angels not allowing me to trip on stones. Refuge is not so much about God being a protective bubble as it is that God is with us when the storms of life come and we must ride them out for a period of time—often of unknown duration.

It can be tempting in the hard season of life to look for a reason for its occurrence, to connect cause and effect so that we can make sense out of our suffering. What I have learned though, through my own hard seasons, is that there isn’t always a clear reason for my suffering. I can become lost in my anguish or I can grab hold of God in my anguish. Like an anchor that keeps me rooted, I may find that I still am battered by storm and waves, but in the depts. of my being, I know I am not alone.

One of Lent’s great gifts, in my opinion, is that if we enter it thoughtfully and intentionally, it matures our faith. To spend forty days contemplating Jesus’ sacrificial love for us as a model of how we sacrifice for others, should burst the bubble of God as protective container. But a God who is with us in trouble, who suffers both for us and with us—such a faith tells me that belief is no promise of exemption from suffering. The promise, rather, is that God is with us in our trouble, in our pain and turbulence. That’s a promise I can celebrate.

Inside Out

"How terrible it will be for you legal experts and Pharisees! Hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and plate, but inside they are full of violence and pleasure seeking. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup so that the outside of the cup will be clean too.  Matthew 23:25

What we value is where we spend our energy, time and attention. Jesus' warning to the Pharisees and legal experts is as true today as it was then. If we are focused on how we appear to others, we aren't focused on what is within us. Appearances matter in our culture. The clothes we wear, the cars we drive, our hairstyles, jewelry, homes, where our children attend school or summer camp--these can be all-consuming for people, the focus of most of their attention.

Withing the church we may find this emphasis on appearances acted out in a different fashion. Maybe we agree to certain positions in church leadership because they give us power, or we contribute with the notion that we can influence programs in the church. I've heard people say they stopped giving because they didn't like something the church was or wasn't doing. Life can be choked out of ministries when pride of ownership takes priority over the needs of others, when "our" ministry cannot be expanded to include people from outside the church.

Motives matter. If our concern is how we appear to others, our motive is not love of God. A story from the desert illustrates this: A brother asked Abba John of Gaza, "If I settle an account and afterwards discover that I tricked my brother without wanting to, what should I do?" John replied, "If the amount is large, then return it to him. If it is small, then examine your thought carefully, asking, from the contrary perspective--what you would do if you were tricked by him and were about o receive that amount; if you find that you would indeed want to receive it, then you too should return it. If you would not receive it, then neither should you give it, unless the person was extremely poor: for in this case, a small amount would make a big difference. In that case, you should give him what is fair."

This story warns agains prideful morality and instructs us to be motivated by other-focused love. If we insist on giving the amount when the other would not want it, our concern is on being perceived as honest rather than loving the other whom we short-changes. We are more interested in our own respectability than in valuing the other person.

It's especially significant that John says to examine one's thought carefully. Neglect of such examination keeps us from seeing what is at the root of our motivation. Self-reflection is the vehicle for turning our attention from the outside appearance of our cup to the inside. It's not easy to acknowledge the yucky stuff within us. St. Teresa of Avila, in The Interior Castle, speaks of coming to this realization as seeing all sorts of vile creatures in the lower parts of our inner selves. Most folks see that and shut the door to their interior, becasue admitting that ugliness dwells within us, good Christian folk that we are, is mroe than we want to know.

But denial does not make the ugliness go away. If we want to be rooted and grounded in Christ, in love, we simply have to deal with the junk within us. We have to clean the cup from the inside out.

Feeding on Silence

I am discovering that, more than food, I need silence. This was especially apparent to me on a recent silent retreat. While only away for two nights, my soul was nourished in a way that simply does not happen in my normal rhythm of life, even with a regular habit of daily silence.

“Need” may seem like a strong word, but it is deliberately chosen. I know that such times of retreat are needed for my life, for my spirit to grow inside me and become my whole life, filling in every crack and crevice and pushing out anything that claims to be other than my spiritual life.

Thomas Merton says, in Thoughts in Solitude, “The spiritual life is first of all a life. It is not merely something to be known and studied, it is to be lived.”

Silence is for me, and I believe for all of us, necessary for that spiritual life to be lived. Silence helps us to strip away those false gods that compete for our attention, that demand we live noisy, scattered, complicated lives so we will feel we are really “worth” something. In silence, I have come to know that the only thing, the only thing that can satisfy my desire for worth is God’s love for me. In silence, I can hear God call me Beloved.

Silence, paradoxically, has moved me from certainty about many things religious, to uncertainty about much of what I hear other Christians shout with great certainty. Silence, though, has made me certain about what I believe is the one thing needful: to know I am a loved and forgiven child of God.

Perfection

But you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.

                                                                                                                Matthew 5:48 (NLT)

Perfection is an intimidating term. Jesus gives this instruction and I feel hopeless to follow it. But I am encouraged when I read the same verse in the Common English Bible:

Therefore, just as your heavenly Father is complete in showing love to everyone, so also you must be complete.

Completeness sounds more doable than perfection. If I think about perfection as completeness, then I can see a way to begin the process toward perfection.

Yet even completeness can be misunderstood. As I am writing these words, a fellow church member sticks his head in my office and talks about all the various "balls" he is trying to keep in the air. If completeness is thought of as an attempt on our part to be all things to all people, then it becomes just another ball we juggle--a burden rather than a blessing. Surely this is not what Jesus means!

But if we think of completeness as the recognition and use of our gifts and abilities to glorify God, then moving toward perfection/completeness becomes the process of self-discovery, of learning who we are in Christ (Colossians 3:3). It is not about adding more items to an already full to-do list, but about pushing some of those items aside to journey inward, to move past the labels that describe what we do (parent, employee, child, volunteer, etc.) and to consider what it is that brings me the deepest joy. For when we consider that, we discover our place of completeness.

Living a faithful and obedient life in Christ is not about gritting your teeth and pushing through a jungle of "shoulds" and "oughts." The only "should" is that a faithful and obedient life should be a life of joy and peace. This is only possible when we strip away the "doing" that is burdensome, and instead attend to our "being." As we come to know who we are in Christ, we can live fully alive, from the depths of our being, and such a life is manifested in the joyful offering of our spiritual gifts, in fact, our whole selves, to the world.

Listening for Quiet

Most of us have almost constant noise in our lives. Whether it’s the inadvertent sounds of air conditioners, traffic or computers or the intentional sounds of television, music or conversations, we are surrounded by sounds. Many people I know invite background sounds of television or radio because they don’t want their surroundings to be quiet.

We may hear the Spirit through the voices of friends and family or through music or through other sounds. However, we may be more likely to hear God’s voice in silence.

Elijah, the famous prophet, whose story is told in 1 Kings, received God’s messages regularly. But when Elijah’s life was threatened, God came to him in an unexpected way:

The Lord said, “Go out and stand at the mountain before the Lord. The Lord is passing by.”

A very strong wind tore through the mountains and broke apart the stones before the Lord.

But the Lord wasn’t in the wind.

After the wind, there was an earthquake.

But the Lord wasn’t in the earthquake.

After the earthquake, there was a fire.

But the Lord wasn’t in the fire.

After the fire, there was a sound.

Thin.

Quiet.

When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his coat.

He went out and stood at the cave’s entrance.

A voice came to him and said, “Why are you here, Elijah?”      1Kings 19:11-13(CEB)

Wind. Earthquake. Fire. These are ways we might expect the God of all creation to make God’s presence known. Instead, God came to Elijah in quiet—quiet that Elijah can hear.

When we intentionally choose quiet, it is a fast from the almost perpetual sound that keeps us always at a level of semi-attention. We may not even be conscious of the wear such sound is placing on our souls. Quiet gives our souls time to rest, time to heal, time to listen for that thin sound of God.

If you are not practiced at intentional quiet, I invite you to try it. Start small—5 minutes a day, or if you are really feeling adventurous, try 5 minutes at two different times a day. Like physical exercise, you have to be deliberate, be consistent, and build up gradually.

Thin. Quiet. It is a marvelous invitation to listen for the whisper of God!

Active Rest

Oh rest beside the weary road, and hear the angels sing.
-Edmund H. Sears

Third verses of Christmas carols are sung less frequently than the first, second and last. While I have sung the carol “It Came upon the Midnight Clear,” I was not familiar with the third verse, which ends with the words above, until I heard “Midnight Clear” by The Digital Age. In the aftermath of Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday and Giving Tuesday, all before Advent has even begun, maybe the best thing I could do this holiday season is rest beside the weary road and hear the angels sing.

Quite frankly, rest is not something we value, probably because we think of rest as unproductive and if we want to be anything at all, it is productive. Our society measures everything in terms of output and results, and those results had better come quickly. Resting and waiting are viewed as unproductive.

Even in the church, we fall victim to our culture’s obsession with productivity. I think that’s why we struggle with how to pray. We pray for results. We want our prayers to be effective, to produce a desired outcome. If that outcome is not obtained, we tend to think we have somehow prayed wrong. I believe that is why so few of us embrace centering prayer. Sitting silently for twenty minutes just seems unproductive. The promise of a growing inner peace that comes over time as one faithfully practices this spiritual discipline is not alluring enough or quick enough for us to patiently persist in such prayer.

Maybe we would do well to consider rest as an active verb rather than as passive. For rest, in the spiritual sense, is not sloth. Rest is more like fallowness, a time of being still, becoming more aware of yourself and thus, of God, and maybe, just maybe, hearing the angels sing, rather than rushing through stores listening to carols piped in over Muzak as we frantically try to secure the latest toy or gadget for someone who already has plenty of toys or gadgets.

Active rest is what happened to Elizabeth and Mary, as they carried the promise of God in their wombs over nine months. As their babies grew inside them, they could do nothing to rush the process of birth along, and their pregnancies came with a responsibility, as pregnancies do, of taking care of themselves so that their babies would have the best chance to thrive. While there is much that needs to be done to bring Christ to others, such as feeding the hungry, caring for the sick and dying, and sharing our abundance with those who have none, that cannot be done at the expense of our own rest, or the Christ we deliver will be sickly and weak, ineffective for the long journey of faith.

So how are you growing the promised Christ within you this Advent season? Do you feel the presence of Christ growing in you as you prepare your heart for Christmas, or only a growing sense of anxiety over getting the right presents? My greatest wish this season is that we all would rest beside the weary road and hear the angels sing. What greater gift could we give to a weary world?

Sabbath and Silence

 One of my New Year's resolutions was to slow down, so this video got my attention. I'm facilitating a study of Richard Foster's Freedom of Simplicity, and as I've been reading in preparation for each week's discussion, I am sensing a connection between simplicity, singleness of purpose and slowing down.


The deeper I dig into spirituality and simplicity, the more counter-cultural I find Christianity to be. In Freedom of Simplicity, Foster observes that if we practice Sabbath, it goes against our urges to get ahead, be productive and provide for our own futures. The discipline of Sabbath leads us, if faithfully practiced, to recognize that life does not consist in the abundance of possessions or promotions or productive actions. Life is only found in our obedience to God and in the recognition that our God who loves us provides all that we need. As we detach from our culture's ravenous pursuit of status and possessions and power, we can learn to be content with what we have, to enjoy all that God has already given us in creation (including relationships), and we become more aware of the needs of others and thus, more compassionate. We then finally begin to live what we pray in the Lord's Prayer: thy Kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as in heaven.


Silence is the complement to Sabbath, because silence causes us to learn to quiet our minds. It is the inner manifestation of Sabbath, for if all we do is cease actual activity, our minds are likely to work overtime to make up for the lack of external busyness. In my own experience, without the discipline of contemplative prayer, I shift into thinking about what I will do when I am no longer practicing Sabbath. Silence is Sabbath for my mind.


Ironically, these disciplines are likely the most difficult for us to practice in our American society. When I've suggested dependence on God's provision, I've received sometimes angry protests. I understand, because I struggle to be dependent on God and find it difficult to reconcile productivity and dependence. It seems to me that we are often unwilling to accept that who we are is not defined by what we do, that, in fact, anything we do, for it to actually glorify God, has to arise out of who we are. And we cannot know who we are at the pace we live our lives. We can only discover who we are through the faithful, regular practices of Sabbath and silence.

Preparation

Recently I was part of a small group study using the book Saint Benedict on the Freeway by Corinne Ware. Thinking about the way Benedictines pray at certain times of the day has inspired me to infuse more of my day with set times for prayer. Beginning that practice with the season of Advent seems especially relevant, because I really want this Advent season to be one of waiting and watching for God.

I’ve been wondering why it is that I am so  deliberate in my individual preparation for Easter Sunday through the season of Lent, but during Advent my preparation for the birth of Jesus is haphazard. In Lent I add in spiritual disciplines to crowd out some of the worldly activities that otherwise fill my time. I consider regularly the sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross and how my sinfulness caused his suffering. Lent becomes for me a season of contemplation and interior preparation.

Why shouldn’t Advent bring the same attentiveness? My preparation for the birth of Jesus, the Word made flesh, is often all exterior. I clean and cook and shop and socialize. I prepare my home for guests but I fail to prepare my heart for the most important Guest of all.

I am part of a group that is studying the Advent Conspiracy. In the video we watched last night, a person who had participated in Advent Conspiracy for a couple of years spoke of how she had previously found her joy in the shopping and crowds, but she now makes space for Jesus to come and dwell within her heart and it has changed the source of her joy and how she prepares for Christmas.

My desire for this Advent season is to make the time, through regular times for prayer during each day, for Jesus to come and dwell within me. I want my heart to be a stable prepared for him, and I want to wait and watch for him to come and be born anew in me.