A Meaningful Lent

“Stop collecting treasures for your own benefit on earth, where moth and rust eat them and where thieves break in and steal them. Instead, collect treasures for yourselves in heaven, where moth and rust don’t eat them and where thieves don’t break in and steal them. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Matthew 6:19-21

Included in one of the readings for Ash Wednesday, these particular verses set me thinking about past Lenten disciplines that helped me focus on collecting treasure in heaven, the practices that had staying power with me and helped me know myself and God better.

One year I took on the practice of writing a poem each day. That practice helped me to pay attention, both to what was happening around me and to what was happening within me. After all, I needed something to write a poem about. I found the practice so helpful in paying attention that I adopted for this year, to help me live into the word that is guiding me in 2023.

Another year, I worked through a Lenten book called Simplifying the Soul. What made this practice significant is that some of the exercises it suggested revealed to me attachments of which I was not aware. I learned a lot about myself working through that book. 

Years when I gave up chocolate or desserts or similar things did not have the lasting effect that these practices had. However, the year I let someone talk me into giving up coffee I found myself resentful. I learned that year not to allow anyone else to determine what my Lenten discipline should be!

The year that likely was the hardest, and yet the most transformational, was the year my practice was to not defend, justify, or explain myself when my words or actions were misconstrued. My then-husband frequently accused me of motives that had never crossed my mind, and when I would try to clarify my actions to him, things would escalate. Choosing this discipline for Lent meant I absorbed the accusations and twisting of my motives. It was so hard. 

Our natural response is to want to be understood, to be seen for who we are. To keep quiet reminded me of Isaiah 53:7: He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.

As hard as the practice was, there was less conflict in our home because I chose to keep silent. Additionally, keeping silent allowed me to see more clearly that his behavior wasn’t simple misconstruing of my actions but a form of verbal abuse. Because I wasn’t allowing myself to be drawn into an argument, I came to recognize something I hadn’t previously.

Obviously, not every Lenten discipline has had the impact that these three did. But taking the time to consider how I want to grow, how I want to be made different beyond the season of Lent, is, for me, laying up treasure in heaven. So I give careful consideration each year to the Lenten practice I will adopt, knowing this season of Lent is a chance for God to create a clean heart in me.

I invite you to pray and consider carefully how your Lenten discipline can help you lay up treasure in heaven. Blessings on your Lenten journey.

The Practice of Waiting

 

Waiting is a topic we often consider during the season of Advent. I’ve read numerous Advent meditations that talk about the importance of waiting, the need to wait, the practice of waiting as a spiritual discipline. If we faithfully practice Advent, we are brought back time and time again to the need to wait. It is part of preparing ourselves for the coming of Emmanuel each year at Christmas.

 Of course, waiting is not the favorite pastime of anyone I know. And waiting is not exclusive to Advent. We spend a lot of time waiting for things. Some might say waiting is a “necessary evil” but I wouldn’t call it that.

 I mentioned in my last blog post that I had learned some lessons from nine weeks of not being able to drive because of a broken shoulder. One of the lessons I learned, or at least became more familiar with, was waiting. I waited on the sidewalk outside my apartment most days, looking for my ride for that particular day. It gave me an opportunity to be present. I watched the trees change colors. I watched clouds in the sky. I saw different people walking down the street. I observed the work of remodeling that was happening at a building near me.

 As a child, I remember learning a rhyme about crossing the street. It began: Stop, look, and listen. Standing on the sidewalk each day, waiting for a ride, gave me the opportunity to stop, look, and listen, a practice I can do anywhere, anytime I’m waiting, if I’ll just stay awake and aware.

 There was another gift of waiting. It was a waiting that curbed impulsiveness. Because I was dependent on others to take me to the grocery store, I had to be attentive about keeping a running list of what I needed. I couldn’t simply jump in the car to pick up one or two items. It caused me to recognize how impulsive I can be. Because I had to wait, I learned to improvise or do without ingredients. Not a bad practice.

 I realized just how much time I can waste making little trips back and forth to the grocery store. I recognized that impulsivity is a barrier to imagination. When I have to wait, there is time and space for creative problem solving. That’s a practice that can apply not only to meal preparation but to other areas of life. Waiting gives space for ideas to germinate.

 As we wait during Advent, I challenge you to see this practice of waiting as creative process. Stop. Look. Listen. Improvise. Think about things differently. What can grow in you while you wait?

Something to Live For

Our life. . . provokes us with the evidence that it must have meaning. . . our purpose in life is to discover this meaning, and live according to it. We have, therefore, something to live for. The process of living, of growing up, and becoming a person, is precisely the gradually increasing awareness of what that something is.                                                                                            

                                                                                                    Thomas Merton

 Something to live for. I wonder how that something changes for us over time. How often do we consciously think about it in our daily round of life? Maybe the phrase only pops into our consciousness when we are shaken awake by some struggle.

 Or maybe it is a gradually increasing awareness, as Merton says, that happens in the ordinariness of life. We might think about what it is we live for from time to time—as we turn the calendar page to a new year, as we approach a milestone birthday, or when we experience a sense of restlessness with life as it currently is for us. We may wonder what it is that we are living for at such times. If we do think about what we are living for, then a follow up question is called for: What am I doing that moves me toward meaning in my life?

 It is easy to be distracted from questions about meaning and what we live for by the thrum of daily news, activities, and a thousand (or even ten) requests for assistance—good things, but must we say yes to every one of them? We are moving, always moving, it seems, but toward what goal? We have filled the hours of yet another day, but with what? At the end of the day, in the purely literal meaning of that phrase, are we any closer to awareness of what we are living for, or moving toward meaning?

 Stephen Covey, in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, speaks of getting caught up in “the thick of thin things.” As Lent approaches, I encourage you to walk with Jesus through this season, to see how he was aware of the meaning of his life, and how he lived according to it. He had something to live for, and he did. To reflect on the purposefulness with which he approached life can move us to clear away the clutter of “thin things” and focus on what it is that gives our lives meaning. What is it that you are living for?

 

Restlessness (aka Acedia)

Restlessness is not unique to us in the midst of a pandemic. It's been around a long time, and we can learn how to combat it from early church leaders.

Lizards, Snakes, and Spiritual Formation

 

I'm sharing a video post this week with some reptilian examples!

An Experience of Waking Up

 Life should be a process of waking up. I was recently thinking about some of my own waking up experiences. I define waking up experiences as times when you realize that something is other than what you thought it was, when you become aware that what you know is insufficient, or skewed, or seen through a lens that distorts your vision. Paul talks about seeing a dim reflection in a mirror in 1 Corinthians 13:12, and Rumi says “Wake up, wake up! You have slept millions and millions of years. Why not wake up this morning?”

 Father Richard Rohr had a recent series of daily messages about corporate sin, the sin perpetrated by powers and principalities that we often fail to see as sin because we benefit from the system. Reading these reminded me of one particular waking up experience. I woke up to the way I was swept up in a materialistic, acquisitive culture, and how incompatible that was to my faith.

 I was not asleep to the disparities among people, both within our country and in the world in general. I’d participated in mission trips and I knew that I had significantly more resources than most of the world’s people. But the waking up was the recognition that I was allowing myself to be swept along in the general current of American culture, which is oriented toward acquiring, holding, and protecting assets, and that this way of living did not feel healthy for me as I sought to practice being a faithful disciple of Jesus, who had very few assets.

 It’s interesting how we pick and choose which parts of Jesus’ teachings we want to follow and practice, or any of the Bible’s teachings for that matter. Some of my waking up experiences have been around the recognition that I cherry-pick which of Jesus’ examples I try to follow and which I choose to ignore or explain away as irrelevant or unrealistic.

 I realize that to live in our culture I will need certain assets to function effectively in the vocation I feel called to practice. But I am also aware that much of what I have is superfluous. While I am far from living as simply as Jesus did, I am continuing to work to detach from the desire to acquire and hold material assets because it is an expected practice of our culture. It requires attention and discipline, because even in the Western Church, we don’t necessarily advocate for going against the grain of our culture with regard to materialism.

What experiences have you had of waking up? Are you fighting to stay asleep? These are questions worth pondering, and questions I return to time and time again.

 

Some Thoughts About Yoga as Spiritual Practice

Only in the context of grace can we face our sin; only in the place of healing do we dare to show our wounds; only with a single-minded attention to Christ can we give up our clinging fears and face our true nature.  –Henri Nouwen

Nouwen is speaking of the importance of solitude, but I also believe these words have applicability to the practice of yoga if one is approaching yoga as more than simply a way to exercise. I encourage students to come to yoga with openness, because the physical practice is only a part of the overall aim and philosophy of yoga.

The physical practice of yoga becomes a spiritual practice when we are able to extend grace to ourselves. We learn our limitations and do not view these as deficiencies. We accept and honor our capability, yet always seek to do the best we can do. When we can accept and honor our own capacity, it then becomes possible to accept and honor the capacity of others.

Our ability to accept our wounds makes the physical practice of yoga an exercise in spiritual growth. We may have injuries or conditions or aches and pains that bring us to yoga in the hope of finding relief. It requires vulnerability to accept and work with the wounds we have, be they physical or emotional. As we learn to love our bodies and what they are capable of doing, we find healing of attitudes that may be more limiting than the wounds themselves. Our culture does not encourage vulnerability, so the ability to hold our woundedness lovingly grows us spiritually.

Finally, there are poses in yoga that challenge us, that invite us to move past fear of failure, that coax us to try, in a safe space, something we may not have thought we could do. For me, that was a significant aspect of spiritual growth. Yoga helped me to be strong in the face of fear, to “breathe through the pose,” and come out on the other side more confident than before. In yoga, I discovered strength within me that I wasn’t aware I possessed. I know where that strength came from, so yoga has helped me to tune in more fully to the presence of God’s spirit in me.

Attentiveness to the Transitions

When Jesus heard about John he withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself. When the crowds learned this, they followed him on foot from the cities.   –Matthew 14:13

After hearing of the death of John the Baptist, Jesus needs some time to himself. However, the only time he gets is the time on the boat. Alone on the water, I imagine him feeling the rocking motion and hearing the waves lapping against the hull. Other than this, things are still, quiet, calm. I can imagine the time on the water soothes his pain.

I’ve read this verse many times but never before have I thought about Jesus’ time on the water. That was merely a transition from point A to point B in my mind. However, a group from my church recently returned from a pilgrimage to Israel. I asked two different men at two different events last week to describe their most memorable moment of the time away. Both of them described being on a boat in the Sea of Galilee in silence for about ten minutes—no boat engine, no conversation. Just silence.

Their descriptions of this experience caused me to pay attention to this verse that details Jesus’ movement by boat. Having heard my friends describe their experience, my own imagination went with Jesus into the boat, and I shared the experience with him. It reminds me that being present is not only about arriving at a destination, but also about being present in the transitions of life, mundane as they often are. For Jesus had only the boat time to renew himself, only that time alone on the water to attend to his grief.

The transitions in my day and yours are many and we often miss the gifts they offer us. Climbing the stairs, driving the car, standing in line, walking across a parking lot—all these are times we can choose to be present and attentive or we can merely be focused on getting to the next thing.

Years ago, I was looking out my office window into the parking lot. A bush was alive with cedar waxwings, devouring the berries. I was mesmerized as I watched them. A coworker pulled his car into the parking space near the bush, got out of the car and walked into the building. He never saw the birds right there in front of him. That happened thirty-plus years ago and I still remember it.

So today, I want to pay attention to the transitions, to the moments between moments, the pauses between words, the spaces between thoughts or breaths. Those are opportunities to be aware of the Spirit’s presence.

Mercy

“Show us mercy, Son of David.”    --Matthew 9:27

 Show us mercy, Son of David

   for we are blind and do not know the way forward.

Show us mercy, Son of David

  for darkness envelops us today.

Show us mercy, Son of David

   when we use scripture to justify sin and excuse our callousness.

Show us mercy, Son of David

   when our blindness is so deep

   that we call the bad good

   and the good bad.

Show us mercy, Son of David

   when we do not see the log in our own eye.

Show us mercy, that we may learn mercy,

   that we may love mercy,

   that we may show mercy

      to the hungry and the hurting,

      to the sick and the homeless,

      to the prisoner and the outcast,

      to the privileged and the proud.

Show us mercy, Son of David

   until we become mercy.

We Are Our Times

“The times are bad! The times are troublesome!” This is what humans say. But we are our times. Let us live well and our times will be good. Such as we are, such are our times. ---Augustine of Hippo

This quote in today’s liturgy for Common Prayer could not be more appropriate, and yet, its author, Augustine of Hippo, lived from 354-430, in a time and place far removed from us. To read this quote in the aftermath of the Las Vegas shooting, and in a world that seems increasingly filled with violence and tension, I realize that there really isn’t any such thing as “the good old days.”

We are our times. . . Such as we are, such are our times. What we tolerate in ourselves grows. What we excuse in ourselves overtakes us. We are often quick to speak of what Satan is doing in the world. But evil isn’t simply “out there.” To blame evil on Satan keeps us from taking responsibility for our part in the perpetuation of evil.

The desert abbas and ammas, those early Christians who have much to teach us today, understood that spiritual growth and transformation happen only as we battle the demons within ourselves. The capacity for any kind of evil lives in each one of us. Why do you think Jesus stated that calling someone a fool was the same as murdering them? What we carry inside, what we allow within us is what determines the state of the times in which we live.

When we fail to understand our own capacity for evil, the seed of evil grows within us. What begins as a thought eventually is acted out through words or deeds—our judgment of someone who is different from us, our unwillingness to act for the common good because it will cost us something to do so, our sense of superiority over others—so the seed grows into a weed that we fail to even recognize as such.

Recognizing our capacity for evil is not the same as saying we are bad or saying “I’m only human.” These excuse us from taking the hard road of growth. Excusing our evil is like running a weed eater over weeds—it does not eliminate them but instead strengthens the unseen roots, causing the weeds to come back stronger than before.

Teresa of Avila understood that spiritual growth was not always easy or pleasant. In her book on spiritual growth, The Interior Castle, she uses the metaphor of a castle for the spiritual journey. She notes that when many people encounter the snakes and bugs of the basement, they turn away rather than persist through what is unpleasant within themselves. It is helpful to have a spiritual companion who will accompany us through the stages of growth, encouraging and challenging us. I have found spiritual direction a safe and grace-filled place to look at the parts of myself I’d rather ignore.

We may not have pulled the trigger in Las Vegas, but we have all wished ill for another. When we can acknowledge that, and see it for the evil it is, our world will begin to change. Such as we are, such are our times.

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? 

Perfection: A Matter of Heart

Perfection, then, is clearly not achieved simply by being naked, by the lack of wealth or by the rejection of honours, unless here is also that love whose ingredients the apostle described and which is to be found solely in purity of heart. Not to be jealous, not to be puffed up, not to act heedlessly, not to seek what does not belong to one, not to rejoice over some injustice, not to plan evil—what is this and its like if not the continuous offering to God of a heart that is perfect and truly pure, a heart kept free of all disturbance?

I read this quote in a book of daily wisdom from contemporary and ancient monastics. It is a restating of Paul’s most famous writing, his words about love in 1 Corinthians 13. Though Paul does not use the word perfection in that chapter that is so familiar to us, to love and live with a pure heart could be a good definition of perfection.

Often, our focus is on achieving outward perfection. We want to be thought well of by others and we may act to achieve that end rather than from the desire to love God well by cultivating a pure heart. I know I have sometimes acted in a way not in accordance with the desire of my heart because I wanted to present a good outward appearance. Yet the dissonance within, created by going against the grain of my heart’s intuition, did violence to my soul.

We know from scripture, both in the Old and New Testaments that God is more concerned with the state of one’s heart than with actual deeds done. You can cross all the spiritual ‘T’s and dot all the spiritual ‘I’s and leave God unimpressed. The prophets chastised the people to attend to their hearts rather than cover all the bases with their sacrifices, and Jesus spoke of those who clean the outside of the cup but leave the inside full of filth.

Why do we give more weight to outward acts rather than attending to the state of our hearts? I believe there are several reasons. Pride is a strong force, and we can be recognized by others as “good people” based on what we do, even if we harbor hatred and bitterness within. Ease is another motive—it’s a lot easier to do an outward something, even something difficult, than to commence the long path of inward change and growth, which requires much discipline. I’ve encountered many who, when challenged to begin a practice of self-reflection, look within, dislike what they see, and choose not to go any further down that path. In her book, The Interior Castle, Teresa of Avila speaks of this propensity with colorful metaphorical language. She talks about the snakes, vipers and venomous reptiles we encounter as we begin the journey inward, and how we have to persevere to get past these.

The most important work we can do for God is the work of allowing our hearts to be changed. It is through purity of heart that our outward acts become pleasing to God. 

Pieces

Ecclesiastes 3:1-20

My life—a jigsaw puzzle,

each piece necessary, but alone

lending no clue to the larger picture

and no box to guide toward completion.

Some pieces that appear to go together

don’t. Unlikely combinations surprise me.

Yet each piece a season, an event—some light,

some dark, but all unite,

making whole. Hope is learning to see

as the Puzzle-Maker sees, the

Imago Dei scattered across the table,

slowly coming into view as I connect

each piece. To see myself

fully human, fully

beloved when the image is not

what I imagined it would be—this

is the key to working

without a box, the key to

becoming whole.

Ashes and Fire

Ephesians 6:10-18

Yesterday’s ashes, washed from my forehead

mark my heart, reminding me that your

refining fire, not chosen by me, compels me choose to

die to self. Flaming arrows of the evil one launched

against me call me to trust not in my strength

but in yours alone.

My ash-marked heart is yours, Most Loving One.

My soul sings of your justice and mercy, inseparable,

one from the other.

I stand by your power, not my own.

I stand in your purifying love.

I stand because of you.

I stand.

Over vs Through

I bought an Italian Parsley plant a few weeks ago. I put the pot in a sunny window, gave it water, and hoped it would thrive there. I snipped leaves off for several recipes that first week.

All seemed to be going well with my little plant until I returned from a weekend retreat. Yellow leaves greeted me on my arrival, even though there was still water in the dish under the pot. I got the scissors and began to trim the dying leaves, which took almost all the leaves off the plant. I wasn’t sure the plant would survive.

But just a couple of days later, I noticed lots of new leaves. The severe pruning allowed the plant to be healthy and grow. Had I simply repotted the sick plant, or just continued to water it, without any pruning, I am convinced it would have died completely.  

That little plant reminds me that avoidance of difficulty, or glossing over one’s pain (think Monty Python—“It’s only a flesh wound”) does not create the opportunity for growth that going through difficulty, enduring the pruning, or feeling the loss makes for us.

When we are seriously wounded, healing takes time and attention. You wouldn’t tell someone with a broken leg to just get over it. The leg has to be set, protected and immobilized, so the bones can knit back together. The inner wounds of bullying, betrayal or rejection are no different. Wounds take time and attention to heal. Ignoring them or pretending they don’t exist is just as unhealthy as wallowing in self-pity.

A friend told me that cancer was the best thing to happen to her. She let go of her go-go pace, allowed her body to rest, and spent time with God. Her spiritual growth through the process of chemotherapy was tremendous, and she is a different person now—filled with a peace and wisdom that only time, reflection and stillness can bring. She told me how she felt sad watching others who, while undergoing chemotherapy, tried to maintain their lifestyle at the same level of activity as before their treatment. She said they missed the gift that their treatment offered—to go deeper with God. They were focused on getting over cancer. My friend focused on going through.

To go through, we have to let go. We have to relinquish our timetable, our sense of control. When we go through loss, pain and wounding, when we allow the pain to teach us, we learn that there is much we no longer need. Pruning makes space for something new, something that cannot grow without enduring the difficult.

Jesus fully went through his suffering. He drank it, without any self-pity, to the last drop. He died, the ultimate pruning, but he rose from the dead. And how did the disciples know for sure it was him? Because he rose with his wounds. He bore the scars in his resurrected body, a constant reminder of the suffering he endured.

Jesus, my parsley plant, and my friend remind me of the gift of going through, of allowing the pain to give us new life.

Letting Go

I have a hard time remembering that I cannot control much (if any) of what happens to me. It’s one of those things I know, but I still get frustrated when things don’t go as I think they should.

It hit me last week. One of those “A-ha” moments as I recalled the most familiar part of the Serenity Prayer:

God grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
And wisdom to know the difference.

There is more to the prayer than these lines, but there is plenty here. And while it is a prayer I am familiar with, last week it went from my head into my heart.

The persistent theme of my life lately has been letting go. In my reading, journaling and in multiple instances of life I have encountered the prompting to let go. Suddenly last week, the beginning lines of the Serenity Prayer hit me like something I was hearing for the very first time.

To accept what I cannot change, not grudgingly, but with peace, is a challenge. When I get frustrated at another’s behavior, when the actions I’ve undertaken with pure motives are misunderstood and criticized, being able to let go with serenity requires discipline.

In a recent discussion I was reminded of one way Jesus did this. When a rich man comes to find out what he must do to inherit eternal life, Jesus tells him to sell all he has and give the money to the poor and then follow Jesus. The man goes away sad.

Jesus lets him go. He does not run after him, even though Mark 10:21 says that Jesus loved him. Jesus lets him make his own decision, even though the man’s decision is to walk away. Sometimes love looks different than our expectations. One might think that if Jesus loved the man so much, he would run after him and try to make sure the man understood the cost of his decision. But Jesus gives him the freedom to make his own choice.

In her book, Kitchen Table Wisdom, Rachel Remen contrasts attachment and commitment. I think what she says is relevant to being able to let go, to accept what I cannot change. She says that attachment closes down options, while commitment opens them up. Attachment leads to entrapment, while commitment leads to greater degrees of freedom.

Jesus was committed to the rich man, but not attached to him. The rich man was not committed, but instead was attached to his reputation as a moralistic rule follower and to his possessions, and this limited his options. He was entrapped by his image and his stuff. Jesus loved the man enough to give him the freedom to remain attached. This way of love may not seem like love to us, but time and again Jesus gives people the openness to choose for themselves. If we love as Jesus did, our hearts and lives and love become more open, and we may be better able to let go and accept what we cannot change.

Slow Small Steps

One of my favorite stories of the desert abbas and ammas reminds me of the slowness and smallness of progress in spiritual growth. A hermit told a brother who was discouraged about his lack of progress in keeping the monastic rule about a father who told his son to clear a field. The son, discouraged at the amount of thorns and thistles, lay down and slept instead. His father found him asleep and asked him why he had done nothing. The son said the task was larger than he could do, but the wise father said that if he would clear only the place he slept each day, the work would advance slowly and the son would not lose heart.

We sometimes think we are not progressing because we don’t clear our inner field all at once. The spiritual journey, however, is not a sprint but a marathon. The thorns and thistles have to be cleared away a little at the time. I’ve been reminded of this as I’ve been reading through Paul’s letter to the Galatians. In chapter 6, Paul encourages the Galatian Christians to not grow weary in doing good. As I reflected on that verse this morning, I saw within myself the thorns and thistles of a lingering resentment. My first inclination was to berate myself for the resentment, but then I thought about story about clearing the field, and I realized that this was the “patch” that needed my attention at this moment.

We live in a culture that does not value slowness and smallness. Consequently, we get discouraged when the only way forward is through slow, small progress. I’ve seen it with folks who are recovering from surgeries or health issues and I’ve also seen it in people who have had a significant spiritual awakening. We tend to grow impatient and frustrated when healing is prolonged and when the spiritual high has descended into ordinary time. And when we come upon an inner patch of thorns and thistles, we may choose to shrug our shoulders and go to sleep, preferring to numb ourselves against the acknowledgement that we are not all we imagined ourselves to be.

I’m grateful that God’s expectations of us do not move at our Western culture’s go-go pace. Grace is about slow, small progress. I won’t even say it’s about steady progress, because the journey of spiritual growth is not linear. It happens in its own time, but it only happens if we keep at it.

The Right Focus

Brothers and sisters, become imitators of me and watch those who live this way—you can use us as models. As I have told you many times and now say with deep sadness, many people live as enemies of the cross. Their lives end with destruction. Their god is their stomach, and they take pride in their disgrace because their thoughts focus on earthly things. Our citizenship is in heaven. We look forward to a savior that comes from there—the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform our humble bodies so that they are like his glorious body, by the power that also makes him able to subject all things to himself.

Therefore, my brothers and sisters whom I love and miss, who are my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord.                                         Philippians 3:17-4:1

Why would anyone take pride in disgrace? That was my first question when I read this passage, the lectionary epistle for the second Sunday of Lent.

Assuming we don’t intentionally want to be proud of disgrace, then I believe that Paul is warning us to not be proud of earthly things. When our focus is on such things, we lose sight of God’s kingdom and the fact that earthly things are impermanent and passing away.

Paul speaks of people whose god is their stomach, which says to me that when something other than God claims our focus—be it food, career, reputation, possessions—it becomes our god.

The early desert monastics had much to say about attachments and their subtle pull on our hearts. One of my favorite stories from the desert tells of a monk who relishes acclaim and is downcast when accused. The abba sends him out into the cemetery two nights in a row. The first night he spends the whole night complimenting the dead; the next night he criticizes the same dead all night long. The abba asks him how the dead reacted each of the two nights. The monk tells him they didn’t respond either way. The wise word to the monk is to be like the dead, immune to praise or blame.

More often than not, it is the subtle things like the “need” for praise, and the pride that underlies it, that become a god. We may resist the obvious temptations and be completely unaware of the subtle ways we are drawn away from God.

The best way I know of to become aware of the subtle forces pulling our attention away from God is to model ourselves after wise guides and to practice silence.

A practice of silence separates us from the constant hammering of the culture that shapes our values and behaviors, taking our focus off the values and behaviors of Jesus. Wise guides reinforce the pattern of Jesus’ life, giving us models for our own lives. Wise guides may be contemporary or ancient. We may know them personally as people of great depth, or we may learn from them by their writings that have endured over centuries.

Patience must likewise undergird our diligent practice of focusing on things of God. Unlike the quick-fix, sound byte advice dispensed in our culture, our transformation is a long, slow process. One of the gifts of Lent is to help us keep our focus in the right place.

Advent Stillness

Stillness does not come easily to most of us. It is hard enough to be still on the outside, but just try to sit still for even five minutes and you’ll likely find that your mind’s activity is making you as tired as if you were actually moving physically.

Our culture devalues stillness, equating it with a lack of productivity. We’ve lost touch with the concept of fallowness, the practice of allowing a field to rest, so that it can be renewed. When a field lies fallow, it is then better able to provide the goodness seeds need for growth. In this season of winter, we see the bare limbs of a tree and know that even though it appears that nothing is happening, the tree is being made ready for spring’s new growth. Nature can teach us about stillness.

I struggle to be still. I know the value of stillness, but the mindset that activity equates to productivity is so culturally ingrained that it takes great discipline to overcome it and invite stillness. Last Sunday afternoon I chose to sit outside in the yard rather than take a walk. Walking feels more productive to me than sitting, but my spirit was renewed as I felt the gentle breeze on my skin, listened to the birds sing and watched the lengthening shadows fall across the yard.

Waiting and watching—Advent words that we are often too harried to embody—speak to me of fallowness, a stillness pregnant with meaning. In this stillness I let go of the false notion that what God wants most is my activity and realize that it is my heart that God longs for, a heart softened by stillness, a heart prepared to be the birthplace of Christ.

The Power of Silence

Because my office is in a downtown church, various groups use the building during the week. On several occasions, space has been rented to a group that is training people to be mediators. Someone asked me the other day if I was leading that group. This person had misread the sign and thought it was meditation training, not mediation training! I half-jokingly said that maybe if more people meditated, there would be less need for mediation!

The discipline of silence is both underappreciated and transformative. Most people want to do something for a spiritual discipline. They would rather fast, serve or study than to be silent. Silence and stillness doesn’t feel like anything, until you actually try to be still and silent. Then you realize that outward movement and quiet may happen, but inward silence and stillness is a whole different story!

I am facilitating a study of a book by Esther de Waal entitled Lost in Wonder. In the chapter on silence, she says, “Listen to the silence, let it enfold you, like a piece of music, like bird-watching.” I like the idea of letting silence enfold me. It sounds more like submitting to what is already present rather than exerting my effort to be silent and still.

Like weeds, the noise around us crowds out the silence that has been present in the world since the world was created. It takes practice for us to uncrowd our hearts enough to let the enfolding silence soak deeply into us. Constant noise and chatter, both outward and inward, stunts our spiritual growth. We may think out noisy minds are thinking, but deep thinking does not happen in chatter but in quiet.

Most of what goes through our minds is not thinking at all but is unthinking. It is why we react emotionally, saying and doing things without consideration. A noisy mind is the birthplace of hurtful words, judgment, wrongheaded assumptions and emotionally charged reactions—all symptoms of violence. This happens because we substitute unthinking for true reality, which is God.

Those who regularly practice silence are able to detach from the noise of unthinking, detach from the emotionally charged assumptions and judgments. Detachment doesn’t denote uncaring. Rather, detachment allows one to view situations from a place of quiet and calm, cultivated by a regular discipline of silence and stillness. Silence and stillness may be the most powerful force for change in the world, because real change begins within each one of us.