Pond

Though stillness seems to define its surface,

a closer look gives hints of what lies beneath.
Small fish, tiny I should say, active at the surface,
create sparkles as they pop up to feed, and less frequently
a splash speaks of larger ones deeper within.
Unseen current, life force, revealed in the sound
of water through the dam pipe
reminds me that this is not the same water I saw yesterday
and will be different tomorrow and the day after that.
Is this how my unconscious looks to God?
Is this the point of pure nothingness that surfaces 
in dreams I don’t recall?

Seeing with Eyes of Love

A video post, of a devotional I gave this week.

Lifelong Learning

I celebrated my 60^th birthday recently. In the weeks leading up to it and in the weeks following, I’ve spent a fair amount of time reflecting on my life to this point. I’ve thought about the things that were important to me as a younger person, what I loved and how I was creative and the people who helped to shape me as I grew up. It has felt like crawling under a house to see its foundation, to know what undergirds the structure.

It has been a good exercise, and I continue to find myself surprised by sudden recollection of a memory that gives me insight into who I am.

Honoring the years and events that have brought me to this point in my life, that have influenced what I value and how I see myself and the world, helps me to appreciate the whole of my life. I realize that it the painful or difficult experiences have been the times I now most appreciate, because I can look back and recognize that I gained strength and depth of knowledge that I wouldn’t have otherwise.

When you can recognize this, it makes labels like “good” and “bad” meaningless in the personal, particular sense. This is not to say that when someone injures you, it’s a good thing, but good can come from experiences where harm was intended and inflicted. Growth most often happens through struggle.

One thing I’ve learned through difficult seasons of life is that you cannot plan for every eventuality. However you’ve planned your life to unfold, it is likely that something will derail your plans. When I teach yoga, I encourage students to find the calm within themselves. Our outer circumstances can change suddenly and violently. We cannot control other people and events, but we can control what our internal state will be in response to the unexpected.

This is why the discipline of solitude matters. To hear the voice of God calling us beloved, we have to tune out the voices that tell us we are not. A strong sense of self and a deep sense of inner calm come when we know ourselves as deeply loved by God. And through sixty years of living, knowing that I am God’s beloved is the most important lesson I’ve learned.

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.

Choices

A poem/reflection on Matthew 4:1-2

The wilderness is a place of starving,

of stripping. A place where

what seemed important,

now seems either

necessity or nothing.

Senses become clearer by sparseness

or consumed by what is now gone.

When you are starving you have

a choice: to focus on what

you no longer have

or

to be filled and nourished by

your emptiness.

Three Haiku from Ireland

On Easter Monday, I traveled to Ireland for a writing retreat, giving my blog a rest while generating fresh ideas for future posts. Today I offer three haiku written in the ruins of the church named for St. Colman Mac Duach.

Ancient prayer grows

from the stone. Small fern speaks life

into hopeful hearts.

Warmh of holiness.

Sanctuary of silence.

Eternity speaks.

I offer my heart

on this ancient altar as

prayers seep from stones.

Listening

1 Samuel 3:1-10

I’m here.

Listening. It’s enough

for me that you know

I’m here.

Listening.

Song of Praise

Revelation 4:1-11

Holy, holy, holy!

Creator God, you are holy!

In the orange fire of sunset,

in the vivid pink of sunrise,

in the indescribable blue of spring sky,

your glory bursts forth.

Holy, holy, holy!

Christ Jesus, you are holy!

In you, we see God’s heart for us—

love we cannot fathom,

patience filled with grace,

forgiveness that bids us live with joy.

Holy, holy, holy!

Spirit, you are holy!

In the stillness of early morning,

in the silence of a chapel,

in laughter, tears and love of community,

your presence is palpable.

Holy, holy, holy!

Wrapped in Trinity’s holiness

may we too be holy,

lifted by love to deep devotion,

challenged by grace to grow in grace,

filled with joy irrepressible.

Holy, holy, holy!

Be Still

Psalm 46

When all around me shakes,

keep me, hold me that I may be

unshaken in your hands,

able to see with nonanxious

clearness, with steady heart

that you are God

and I am not, so I can

be still in my soul.

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.

The Threat of Silence

Many people I know have a difficult time practicing silence and stillness. They’ve bought into the myth of our Western culture that we are what we produce, that our worth is based on our busyness. Sadly, I see many in the Church who do not value silence, some who even laugh at it as if it is trivial, silly or nonessential to one’s spiritual growth. Yet I have seen some of these same people anxious, reactive and rootless, changing like a chameleon to please whatever audience offers them approval.

We tend to dismiss what we do not understand. It’s part of the reactive nature of our culture. One does not need to look far to see that this is true in this political season. But such dismissing happens within religious communities just as much as it does in politics.

Take a look at this pointed quote about silence from Joan Chittister:

Those who cringe from silence see it like the plague, fearful of its weight, cautious of its emptiness and the shock that comes with its revelations. The heaviness and emptiness we feared give way very quickly to turmoil and internal pressure for change. Silence enables us to hear the cacophony inside ourselves. Being alone with ourselves makes for a demanding presence We find very quickly that either we must change or we shall surely crumble under the weight of our own dissatisfaction with ourselves, under the awareness of what we could be but are not, under the impulse of what we want to be but have failed to become. Under the din is the raw material of the soul.

When we set out to practice silence, we soon discover that what is within us is disordered. We find that we begin to question things we had once accepted as absolute. When we get uncomfortable with the way that silence works like a spotlight into our soul, our reactive nature causes us to want to run away from the silence back into the comfortable environment of distraction and back into the moral codes we substitute for discipleship.

Without a regular practice of silence, one soon runs up against a wall that prohibits any further spiritual growth. Such a person is like a child who continues to play in a sandbox when just over the bluff is the beach and an entire ocean. We miss the immense joy of freedom because we choose to stay confined in a small, constrictive space.

The discipline of silence is essential to spiritual maturity and wisdom. The way forward is not easy and is best done with a wise spiritual guide, one who has been where you want to go. But the journey, though difficult, is the way to live a life of freedom, detachment and grace. 

Being Seen

A few weeks ago, our pastor preached on Luke 7:11-17, where Jesus raises the widow’s son, restoring him to life. He talked about how Jesus sees the woman, and how there is seeing, and then there is really seeing. We can know that Jesus really sees us, and that is a comfort when we sense that others don’t truly see us for who we are or what is going on in our lives.

A blessing by John O’Donahue includes this line:

May you have friends who can see you.

That simple thought is a significant blessing because many people move through life at such a frantic pace that they are unable to see others, even those who are in close physical proximity to them. Physical closeness does not translate into being seen in the way that Jesus sees and that O’Donahue invokes in his blessing.

Being seen involves understanding, at least the willingness to understand. It means seeing another for who they are. To see another for who they are means not allowing stereotypes to govern one’s seeing. It means not projecting the actions or habits of one person on another. For example, you can’t assume that your spouse will act as your parent did.

To have friends who can see you has been one of my greatest blessings. Being misunderstood and mislabeled is painful, but is more common than it should be, especially because it takes time and attention to see another. The easy way out is to stereotype, project and label another. We think if we can do this, we can “manage” or control another.

But people are not machines or projects. We are, each one of us, uniquely created by God, with our own distinctive desires, gifts and vulnerabilities. To label another is to deny their uniqueness. If we choose to follow Jesus, then following means a willingness and effort to see others. 

The Power of Withdrawing

Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit . . .

                                                                Luke 4:14a

After forty days in the wilderness, Jesus emerges with power, ready to begin his ministry. I think about the preparation that his time in the wilderness gave him. Would we ever think of withdrawing as a way to access power? I have heard many people say they were fearful that if they took time away from the activities (be it work, volunteer service or recreation) they would be forgotten, deemed nonessential, or would lose the discipline to show up.

Withdrawal seems so passive to us, and most of us don’t like to be passive. I remember several years ago hearing someone say he did not want to call a retreat by that name. Instead he wanted to use the word “advance.” Advance does sound more assertive than retreat, and we might think that advancing would make us more powerful. Withdrawing or retreating, stepping out of the fray of daily activity, may not seem like the way to power.

Our cultural tendency to grit our teeth and push forward as if we are superhuman is not the way of Jesus. If we want to follow Jesus, we have to cease our breakneck pace of life. We have to move with intention and attention. We have to stop, rest, withdraw and pray. To receive the power of the Spirit requires that we lay aside our own notions of power, our tendency to take matters into our own hands.

To follow Jesus, not run ahead of Jesus, requires that we trust that the Spirit will empower us, that we can withdraw, wait and rest, setting aside our arrogant notions of how things should be and instead entrusting God with our being and doing.

It is why following Jesus is so hard for us. We have to follow, not lead!

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.

Accessing Inner Wisdom

Sometimes, if you are paying attention, you know the truth of the phrase from Psalm 42: deep calls to deep.  I had one of those experiences yesterday evening at Taize worship. As we sang “Jesus, Remember Me,” the words I sang came from deep within my soul. It was my prayer, my longing, my heart’s desire, not merely lyrics sung as a participant in a service. My chest ached and tears filled my eyes. I thought of the first one to utter these words, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom,” and I was grateful that he spoke those words and that, set to a simple tune, they worked their way so deeply into my spirit that I sang them as an expression of my own longing to be remembered by Jesus.

Recently I read Sue Monk Kidd’s book, When the Heart Waits. It contains much wisdom, but one thing she wrote has probably had more impact on me than anything else in the book. She speaks of looking within, of accessing and trusting the Spirit within me, my inner wisdom. Thomas Merton said of the Spirt as our Inward Guide, “We don’t have to rush after it. It was there all the time and if we give it time, it will make itself known to us.”

Moments such as I had at Taize remind me that even my longing for God is a gift given to me by God, by the Spirit dwelling within. This Spirit lives in all of us, but for us to begin to hear its wisdom without the filter of our own egos, we have to practice regular silence and stillness. I’m not talking once a month regular, but daily. Like muscles subjected to exercise, our ability to hear with the ear of our heart is strengthened by showing up to silence and stillness daily and with an investment in time.

Conscience is not the same as our Inward Guide. Conscience is a good and necessary starting point, but our consciences are influenced by our egos, our biases and life experience. The difference between conscience and inner wisdom is found in letting go of control. The way to learn to let go of control is through regular periods of silence and stillness, practiced without any expectation of receiving anything. And this is why few will choose this discipline. We are results oriented. If nothing is happening, we move on to something where we can see results. It keeps us in control and, in our spiritual lives, keeps us from accessing the wisdom of God.

The way of silence and stillness is narrow, and few will choose it. But, as Merton notes, for those who will take the slow, steady steps of silence and stillness, not rushing after it, giving it time, the inner wisdom of the Spirit will make itself known to us. It will catch us by surprise the first few times it happens, but eventually we come to trust it, knowing its Source is trustworthy.