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.

Spiritual Consumerism

Someone recently contacted me looking for a place to go on a spiritual retreat. They had a checklist for what they wanted a place to have, and as I put down the phone from talking with them, I felt as though I was helping them shop for a car or stove.  “I want it to have this feature; I don’t want that feature. . .” I hear similar lists of wants/don’t wants as people discuss worship. I wonder if we are often blind to the ways we attempt to dictate the time, place and method of encountering God.

Ironically, I’ve been listening to a series of conferences of John of the Cross, the Spanish mystic who gave us the concept of the dark night of the soul. John speaks of the dark night of the senses, which is when you no longer have a sensed presence of God. Many of us have experienced some sort of assurance of God’s presence through our senses—we see or hear or feel something that affirms God for us.

Without a felt sense of God’s presence, especially after have had such experiences, one may wonder if God’s presence has withdrawn from them. Unfortunately, much of our contemporary Christian spirituality is dependent on felt experience. So when you no longer receive a felt experience, you may change your spiritual practices to attempt to reclaim the “rush” you are missing.

The experience of what some mystics call “spiritual aridity” may leave us casting about for something new to recreate the buzz we are missing. But when our interest in spiritual matters is precipitated by felt experience, then our focus is not on God, but on ourselves. Spiritual experience can feed the ego, and ego is exactly what blocks our view of God.

There is no formulaic way to an encounter with God. Growth in our faith happens as we are content to know God present with us without the felt experience of God. Our faith grows not as we receive affirmation through a felt spiritual experience but through keeping faith even in the darkness, when we have no option than to simply trust that God is present with us.

Improving our Vision

People of prayer are, in the final analysis, people who are able to recognize in others the face of the Messiah.  –Henri Nouwen

 I am not there yet. I can see the Messiah in the faces of the oppressed. I can see it in the faces of families seeking asylum. I can see it in the faces of those who struggle between following orders and following conscience, knowing that following orders brings stability of paycheck—even though it is at the expense of their own well-being—while following conscience may lead to poverty.

Sometimes I see the Messiah’s face in people so consumed by fear that they hurt others directly or indirectly. This fear can take many forms: fear of those who are different, fear of losing some of one’s possessions, fear of change, even fear of God. When I can see their fear, I can find a measure of compassion for them, even when their fear causes them to reject, label, judge and demean others. It at least helps me to understand what motivates their hurtful behavior. It is still very hard for me to see the Messiah in such people. The only way I can even glimpse it is by looking at their fear.

I want to be a person of prayer, and yet this struggle to see the Messiah in others continues to challenge me. It reminds me that the faith journey is, in fact, a journey, and often a difficult one.  It also reminds me that prayer is more than simply talking to God. It is opening myself up to be changed by God. Prayer is the willingness to be pliable and changeable. Prayer is the willingness to have my beliefs challenged.

When I engage in prayer as listening to God in silence and solitude, my seeing changes. Unlike our physical lives, where vision often declines with age, the spiritual life offers us the invitation to improve our vision as we grow.

Touching His Wound

“Put your hand into my side. No more disbelief. Believe!”

                                                                John 20:27

Let me draw my life from your life,

as I feel the beating of your heart

under my trembling fingers.

So close to you, your breath on my skin.

You, source of my life.

You, source of my love.

Let me draw my life from your life.

Let me never doubt your presence in me,

your love for me,

your Spirit’s power moving me.

I put my hand under your heart.

I put my whole trust, my whole life, in you.

What Easter Means to Me . . . Now

I awoke on Sunday filled with excitement. Easter had arrived! It was time to celebrate Jesus’ resurrection and the startling truth that love overcomes all, and I do mean all.

It’s not a story new to me, or to others. So why the excitement? What makes Easter different for me now?

This is my favorite icon. It is known as the Harrowing of Hades and depicts Jesus standing on the gates of hell. He’s pulling Adam and Eve out of their tombs.

This icon reminds me of something many churches have edited out of the Apostles’ Creed: Jesus descended into hell.

Several years ago, my life broke apart. I had become aware of cracks, but then one day came, and everything was suddenly very different. Only a couple of days later, I was at a conference and one of the speakers, Elaine Heath, talked about this icon and what it represents—that Jesus goes into hell and pulls us out of it. She said that this is the good news many need to hear because many are living in hell. Jesus comes into our worst circumstances and does not let go of us.

For me, this was news I needed to hear. It took some time for me to get completely out of the hell in which I found myself, but never did I feel abandoned there. Through the darkest days I knew the grasp of Jesus’ hand in mine. Though I walked through wilderness, experienced betrayal, false accusation and the pain of desertion by people I loved dearly, I knew Christ’s presence with me.

Over time I was pulled out of death and decay into new life. I experienced Easter. It has changed what Easter means to me. Before my own resurrection, Easter was a promise of something to come at the end of earthly life. But now I know it is more than that, not because someone told me but because I have lived it.

No matter what anyone tells you, no matter the shame and guilt others may try to shovel onto you as dirt is shoveled over a casket, you are not abandoned by Jesus. The one who knew betrayal and false accusation is the one who has gone into hell—for you. He holds your hand as he stands on the gates of hell and he will not let go. Easter is the proof that Christ’s love overcomes all.

An Imperfect Lent

I struggle with perfectionism. My childhood environment likely contributed to this tendency. Because I used to teach time management and spoke of the dangers of perfectionism, I hadn’t recognized it in myself until I was first introduced to the Enneagram. When I read about Enneagram type One, I realized I could not deny this part of who I am.

A social media post circulating just prior to Lent motivated me to practice a Lenten discipline of letting go of perfectionism. What I am realizing is just how subtle and insidious the demon of perfectionism acts in my life. I catch myself more often than I would have expected beating myself up for failing to do something I feel I ought to do.

Shoulds and oughts are the love language of the perfectionism demon! Grace is the antidote to combat the negative self-talk of should and oughts. Holding my successes and failures with equal grace is the discipline I am seeking to cultivate. The patience I extend to others who fail I also need to extend to myself.

I don’t expect to arrive at Easter Sunday perfectionism-free. The tendency is deep within me. However, as Enneagram literature tells me, the gift of being a One is the desire to improve the world. Improving the world means improving myself, and improving myself means allowing myself to fail with grace and without shame.

Circles

I live my life in widening circles

that reach out across the world.

I may not complete this last one

but I give myself to it.

                                                --Rainer Maria Rilke

We do live our lives in circles. The temptation is to think that our lives are linear, but like a drop that falls into a pond and radiates outward, our lives radiate outward around us. We have a circle of influence, be it large or small.

Whether our circle is widening largely depends on the openness of our heart. I know people whose generosity and openness draws people to them. Such people are a joy to be around. They radiate love to others and though they may not even be aware of it, their circle is wide because their hearts are wide. They believe in goodness and see it present around them. As they age, their lives and hearts grow more expansive. Their humility and wisdom keeps fearfulness far from them. They have nothing to prove, protect or defend, so they can love freely, without worrying about what is “right” or “wrong.”

I also know people who live life close to the vest, not exposing themselves to risk, not revealing their vulnerabilities, not trusting the goodness of others. These people do not live in widening circles. On the contrary, their circle is small and grows smaller over time. They do not readily invite people in because they are unwilling to relinquish control and are unwilling to admit or expose their vulnerabilities. They are worried about what others think of them and concerned with presenting a particular image to the world. They may know a lot, but they do not grow wise because ego, not humility, is the driving force in their lives.

The irony is that those who seek to be people of influence are not as influential as those whose energy is focused on loving others. What we attempt to gain by force seldom works out the way we want it to. Grace and love cannot be forced. Yet when they flow freely through a person, there is no stronger attractant.

Our world needs people of humility, grace and openness. These traits are cultivated over a lifetime as we relinquish the need for control and give ourselves to love. Silence and solitude are the soil in which grace and openness grow. A daily practice of centering prayer can open one’s heart more fully over time.

Will you begin to practice a regular, daily time of silence? More than anything else, it may be what saves our world.