Grand Teton reading #3

I won't be able to blog much about this one. The things it touches on are too much to share. But I cannot recommend it enough. It is a simple-looking book ~ big print, wide margins, short chapters. But it cuts to the heart in profoundly convicting ways.

Nouwen addresses our deep needs for solitude, silence, and prayer. Here are the reasons:

Our society is not a community radiant with the love of Christ, but a dangerous network of domination and manipulation in which we can easily get entangled and lose our soul. The basic question is whether we ministers of Jesus Christ have not already been so deeply molded by the seductive powers of our dark world that we have become blind to our own and other people's fatal state and have lost the power and motivation to swim for our lives.

He then calls out our great sin: our compulsive need to maintain a false self. In other words, "what matters in how I am perceived by my world." He then goes on to show how Jesus faced these things in his 40 days in the desert, where he was confronted with three sins of the false self:

1. To be relevant (turn stones into bread)
2. To be spectacular (throw yourself down from a great height)
3. To be powerful (I will give you all these kingdoms)

Obviously, the irony of writing about all of this on a blog, for the world to see, is not lost on me. Again, I won't be airing my laundry here. I am simply reminded that the goal of solitude is not privacy, but transformation. As Nouwen says, in solitude we struggle "to die to the false self" by having our scaffolding (friends, calls to make, meetings to attend, emails to answer, etc) removed. Rather, we bring ourselves (vulnerable, sinful, weak) to the feet of Christ.

The wisdom of the desert is that the confrontation with our own frightening nothingness forces us to surrender ourselves totally and unconditionally to the Lord Jesus Christ.

It is here then that Spirit-filled compassion takes hold, and from which ministry can then emerge (see Matthew 4 for how it unfolds in the life of Jesus.)

I'll end with Nouwen's words:

It is in this solitude that we become compassionate people, deeply aware of our solidarity in brokenness with all of humanity and ready to reach out to anyone in need.

Active Waiting

An outstanding quote from Henri Nouwen this morning:

Waiting is essential to the spiritual life. But waiting as a disciple of Jesus is not an empty waiting. It is a waiting with a promise in our hearts that makes already present what we are waiting for. We wait during Advent for the birth of Jesus. We wait after Easter for the coming of the Spirit, and after the ascension of Jesus we wait for his coming again in glory. We are always waiting, but it is a waiting in the conviction that we have already seen God's footsteps.

Waiting for God is an active, alert - yes, joyful - waiting. As we wait we remember him for whom we are waiting, and as we remember him we create a community ready to welcome him when he comes.

I pray I may embrace patience in my waiting, rather than just try to keep distracted to somehow make the time pass more quickly. As I get older, the things I wait for become much larger and deeper. I am realizing that I still must learn how to actively wait.

Freedom

I read this this morning, from Henri Nouwen. It rang true -- and makes me aspire to do the same. What do you think?

Jesus was truly free. His freedom was rooted in his spiritual awareness that he was the Beloved Child of God. He knew in the depth of his being that he belonged to God before he was born, that he was sent into the world to proclaim God's love, and that he would return to God after his mission was fulfilled. This knowledge gave him the freedom to speak and act without having to please the world and the power to respond to people's pains with the healing love of God.

~~~~~~~~~

Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too.

You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.

Though he was God,
he did not think of equality with God
as something to cling to.
Instead, he gave up his divine privileges;
he took the humble position of a slave
and was born as a human being.
When he appeared in human form,
he humbled himself in obedience to God
and died a criminal’s death on a cross. (Philippians 2:3-8)

May we live, speak, serve and love in true freedom, the way Jesus did.

Stillness & Motion

I feel like I heard from God this morning in a couple of nice ways...

First from Henri Nouwen quote of the day:

A Still Place in the Market

"Be still and acknowledge that I am God" (Psalm 46:10). These are words to take with us in our busy lives. We may think about stillness in contrast to our noisy world. But perhaps we can go further and keep an inner stillness even while we carry on business, teach, work in construction, make music, or organise meetings.

It is important to keep a still place in the "marketplace." This still place is where God can dwell and speak to us. It also is the place from where we can speak in a healing way to all the people we meet in our busy days. Without that still space we start spinning. We become driven people, running all over the place without much direction. But with that stillness God can be our gentle guide in everything we think, say, or do.

Then I read this in a devotional:

Spirituality is clearly rooted in living ordinary life with extraordinary awareness and commitment... it is so easy to go through life looking feverishly for special ways to find God when God is most of all to be found in doing common things with uncommon conscientiousness.

Today is my weekly Sabbath day. I got in the habit of taking Saturdays for this (rather than Sundays) years ago when I started working for a church. Today I woke up slowly, read and prayed a bit, then went into the garden and picked some green onion and swiss chard. I sauteed them in some olive oil, fried up some eggs with them and had a very nice breakfast (with a requisite cup of coffee, of course). My day will be simple -- some exercise, a little reading, some doodling around the house that helps bring some order to my personal life. I will heed the words from Nouwen and from Benedict, to revel in the ordinary with acute awareness. I thought about dear old Jack the cat and got a little wistful -- I missed his tail talk in the morning as I made my breakfast. But I enjoyed the birds as I hung laundry and noticed a large black lizard in the woodpile next to the patio. The warmth of the sun felt good on my face.

As I gather myself this Sabbath day and get my wits about me after a full week, I then want to take that stillness that can only come from the Spirit of God into another week of motion. Let's help each other do this.

Creating Space

As always, Nouwen comes through with another one today:

Creating Space for God

Discipline is the other side of discipleship. Discipleship without discipline is like waiting to run in the marathon without ever practicing. Discipline without discipleship is like always practicing for the marathon but never participating. It is important, however, to realize that discipline in the spiritual life is not the same as discipline in sports. Discipline in sports is the concentrated effort to master the body so that it can obey the mind better. Discipline in the spiritual life is the concentrated effort to create the space and time where God can become our master and where we can respond freely to God's guidance.

Thus, discipline is the creation of boundaries that keep time and space open for God. Solitude requires discipline, worship requires discipline, caring for others requires discipline. They all ask us to set apart a time and a place where God's gracious presence can be acknowledged and responded to.

I find that spiritual discipline is not so much about doing as about being... entering intentionally & expectantly into God's presence, being quiet, waiting with patience, allowing myself to actually get bored -- which I use as a sign that I've actually slowed down enough.

So I'm off the internet and on to the quiet...

Don't Be Disappointed

Signposts on the Way to God
Henri Nouwen

How do we know about God's love, God's generosity, God's kindness, God's forgiveness? Through our parents, our friends, our teachers, our pastors, our spouses, our children ... they all reveal God to us. But as we come to know them, we realise that each of them can reveal only a little bit of God. God's love is greater than theirs; God's goodness is greater than theirs; God's beauty is greater than theirs.

At first we may be disappointed in these people in our lives. For a while we thought that they would be able to give us all the love, goodness, and beauty we needed. But gradually we discover that they were all signposts on the way to God.

Spiritual Reading

I received this today from the Henri Nouwen Society in their daily newsletter.

Reading Spiritually About Spiritual Things

Reading often means gathering information, acquiring new insight and knowledge, and mastering a new field. It can lead us to degrees, diplomas, and certificates. Spiritual reading, however, is different. It means not simply reading about spiritual things but also reading about spiritual things in a spiritual way. That requires a willingness not just to read but to be read, not just to master but to be mastered by words. As long as we read the Bible or a spiritual book simply to acquire knowledge, our reading does not help us in our spiritual lives. We can become very knowledgeable about spiritual matters without becoming truly spiritual people.

As we read spiritually about spiritual things, we open our hearts to God's voice. Sometimes we must be willing to put down the book we are reading and just listen to what God is saying to us through its words.

Are you pausing each day to read spiritually?

The Non-Possessive Life
by Henri Nouwen

To be able to enjoy fully the many good things the world has to offer, we must be detached from them. To be detached does not mean to be indifferent or uninterested. It means to be non-possessive. Life is a gift to be grateful for and not a property to cling to.

A non-possessive life is a free life. But such freedom is only possible when we have a deep sense of belonging. To whom then do we belong? We belong to God, and the God to whom we belong has sent us into the world to proclaim in his Name that all of creation is created in and by love and calls us to gratitude and joy. That is what the "detached" life is all about. It is a life in which we are free to offer praise and thanksgiving.