driven to spiritual discipline

The more tired I feel, feel like I am being put upon, or unfairly judged or anything in that vein, the more I tend to isolate. Then I only see things that are all about my world and my self in that world.

However, my path and passion is to glorify God. The one who has created, forgives, and continues to redeem me in all time and circumstance.

At the very time it feels like pressure from both outside and inside myself is driving me down, that I need to spend more time "doing my job" and fulfilling the expectations of other folks, I am aware that I really need to spend more time in the spiritual disciplines both individually and with others.

Worship, Bible reading and reflection, and prayer are three that I desire to spend more time in with other people. I need to invite others to do that.

Meditating, prayer, reading the Psalms, waiting on God...at least in the morning and at night...I am starting to do more of on my own.

I am developing a journal for folks who visit with Fairlawn West to help them in their spiritual journey and possibly how they could do that through Fairlawn West. I am copying from a journal that Kate (my older daughter) received when she visited Goshen College two years ago. I started working on it at that time, but couldn't quite discern all the kinds of things that I would need to do to transfer it from the college context to the church context. Then a few months ago I received a little booklet from Renovare that spelled out 6 ingredients that could help us in our spiritual journey and with some very specific things we could do in that process. Those six were what I was looking for. I hope to have this personal journal done with in a few weeks to have available so that as folks are guests of our congregation, they could take this with them to help them become more clear about their spiritual journey and the process they are in to find a spiritual home.

I am looking for folks who are also "weary and heavy ladened". Together we could journey to Jesus who will give us rest. That we might take his cross upon us. I am having coffee this afternoon with an old friend who was a powerful spiritual influence in my life and I know he is feeling the burden in his life. It starts with us burned out sinners seeking Jesus...as brothers and sisters on the road.

the long journey needs refreshment

The journey this Lent has been deeper than others in recent years. I have been stressing with our congregation that Lent is a tithe (1/10th) of the year to give ourselves fully to God. It is a time to grow more deeply in our practice of the spiritual disciplines. That the journey with Jesus is like crossing a desert. You can start out somewhat easily, but along the way you will need some water. Many of us burn out on this journey. The spiritual disciplines are like the water of the desert journey. Without them, we will not make it. And we will wind up probably being more "churchified" rather than disciples and apostles. Its the refrain of the retirees, "The young people need to take over." But the young people aren't around to take over. And now congregations struggle to let go often of their treasured personal history and their buildings while God is trying to call them out to a new time, a new era, a new creation. But the "canteen" is dry and we are afraid. And the road ahead seems to not even dead-end, but just gradually to peter out.

So, we are seeking to do more listening than talking around Fairlawn West...which is one of our stated bedrock beliefs of our congregation about prayer. Pray to listen more than to chat.

A great voice of God comes from Madeleine L'Engle:

“Have courage and joy. Sometimes our moments of greatest joy come at [the] times of greatest courage,” she says simply. “Our children need to hear over and over again that there is no such thing as redemptive violence,” she adds. “Violence never redeems. And what we do does make a difference!”

Madeleine pauses before reinforcing, softly emphasizing each word, “Be brave! Have courage! Don’t fear!” And echoing the message proclaimed and lived by all prophets, she adds, “Do what you think you ought to do, even if it’s nontraditional. Be open. Be ready to change."

Sacred time and space in an urgent world

Sacred space and sabbath are core places/experiences as a child of God. Right now our country is trying to hurry to fix our economic wows. The urgency is important, but we will create more havoc and chaos if we continue to rush into this without time and space which is focused solely on God. Listening to God. Being with God.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Christian martyr of WW II - killed by the Nazis just a few days before the Allies liberated his prison, celebrated the Lord's Supper weekly in his cell using the toilet seat cover as the communion table, with other prisoners and guards receiving it as he officiated. Nothing was more urgent than this, to be at table with our Lord and other brothers and sisters.

David Loar
Fairlawn West United Church of Christ
Akron, Ohio

give up money for Lent

What if we gave up money for Lent? Ok. Then how about giving up using the atm and credit card for Lent.

The point is, if we are really serious about "giving up" something that God could use to help us grow spiritually deeper as a disciple of Jesus Christ, it seems to me money would be a good one. It clearly is at the center of most of our lives, and is the greatest competitor with God for our attention, let alone our devotion.

hibernation

The last month has clearly felt like a hibernation mode for me. As time has gone on, snow been on the ground for over a month, and cold temps were predominant, I found myself going through the motions rather than "forging ahead." No wonder the Native American Indians didn't stay here in the winter, but migrated south. Just like they didn't stay along the Gulf Coast in hurricane season, but moved more inland. Mobility has its assets.

Our ancestors in the Judeo-Christian faith were mobile. In fact, they went for a large number of generations before they were given their own land. Up until the end of the exodus, they were always aliens, foreigners, depending on the hospitality of other peoples. Even then, the land described as "flowing with milk and honey" would seem pretty barren to us.

I lived most of my life on the move. Never lived anywhere more than 6 years until the last 13 1/2 here in Akron. I was haunted by the feeling of using a "geographical fix" to deal with the issues of my life. But there is part of me that also wonders about the "settlement" that has led to so much lack of adaptability, flexibility, and mobility. One of the things about emerging churches is that people move as families to new settings as "missionaries" to start new churches. They don't just plant a church, but they grow community among themselves and invite others into those spiritually centered, missionally reaching out communities. My geographical fixes were alone or just my family. Even when Abram started out from Haran, he had quite a "flock" with him. (tee hee hee, "flock", get it).

Settled in, hunkered down...I think we have lost our ability to follow God where God leads and desires us to to go to live. And by live, I mean LIVE! To be alive!

quiet

Sabbath, quiet, prayer, meditation, and reflection are integral parts of the Christian spiritual journey. Yet, they seem like luxuries to many of us. We think that once we get our "work" done then maybe we can do those kinds of things.

Jesus carved out daily time for these practices. It was the only way he could truly know his Father. In his last time of sabbath prayer and meditation we are allowed to listen in...the Garden of Gethsemane. It is deep struggle and yet deep obedience also. And it leads to deep connection in the most god awful moments on the cross.

In Genesis 1 God created the world in "7 days." In the first six days of creation God says each day's creation/work is "good." But on the 7th, the sabbath, he calls it "holy" rather than good.

We live in a world that is obsessed with the good. We think the ultimate purpose of our life is to be good or to become good. Church has been twisted to supposedly help us to be good people, good citizens, good Christians, good parents, good children and so on.

Our ultimate purpose in life is to be holy rather than good. And like Jesus in his daily regimen of discipleship spirituality as we hear it in Gethsemane, we can only become holy when we allow our lives to decline or as the Apostle Paul says, as we die to ourselves so that we might be alive in Christ.

With the world's demands on us, this is not easy. We will be called lazy or off task or not getting the job done. That is why reading the Bible is so important! That is the purpose of the Bible. To help we creatures to allow God to restore us not just to a good status, but to our life of holiness. Pray, mediate, reflect, observe the sabbath.

the dark night

The "dark night of the soul" began to be defined with St John of the Cross. It is knowing even in despair that this is part of our spiritual journey given by God. I know of it at this time of my life. Like the Apostle Paul the good tbat I intended 2 do does not seem 2 get done

Romans 7
17-20But I need something more! For if I know the law but still can't keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don't have what it takes. I can will it, but I can't do it. I decide to do good, but I don't really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don't result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.

time is holy

I am finally finishing the book "The Sabbath" by the late Rabbi Abraham Heschel. I now know why this book is so important. Its here at the end. Heschel makes clear what has been clearly spoken in the Bible...time is far more holy than space. But we have made space far more holy and made time a tool for ourselves.

I just posted this on my twitter: finishing Heschel's "The Sabbath". Time is far more holy than space. Yet so much of Advent in our culture is about rushing

We have reduced holy "time" down to an hour on Sunday. However, we have transformed space (buildings) into the "church." We most often use the term "church" to refer to the building we use and to what we do on Sunday morning "I went to church." (rather than, "We were in the worship of God.")

We have turned material into our idol. And like our ancestors of old, we worship them with our time and money. Because space is clearly where we spend more time and money than in the act of worship or sabbath and in the care of our brothers and sisters...as a church. We ask people to "commit" to the church, but that boils down to time and money to an organization based in the building.

God finally gave in to king David and agreed to have the temple build. But God still said that the sabbath was holy, not the temple. Over and over again. Six days of creation were "good", but the seventh was/is "holy."

We will continually and always lose our way when space remains our focus. We are unwilling to give our time to God. Even here in the Christian season of Advent, which is all about time!

Thomas Merton quote on God

I am re-reading Merton's "New Seeds of Contemplation". This paragraph speaks to me in a time when we are attempting to be "intellectually spiritual" and trying to work through in our minds what we will accept about Jesus and what we will discard as irrelevant or "out dated" about God.

In all the situations of life the "will of God" comes to us not merely as an external dictate of impersonal law but above all as an interior invitation of personal love. Too often the conventional conception of "God's will" as a sphinx-like and arbitrary force bearing down upon us with implacable hostility, leads men to lose faith in a God they cannot find it possible to love. Such a view of the divine will drives human weakness to despair and one wonders if it is not, itself, often the expression of a despair too intolerable to be admitted to conscious consideration. These arbitrary "dictates" of a domineering and insensible Father are more often seeds of hatred than of love. If that is our concept of the will of God, we cannot possibly seek the obscure and intimate mystery of the encounter that takes place in contemplation. We will desire only to fly as far as possible from Him and hide from His Face forever. So much depends on our idea of God! Yet no idea of Him, however pure and perfect, is adequate to express Him as He really is. Our idea of God tell us more about ourselves than about Him.

Thomas Merton

what I like about the United Church of Christ/UCC #4

There was in liberation theology what was called the action-reflection model. Action for the poor, often in a political/social context, would take place and that would be followed by an intentional time of reflection on what had happened with prayer and scripture as part of the ingredients of that time and space. I experienced it here in the US but saw it powerfully used in Christian base communities (neighborhoods Bible reflection and action groups) in parishes in Nicaragua in 1987 when I was there. Focus was on action rather than simply ivory-towered academic theological equations on truth and justice.

Today, we need to recover the reflection part of that model. And one such place that helps that in the United Church of Christ is the web site of the congregation I serve. Particularly our "spiritual life" page. There are links for settings such a Renovare and Shalem as well as SOAPing which has become a central piece for our congregation in its spiritual life. This has enabled us to grow in reaching out to others with a confidence of spirit that we have not known before.