A Labyrinthine Journey

One of the books I picked up on my retreat a month or so ago was The Daily Reader for Contemplative Prayer, a compendium of excerpts from Father Thomas Keating. I would highly recommend this to anyone who wants to go deeply deeper into their spiritual lives. The other day, there was a line that I am still pondering.

The paradox is that we can never fully fulfill our role until we are ready to let it go. [June 24, p. 175]

This struck me as profoundly true. There was a time when I hungered to preach. I couldn’t see myself not preaching, so I had a sort of desperation to be the one who preached all the time. However, over the past years I have been learning that my life can be fulfilling whether I am preaching or whether I am not. I have seen this leading to a greater freedom in allowing others to preach in my presence (sounds incredibly arrogant doesn’t it. well, it was) without having to critique their “performance.” I have also seen this leading me to greater freedom in my preaching and others have noticed that new release of energy once I let go of the need to preach.

I have also experienced this in the process of being a developing spiritual director. When I started out, I have to confess, I did it because I thought it was something with prestige and honor. It was something that not too many people were doing (that I knew at the time) and so there was a need I felt within me for that kind of recognition. However, over the last three years of this training and now as I stand on the threshold of this new ministry, I see that the most important part of the preparation wasn’t the classes (as great and wonderful as they were) or the readings (what can I say about the life-giving words I have found in the last few years), but the process of letting go of those false and self-centered motivations for answering this call of God toward offering direction to people who are seeking. I am learning that I serve best when I let go of any personal need or gain from the “honor” of being a spiritual director. It isn’t about me or anything I may gain, but it is all about what God’s Spirit is doing in someone’s life. If I am allowed the gift of being with someone on the holy ground of their journey with God then that is enough. If I am allowed to see from afar what God is doing in someone’s life then that, too is enough.

It is about letting go of my false ideas of “happiness” according to Keating that lead to living in my true human-ness.

Went to the labyrinth this afternoon because I thought I needed to refocus. It has been difficult with the move coming in 6 days (a surreal feeling) to stay focused on the things that I think I need to be doing. So I went seeking a gift to concentrate and focus more on my stuff and on God. The temptation with all the busyness is to say I will get back to God when things settle down. Yet, you and I know that then is the time when I most need to seek God’s face.

Anyway, back to the labyrinth. As I walked I realized that focus was indeed my problem, but not in the sense that I didn’t have enough of it, but as in I had too much of it. What I needed from God was not more focus but more openness. The whole playing field was being changed in front of me. I need to have my heart broken open to let all of God’s presence in. The dilemma was that I was working real hard to be so focused on this project or that task that I was focusing God’s presence out of my living moments.

What is the essence of obsession and addiction? An almost compulsive (read binding as in prison) focus on something. One danger of this compulsive focusing is that we close our hearts, minds, souls, and bodies off to the other parts of life. I had my headphones on the other day, focused on something on my computer (I don’t even remember what now) when I felt this slight touch on my shoulder. I jumped and then turned and saw that my wife was home early from work. My shutting down of my senses led me to miss hearing the presence of love.

Is God’s presence focused? Can God only be found in this sacred place or that holy mountain? Does God speak only in one way or in many ways? How have we closed ourselves off to many of the ways that God wants us to delight in Grace and Love by thinking we have to focus more on a limited set of ways God’s presence is with us? I am so glad that as God creates the universe that God didn’t focus obsessively on only a few things but comes to us with broader strokes of fine detail and outrageous color and shape.

Ironically, as I walked, I realized that I am able to accomplish more things better and with greater joy when I am broken open to the breadth of God-life than when I focus exclusively on only one or two things. That also keeps my heart open for those gentle touches of Love that invite me into a new way of delighting in Life and the God-life in me, in us, in the universe.

Wow, it has been too long since I have sat down to reflect and really this is one of those “can’t write now, but I’m thinking of you” posts. Here are my excuses:

1. 3 weeks ago I was on a 5 day directed retreat without computer,
2. since we are moving in about 8 days not only have we been packing, but I’ve been trying to make sure things I can wrap up for my successor are wrapped up, and
3. last week was our 4 day Iowa Annual Conference (which takes at least a day to recover from).

Now those things have two results: not much time to reflect and write, and an accumulation of things that I want to reflect and write about.

I’m hoping soon to have a convergence of all the universal energies so that I can get back to reflecting and writing. Whether it is where I am currently sitting or in a new town and place, we will have to see.

You want a hint at some of those things?

• more reflection on the whole idea of status and service with ordination/certification
• Many reflections from Gerald May’s last book, The Wisdom of Wilderness which led my retreat.
• Reflecting on our thanatoptic dillemma in the church as a result of Dr Philip Amerson’s address to the Clergy Session about the Study on Ministry.
• A couple reflections from various teaching times at Annual Conference.

How’s that?

Oh, you probably are wondering about the thanatoptic dilemma. Thanatos is the greek word for death and dying. It is Dr Amerson’s view (and I am really appreciating it) that one of the biggest dilemmas facing the church today is that we are too focused on a perspective that sees only the death of the church and we have forgotten that we are a church of resurrection, formed and reformed by the Spirit of God not by our structures, circumstances and numerical tables. (how’s that for a taste?)