A Labyrinthine Journey: Soon Coming in 3-D

• The flu has finally brought Barbara down. 07:52:47
• Cold day. Chicken Soup. Day of Rest. Ahhh… 12:40:14
• I love puttering around. I can do a little bit of this if I want. I can do a little bit of that if I want. I can just sit if I want. Hmm… 14:33:01
• Wii Bowling and pizza with my bride 18:13:58
• That was fun (not) Snow turned a 45 minute drive into a 75 minute one. Now to repeat it. 19:47:32
• home again home again. Trying to sort through the ending to this season of Psych. 22:06:36

Preaching on the Transfiguration. Applying it to the transforming work of God in our lives. As I follow the thoughts and ideas I find I am needing to change a perspective on the spiritual life that I have preached on before.

I used to really like the idea of our lives being a reflection of the Glory and Grace of God. It has been in invitation to free ourselves from the trap of needing to create and work for our own righteousness and spiritual life. We need to try to get out of the way of what God wants to show to others. Reflecting is a good thing, but I am wondering if that is enough.

At the Transfiguration (Mark 9:2-9 this year) we don’t see Jesus reflecting the glorious light of God as if God turned a huge spotlight on Jesus and said, “Look at him.” I read the text saying that Jesus was transfigured from the inside out. He didn’t just reflect God’s glory, he revealed it. It may not seem like much of a difference, but I am beginning to see it as an importance shift in perspective.

When we are reflecting something, we don’t really participate. We are showing something that is not us or a part of us. A mirror reflects light and images but is unchanged as a mirror. That silvery surface can reflect images of beauty and wonder then in the next moment show images of ugliness and destruction.

Yet, when Jesus reveals the Glory of God he is fully participating in that action. He is transfigured by that presence and we see in the Gospel a noticeable change in him for the rest of the story. Jesus is the Living Light of God in that event. Jesus, according to John, is the Living Word of God while on earth. The early church wrestled with that idea and ended up with the mysterious formula of Jesus being fully human and fully divine to capture this idea that when we see Jesus we don’t see a human being giving us reflections and pictures of God, but we see the real presence of the Divine in the completely human life of Jesus.

I believe our transformation by grace can learn from that event in the Gospel. God doesn’t come to simply use our lives as a surface to reflect something that is not us to the world. God wants us to fully participate in the Creating/Living Presence of Love. And we should want that, too. We ache inside to be a part of God in the world. We yearn to become Revealers of God.

And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit. — 2 Corinthians 3:18 NRSV

While Paul begins here with the idea of reflection and mirror, he doesn’t end there. He talks about this process of transformation where we no longer just show but become.

Jesus called the crowd with his disciples and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” –Mark 8:34, NRSV

Okay, I confess I have struggles with ideas such as surrender, denying myself, and even following. So today’s reading from Sacred Space was a bit soul rattling. It isn’t an earth-shaking concept at all. I just struggle with it. Part of the struggle comes from being an Enneagram 8 which is very much afraid of others controlling our lives. Yet, I think this is a struggle we all have as we work out of and through our sinful, self important orientation to life.

Face it, we all go through life trying to get everyone and everything to serve our best interests. We become masters of manipulation. We mold our image and the situation so we become the winner. We have even found ways to make doing good things for others into a way that we get payback. Control is a major issue for all points in the enneagram not just the Eights where we excel at it.

Right now, the hot zone is my spirituality. I say that is a good thing because that signals me that there is where my growing is most active and part of me doesn’t want to budge. I haven’t been able to name that part yet, and may never identify the persona inside me that is leading the resistance. I don’t need to be able to understand what is happening in order to proceed with the growing and healing. (seeking to understand is the control issue for the Enneatype 5, my stress point)

Back to denying. One of the fears of the call of Jesus in Mark 8 is that it opens up life to vulnerability, to weakness, to loss, even to emptiness. For quite a while, John 10:10 has been a calling point for me: the gift of life abundant. But here Jesus lays out a different path of life and growth, one of lessening not abundance. I have naively associated abundance and the fullness of God’s presence with the image of the rich feast where all our hearts desires (as we define them) are laid out for our joy.

However, lately, the experience of the abounding presence of God has been more desert then lush forest. It’s been about emptiness and sparseness than rich color and luxury. So the invitation to a life of denial is another string of this surprising path God has been leading me on.

The surprise has been enlightening.Once I get past the initial reaction of ache to the void and emptiness that seems to surround and fill me I find more there than I expected. The clutter and the noise recedes and instead of nothingness there is everythingness. Last year, I set as my personal Purpose statement to “Behold the ab0unding Presence of God.” I am discovering that as I move into this spaciousness of grace within that this Gloriousness is more visible. When I turn off the noise and allow the many voices to quiet and recede that it is becoming easier to hear the whispers of the Beloved. And my protests of fear and control and success and judgement and “look at me, look at me” now show themselves to be my small attempts to fill the void thinking It was what I truly feared when the Lover found in that space is truly my heart’s desire.

A struggle yes. Yet, I am soo far along the path to turn back now and I find myself actually more intrigued the further I walk along this desert path. Besides if I try to retrace my path, I can’t. The desert winds have blown away my track. I have little choice but to follow the pillar of glory that is changing it all.

How do we make connections? We live our lives surrounded and upheld by an almost infinite number of relationships. Some relationships we aren’t even aware of as we live in a global economy. Other relationships we live more fully enjoying or wrestling with. At whatever level we want to consider the issue, we cannot ignore the myriad connections we have throughout our daily lives. So how do we make those connections?

The word we use to describe that process is communication. Without relationships we would have no need for communication and without communication we find relationships hard to maintain. We are almost overwhelmed today with opportunities and means for communication. You can email me at work or at home. You can read my blog (which you are already doing) or be my Facebook friend. You can follow my Twitter tweets and I can follow yours. If computers aren’t your thing, there is always the telephone: church, home, and cell. Yet, with all those technological ways of communicating information and are very helpful ways of connecting, they cannot compare to what happens when we have the opportunity to share and listen face to face.

With all those means of relating together available they do us no good if we don’t use them. For example, if you are in the hospital or need someone to talk to and not call, then we have no way of knowing your need and responding. In the same way, if in our families we each have thoughts and ideas and concerns and questions but don’t communicate them with the people in our lives how will they know.

Sometimes communication is easy, sometimes it is very hard. Sometimes the words and ideas flow easily from mind and heart to speech or page and sometimes those thoughts and emotions move like hardened cement or clay deposits. Sometimes when we listen it is like light surrounds and fills our hearts and other times it is like we are deaf in deep darkness.

In our daily relationships we need to continually renew our commitment to nurture those connections. When it hard, we need patience, perseverance, and grace to not give up and anticipate those times when the relationship is in that state of easy flow. In the larger scheme of relationships what is important is not whether we are communicating well or poorly at any particular moment, but that we remain committed to the relationship until the time of richness arrives.
If that is true in our relationships with other human beings whom we can see, hear, and touch, it is more important in our relationship with God. Lent offers to us the invitation to renew our commitment to nurture our connection with God in our daily living. Since it takes time to connect with humans, we need to remember to take the time to connect with God.

When we gather together for worship or study we are seeking to support and encourage each other in our connection with God. When we pick up our Bibles and read to hear what God wants us to know right now in our lives, we are opening our lives to the living Word. When we set aside the busy-ness of our lives to spend time with God in prayer, we are showing that we want to tend to that living connection with God through the Holy Spirit. Prayer is both that wonderful invitation of God to share with God’s heart what is in our hearts, it also becomes a way to quiet our minds so we are able to hear the loving whispers of the Beloved Redeemer.

One of those dreams that I have had for years is to be a writer. I’ve augmented that with wanting to be a retreat leader. I have garnered some fulfillment with being a Spiritual Director, but I find myself at times aching for more than what I have at them moment in those areas.

My writing in my blog is a way to practice and to have an outlet for those desires while the skills and disciplines are growing and developing. However, I have to say that my readership stats have never been all that great. And especially after an extended time of irregular posting, my stats wouldn’t excite anyone. So I have been struggling for a while with the whole question of why am I doing it.

At times, I have tried to apply as a goal for my writing and teaching as making a difference in people’s lives. I want to offer ideas and perspectives that might help people in their walk with God and their living of faith. But when only a few people read them, then why bother (so speaks the voice of my inner critic). I have struggled with the same thing with my photography. And I even find that idea being planted in my ministry and spiritual direction: it only affects a couple people, isn’t there something better you can do with your time?

As I reflect on that dialogue between my deeper dreams and my critic’s realism, I see that I need to reconsider my Why orientation.

In our Stephen Ministry training which we completed a few weeks ago, we kept coming back to the need to not be Goal oriented in our work, but to attend to a Process orientatation. As we consider being with someone who needs care, we needed to move away from goals that involved the response of the care receiver since that was out of our control. To be faithful and trusting, we needed to define our goals so that we attended to the process of our care instead of bringing about any specific results. That leads us away from seeking to manipulate or pressure people and also leads us to trust in the work of the Holy Spirit in the relationship and in bringing healing.

As I have been struggling with this dialogue, I see the invitation to God to be more Process oriented in more of life, not just in those times when I need to apply them in caring or directing others. I need to find a Why for seeking to write that is more oriented toward expressing what God has planted inside and less focused on making something happen in the hearer or reader.

Same thing applies with other creative and life opportunities. The more we live our lives as an expression of what God has already given us, the more free we are to be ourselves. The more we turn that around and try to earn honor and respect and meaning through what we do, the more trapped we become.

I don’t know what God wants to do in my life, but I know that I need to live believing that God wants to somehow be present and active in my life. This leaves the what of my life in wiser hands.