A Labyrinthine Journey

Last week for Ash Wednesday, I wanted to try to help my Confirmation students understand Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness. Last year I started working with my own version of Confirmation that links up with the Enneagram and some of the process perspectives that offers me. So it didn’t take much for me to see a link between the three temptations of Jesus and the 3 energy centers of the Enneagram (also the three energy centers of Thomas Keating).

But even that didn’t lead me to connect well with the students because the needs of the three centers are basic needs for life. What makes them traps for us is when we go to the extremes with the importance of or the means to achieve our needs. The common thread with all the temptations of Jesus was the temptation to do “Whatever it takes.”

Temptation 1: Turning Stones to Bread

We all have the basic desire for survival, to not be hungry. We like to feel safe and secure with all of our needs met and our fears taken care of.One of the things we really don’t like is that feeling of emptiness and it doesn’t matter if the emptiness is in our stomachs, the noise level around us, our bank accounts, our schedules, our understanding of life, or our inner spirit. We just don’t like it. In US society we loath emptiness so much we overindulge and hoard just about everything. We have fallen into the trap of confusing what we want with what we truly need all in the service of preventing us experiencing even the hint of being less. On the Enneagram this would correlate with the Head corner of the 6-5-7.

So Jesus in the wilderness after 40 days of no food sits in a place that we actively avoid. My confirmation students thought the idea of going 4 hours without food was ghastly enough let alone 40 days. So Jesus is set up for the first Whatever it Takes temptation. He was famished, and I can imagine that emptiness raising weakness and fear that he might not survive this time and the wilderness would be the end of his journey even before it really got started. So the temptation is to not believe that God will really take care of him, that the Spirit left him out here to die in the wilderness, so if Jesus wanted to survive, he would have to take care of it himself.

Both Jesus and Satan knew that Jesus had the power to make it happen and besides who would know. Jesus would know. And the truth he would know was that in the end he wasn’t able to trust God to care for him with even his basic needs, so he had to step in and fill the void of God’s activity in his life.

Whoa. That raises a lot of questions for me about all the things we do to “insure” that we will succeed in surviving our life. I will leave any personal reflections up to your living conversation with God’s Spirit.

But I find this temptation causing me to wonder how many survival programs for struggling churches are all based on the idea that God hasn’t stepped up to save you yet, so you need to do Whatever it Takes to make sure you have your needs as a church met. I’m all for hoping the Church of God continues (my income is a vested interest in that endeavor). However, I think we have lost sight of the idea that the Church is the Body of Christ and that the God who creates us and forms us together as a people is also desiring for us to live abundantly.

Where is the Trust that God holds the future and is faithful to us?

In many books and programs that come through my email and inbox the trust seems to lie instead on how we are processing the metrics of “successful” churches to “insure” our survival as a congregation or as a denomination.

Are we as the church being seduced by the Surviving by Whatever It Takes temptation? I’m afraid we are more than we would like to admit.

OK, this ended up being longer than I expected, so I will break it up into 3 parts and take each of the other two temptations.

Feel free to comment below.

Note: A long introduction to this post.

I’m approaching Lent with a different attitude this year. Instead of focusing on giving up something simply for the sake of giving something up, I sat down to see what I wanted to add to my life. More particularly, what can I add to my life that enhances and expresses my living relationship with the Presence of God.

I’ve from time to time found great value in daily journaling, but haven’t touched my journal for 7-8 months. So that is part of what I am taking on. I also have found that the two times a day Centering Prayer is foundational to so much of who I believe God is calling me to be. So that is the package. Over the 40 days of Lent it is my intent to develop those three pieces of my spiritual practice to the point where they are my basic core.

Now, to the flip side. In order to be successful in that intent, I do have to decide what in my life can be set aside to make room. The image I’ve been working on is the image of our lives being a bucket (or a water tank as a member of the church shared). Our buckets are already full of things we do. So, for me to be successful in making those practices a core in my life, something has to be taken out of my bucket.

As I thought about that, I have realized for a long time that aimless television viewing is a major time and energy sink for me. Notice, I didn’t say television itself, but aimless television viewing. This is sitting down, grabbing the remote and spending hours just flipping around watching for a few moments whatever catches my attention. Big problem. So, that is the giving up part of this formula.

If I have a show I want to watch, fine, I will watch it, but then I want to turn the television off when it is done. The other night, I sat with my wife and watched a couple hours of television. That’s fine, too. We were sharing some time together, we would watch, we would talk. Yet, I have to confess, when she left, I slipped right back into the aimless viewing that I was wanting to stay away from.

Now to the point of this post!

I realized as I was processing that event in my journal, that the larger attitude I am trying to give up is living without intention. To do something without aim, purpose, or intention leads to that larger experience of wasting the precious moments that God gives us. This is living without choice.

The gift of life is something wonderful and I want to waste less and less of it as time goes on. So whether it is watching television or surfing the web or pastoring a church or anything else in my life. I am realizing that to live it best is to live with intention. And that intention is to express in everything I do the living Essence of God within me.

I’m turning my thoughts to Confirmation class which begins tomorrow. Last year, I began working with my own curriculum to utilize the insights of the Church Year, the Enneagram and the Christian Virtues. While there is some basic doctrine and practices (the Wesleyan Quadrilateral is definitely present) the focus is on how to live as a follower of Christ. Which fits nicely to this last reflection from the Magi.

To recap, Part 1 I called Mindfulness. This was the openness of mind to the fuller reality of our lives and the world around us. The tragedy in Haiti has been a test of how open we remain to that fullness. But the gospel must be rooted in the truth of our experience or else it is worthless to us.

Part 2, I called soul-filled awareness (I really couldn’t come up with another phrase that I liked). This was an openness of soul and spirit to the reality of the presence of God in our lives. For me it is an invitation to really believe that God is there and is already working to bring righteousness and justice into my life and into this world.

It certainly takes a healthy faith and hope to hold both these perspectives on reality before us and within us.

So, now what I am calling Heartfulness. This completes the Three-fold teaching of the Magi. As we remain open to the reality around us and as we keep our spirits looking heavenward to receive all that God is doing we need to get up and get going.

The Magi who visited the baby Jesus responded to the sign in the heavens. I can imagine that this was not a simple process. They had to verify that the star was still there for a few nights. They then had to consult with one another to discern the meaning of it. Then they had to go to their Boss with those ideas and with the proper response laid out. “If this is a new-born king whose birth graces the heavens, it is best for us to do something to honor that birth”

The Ruler had to be convinced, then resources had to be mobilized. The gifts gathered (gifts that pretty much were reserved for royalty, I’m sure you couldn’t pick up a container of myrrh in the local convenience store). A caravan needed to be gathered together and only then could they venture out.

A lot of work to honor a baby and bring royal gifts.

Then to return home.

That took a lot of investment of time, money, even reputation. What if they got there and there was no royal birth (which Herod’s surprise may have led them to fear)? Yet, they did it. They saw, they responded.

As we believe that Jesus is the Light of our World, our response can be no less, in fact, it needs to be so much more. We need to follow this Christ with our whole-hearted, fully-lived response (hence my name for this).

We need to begin with honor and homage, but that is only the beginning.

The heart is the seat of expressed Love. Love received with thanksgiving and grace, and love poured out with gratitude and generosity.

That is what we are invited to give as gifts to the Christ. Our valuables (gold), our prayers (frankincense) and our utter dependence of Christ’s salvation (myrrh) are good starting points. But the great commandment is to love God with our whole heart, soul, mind and strength and to express that same love in all of our relationships.

This respond invites our complete investment. All our ideas, our perceptions, our words, and our actions need to be expressions of God’s love and our love woven together by Heartfulness.

Now, how to invite a group of 8th graders to see that. How to inspire of congregation of children and adults who already feel overburdened by failed expectations to set aside fear and give their hearts. How do you and I continue to stay “full” (mind-full, soul-full, heart-full) during the seasons of life.

Only be the Grace-Full-ness of Christ within us can we even hope it will happen. Yet, faith keeps inviting us to live that hope.

Before I move to part 3 of my thoughts on spirituality in the steps of the Magi, I wanted to pause for a moment for a footnote. This actually connects to a lot of thoughts I am having about our spirituality becoming more than 3-Dimensional.

In part 1, I thought about developing eyes for what is going on in the reality of our lives through what I am calling Mindfulness. Then in part 2, I talked about keeping our eyes looking toward the heavens in spirit/soul-filled awareness. The footnote is that we need both of these visions.

As we see more and more about the reality of our experience we need to see where God is at work. When we don’t do that we become open to a cynical and despairing view of the world. This is a part of our current reality in society and even (especially?) within the church.

We can see more and more the dark sides of ourselves and of others. We are inundated with studies and voices of critics that spell doom unless we do something about it. And many of those voices are even doubting whether there is anything we can do about our reality saying that we have messed things up too far. Whether it is politics, economics, global climate upset, or the future (lack thereof for many) of the church.

Things are bad, and we have to fix it before it is too late (if it isn’t already too late).

That is the message of those with an overly developed mindfulness without the spirit-filled awareness. When we lean too much in that direction we have already taken God out of the picture. It only makes sense, if we really don’t believe that God is involved in our lives then we are open to all the doomsayers and cynics. Also, if we don’t see that God is doing anything (seeing God as a classic underfunctioner) then we are compelled to step in, over-function, and try to fix things ourselves (which ironically is what created the problems in the first place)

That living belief in the living activity of God in our lives helps curtail or descent into despair and rampant control.

Yet, we can also become out of balance the other way. I know people who live within a fantasy world based on visions and words of mystics and scripture that has no contact with reality. How many of our best-selling Christian books come from this limited vision of life that does not allow for the shadows of life or the reality that evil is within each one of us. This view of reality that forgets or ignores what is actually happening in our world leads to a different kind of fear that removes us from our neighbors. This view even removes us from our own selves. If we cannot accept the shadows of our own lives then we cannot allow God to come into those places and heal us.

If the incarnation (the original even that brings the Magi to our attention) means anything is that God comes to the garages and cow barns of our lives because they too are part of this life.

I do believe these two points of vision fit very well together. And as we cultivate both areas of awareness we can see how for God, there are not really two realities, but just one. And in that one reality there is the one truth of God at work.

If the first task of the wise ones we call Magi is to be mindful of the reality of their lives and their world, the second one we need to learn from is to cast our eyes heavenward. We need to be filled with soulfilled awareness. The word is odd, I know, but I can’t seem to find another one that I like better.

The Magi were star-gazers. They looked for and reflected on signs in the stars and in the heavens. They had to do it as a regular practice otherwise how would they know there was a new star in the west. And how would they discern what it’s significance might be.

In the tradition I grew up in, the truth of these astrologers was conveniently passed over, but these wise ones read the charts. In fact, they probably made the charts. And God used those charts to lead them to the light. The more I think about it, the more amazing that little fact becomes to me. I have spent enough time listening to and learning from a lot of new age spirituality which those church leaders from my youth would declare as out and out heresy. But if God is able to speak to astrologers to allow them to bring homage to God’s own child, why can’t God use things like labyrinths, Enneagrams, meditation techniques, and ambient soundscapes to bring God’s own children closer to the Presence of the Beloved.

Anyway, that is simply an aside.

These Magi spent their time looking for and expecting the heavens to speak to them with truth they needed to respond to. As I think about that, I don’t advocate astrology (that wasn’t my point above) but I do believe that we need a spiritual practice that is oriented to listening to and expecting to receive the Presence of God in our daily life.

Do we really believe that God is speaking to us right now? Or do we think that God only works in other people’s lives?

I confess that much of my life I only theoretically believe that. I really don’t expect God to do something in my life. Most of the time.

Yet, I am learning differently. This is the second lesson of the Magi for me. Know that God is showing me things, then go find where God is expressing that Grace.

Believe that God is guiding me, then open my heart and soul to see that direction.

The way the Magi did that was by looking heavenward all the time. They were open to the subtleties of the stars. And they believed in the significance of even the smallest of events.

Rarely does God (if ever) communicate with us through big, neon signs. God tends to love the subtle whispers of the Beloved to communicate the most important information. If God seems hidden it is not because God is cruel or is not wanting us to discover the Divine in our lives. I believe it is because God wants us to look, seek, and then find.

Early in my ministry, I discovered a trick in responding to shy children. The first thing I learned is that children don’t shake hands, but they will almost always give someone a high-five. And usually with a smile and a laugh.

But that isn’t the trick. The trick is to turn it into a game. If a small child is hiding behind the legs of their parent or grandparent and look like they are scared of this strange, tall man with a beard wearing a dress (my preaching robe), then I will slip around the corner from them and peek. Instead of them wanting to run away from me in fear, they now want to find out where this funny man is.

God invites us into a relationship that is not based on our fears. So what if God chooses to hide behind other things in our life so that we become the ones who now seek the One who came from heaven to seek us.

And for us to see that and respond, the Magi tell us to keep on looking to the heavens expecting to find there all that we need to know.

Part 3 will come sooner than part 2 and goes by my name of Heartfulness.

In considering the story of the Magi, I realized that they provide a formula that works well for anyone of us who endeavor to follow the light of Christ upon the spiritual journey. I see three components of their journey that can guide us in our journey.

1. Mindfulness

I know that mindfulness is one of the hot words within spirituality circles nowadays, but I think my meaning is a bit unique. As I consider the Magi and mindfulness I see the importance of always awakening to what is going on in our lives and in our world. I’m sure the original wise ones provided such a service to their employers: the service of observing all that was going on within the society and outside their borders. I can imagine these magi as some of the original intelligence officers as they sought to understand the reality of life. Just as a skilled diagnostician needs all the info, so we need to have clear minds about our experience and circumstances.

It is easy to want to see only part of our experience. I want to forget or even ignore the unpleasant aspects of my life. Yet, they are a part of where I am in my life right here, right now. And it is within the right here and right now that life can be lived. We cannot go anywhere in growing or living if we seek to maintain a fantasy-based or a partial-truth based view of our lives.

So our minds and our understanding become tools to help us see the dirt and mirrors of life into which Christ seeks incarnation.

Trusting in the grace of God is essential to this mindfulness. If we cannot trust in a God of forgiveness and grace then we will not take the risk to see ourselves as we truly are with gifts, graces, brokenness and rebellion all included.

Let go of our judgement about what is acceptable before God. If Christmas means anything to us, it should mean that Christ came to where we were, as we were. God loves us too much to leave us disconnected with our own lives, so Christ comes to redeem us in our broken wholeness.

So, what is happening in your life? Where are you growing and expressing the essence of the divine? Where are you walking in darkness or pursuing other hopes than the divine will?

Trust God and let yourself be seen with the eyes of loving truth.

Part 2: Soulful Awareness.

This Sacred Breath

Hard to keep track of which one this is: Number 379,399,423 maybe. I take over 800 an hour depending on what I’m doing. Each one though is important and sacred for each one brings me a few more moments of living.

Out of those almost 380 million, I’ve probably only paid attention to a hundred or so and even then just for a moment, then the next moment and the next breath comes to bring life.

All those past breaths can’t help me now. Their moment has come, but now I need to be in this present moment.

This sacred breath.

This breath has probably come from everywhere.: this tree, that blade of grass, the lake down the street, a couple oceans, maybe a glacier or three, the house in another town on another continent. Even with this breath being present in this moment it may have quite a history to it that connects this moment with many moments and many people.

This sacred breath.

Who has shared this breath with me? This breath might be part of some child’s first breath. Maybe a part of someone’s last breath. This breath has probably known laughter as well as wailing. What will this breath bring me in this moment.

This sacred breath.

This breath is helping my brain with oxygen to form words. This breath is bringing energy to muscles large and small to take the words and touch keys in the right order to increase our mindfulness of this sacred breath.

This sacred breath.

This breath joins billions upon billions of other breaths in this moment on this planet. Some breaths are becoming song. Some are sharing ecstasy and love. Some are spreading hate and fear. Some breaths are bringing healing sleep. Some breaths are sources of struggle.

This sacred breath.

This breath knows not the future, nor how many breaths will follow for me or for you. Yet, this breath holds within it all the infinite possibilities of living. So many choices that lead to greater living and joy. So many choices that lead to pain and less life.

This sacred breath.

This breath comes following that last one. And God willing there will be more to come. Over 800 an hour. Almost 22,000 in a day. As I consider this breath, I give thanks. I accept this moment as a gift.

This sacred breath.

What will I do with this breath? What will you do with yours?

As a pastor, I see the great toll fear and anxiety brings to every member of my church. As someone who breathes I know how pervasive fear is in my life and my family. As a member of society, it distresses me to see how fear is a motivator behind most of our business, church, and personal decisions. Fear clouds even the strongest person’s point of view and it damages bodies, hearts, minds, spirits, and relationships.

In his book, Fearless, Max Lucado examines 13 ways we need to hear Jesus’ invitation to “fear not.” He makes real how we experience fear and then brings meaning to the hope and comfort Jesus’ words bring to us. I have enjoyed many of Lucado’s books, yet this one touched me most personally. I am deeply thankful and recommend this book for that reason alone.

As a bonus, the end of the book contains questions for group discussion that can brings Christ’s invitation to “live without fear” to many people in my congregation.

It is time to free ourselves from the power of fear in our lives. This book points us to how Jesus can bring us that freedom.

An excerpt from my Soul Writing from a few days ago.

Dear God,

Thank you for inviting me into your abundant life. I don’t always hear the invitation clearly, yet you keep on knocking on my heart’s door and calling my name. Sometimes I do hear it but I turn away from it. I don’t know why. Those seem to be the times when I think the little I have is all I deserve. The shadow voices convince me for the moment that I am only worth the lesser portion. You have to admit it, this life you invite me to is pretty amazing. It does go far beyond imagination.

Sorry, but I live among a people who are used to dreams dying. I’ve been a Chicago Cubs fan. It is very common and almost normal for us to find disappointment and to live discouraged.

I get so excited about some dream idea and then it doesn’t come. That excitement turns to grief and pain. Or maybe I get what I want, but it doesn’t live up to those hopes. What’s left is emptiness and even resentment. Or sometimes I will have fun starting to follow a wonderful dream, but then it gets hard or it changes too much from what I thought it would be. I give up.

I become disheartened.

That’s a good word for it: disheartened. With time and the accumulation of more disappointments I have learned to protect my heart. A few times in I can actually picture my heart encased in a hard shell. I stop getting excited about things. I learn the cynical path is the easiest one to take. I stop imagining things. I settle.

I settle for the lesser life.

I can tell when I am in that settling place by the echo of my heart. I read, hear, and even write or preach your words of hope and love, and inside I hear those words echo in emptied spaces. The shadowed chambers of my soul ring the deep notes of that disappointment. My hearts feels the pre-creation void as an echo of that old shadow. And those days feel so small.

I wonder though, why would You torture me with this vision of abundant life if you had no intention of truly providing it for me. You wouldn’t do that would you? That wouldn’t be fun or fair. It would be so much easier to just stop dreaming, to accept that this vision of abundance is just illusion and that this little life is all I will ever get. The dying inside will hurt some at first, but then after a while I won’t know or care anymore. have accepted my small life while still yearning for abundance.

I think of my Grandmother. As her dementia began she was terrified. She had watched her Mother disappear before her eyes and recognized within herself the same progression. Then she reached that part of the disease where she forgot and was no longer afraid. Her world had grown small enough that she again felt safe.

Is that what is available? Spiritual dementia? Accepting the lesser “vision?”

If that is all you are ever going to give me, then in your kindness and grace take these extravagant dreams away from me.

However, you still invite me to this abundant life.

I will not accept the shadow idea that you are cruel and arbitrary. I will not accept the idea that you would offer us only empty promises. If you invite us to live your abundance, I will trust that you will make it real.

Strengthen me when the siren song pulls me toward the rocks of Less. Carry me through the times of transition and transformation to the place of grace.

God, help me to always remain open to your invitational knock. Don’t let me slip into my little world where your dreams are all dead. Resurrect my soul, illumine my heart, and free me for your life abundant.

As a preacher, words are my tools. Other people have other instruments and implements to do their work, but as a preacher and a spiritual director all I have available to me are words. Words received and words handed out.

While preparing to preach on Ephesians 1:3-14 last week, it dawned on me that language can be small or it can be big. It isn’t a matter of large or small words. Nor is it a question of intelligence. Language can lead us into our experience of past, present, and future. Our language belies our view of God, the world, our selves, and our possibilities.

Have you noticed how prevalent small language is in our society? Words and ideas that seek to contain and restrict our ideas and our imaginations. Listening to some people all you can hear are stories of a penned up life with a sparse past, a future without, and a present filled to overflowing with scarcity. Reminds me of the book that J.B.Phillips wrote, “Your God is Too Small.” Even without reading the book the title offers a challenge to each of us who seek to use language to describe the God who lives beyond words and whose grace breaks open every soul who seeks to fathom that love.

Then there is the story of the blind men and the elephant. Small language seeks to understand God completely and stops content that it has succeeded. What is left is a view of god that is smaller than our capacity and at the whim of each different practitioner of those words.

No small language or small God for Paul in Ephesians 1! Read those words a few times and allow the rich vastness just wash over your soul. With those words Paul invites us to dive into an understanding of God and Grace that is not small in any manner of the word. Abundance. Spaciousness. Glory. Riches. These words call us to an openness of life that is what we yearn for, and what terrorizes us. “Woe is me,” Isaiah writes in chapter 6 of his prophecy, “I am small and messed up and I am in the presence of Vastness and Wonder.” (my loose paraphrase).

Everytime we dare to enter the presence of God-words, we need to share the same sense of scale. Our words are inadequate. God’s language is Huge. Yet, God has gifted thsoe words to us as the bridge of life eternal, abundant, boundless and free.

With gratitude let us follow Paul’s invitation and live this moment and each new moment “for the praise of God’s glorious grace.”