Sojourn

Spiritual Listening and Action

We are in touch with God every moment that we live, for the simple reason that God is life; not religious life, nor church life, but the whole of life.  God is the Life of life.

Spiritual awareness, then, is about being aware of God in the midst of the change and movement and flow of life, in the rising of the morning sun, in the work and relationship of daily life, in the great struggles of society and nation, in alertness to the interior life of the soul, in times of rest and sleep and even dreaming.  God is at the heart of all life, in both the visible and invisible.  We don't have to try to reach God through acts of devotion, for God is closer to us than our very breath.  We have been given union with God whether we like it or not.  Our flesh is his flesh, and we can't jump out of our skins. This is not pantheism.  It is rather to believe, like Scott, Eriugena, and other Celts before him, that God is the Being on which all being rests, the Light within all light, the Life at the heart of all that has life.

The true mark of Christian spirituality, according to George MacLeod, is to get one's teeth into things.  Painstaking service to humankind's most material needs is the essence of Christian spirituality.  In other words, to move more deeply into life, and especially into its places of struggle and suffering, is to move closer to the life of Christ, the light that is within even the darkest of situations.

What most debilitates our prayer life is not bad prayer technique. It is our presupposition that the pressures of life are on one side while God is on some other side.  Instead, it is precisely at the pressure points of life that God is to be looked for.  God is to be found on the high street of life, in the busyness of our lives.

~J. Philip Newell (on the teachings of George MacLeod)

An Introduction to Celtic Christian Spirituality

One of the best books I've read this year is a small volume entitled, Listening for the Heartbeat of God.  One day in January that beautiful brown box with the curvy Amazon arrow showed up and greeted me upon coming home from work.  After dinner Lynn and I turned off the television, curled up on the love-seat by the fire, and spent the evening reading.  I nearly finished the whole book before bedtime.  I couldn't put it down.  In a way, it was almost as if my soul had returned to a long forgotten place where authentic intimacy with and worship of Christ had not yet been swallowed up by institutional religion.

This book provides us with a glimpse into Celtic Christ-centered spirituality as contrasted with Roman Christendom.  Let me share with you a bit of the journey I took through its pages.

The first thing you need to understand is that nearly all of our Christian experience in this country finds it's roots in the Roman Empire.  Catholic and protestant expressions of faith all emerge out of the Roman branch of Christianity.  What we don't often hear about are the branches of Christianity that emerged outside of Roman influence and managed to remain untainted by the abusive, oppressive, and often heretical Papal influence and the later hyper-Calvinist system of isolation and exclusion.

A purely British, non-Roman Christian stream began around the early fourth century primarily through the ministry of a man named Pelagius whom the Roman church later declared to be a heretic (yet a careful reading of his own writings may leave you convinced that perhaps he wasn't as much a heretic as he was a threat to Roman control and domination). This stream of Christianity flourished and managed to remain free of Roman infection until the Synod of Whitby in 664 finally pushed it to the margins where it eventually faded, though never entirely disappeared.

First, some contrasts between the Celtic stream of Christianity and the Roman stream of Christianity, in which most of us today remain:

Celtic Christian spirituality emphasizes the ability to listen to the voice of God and experience His presence in all of life.  Roman Christian spirituality emphasizes that the voice of God and the experience of His redemptive presence is only to be found within the church, her doctrines, and sacraments performed by a "properly ordained" priesthood.

The Roman church's view on humanity and creation begins with the fall.  Therefore, everything human and everything natural is viewed as evil, sinful, and entirely void of God's goodness.  The Celtic view on humanity and creation begins with creation and the Creator's pronouncements of "It is good" and humanity being created in the "image of God."  Where the Roman stream believes that humans are an entirely evil species which must be transformed into a new creation by God's grace, the Celtic believers believed that the goodness of God remains in creation and the human condition is that of God's image-bearers imprisoned by sin, yet longing to be freed by God's grace and restored to the righteous species we were created to be.  Roman spirituality declares that the fall erased the image of God from our humanity. Celtic spirituality believes that the image of God remains, though it is imprisoned by sin.

The Roman church locates it's authority in the person of St. Peter as a symbol of faithful action and outward unity.  The Celtic church honors all of the saints, but resonates most deeply with the person of St. John, the beloved disciple who leaned into the chest of the Savior at the Last Supper and listened to the heartbeat of God.

Next, I'll simply share with you a series of quotes from the book.

"Celtic Christian spirituality is one of deep and rich perspective, with origins in the mystical traditions of the Old and New Testaments."

"How many of us were taught actually to look for God within creation and to recognize the world as the place of revelation and the whole of life as sacramental?  Were we not for the most part led to think that spirituality is about looking away from life, so that the Church is distanced from the world and spirit is almost entirely divorced from the matter of our bodies, our lives, and the world?"

"In the old Celtic prayers the lights of the skies, the sun and moon and stars, are referred to as graces, the spiritual coming through the physical, and God is seen as the Life within all life and not just the Creator who set life in motion from afar."

"Pelagius maintained that the image of God can be seen in every newborn child and that, although obscured by sin, it exists at the heart of every person, waiting to be released through the grace of God.  He argued this despite increasing acceptance throughout the Western Church of Augustine's teaching that every child is born sinful.  Augustine believed that the image of God can be restored to us only though the Church and it's sacraments.  He thus developed a spirituality that accentuated a division between the church, which was seen as holy, on the one hand and the life of the world, perceived as godless, on the other."

If you're interested in looking at the book for yourself, click here.

Where Has The Wonder Gone?

It's was 8:15 on Sunday morning.  I was finishing a glass of orange juice and bowl of Frosted Mini Wheats while watching the televised service from a church here in Columbus, GA.  The pastor was preaching a message about prayer.  Every few minutes the camera would pan in such a way as to show the faces of band members and choir members behind him.  Occasionally they showed a shot of the people in the congregation.  Here's the dichotomy that struck me. The preacher is talking about the most amazing, powerful, transcendent conversation that can happen in all of the cosmos.  Yet the faces of the people around him are blank and bored, betraying that the minds behind the faces are occupied with a hundred other things of life.  I can somewhat understand the faces as I listen to the sermon of droll jokes and worn-out cliches. But beyond that, they are the faces of men and women who have lost the wonder of a conversation with God.

I can relate.

Several days ago I wrote a post called, Tolerance, Taste, and Spirituality in which I express some of the same feelings of boredom which really are the result of a loss of wonder.  It's easy to lose that wonder when we reduce our relationship with God down to church attendance, ten or twelve "worship" songs, a purely intellectual pursuit of the Divine, and a political agenda every four years.

"All philosophy begins with wonder."  ~ Plato
"Wonder dies with knowledge."  ~Francis Bacon
"Explanation is the termination point of mystery, analysis the death knell of curiosity."  ~ Ravi Zacharias

A while back Lynn picked up a book from the Library written by Ravi Zacharias called "Recapture the Wonder." I finally picked it up one night, read the introduction, and ended up taking it to bed with me where I found it difficult to put down.  In the first chapter he talks about the transition from childhood to adulthood and how much of the enchantment of our childhood vanishes with age.  The difficulties of life strip us of any hope in there being anything beautiful, mystical, and transcendent in our existence. Knowledge tends to leave us convinced that most of what we found fabulously mystical as children is, in fact, logically explainable.

"Deep within every human heart throbs the undying hope that somebody or something will bring a way to retain the wonder."  ~ Ravi Zacharias

Of all places and all peoples on earth where there should be a very real, on-going, experience of that which is mystical and transcendent, should it not be among the people who have been raised to new life by the one who was raised from the dead and sits at the right hand of God in Heaven?"  Shouldn't our times together, as those people, be times in which the drab and painful here-and-now is mysteriously swallowed up in the unexplainable, illogical, yet more-than-real life of a Kingdom not of this world?

How do we recapture this wonder, this reality that life as we know it is a mere echo of that which is real life?  How do we embrace this life, yet see past the foggy mist of our perceived reality to anchor ourselves in that which is truly real?

Hillside Conversations

God:  "I bless those who realize their need for me, for the Kingdom of Heaven is given to them."

Me:  "Yes Lord.  I desperately recognize my need for you. Your presence in my life is as the air I breath.  Without you I am among the walking, wandering dead."

God:  "I bless those who mourn, for they will be comforted."

Me:  "Yes Lord.  My life has been punctuated with grief.  I have taken my seat of mourning at the bedside of illness and death.  My heart has beat out a rythmn of sorrow while watching another heart fall silent.  Irreparable regrets from days gone by and seemingly unattainable hopes for days yet to come conspire to imprison me behind a veil of darkness and shadow.  I receive your comfort Lord.  From you comes the brilliant radiance of a joy not of this world."

God:  "I bless those who are gentle and lowly, for the whole earth will belong to them."

Me:  "But Lord, I am not this man.  I am not gentle.  Words of harsh judgement come much more freely than words of kindness.  I most eagerly pursue my own way, my own path, with my own strength - strength that I don't really have.  Pride and arrogance have been my guideposts, marking my way for me.  How shall I be one to whom the whole earth will belong?"

God:  "I bless those who realize their need for me, just as you have done.  The Kingdom of Heaven is given to you!"

God:  "I bless those who are hungry and thirsty for righteousness, for they will receive it in full."

Me:  "But Lord, again I fall short.  I hunger and thirst for comfort.  I hunger and thirst for pleasure.  I hunger and thirst for status.  I hunger and thirst for power.  I hunger and thirst for possessions.  I hunger and thirst to satisfy my hunger and thirst. Though I long to know your righteousness, that longing is so easily swallowed up by my cheaper longing for lesser desires.  How shall I be one who is filled by your righteousness when my hunger pangs are so few?"

God:  "I bless those who realize their need for me, just as you have done.  The Kingdom of Heaven is given to you!"

God:  "I bless those who are merciful, for they will be shown mercy."

Me:  "Lord, I despair in my mercilessness.  I cannot weep with those who weep, for I prefer to appear strong.  Before I share my food with the hungry I make sure that I myself am well fed.  The stranger will be given a drink of cool water, as long as my cistern remains full when he leaves.  I turn from the sick out of fear of joining them in their sickness.  My heart is a stone, heavy and burdensome.  How shall I be one who will receive your mercy when there is heard only silence while listening for the voices of those who have received mercy from me?"

God:  "I bless those who realize their need for me, just as you have done.  The Kingdom of Heaven is given to you!"

God:  "God blesses those whose hearts are pure, for they will see God."

Me:  Lord, my heart is carried about by the winds of lesser desires and divided loyalties.  I awake in the morning longing to walk in the way of Jesus, yet fall asleep at the end of a path I have blazed for myself.  My devotion to your Kingdom is as a flag standing alone on a hill being blown wherever the wind may blow it.  How shall I be the one to see you when I have allowed my heart to be parceled out to so many others?

God:  "I bless those who realize their need for me, just as you have done.  The Kingdom of Heaven is given to you!"

God:  "I bless those who work for peace, for they will be called the children of God."

Me:  "Then Lord, I cannot be called your child.  My work, though heavy and burdensome, is done to satisfy my desires and accumulate my possessions.  I have neither the time nor the energy to be a peacemaker - to seek out and step into conflict and suffering with your peace in hand.  How shall I be called your child when my work is done to satisfy my desires rather than to carry your peace into a broken world?"

God:  "I bless those who realize their need for me, just as you have done.  The Kingdom of Heaven is given to you!"

God:  "I will bless you when you are mocked and persecuted and lied about because you are my follower. Be happy about it! Be very glad! For a great reward awaits you in heaven. And remember, the ancient prophets were persecuted, too."

Me:  "But Lord, most often I'm not sure anyone would know that I'm your follower.  If I am the light of the world, then that light seldom reaches outside of the basket under which it is hidden. If, as your child, I am like a city on a hill then I have provided so few directions to that city.  I am too often silent when the world around me requires courageously spoken words.  I am too often busy playing with toys in the sand when there are grand voyages to be taken.  I recline at the table of gluttony while around me brothers and sisters die bravely in warfare for the Kingdom.  Where is my happiness in valor?  Where is my gladness in sacrifice?  How shall I be one to receive any reward when I run from suffering for your name?

God:  "I bless those who realize their need for me, just as you have done.  The Kingdom of Heaven is given to you!"

Me:  "Lord, I am slow of learning."

God:  "I blesss those who realize their need for me, just as you have done.  The Kingdom of Heaven is given to you!"  Because you have so freely expressed to me your great weakness and your great need, the Kingdom of Heaven already belongs to you!  And because the Kingdom of Heaven already belongs to you, I will flood you with gentleness that you may be gentle.  I will purify your heart and turn you to the singular purpose of knowing me and being known by me.  Because the Kingdom of Heaven already belongs to you, I will cause your life to be a fragrance of peace wherever you walk and you will become the embodiment of selflessness, valor, and sacrifice all for the good of others and for the glory of your God."

Me:  "Wonderful Lord!"  What must I do?  How do I now make all of this come to pass?"

God:  "I bless those who realize their need for me, for the Kingdom of Heaven is given to them."

~Inspired by my wife's insight into Matthew 5

Creation and Imagination

One of the things that has so caught my attention recently as I investigate the spirituality of the ancient Celtic followers of Christ is their belief that the experience of God's presence and nature is not limited to the ecclesiastical setting, but can be found in all of life and all of creation.

I've always kind of known this.  Even before I was a follower of Christ, Romans 1:20 was true for me.

"For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made..."

I've always held an awe of creation.  As a child I was fascinated with space and had books and posters about astronomy that I would read over and over again.  Growing up I used to love to get on my bike, or motorcycle and ride far out into the country where I would be surrounded by woods, open fields, and pastures filled with lazily wandering cows.  There was an unexplainable peace that would come over me while in those settings. 

When I was pastoring I planned an annual 3-day retreat which I would spend at a place called "The Hermitage" in Rushville, Illinois.  It was a house owned by the church and surrounded by hundreds of acres of woods.  Between praying the morning and evening prayers in the small chapel my days were spent fasting, reading, silence, and journeying through the woods.  I always experienced life-shaping communion with God during those journeys.  One of my first sermons in our newly planted church emerged from this time and was entitled, "Two Creeks Converged in the Woods."  God used a walk through the woods to provide a prophetic word to our church that turned out to be incredibly profound over the years we were there.

The rain forests, mountains, Altiplano, and pampas lands of Bolivia have for the past six years of short-term trips communicated to me a divine presence that far outweighs the misery so many there experience in day-to-day life.  In those settings I can see, in Pelagius' words, the "narrow shafts of divine light piercing the thin veil that separates Heaven from Earth."

In his book, "Listening for the Heartbeat of God," J. Philip Newell has much to say about the Celtic experience of God's presence in creation and through the power of imagination.  I'll share some of the quotes with you.

"This may be difficult for most of us to comprehend today, but within the major traditions of Western Christianity we have been influenced by aspects of this Calvinist and Augustinian stream of spirituality that denies an essential goodness at the heart of every person.  There is much in the Western tradition that has discouraged us from believing and hoping that, even in the midst of terrible wrong and evil, deeper still, buried maybe, at the core of every human being is the image of God."

"Alexander John Scott (also considered by the Reformers to be heretic) described the believers of Scotland as listening for God in all things, 'in the growth of the tree, in the rising of the morning sun, in the stars at night, and in the moon.'  In their 'inmost being,' he said, they knew of a type of communion with the uncreated at the heart of creation.  It was of supreme importance to perceive the interweaving of the spiritual and the material, of heaven and earth, time and eternity 'from year to year, from month to month, from hour to hour.'"

"Always, said Scott, 'there is the greatness that lies within and beneath the common.'  Everywhere, therefore, we can glimpse signs of the presence of God's life in and among us, for God, he believe, is 'the Being on which all being rests.'"

"The Spirit of God, Scott said, is 'impregnated' throughout the whole of creation.  Where there is life and goodness, there is God.  God exists wherever there is love and creativity.  Scott was critical of the Church's Sabbatarianism, because it taught that only one day of the week is holy, instead of seeing that the whole of life is sacred, every day, every hour, every moment."

"Just as an infant comes to know his mother through form and color, scent and sound, so we come to a knowledge of God through the universe (Romans 1)."

"The gift of the imagination, which in a child is still uninhibited, allows creation to be a lens through which we may fleetingly bring into focus aspects of the eternal."

"Creation is essentially a theophany, a showing or revealing of God's Soul to our souls."

"Scott urged us to hold a Bible in one hand but also to study God 'in that other volume', namely, the great and holy book of creation."

"Again, the emphasis that comes across in Celtic spirituality and in this particular expression of it is that spirituality is not about looking away from life but more deeply into it, not about denying the human but about releasing our truest selves, and that the life of our truest self partakes of the very substance of God's life, the One Self that is at the heart of all selves.  In Christ, the perfect image of God, we see our truest self."

Occupational Spirituality

Every week I spend about 40 hours overseeing both the operations and marketing functions of a department within my company.  When I am not here crunching numbers, developing and executing strategies, and managing employees and contractors, I spend another several hours per week thinking (as I drive, shower, eat, and watch television) about how to successfully navigate the fundamental changes underway that will, ironically, eventually, render my role in this industry irrelevant. Yes, you heard me right.  I devote 40 to 50 hours each week to a role in life that will, in the near future, cease to exist.

So, because of that fact, and the fact that I like to eat, I spend another 12 hours per week sitting in classrooms, working on homework assignments, and taking tests that will culminate in a degree that, hopefully, will allow me to continue providing for my family into the foreseeable future.  The twist here, is that the foreseeable future becomes less and less distant all the time.  In other words, you used to be able to make occupational plans with a 40 or 50 year mindset. Now, what you spend four years planning to do may no longer be a viable career path in ten years.

All of this monologue thus far is meant to establish the case that, much of what troubles my heart and mind is really an exercise in futility.   There is really nothing that a person can truly depend on in this life.  You cannot depend on financial security.  You cannot depend upon the work you're doing today to be there tomorrow.  You cannot depend on physical health.  You cannot depend on anyone to keep you "safe."  You cannot depend on any of your hopes and dreams actually coming to fruition.

And it is in the midst of this reality that the oft read words of Matthew 6:33 crescendo from red ink on white paper into a thundering refrain that quiets our minds, calms our hearts, and sets our eyes upon a new occupation.

"Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need."

Jesus certainly has a way of turning things around, doesn't he?  This verse is found within a broader conversation about the basic needs of life and the human tendency to worry about these things and pursue occupations to secure them.  What I think I hear Jesus saying here, is that pursuit of the Kingdom of God must become the occupation out of which all of our needs are met by the only one who IS dependable in this life.

Please approach the bench for a sidebar:

I find two primary definitions for the word "occupation."  The first defines this word as that with which you are occupied for the sake of your livelihood.  The second definition puts this word in a military context, describing the state of a place under the control of an outside force.

What would it look like for an individual to so radically change their way of thinking that they now see as their primary occupation in life to be that of pursuing God and his kingdom?  What would it look like for me to wake up in the morning, get dressed, and drive into my workplace with this mindset: above and beyond anything else, my purpose in life for the next 24 hours is to discover the rhythm of God's heart, synchronize with it, and plumb the depths of his character and the realities of his kingdom?

I see both definitions at work here.  Could God so completely invade and occupy the space of my heart and mind to the point that pursuit of him and his kingdom becomes the very thing with which I am occupied for the sake of my livelihood?

If we can enter into this reality, then everything else simply becomes the prop-filled setting, or stage, upon which our spiritual occupation is played out.  My paycheck-generating activities today lose their place of supremacy and simply become the stage upon which I currently find myself as I harmonize with the heart of God; a stage filled with the props of spreadsheets and market analysis, and budget directives...but simply a stage.

It's in this perspective that transitions from Act 1 to Act 2 with different props and different stage lighting become much less frightening.  Instead of fearing the future, fearing the disappearance of some props and the appearance of new, unfamiliar ones, we rejoice that the unchangeable God is still the central character of the story, we are still his beloved ones, we are engaged in the preeminent occupation to which humanity can give itself, and his promise to us remains unshakable: 

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." ~ Jeremiah 29:11