Ah, the first really neat day of the spring where I can sit on the patio in the evening with gold finches and woodpeckers at the birdfeeder, spring birds calling, the neighborhood is quiet. Even if I am out here with my WiFi and laptop, it’s peaceful. Reminds me to take a few deep breaths, shut down the brain and realize, God is Good. Here’s a nod to St. Francis of Assisi.
Archive for the ‘Spirituality’ Category
God is Good
April 21, 2008A Little Path
April 21, 2008Ultimately, we are responsible. In everything, in every choice – it is up to us to discern and act accordingly. God will open the doors, but we must choose to seek Him. That is an awesome responsibility. One we drop, pick-up, dismiss, lose sight of, search over, blame someone else for, and re-address on a daily basis. And most of that time, we are not even aware of it.
God wants into our lives. It is not our actions or our deeds which are important, but our relationship with God. That is all that is important. If we can get to that basic, everything else becomes so much easier. I often wonder why it is so hard to stay on this path.
I had a dream. (I do record my dreams.) There was a small path, barely noticeable in the grass, yet it is straight and clear. A highway is to the left. A four lane thoroughfare, divided, paved and thoroughly modern. It would seem the fastest way to go. The highway seems the “normal” way to go. But a roller coaster beckons to the right with the highs and lows and thrills along the way. Who knows what is next and where it might lead?
I have been on all three paths. I know them all. I have taken the thrilling yet devastating ride seeking a good time. I have also been left crying on the sidelines. I have stumbled back to find the straight little path. It is not big and it too goes down through the valleys, but it is clear enough.
Then again, I have wondered onto the highway, even maneuvered into the fast lane. I have schemed and lied, planned and climbed onto the corporate ladder. I have crashed and burned into the median. The straight little path seemed inviting then.
On and off I have gone to the left and to the right – yet the straight little path is clear enough. It sparkles in the cool moonlight to draw me back from my fallen state.
“The light and the way” – the little path is clear enough. Why do we find it so hard to stay upon it?
Posted by Darcy
Who is Jesus?
April 19, 2008I travel often on business and this week was no exception. After a busy day and a late dinner, I found myself chatting with the woman seated beside me. The conversation turned to a spiritual life, as it seems to do often around me, and she described her growing up process as a true California Bay area girl. She was not raised with any knowledge of religion and turned to Buddhism–talking about chanting while facing a blank wall. Then she liked the mind-body connection of Yoga and turned to Hinduism. When I told her I was a member of a United Methodist congregation, she suddenly asked the crucial question, “Who is Jesus?” Unfortunately, she also has a touch of ADD and before I could say anything turned to jump in a conversation elsewhere. But the question is crucial–just who is Jesus?
What would you say if someone asked you? I try to be sensitive to where the person is in a faith journey. I meet many, many people with no religious upbringing or background. You can’t answer in formulaic phrases. You must answer from experience in order to connect. Enough books have been written where the author speculates about who Jesus is to fill a small library. I’ve read some of them. But the best thing I’ve seen that helped me explain comes from Hebrews where the writer refers to Jesus as the founder and pioneer of our faith.
I could have said, “He’s the Son of God” and stopped there. But that won’t mean very much to many people. But to say Jesus was perfectly full of God’s Spirit, and through a real relationship with him, I have learned to be full of God’s Spirit, too (maybe a little short of perfectly full, but you get the picture).
She’s a business associate whom I will see several times a year, and as long as I don’t do something stupid to ruin her view of me, I’ll have many opportunities to gently show and tell her who Jesus is. I’m pretty clear in my mind and experience. How about you? Could you answer the question in terms that someone with no faith can understand? Add a comment, I’d love to collect a bunch of answers. I seldom have the only right one.
It’s a relationship
April 15, 2008I’ve been going through “The Congruent Life” by C. Michael Thompson. The point of the book is that your business life should be congruent (in line with) your spiritual life (or your “church” life). At the beginning of the book he ponders the spiritual life. As I’ve written before, he goes through some spiritual disciplines. But the point today is that the spiritual life is a relationship. Does your spiritual life start and stop with creeds? Thompson writes that creeds were developed to serve the spiritual life. They are words that describe the faith. It could be the Apostle’s Creed or any statement of faith. The question really is–is there life in your words?
So, how do you move beyond words to a relationship with an “invisible” being? That is where spiritual disciplines come into play. You have to prepare the ground for the seeds to be planted. Study of The Bible and other spiritual books opens your soul for a relationship. Meditation on the words deepens the the word. In this case, meditation doesn’t mean chanting a South Asian word such as “Om.” It means when you read something, you stop and think long about the wisdom you just read. You sit quietly and let the words sink in. Often you will get a “realization” about what those words mean to you at this stage in your spiritual journey. That is God talking to you. Sometimes the word that comes to you challenges you to change something in your life or to take new action. Such a thing happened to Abram when he listened to God and left his home for a foreign land. Such a thing will happen to you if you listen. I can’t believe the things I’ve done while growing from geek kid to semi-geek adult. It’s all in being open to hearing–not just repeating words and stopping there.
Gary
Grab the moment
April 11, 2008Sometimes life works out and you do the right thing and it feels good. I travel a lot, so I miss lots of goodbyes at funerals of acquaintances. When we planned an Easter trip to visit the daughter in suburban Chicago (and attend Easter services at Willow Creek) we stopped by to see my wife’s aunt in the hospital. It was a joy to see her face light up and talk with us for a while. She was noticeably tired, though, and passed away Monday. Sometimes you have the opportunity to see someone–better follow up. She was very good to me, and especially to my daughter. She could see through things and didn’t put up with BS. But she always helped and was hospitable. The world lost a good person.
So, as I listened to people talk about her life and all the things she did, people she helped and organizations she led, makes me put my life in perspective. Am I doing what I should be doing? Am I enjoying life while I can? Do I know what’s important? I’m getting to be the oldest of the next generation. Makes you pause and consider. What about you?
Gary Mintchell
The Wave Theory of Spiritual Formation
April 7, 2008Those of us in our faith community who attended the sessions with Dr. Robert Mulholland a week ago were blessed with his deep thinking. His study is in spiritual formation as a journey. He talked about the spiritual journey as a process of growing into the image of Christ for the sake of others. Therefore, his explication of Jesus’ response to the question about what is the greatest commandment is “love the Lord your God” and another way to say that (according to the translation of Mulholland) is “love your neighbor.”
I appreciated his comment which added context to my own recent experiences. I was with the group that toured Israel last summer. I think while most people were experiencing (or hoping to experience) a personal encounter with God, I was told to devote more of my prayer and time to others.
This was all on my mind as I watched the North Carolina/Kansas basketball game Saturday evening. NC was down 28 points midway through the first half and Billy Packer said it was all over. But NC reversed the momentum and almost caught up before Kansas regained momentum and pulled away. There’s a point to this seeming digression. I’ve found after 30 years of a contemplative life that our lives are like that experience. Sometimes we have a wave of great commitment, joy, peace and other fruits of the spirit. Then for no apparent reason, the momentum changes and we feel lost, alone, apart from God. Then the wave returns. As we learn balance and perspective in our lives, we remember that neither the highs or lows last. Just remaining fixed on a relationship with Jesus is the constant. Kind of like other relationships. Sometimes we don’t have the “feeling” but we work through them and do things for the other person. Same with Jesus. Sometimes we don’t have the “feeling” but we continue to do the work he’s given us and then the next wave comes.
Maunday Thursday
March 23, 2008The music was fantastic at the Maundy Thursday service. Cheryl and Jane played an arrangement of ‘What Wondrous Love Is This’ (on organ and piano respectively) which truly just took me away. I looked up from my seat in the choir to the beautiful stained glass window pouring the evening sun over the balcony and closed my eyes to better delve into the music. The negative imprint of the stained glass frame in glowing white was displayed through my closed eyelids. A shape of the human brain (a line drawing as in the encyclopedia) was transposed over it in my mind. ‘The sun in my mind’ I thought.
On the way home I told my husband the beautiful vision. He said “You have active imagination. Don’t forget we have to take the garbage out when we get home.”
The next morning my devotional was on Philippians 2:5 with reference to 1 Corinthians 2: 16 that Jesus’ mind was their inheritance – ‘the Son in my mind?’
As God took Christ home, the Spirit was left to continue His work. In the early church, miracles were performed by calling upon the Holy Spirit and seeking healing. The blind could see, the deaf could hear and the possessed were set free. The Holy Spirit remained, but our human egos put conditions and restrictions in place. Those who were afraid gave way to those who were not and the church leaders became rulers and owners of the ‘keys’ to church. We humans bought into the programs and gave away our faith and trust to be comfortable.
She is still here, waiting to be invited into every heart. The Spirit of the Trinity, of God has trouble making contact through the noise, the hardened intellects, the all too sure reality seekers, and the fearful multitudes which seem to dominate our modern world.
Am I crazy, probably, at least a little, but I believe we are missing out on so much because we fail to just ask. And once we have asked to truly pay attention. She does not lead, She nudges. She does not command, but whispers. “The wind blows … ”
I am Darcy Dill, a student at UTS working on a Masters of Divinity with emphasis on Church Renewal. My views are not to reflect in anyway on the Seminary or on Sidney First UMC, just ramblings from my mind.
Relationship
March 21, 2008It’s Good Friday, a day meant for reflection if there ever was one. I’m still digesting all the wisdom in The Congruent Life by C. Michael Thompson, and this sentence hit me like the proverbial brick. “The spiritual life is more concerned with relationship than creed.”
We have a creed about Good Friday, (“suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried”). The church my wife was a member of growing up in suburban Detroit taught that you shouldn’t “say” the Lord’s Prayer. They also didn’t recite the Apostles’ Creed. They taught that prayers “should come from the heart.” But they also had creeds–“I believe in the Bible” for example. The reason I bring this up is not to make fun of Baptists, but to point out how hard it is to enter the spiritual life as a relationship with God, and a relationship with Jesus who shows us the way to God, without slipping into the complacency of repeating creeds–often called “empty” words.
When you pray this weekend, make an effort to put your mind and attitude into one of seeking a relationship with the Holy Spirit. Make It part of you, you part of It. Don’t think of today as a set of words from the Apostles’ Creed, but seek a relationship with Jesus, who died for us. But come Sunday we also remember that he became alive again, also for us. That’s another relationship. Same person, different experiences. Jesus will go with us from the depths of our depressions to the heights of our spiritual lives. That’s a relationship worth nurturing.
Gary Mintchell
Stirring within
March 20, 2008So back to The Congruent Life after a brief hiatus. Thompson’s view that you need to get all the areas of your life in order depends upon being aware of your spiritual life. Your actions in the business world and in the “church” world (and all your other “worlds”) need to be congruent–that is, go in the same direction. Don’t have a set of ethics for business and a different one for home. Ethics must come from your spiritual life.
So, what is your spiritual life? Thompson’s research and reflections on his own development, bring him to a definition that most people experience the Spirit as “a search or a stirring within.” Have you ever had that deep feeling that compelled you to do something? You just had to learn more about a topic? You just had to find a way to experience God more deeply? This is a stirring. I think that we neglect to teach people to be sensitive to this stirring in our haste to make sure that they repeat the correct words. The first thing you must do to cultivate the Spirit is to be quiet and listen. It’s OK if part of your prayer time is given over to asking God to help yourself and others. But it is crucial to your development that you take part of that time and just be quiet. If you get an unsettling feeling that something needs attention, stop and contemplate that feeling. See if the Spirit is leading you somewhere deeper. It will probably send you off to study for a while. The process may last for a day, or it may last for months. Mother Teresa experienced Jesus talking to her, then spent her entire life figuring out all the implications all the while doing the work that He suggested. This listening and study become the foundation for an ethical and congruent life.
Some people are worried about the form of listening. Is there a particular posture? Do you need background music or to chant something? If you are my age, you remember when the Beatles went to India and discovered the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Transcendental Meditation was suddenly everywhere with its chants and mantras. Maybe that’s a fond memory, but don’t let that corrupt your thinking. If you like meditative music, then by all means play it if it helps focus your mind. In fact, you don’t even need to sit. You can contemplate the Spirit while walking, or even running on the treadmill at the Y. I know of a man who wakes up at 2:30 in the morning and lays in bed on his back and contemplates for hours before he gets up. Which leads to a good point. Setting aside a particular time for God every day is a good habit. You’ll find that you’re ready to listen after a few days. Another thing, a smart person once gave the teaching, “Try, easy.” You try by setting aside the time. But don’t force anything. You simply quiet your mind and listen. Let the Spirit lead you. You’ll know.
Gary Mintchell
Watch who you follow
March 12, 2008I write three blogs, and none are political (I hope), but the news this week shows the hazards of placing belief and faith in a person other than Jesus. Just while I was writing about ethics in business, the message is interrupted by this announcement–Eliott Spitzer, governor of New York and former crusading prosecutor, has been implicated in a high-priced call girl scheme. According to news reports, there exists a call girl ring based in Washington, D.C. that rents girls for $1,000 to $5,500 per hour. Spitzer transferred “large amounts” of cash from two of his bank accounts to the leader of the ring. What makes this news is that he has made a career out of prosecuting all sorts of ethical problems including sex trade. People in New York overwhelmingly elected him governor based on his crusading past and promise to clean up corruption in Albany.
Sometimes the demons people fight within are reflected in the preoccupations that they have on the outside. He had a weakness (guess that makes him human), but he evidently couldn’t deal with it within himself.
God uses people to do his work, and Spitzer definitely did a lot of work that God would approve. But now, he has a lot of additional work to do to redeem himself. I hope he does. But for all of us, it’s a reminder to place our complete faith in the relationship with Jesus. People will do good, and people will fall short. Honor the good they do, but don’t place all your faith in humans. A lot of good came out of the fall of the powerful after Watergate in the early 70s (think Chuck Colson and his prison ministry, for example). Perhaps a powerful and influential person like Spitzer can face his demons and come out of this doing even more good work. Or maybe the demons win. It’s the same battle we all face.
