Faith Venture

I have thoughts, but I am not my thoughts.

Anger visits me, but I am not my anger.

I heard a story once about an elderly woman who was found by neighbors lying on her floor non responsive. They called the rescue squad to help her. As they loaded her into the ambulance, they noticed she was clutching tightly to something. Eventually they were able to pry open her hand and found a small coin. It was as if she needed something to cling to and could not let go.

We are that way. A thought, an emotion enter us. We cling to it. It is so easy to identify with our anger, fear, insecurity, hate, tension. Sometimes they are much like toxic friends that we feel we just can’t live without.

But that is what prayer and meditation are for. They are tools developed over thousands of years that help bring us back to ourselves. To the realization we are not our thoughts. We are not our emotions. We have them. They come and they can go.

If they don’t go, then they have us in prison. We may think we are free, but we are not. But we ourselves are the jail master. And we can decide to let go. When we let go, then we are free.

Do you find yourself venting some emotion such as anger, hate, fear by reposting something you’ve seen on social media?

Do you have a nagging tightness in the gut, especially thinking of the way some group or other acts?

Do you snap back at people who disagree with you?

Do you load yourself with work?

Do you rush to meet deadlines?

Are you late for every appointment?

I have a word for you. A Monday morning gift.

Relax.

A slow, deep inhale. Pause. A slow, complete exhale.

Repeat 3-4 times.

Feel the relaxation.

Now, see with perspective. Slow your movements a little. Let those stupid posts on social media just slide on through while you look for updates from friends and family about what the kids are up to, or their latest trip, or their new car, or who is sick and needs prayer.

Then go on to the next task. No rush. Just relaxed.

What better way to start a day or a week?

We may use the terms “mimic” or “ape” or even merely “copy” to describe why and how we do something.

I watch my grandson’s 13-year-old baseball team. It’s cute in a way to see how some of the kids have watched a few major league games and copy this or that mannerism. If only they would copy catching the ball or being in the right place during a play!

Those of us who are self aware may ask why we do things or believe things.

The writer of The Cloud of Unknowing in his other writings collected as The Pursuit of Wisdom warns against aping another.

As good spiritual directors will, he probes our motivations.

Are we merely copying someone’s spiritual practices? Or, are our souls stirred by the spirit to pursue study or meditation or small group in order to go deeper into the spirit?

What about our religious or political or even business beliefs? Are we letting others put words in our mouths? Or, have we thought through the foundations and ramifications of those beliefs?

Maybe something sounded cute on social media, but upon reflection we discover that Jesus would have never condoned that thinking.

Maybe we should periodically meet with ourselves or our spiritual director and rethink our motivations and make course corrections as necessary.

It is the time of the Perseid meteor shower. Our grandkids live in a city where the lights overpower the sky and stars are not seen. We live on the outskirts with civilization close by, but corn and soy bean fields predominant.

They came out to stay up late and gaze at the sky. We sat down. I told them to develop the technique of staring without focusing. Make your field of view broad, not narrow.

One meteor streaked across the sky. Then another. Then a series. And their excitement built until they were almost shouting about seeing another.

We so easily forget the joys and delights in simple things. It’s easy to become lost in our work, or politics, or finances. This must be part of the “becoming like a little child” comment of Jesus. Sit back, take in new experiences with surprise, delight, wonder.

Seth Godin pondered on this week’s podcast about what life would be like after most work can be done by artificial intelligence and automation. I agree with him.

First, humans want to build, create, contribute. And they will.

Second, perhaps we can be like our ancestors for the previous thousands of years until the industrial revolution of the 1700s. We will have time to sit on the porch, stare at the sky in wonder, tell stories, perhaps sip on some wine.

As I sit on my patio at 6 am watching the mist hover over the grass and bushes, the rabbits munching on plants, the blackbirds scouring the yard for bugs, sandhill cranes squawking, geese training for migration.

Times like this make room for pondering the creator of it all.

I think I’m fascinated with reading the early Christians because they were trying to figure out just what this Jesus was and what it meant to live a life with him at the center.

And they tried out a variety of ideas. And they discussed and argued points of view. After all, Jesus did not leave behind a systematic theology. Mostly he left teaching on how to live and how to relate to God. And he also left miraculously through resurrection from being dead, a fact which begat the passion of the followers.

Until 313 when Constantine made Christianity legal, Christians met secretively—but not so secretive that their numbers didn’t spread wildly throughout the Mediterranean region. Once legal and out in the open, the master teachers, called bishops in our translation, met in the open to figure out a common set of beliefs to describe the newly legal religion. That was in 325. It only took 55 more years for Theodosius I to recognize the growth of Jesus’s followers and make Christianity the official religion of the Empire in 380. Those 300 years from 30 to 325 were years of exciting discovery.

Much like each of us who are born need to figure things out all over again. That is, unless we are like the Christians Paul once described that were babies in the faith and still spoon-fed baby food. Perhaps you were taught things at six that you have not grown past. You would be stuck in that infancy mode that Paul described. But he urged us to mature in the spirit.

Our story can reflect the story of the growth of the faith. Figuring things out ourselves, leaving behind the false trails, constantly pursuing maturity. Enjoying the pursuit of God.

The fictional English detective Sherlock Holmes, who recently had a resurgence in popularity, is renowned for coldly rational and deductive thinking. Maria Konnikova explored his way of thinking in an excellent book, Mastermind: How To Think Like Sherlock Holmes.

For entertainment reading to take a break from theology and edge computing/Internet of Things, I’ve been “binge reading” the complete collection of Sherlock Holmes stories.

Twice in the first couple of stories I underlined sentences where Holmes told his companion Watson about the power of imagination.

Imagination is a great way to get yourself out of a rut. Maybe a rut of reading the same New Testament passages and getting nothing new.

Try exercising the imagination muscle to take yourself there, into the story. Imagine being the person Jesus was talking to. Imagine being a bystander. Imagine being an opponent who is greatly offended—sort of like a conservative hearing a liberal bash Trump. There—that got your imagination going, didn’t it?

Instead of trying to parse out a set of rules to follow from one of Paul’s letters, why not imagine being in the dark room with him as he is striving to describe a new way of life in the reality of a risen Messiah with a new way of living with God.

Instead of complaining about your church or group or company or neighborhood, imagine a better way and ask, “Why not?” Then begin taking steps to change.

Einstein often talked of the power of imagination and curiosity. From that came ideas that explained the motion of stars and planet that help land people on the moon and send satellites to distant worlds to explore their mysteries.

We exercise our biceps; why don’t we exercise our imagination? Take out a sheet of paper or a journal and write 20 different ways to tackle a problem. You will begin imagining many different solutions to explore.

What if our Golden Rule were not only “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” but also “Give more to the world than you take from it”? —Jacqueline Novogratz

Among my reading so far this month is Manifesto for a Moral Revolution: Practices to Build a Better World by Jacqueline Novogratz. She is inviting us into a new way of living and doing business by sharing examples of people doing just that. No doubt I’ll have more to say later.

I remember a conversation with a classmate at the university that introduced me to Baby Boomer ideology of “me first, and only me”. For some reason the German professor liked me or something. He recommended that this classmate get me to tutor him so that he could pass German, graduate, and get the job he had been offered at a good salary. His wife even came and personally thanked me.

What I really remember were the thoughts of “I don’t care about this person or that one, I don’t care about your causes (I was the civil rights/peace guy on campus—yes, singular in 1968), I just care about me”.

Some few years later Time magazine did one of its famous covers on the Boomers as the “Me Generation.” I thought of that guy.

I never wanted to be that guy.

There is something we could each do today to give back to the world.

Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection was concerned that we let things get in the way of the simple presence of God in our lives. Zoom from the 17th Century to the 20th. Dallas Willard and Richard J. Foster wrote and taught the spiritual disciplines. They also cautioned that we don’t let practice become the end. We form the habits of spiritual practice in order that we might be reminded of God’s presence continually.

Meditation is popular right now. Meditation is a practice that has many children.

Psychologists and therapists have discovered that a mindfulness meditation practice is an effective treatment, or at least an important tool, for reducing anxiety and stress. It can also help reduce anger and help change a person’s outlook on life.

Meditation has been a practice used for more than 1,500 years by practitioners in many religious traditions as a path to enlightenment—the presence of God deeply into our life.

Those of us who have had an experience of enlightenment understand that the next step is not to go around telling everyone about it and perhaps even make a career of speaking and doing seminars or whatever. We just return to our work with a deeper sense of the presence of God.

Humans have devised sets of rules to follow in order to please God for thousands of years. Even today there are those who believe that if we only enact more laws through our governments that we can control people and make them Godly.

Brother Lawrence taught that this would be the wrong focus. Focus first on loving God and practicing the presence of God in our life. Then we do our work with a new meaning that no law would ever cause.

Anger is an indication of concealed hatred, of grievance nursed. Anger is the wish to harm someone who has provoked you. An angry person is like a voluntary epileptic who, through an involuntary tendency, breaks out in convulsions. …a sure proof of a hot temper is that a man, even when he is alone, should with word or gesture (or Twitter) continue to rage and fulminate against some absent person who has given offense. —John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent (OK, I added the Twitter part. That wasn’t invented in the 3rd Century.)

Anger seems to be a sign of our times. It is exhibited at the highest places…and the lowest. John Climacus says there is no greater obstacle to the presence of the spirit than anger.

He also adds advice. The first step toward freedom from anger is to keep the lips silent when the heart is stirred; the next, to keep thoughts silent when the soul is upset; the last, to be totally calm when unclean winds are blowing.

He said that the mothers of anger are pride, avarice, greed, and lust. The father is conceit. The daughters are remembrance of wrongs, hate, hostility, and self-justification.

We can counter this with humility—that is, placing others before us, removing ourselves from the center of our life and replacing with the Spirit.

I recommend breathing. Conscious, mindful attention to breath. Deep inhale, hold, slow release. Done four times it is a remarkable prescription for calming the flames. And can, if repeated daily for weeks, change your life.

Every new human born into the world must learn for themselves that which humans have discovered thousands of years ago.

I am amazed every time I read from old or ancient sources the accumulated wisdom of the time, which is often not that much different from what we teach or at least know to be right in the present moment.

Some popular writers have explored the power of habit and how to create the right habits. There’s Charles Duhigg and I’ve recently discovered James Clear. And then there is Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection from about 1670.

That in order to form a habit of conversing with GOD continually, and referring all we do to Him, we must at first apply to Him with some diligence: but that after a little care we should find His love inwardly excite us to it without any difficulty.

In order to live alongside God, first we must put our attention on God. This must be intentional and daily. Set aside a time, at first, where you know you will have one thing to do—set your mind on God. Maybe you repeat a phrase or the Jesus Prayer.

But then, after some period of time this becomes just a natural part of us. We “find His love inwardly excite to us without any difficulty”.