Posts Tagged ‘Prayer’

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Sickness of the soul

February 24, 2011

Do we talk much about the soul anymore? After 90 years of “scientific psychology” (psychology was once called the “science of the soul”), have we tried to limit our discussions to physically observable phenomena?

The soul — if I may attempt a very brief description — is that part of a person that lives within our physical being, drives our personality, unites with or rebels from God, and lives forever. The care and feeding of the soul is probably our single most important task in life.

As I continue to read through Julian of Norwich, this passage jumped out at me this morning

God showed two kinds of sickness of the soul that we have:

-the one is impatience or sloth

-the other is despair or doubtful fear

I’m not sure which would be more prevalent for us today. We certainly want instantaneous results. Evidently people 600 years ago did, too. But I have to believe in this electronic age that we are even more impatient. And if we can’t get results right away (without working for them I might add), then we don’t want to bother working for them.

A woman I knew once was hiring young people for entry-level marketing positions. She was amazed. These young people would say “OK, I’ll do this for a year or so, but I expect to become CEO of this large company after a couple of years.” They didn’t understand the work and sacrifice it takes to be CEO–or to just improve as human beings.

Then there is the sickness of whining. “I can’t do it. Mom liked you better. I was never good enough.” These people are diverted from seeking God (remember her “seek, wait, trust”?).

She said later that it was easier to know God than to know ourselves. Unfortunately, the first step to healing these sicknesses, if you have one, is to be able to look at yourself, recognize the sickness and then work to heal it. Here’s a tip. If something is getting in the way of your prayer, study or fellowship life, then it is time to find that obstacle and work on it.

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How to Pray

February 17, 2011

How do you pray? What do you visualize, if anything? I think that it was Donald Miller who gave me the picture of God as some sort of giant vending machine. Put your request in, pick up the solution from the little tray at the bottom. Do you picture God as a giant Dad to whom you ask for the keys to the car so you can go out?

I have hit the sections on prayer in Julian’s Reflections and she has several meaningful observations. Like contemplatives before her (including Paul who talked about being one with Christ), she builds on her experiences and discusses prayer as union with God.

So, when you pray, are you just looking from a goody from the vending machine in the sky–or are you resting in the bosom of God. You can slow down, breathe, open yourself in trust to God, and let Him just infuse your being. Think rather than machine but a tea infusion that lets the tea totally mix with the hot water.

Sometimes we’re in a rush. We just need a friend to talk to. If you’re in a rush, that’s the best signal to slow down and take time with God. If you need a friend, that’s OK, just take the time to settle in with the friend–kind of like meeting your friend for coffee and taking a little time to connect before sharing all your problems.

Julian has another observation. When you pray, conform your soul to God. She says if you try to make God conform to your soul, it won’t work–because God is never changing. People of my generation in the US (called Boomers) have been great at trying to manipulate everything to conform to their wishes. I see people trying to conform God to their own ideas or wishes.

No, God is God. God is the creator, not the created. God existed before humans, and will exist after humans have disappeared. The best thing is to quit trying to make God into something and just rest in Him. In that way, the fruits of the Spirit will grow in your life and you’ll find true happiness.

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Trust Jesus Completely

February 8, 2011

The third of Julian of Norwich’s “objects” of seeking God is trust. Remember first is seeking. Second is waiting. “The third is that we trust in him mightily in fully certain faith, for it is his will that we know that He shall appear without warning and full of blessing to all His Lovers — for His working is secret, but he wishes to be perceived, and His appearing shall be truly without warning, but He wishes to be trusted, because He is most simple and  gracious.”

While you are waiting for an appearance of Jesus, you must trust Him that He is there and that He will come. As he said once, he’ll come like a thief in the night. Without warning. A surprise.

Trust is tricky. A child will trust completely. One of the most devastating things I can imagine is to betray a child’s trust. I can imagine the look on its face. We have all trusted someone in our lives. Even the most cynical of you trusted someone before you became cynical. And we have all had someone betray our trust. Maybe even a close friend. Maybe a spouse. It’s tough.

Even if you feel that you can no longer trust anyone because of a betrayal so deep and painful that seemingly there is no cure, you need to try to trust Jesus. Why? It is part of being fully human. The inability to trust destroys you chance for personal freedom and communion with the Spirit.

Julian is just one more witness who can testify to the trustworthiness of Jesus. She had a powerful experience of God when she thought she was dying. She then lived 20 more years in a little room in serious contemplation of God and everything he had done for her. He was steadfast for her. He can be for you.

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Seeking God Willingly

February 4, 2011

People over the years have developed some strange (at least to us) practices. In 14th Century England (the time of Chaucer for you literary buffs), sometimes a woman of some means would both become widowed and have a religious experience. They would lock themselves in a room, never to exit alive.

Julian of Norwich was such a woman. Her room was built on the outside of the wall of the local church. She had a small window that looked in toward the alter, a locked door and a window open to the alley so that she could talk with people (and I presume obtain food).

Before this happened, she was thought to be on her death bed. The priest was called. He brought the crucifix up to her lips during the last rites. At that moment she had an overwhelming experience of God. It was revealed in many “showings.” She lived many years afterwards and wrote her “Reflections” which detailed the visions and her explanations.

Early in the manuscript, she says there are “three objects of our seeking.” That is, there are three things that a seeker of God must do to find Him. These are seek, await and trust.

She says that we must seek willingly and diligently without laziness and gladly and merrily without unreasonable sadness and useless sorrow. This is overwhelming to ponder.

I went to a geek conference once. When you’re dealing with electronics, sometimes you can’t see what you’re looking for unless you believe there’s something there. The T-shirt they gave us that year had the phrase “Some things can’t be seen unless you believe that they exist.” That’s like God.

You believe He exists. You seek Him. But, you have to do it willingly (not by accident, but by persistent searching). You must be diligent without laziness (every day, not just on a whim, and don’t get lazy and think you’ll do it tomorrow). And with joy (remember Jesus talking about people going around looking serious and pious trying to draw attention to how religious they were, and how he disdained that).

I think that if she had not written anything else, this one instruction would serve us well.

Next week, I’m off to another conference for manufacturing geeks. This is where I get to practice that diligence. Starting Sunday, I’ll have dinners that last until 10 or so followed by breakfasts the next morning at 7. Fitting in time for physical exercise; study, meditation and writing; and answering about 150 emails will be a challenge. I’ll try not to let these meditations dry up. You can hold me accountable and ping me with your proddings.

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Listening For the Call

January 18, 2011

“Can you hear me, now?” asks the mobile phone technician in the series of TV commercials. Getting heard. That’s what we all want, right? We are flooded with messages in every media we encounter. Then we meet people, and they just want to say what’s on their mind. In politics, it seems that everyone wants their opinion heard–even if there is no tainting of the opinion by facts.

I have a fault–OK, lot’s of them. Sometimes I tell more than I need to in a conversation once I get started with a story. The other day I was talking to someone and by the time she’d talked to someone else and it eventually returned to me, the story was completely changed. It was like that old parlor game “telephone.”

But–who’s listening? Folklore holds that the famous baseball catcher and manager Yogi Berra said “You can hear a lot just by listening.”

The first thing about listening is acknowledging in your own mind that there is another person. Then you need to focus on that person. And treat what they say as important–indeed, the most important thing in the world at that moment.

I’m teaching from Daniel for a short time. I really like him. If I could pick interesting people with whom I’d like to spend an evening or a day in conversation, he’d be up at the top of my list. One thing he did–he listened to people and he listened to God. Even at one point where he was troubled and another where he was perplexed by what God said, he still listened.

David talked about Abraham and Sarah Sunday. There are two other people who listened to God. They didn’t always believe what He said. They were quite old and God maintained that he would eventually send a child–they didn’t believe Him any more. But it happened.

It’s time to polish up those listening skills. Pay attention to the next person you encounter. Remain open to God’s voice–and if he talks, please listen.

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Praying to keep the Christmas Spirit

January 7, 2011

I’m sitting here this morning looking at my wife’s beautiful Christmas cactus. It’s full of blooms. It sits there all year waiting for mid-December to bloom. The blooms last a little while. Then it goes dormant again.

It’s kind of like us. How many years are we dormant most of the time, then bloom in December with the excitement of Christmas (carols, talk of peace, remembering Jesus, buying gifts for others), then the blooms die in January with the Christmas tree we pitch out on the street.

I’ve been reading 14th Century mystic Walter Hilton–“The Ladder of Perfection”–where he talks about how to cast the spiritual eye of your soul on Jesus. He writes some chapters about how hard that is for humans to do constantly. You slip, think about physical pleasures or pressures.

Hilton suggests praying the Psalms. But praying them in the soft voice of Jesus, not the “high-pitched voice” of men trying to impress. Put yourself in an attitude of communicating with God and then begin to pray the Psalms.

That sounds like a good idea. Many years ago I read a book by German pastor and theologian (and political activist) Dietrich Bonhoeffer where he called Psalms the “prayer book of the “Bible”. Let’s see if that gives a focus to our prayer life.

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Preparing for Jesus’ Arrival

December 10, 2010

Another popular phrase in Christian preaching circles in December is either advice or admonition to prepare your heart for the coming of Jesus. There is a sense that this is a remembrance. We remember and celebrate the event of Jesus birth as a human in Bethlehem 2013 years ago–more or less.

Try out another sense of what it means for Jesus’ coming. Every new person who is born every day since that first event must welcome Jesus into its being. Some of us have already experienced that dwelling within us of God’s Spirit. But many have not. Some think they have, but are fooling themselves. That is the most lamentable.

But all of us must seek the renewal of Jesus coming into our lives or the expectation of meeting Jesus fresh for the first time. There is an ancient saying that a jar is not useful unless it is empty. The saying must be taken in the spiritual sense. If your mind and life are full of plans for what food you’ll be preparing for family celebrations, with what presents you must give to others, with what presents you wish to receive, with many cares about finances or conflicts, then there is no room for Jesus to enter. If you have something valuable to store, first you must empty a container before you can store the valuable thing.

Just so with Jesus. First, you must quiet your mind and emotions. Seek a quiet place, even if only for 15 minutes at a time. Read something from the Bible. Sit quietly, listen to your breathing and let thoughts, cares and worries drift in and out of your mind until you are finally empty. As you sit quietly in expectation you are now prepared for Jesus to make room in your inner life.

As you learn to seek quiet, you will experience what the Spirit can do for you. You will be refreshed. You will also gain perspective on life. And you will be able to enter the busy world with the attitude of serving in the name of Jesus–the very servant leader Jesus trained his first disciples to be.

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Forget Goals, Find Your Passion

November 27, 2010

I returned to the US from Germany just in time for Thanksgiving. Sorry, I didn’t do an obligatory post on thanks. When I’m traveling–especially to these conferences–that extra hour to work on one of these posts just seems hard to come by. Plus I’m working on recovering my stamina after a fairly bad muscle pull Sept. 1 that but me on two weeks of bed rest, a week of physical therapy before I started a series of 6 trips in 9 weeks. In December, it’s two trips to Chicago and a trip to Tennessee/Florida over Christmas.

If I made goals like all the self-help gurus tell you to do, I’d make a goal to come up with a better schedule of how to work on the road. But that leads to my thought for day. Tomorrow is the beginning of Advent. This is a season of preparing for the future. Many people use this time in their personal lives to take stock of what they have done and think about what they’d like to accomplish. Then they make goals (sometimes called “New Year’s Resolutions”) to focus them for the coming year.

The church had a future-looking committee many years ago. As people talked, it became obvious that there were many people with many great ideas for ministries. But the committee leadership was fixated on developing a five-year plan of goals. (Or, as I have been known to observe–this form of planning worked so well for the Soviets…) But a new pastor came to town who did one pretty simple thing–he gave people permission to pursue their passions. And, wow, what a change.

So, here is some practical advice for you for the new year. Or the rest of your life. Don’t set goals. Find your passion and accomplish what you want in life while having fun doing it. My favorite lifestyle writer, Leo Babaueta, says this:

Goals take credit for our accomplishments. We give them a lot of credit for our accomplishments, but they didn’t do the work. They might have given us a direction, but in the end, the work is done on a daily basis. Goals also require that we do a lot of admin work — assess and report on how we’re doing with our goals, etc.

But remove goals from the picture and look at the gritty details of how work gets done and accomplishments happen:

  • You get excited about something. Sometimes that’s through setting goals, but it could be other ways: inspiration from someone else doing something, setting a challenge for yourself, joining a group doing something exciting, or just waking up and wanting to do something great. Or you put on ‘Hey Mama’ by Black Eyed Peas and start shaking your booty and want to get moving.
  • You take action.
  • Maybe you report your new thing to others — on your blog or Twitter or Facebook or an online forum, or just telling your friends.
  • You might make it a part of your life for a little while.
  • You take more action.
  • You tell people about how you’re doing.
  • Pretty soon you’ve done something amazing.
  • Notice that goals are only one way to do this.

So, here you go. I wish you all the best in finding your passion while you meditate on Jesus’ coming during this Advent season. You might spend the month asking what he wants you to be doing. Oh, yes, but then you have to listen. Then, do.

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Are You Acting The Part of a Spiritual Person

November 17, 2010

Humans are great actors. Most won’t make it in Hollywood. But most of us try to act like someone we’re not in real life. We dress a certain way to impress people. We show up in church. We show up for certain service activities. We may even hold doors open for others. Or say “please” and “thank you.”

But what is inside? Do we care at all for those we serve? Are we full of anger, hurt, bitterness, vengefulness, envy, greed? It’s easy to be caught up in some of those emotions–emotions that can crowd God out of the picture and our lives. Anger seems to be the prevalent emotion in America today. Most likely caused by underlying feelings of greed, selfishness and envy.

I live in America and travel frequently to Europe. I speak only a little German and very little French. I can watch a little TV and see magazines, though, and see the same things as here–a supersaturation of marketing trying to reach the depths of emotions of needing things to be satisfied (or sexy, or beautiful, or accepted). Those are all external things with which we act a part in a play. And we buy it. Literally.

But, what are you left with?

The real need is to be in relationship with God. Bring your inner life into congruence with what your outside life sometimes says. Saying you have faith is one thing. But living with God is another. Living with God requires stepping back in your mind and observing yourself. Catch yourself when you get caught up in some of those emotions–and you will get caught up in them. Then remember your friend–Jesus. His example and teaching were meant to help us line up our thoughts, as well as deeds, with God.

This takes effort. You must slow down your life and reflect. Pray as a conversation where you talk and you listen. Don’t pray that someone else’s faults are corrected. Pray that your own faults will be corrected. Simplify your life so that you quit acting a part and start living the part.

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Achieve Focus On God

November 2, 2010

How do you achieve focus on God? Paul wrote that we should pray without ceasing. What does that mean? The little book by an anonymous author called “The Way of the Pilgrim” charts the journey of a 19th Century Russian peasant who lost his family and his house and sets out on a spiritual journey.

As he travels, he ponders the advice of Paul. Then he happens upon a wise person who told him to pray the Jesus prayer 1,000 times a day. He gave the pilgrim a rosary upon whose beads he could count. The pilgrim began reciting the prayer aloud, but then discovered that he could just think them. Eventually the words were written on his heart and they were with him always. He then met many people on his journey who helped him including one rich man who sponsored his journey to the Holy Land. It’s a wonderful little book. Changed my life.

The prayer? “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Many people shorten it to “Jesus Christ have mercy on me.” Eventually you can just say one word and it will remind you of the whole thing (e.g., God, Jesus, mercy). This should help your focus–and your outlook on life. How can you mistreat others if you are always focused on God?

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