By Talitha Fraser —
It was back in 2008 that I first came to know of a radical discipleship community known as “Seeds” (www.seeds.org.au). This was a network of small communities engaged in their local neighbourhoods bound together by a shared charism, written by Mark Pierson and Marcus Curnow, drawn from Baptist and Quaker influences as well as the writings of Ched Myers “Who Will Roll The Stone Away?: Discipleship Queries for First World Christians”. Refreshingly to me, this charism was based not in having ‘right’ answers, but in having ‘good questions’. I heard the invitation of Rainer Maria Rilke to:
“…have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”
This felt to me to be an invitation to encounter and growth through relationship, with God and my fellow community members, and the most authentic expression of discipleship I had encountered in church to date. Bill Wylie Kellerman, co-author of “Resistance and Public Liturgy”, role models and teaches us that liturgy implicates. He said: “We believe God has already intervened, breaking in to break out on behalf of human kind. We recognise the authority of God [as bigger/beyond figureheads of power], we believe this is the meaning of the resurrection and we have come to say so”… What does it mean for us – in this time, this place, this context we live in– to be mindful of and respond well to matters of justice from a framework of hope? What can Jesus’ questions of the disciples ask of us? And how might we commit and support each other to live well into the answers?
Grouped under these 3 spiritual disciplines: Know the Word (Spirituality), Grow Home Through Slow Food (Community) and Go Engage (Mission). The invitation is to identify for the coming year in what ways we will learn, how this will change us and how in turn that change will be expressed in our practice and engagement with the world around us. Each year I enjoy making this a contemplative and creative practice, reaffirming my commitment to be changed by the relationship, revelation and resurrection of God in my life. May you hear this invitation also, may you discover good questions to live by and may your 2019 be blessed for knowing the love of a living God.
KNOW THE WORD
What is the kingdom of God like? To what can we compare? (Luke 13); Why do you not know how to interpret the present time? (Luke 12); What are you discussing as you walk along?…..What things? (Luke 26) Are you not misled because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? (Mark 12)
Queries What is our honest experience of Jesus Christ? What are the stories that found and shape our lives, our locality, our culture? How will we discern the Living Word who speaks to us through the biblical story, prayer and the people and situations around us? How do the questions from the gospel stories shape our understanding? What are the connections between the story of the Bible, our world and ourselves?
GROW HOME
Do you also want to leave? Did I not choose you twelve? (John 6); Have you anything here to eat? (Luke 24); If there were not (many homes in my Father’s house), would I have told you that I am going to prepare a house for you? (John 14); What were you arguing about as we travelled on the road? (Mark 10)
Queries Who are our kin/mob/family? (Mark 3) In what ways will we or will we not ‘be there for each other’ as ‘family’? How do our families of origin and previous experiences of community affect us now? How can we practice the disciplines of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience in this locality? What are our economic necessities? (home, household, village…etc.) What does it mean for us to be the body of Christ? Where am I putting my own body?
GO ENGAGE
When I sent you forth without a money bag or a sack or sandals, were you in need of anything? (Luke 22); How many loaves do you have? (Mark 6, 8; Matt 15); Which one was neighbour to the robber’s victim? (Luke 10); Do you want to be well? (John 5)
Queries How does Jesus’ life, incarnation, death & resurrection shape our practice of mission? Who is at our table? Whom are we offering hospitality? Are we dependent on those we serve? Are we experiencing hospitality from those we serve? What is my vocation/calling? What voices are shaping our choices? What is ‘good work’? In what ways can we put those considered least at the top of our priorities? How are we deepening our understanding and practice of Teaching, Healing and Exorcism in light of the Word?
by Christine Sine
It’s confession time again. I am addicted to Big Dreams, Small Spaces with “Britain’s favourite gardener” Monty Don. He has inspired me to get out into the garden early this year and encourage others in the Mustard Seed House to get out there with me. He has inspired me to think big but work on one small project at a time. He has encouraged me to reimagine a garden transformed and work slowly to see it happen.
We have a new set of grow lights set up in the garden room and have already started lettuce and spinach and Asian greens. Outside I have been filling my pots with primroses to add a splash of colour to the winter landscape.
More than anything I have been dreaming. As we plant we do not imagine a field of hidden seeds, we dream of beds full of lettuce, spinach, Chinese greens and arugula. I found myself imagining far more than the small beds that will be filled with our seedlings.
Inspired by the gardens I have seen transformed by Monty Don’s advice, I dream of new water fountains, winding paths lined with beautiful borders and a garden no longer overgrown and randomly planted. Keep it simply he reminds me. Don’t try to put everything into your garden. Mustard Seed House member Dan has encouraged me to draw up a 5 year plan. Great advice. If I don’t dream about what the garden could become I will never work towards that goal and the mess of weeds and unkempt plants will never be transformed.
I look over the whole of my garden and dream of what it could look like in a couple of months, next year, and in five years time. My hope is for a diversity of healthy flourishing plants alive with splashes of red and yellow and purple flowers. I imagine the bees flitting from flower to flower laden with pollen. And in the vegetable garden not just greens but broccoli and cabbages, tomatoes and zucchini, potatoes and onions and an abundance of berries and fruit forming on the fruit trees.
The garden of God’s world is the same. I plant seed, seeds of love and compassion and generosity and dream of gardens of abundance and caring where all God’s people flourish.
If we don’t dream of what a world made new could look like we will never see it transformed. And God has an amazing vision for the future: a vision of Shalom and Wholeness.
Here are a few of the lessons as I begin to plan my garden this year:
- Dream big and infuse others with the dream. I love to share my garden dreams, recruit helpers to work alongside me and then share generously of the abundant harvest. Working alone in the garden or in God’s broken world is backbreaking and often discouraging. We need a clear vision of what God is wanting to accomplish – a vision of flourishing and justice and freedom; a vision where all God’s creatures are provided for and live together in unity and harmony. Then I need to share that vision and work towards it. We are created for community not just for fun and fellowship but also for work. We need friends and colleagues to share our part of God’s vision and help us fulfill it.
- Plan well but keep it simple. There are two stages to planning a flourishing garden. In the dead of winter, when the earth is still too cold and hard to till I get out my seed catalogues and think about what I want to grow. I remind myself of what flourished last year and what didn’t. I try to work out why and do some reorganizing based on my results. When I can finally get out into the garden there is still more planning to do. I figure out what has died and why, what needs pruning or moving and what needs to be fertilized to thrive. If I want to harvest abundant fruit in God’s garden I must do the same type of preparation. How do I plan for justice and generosity and freedom? What hindered my efforts in the past and how do I need to change my plans to be more successful in the future?
- Plant lots of seeds. I always plant far more seeds than can possibly fit in my garden space. Some of them I give away, some of them get eaten by slugs, others get thinned out later in the season so that the remaining plants can flourish. Sometimes our efforts in God’s garden don’t produce a harvest because we have sown too sparsely, or the wrong kinds of seeds, or in the wrong places. Paul reminds us in 2 Corinthians 9:6 that: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. Sometimes we don’t spread our seed that can produce justice and freedom far enough. Or perhaps we limit our sowing to one kind of seed, a type that is not thrive in the soil. At other times we have not prepared the soil adequately and weeds outstrip our seedlings, choking them and limiting the harvest.
- Fertilize well, water appropriately. The number one rule of organic gardening, as I shared in this post is “build up the soil”. All seed has the potential for a good harvest if we build up the soil properly. And what is the best fertilizer – compost – garbage that can be transformed to gold. Sometimes I wonder if we don’t see the harvests of freedom, compassion and abundance God intends, because we fail to build up the soil or because we build it up with the wrong fertilizer. What is the garbage in our lives that God wants to use as fertilizer for a rich harvest of justice and righteousness?
- When the garden doesn’t produce a harvest know how to give it a second chance. Our God is a God of second chances. I was made very aware of that at church on Sunday as our preacher spoke about Jesus parable of the unproductive fig tree in Luke 13:1-9. I had never noticed before that this story is part of a sermon on repentance. Something is wrong with the tree. There is no fruit. But the solution is not to get rid of it. The gardener gives it a second chance. He works on the soil around it, tilling it, pruning it and fertilizing it. Jesus gives us second chances too every time we fail to act justly and lovingly. He raises our awareness of the wrongness within us and our society, calls us to repentance and fertilizes the “soil” around us so that we can be changed and learn to respond in a way that will once more produce abundant fruit. What are the places in your life that are no longer fruitful? How is Jesus working to fertilize you so that these may once more produce abundant fruit?
The prophet Zechariah tells us:
I am planting seeds of peace and prosperity among you. The grapevines will be heavy with fruit. The earth will produce its crops, and the heavens will release the dew. Once more I will cause the remnant in Judah and Israel to inherit these blessings. (Zechariah 8:12 NLT)
This is God’s vision for the future. What seeds of peace and prosperity have you planted in the lives of others or in our broken world that you long to see bear fruit? How could you nurture these seeds so that they produce an abundant harvest?
By Lilly Lewin—
Art speaks to me.
I am a visual learner so images speak loudly to me and God often uses images to speak to me and inspire me.
One of the artists God uses on a regular basis is my friend Scott Erickson.
I’ve talked about Scott before. His Instagram feed @scotthepainter is one of my daily devotions. Scott is not only an artist, but also a spiritual director who uses his creations and creativity to design work that tells stories about life, faith, our journey, and deep healing. 
God has used the image above of the row boat in hands in the past year during my own spiritual direction practice.
What does this image say to you?
For me, it started out with a few questions …
Where are you Jesus?
Jesus are you just asleep in the boat?
Do you even care?
But eventually, as I prayed with and pondered the painting…I came to this:
Ah, Jesus! you aren’t just with me in the Boat, you are holding the boat and holding the water too!
You, Jesus, are in it all.
You, Jesus, are with me even when the sea is rough.
Jesus you are holding up my boat.
You, Jesus, are sitting with me and will give me the strength to keep rowing.
You, Jesus, will keep me from sinking.
You, Jesus are with me in the Boat! and thankfully you aren’t asleep!
I highly recommend checking out Scott’s website and art work. He also has an amazing Prayer Book that is being Re-released this coming week called
Prayer: 40 Days of Practice that he wrote with Justin McRoberts. It has both prayers, practices and Scott’s amazing images to use in your prayer time.
I have a copy from the original printing and I use it all the time. It would be perfect for a Lenten devotional this year.
You can even preorder it from Target for a great price. Didn’t know Target had prayer books on line. Amazon has it too and that helps Godspace.
Also, a couple of weeks ago, Scott was in Nashville doing his one man show “Say Yes: A Liturgy of Not Giving Up on Yourself.” He is doing the show in several cities this Spring! You will be encouraged through everything from Centaurs to karaoke! Go see it! It’s great church! And check out Scott’s videos on why the church needs art too! They are on his website here.
Take some time today to find a piece of artwork or an image that speaks to you. Allow Jesus to open your eyes and your heart to hear more from him. You might even get out your crayons or paint and create something yourself. I’d love to hear what art speaks to you and see what you create. As Scott says, just say yes!
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By Steve Wickham —
That sentence ends… that you might be wrong.
This is something that God ushered into me late last year as a word for this year. It’s the reminder to weigh matters before I make certain choices, to get the log out of my own eye before I judge, to seek more truth before I decide, and to examine myself akin to the prayer of Psalm 139:23-24:
“Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my thoughts.
See if there is any hurtful way in me,
and lead me in the ancient way.”
Isn’t it ironic that God already knows our hearts and thoughts? So, as we pray this prayer honestly, we invite an answer and receive divine revelation. This is central to the task of a human living in the image of God. When we’re led in the ancient way, the way before the Fall, we live redemptively, putting back together the broken pieces as best we can, reimagining what was prior to the breakage.
The only way we can do this, in discerning the way forward, is to acknowledge, as individuals, we all do have the power to harm; that this power comes from the hidden longings always waiting to be discerned.
I like what Christian psychologist, Diane Langberg, PhD, says about our need to reflect on our longings:
“Examine your longings; know what they are because they make you vulnerable to fulfillment in illicit places. Our hearts are to be ruled by God alone. No longing, no goal, no human promise is to own us.”
The Christian life is one of discernment, especially in this age of outrage where power subverts so virulently, even as it emanates in our own lives. One of our key tasks is to become aware of those longings, goals and human promises that would garner the praise of our hearts, and repent of them. If we don’t, as Langberg says, those longings inevitably lead us to illicit places.
As broken human beings made in God’s image, we have great power to charm or to harm. We use whatever power is at our disposal to bless or to oppress. Influence runs one way or the other. We may love through the powers of kindness, graciousness, patience and generosity. Just the same, if we’re not spiritually studious and honest enough, we may succumb to the power of deceit and deceive others through manipulation, greatly misusing, indeed abusing, our power. Especially if we’re driven by longings that were good, but where the good is tainted and those once-good desires blur into demands.
This year’s key spiritual task is to slow down, act out of Jesus’ peace, become aware of the longings in our hearts that are not of God, and to repent and “seek the things that are above” (Colossians 3:1).
Here’s an exercise to illuminate our prayer life:
Could it just be that I…
- haven’t got all the information I need?
- am wrong? (I very often am, at least partially)
- need to pray more about something?
- need to press in to God more in discerning a path?
By Hilary Horn —
It’s been just shy of 5 years where we have not done anything drastic. My family hasn’t moved, I haven’t had a new born baby, been pregnant or started a new ministry or job. For a good season, our life was always on the move or had something new that would drastically put a curve ball into our life rhythms. None of them were bad, but it caused big waves that forced us into movement. I felt like we never arrived and were constantly trying to catch up during the past few years.
This year, we don’t plan on doing anything new and it’s been so refreshing. Every year my husband and I pray about a word that will direct our year and our word for 2019 is “faithfulness”. Being faithful in our everyday lives and not adding anything into the mix. Being steadfast and consistent in what we are already given.
So this year, I feel like I’m resurrecting the ordinary. Often we take for granted the ordinary-ness of life. We jam-pack it with busyness or hyper entertainment or change. But there is something special to the normal, ordinary parts of life that we get to experience.
Ordinary helps calm our souls and give us a sense of safeguard. When things around us may storm up, we feel better equipped and rooted because our own lives are anchored. We may handle others storms with more eloquence and wisdom. Ordinary helps give us margin in many facets of life. And ordinary helps us discover Jesus in simple ways.
We’ve only been a few weeks into 2019 but I’m loving watching the ordinary resurrected in my life. The beauty in simple mornings watching your kids play while you sip your coffee. Being pretty confident in our routine and schedule which helps allow margin for more life giving things like exercise, longer meditations or more time with friends. Discovering new flowers blooming you somehow missed last year in your garden. Cooking meals and enjoying them with your family. Finally hanging up those frames that have been sitting in my closet for 5 months. Getting rid of the junk that’s piled up and making space for more creativity. Not being too rushed for time and enjoying play with my kids. Ultimately, enjoying the ordinary, regular rhythms of the week to week cycles we venture into each month. Some may see it boring, but I see it as transformative. Ordinary every day things that give me a chance to be faithful in.
I’ve been reflecting on this verse this month during my “ordinary” days from Romans 12:1-2 when Paul is talking about living a sacrificial life. I really like the message version as I’ve been exploring the idea of an “ordinary life”.
“So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him“.
Living your life as a sacrifice to God often isn’t in the huge moments of life. Often, they are in the quiet, unseen, ordinary parts of life. We see our true obedience when no one is looking and when sometimes life just looks boring or similar. Instead of looking for the next best thing or tick off something on our life check list, we are steady in the place we are at. These moments and seasons aren’t always glamorous. We can still honor God and be a fragrant offering to him in our normal, day to day lives.
In these places of ordinary, I see small growth. I’m excited for next year to look back and see these mustard seeds burst into their fullness because of the every day little steps is faithfulness. To see this in my personal life, our families life and our church life. These ordinary weeks become extravagant months when you look back on them. The ordinary becomes a transfiguration of new life in my soul and community.
Are you in a season of “ordinary”? What does that look like in your walk with Jesus? I’d love to hear your comments below.
By Bill Borror —
In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’
And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.
And in the morning, a great while before day, he rose and went out to a lonely place, and there he prayed. Mark 1:9-13; 35
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that
I think I am following Your will does not mean that I am
actually doing so…..Thomas Merton
I once asked a wise spiritual director how can I know what God wants? She replied God wants you in heaven, meaning God just wants you. Pressing her a bit more (because that could not possibly be all-right?) I said,
“Well what I am I supposed to do?”
She gently replied, “What would be your saint name?” She smiled at what must have been my bewildered look. She continued “For instance, St Francis was Il Poverello; Juan de Yepes became St. John of Cross; Therese of Lisieux was ‘the little flower.’ Think about what your name might be and we can discern more the next time.”
I never went back initially, because I was totally stumped. It was not for lack of options in my lexicon; I was teaching Church History as well as pastoring at the time. But I could find neither sign nor symbol to attach to my identity. I remembered a graduate professor once told me that my patron saint should be St Sebastian, mortally wounded thirty-nine times, but I think that was more of a commentary on my career than my soul.
In spite of never returning to the director, I have kept her question like a zen koan close to my heart ever since. And though I do not yet have a name (St. Bill the Perplexed?), I know God’s desire for me is discovered in my identity and that my work is only vocation to the degree it leads me back to the love of God. This seems to be part of what is going on in the Baptism of Jesus. His “commissioning” is God’s confirmation of his identity. And discerning this identity/commission leads him into the wilderness of testing and prayer.
I wonder how Jesus’s prayers of discernment were different than my feeble attempts? What may even be more mind boggling is how might they be similar. We too have to pray our way through the desert surrounded by graces and terrors, inner demons and our better angels.
And at least once in the struggle, God was as silent with Jesus as God is on a regular basis with me (and perhaps you too).
I think Jesus was lonely in this world. Certainly this “a-loneness” was a function of his unique identity as the Incarnation of God. But his being misunderstood by both friends and foe; his rejection by family and the “faith”; his embracing of the suffering of others; and the constant demand for him to give more; are isolating dynamics that most of us can relate to on some level. Life is lonely and frequently the more sensitive one is to what is really going on in the world, that loneliness is intensified. Maybe this drove Jesus to lonely places to connect to the one he knew as Father.
In the process of discernment, it is as important to be present to where we are, as it is to ask where we are going. It is possible that the Logos of creation found comfort in the beauty of a star-filled night and the hymns of the night creatures. Points of isolation are pregnant with possibilities for insight; just ask Jonah. I think when Jesus went into the Judean wilderness or into a Galilean night, he was not only withdrawing from but moving towards something and someone.
Discernment is not ultimately about finding life direction, but finding the One who is “the way, the truth and the life.” The existential, emotional, and spiritual lonely place in which each individual finds themselves is what drives us to the Father as well. This encounter with the Divine offers meaning, consolation, and comfort when felt; and when absent, the dark night tango of faith.
As Brother Merton’s prayer concludes:
…But I believe that the desire to please You
does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that, if I do this, You will lead me by the right road,
though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore I will trust You always though I may seem to be lost
and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for You are ever with me,
and You will never leave me to face my perils alone.
by Christine Sine
The last couple of days have been a real struggle for me. I have prayed, I have repented and at times I have been in tears. What on earth is going on you might ask? Has she strayed from the straight and narrow? No! At least not in the usual way we think of this.
I am however weighed down by the news and a deep sense of the evil that exists in our world and the feeling that I am a part of it… and I want to turn away from the pain.
First there is the ongoing saga of the U.S. shutdown. Now at an end thank goodness, at least for the moment. So many lives scarred and disrupted by it.
Then someone reminded me that many of the migrants the US Mexican wall is meant to keep out are displaced and in poverty because of the deliberate destabilization caused in their countries by past US governments. Something else to cause me pain.
January 26th was Australia Day and brought with it another wave of pain. Reading Michael Frost’s important but devastating article We stole your land, your language and your wages but hey let’s celebrate about how indigenous people in Australia have been treated since white people settled there had me in tears. Knowing that the same has happened here in the U.S. and in many other parts of the world makes my heart ache.
January 27th, was International Day of Commemoration For Victims of the Holocaust. So much pain. So much suffering and as one person commented How could a Christian nation do this?
It is easy for all of us to turn a blind eye to to the pain and disruption in peoples’ lives. It overwhelms us and we are afraid that it will consume us if we dwell in the midst of it for too long.
Reaching for Solace
Fortunately there is a way to cope that allows us to confront the pain without being overwhelmed by it. The word David Whyte uses in his book Consolations David Whyte is solace. He is talking about the need for solace after the loss of loved ones, but it seems to me that we also need solace when we are confronted with the kinds of situations I mentioned above.
Confronting this kind of pain makes us feel we have lost a loved one – maybe it is a beloved viewpoint about the goodness of our culture, or of the “Christian” heritage that shaped it. Whenever we confront the reality I found his words really spoke to my heart.
Solace is what we must look for when the mind cannot bear the pain, the loss or the suffering that eventually touches every life and every endeavor…. Solace is found in allowing the body’s innate wisdom to come to the fore…. (and letting it lead us), when the mind cannot bear what it is seeing or hearing, to the bird-song in the trees above our heads, even as we are being told of a death, each note and essence of morning and of mourning; of the current of a life moving on, but somehow, also, and most beautifully, caring, bearing and even celebrating the life we have just lost.
Solace is defined as comfort or consolation in a time of distress or sadness. We need it when we lose a loved one or are devastated by illness but we also need it when we are confronted by the societal atrocities of our cultures, because it is only when we have felt comfort and consolation that we are able to move forward and act not just with repentance but also with reconciliation and sometimes with reparation.
Despair leads us to darkness, solace pulls us out into the light where we can hear the bird song and relish the beauty of the sunrise, and be reenergized to respond.
David Whyte goes on to say:
To look for solace is to learn to ask fiercer and more exquisitely pointed questions, questions that reshape our identities and our bodies and our relation to others. Standing in loss but not overwhelmed by it, we become useful and generous and compassionate and even amusing companions for others.
Solace allows us to ask fierce questions, direct questions that are more than fluff and mild sympathy, without burning us out — uncomfortable questions — what can I do? How can I respond? What do I need to give up to make this response?
One of my friends started tithing to the local Native American tribe because of the hard questions he has been forced to confront. Another started working with families in Central America to help them find economic and educational stability in their still unstable country.
I am still discerning what response God is asking of me, but I know that in order to go deeper into God I will need to make a response. In the mean time I have written a prayer/poem that I know will keep me on track.
Shalom maker
Bringer of peace
through unexpected paths.
Rabble rouser,
Lover of the unwashed,
Companion of sinners,
Friend of the poor.
Shalom maker
Bringer of costly peace
that demands our lives.
Peace not through violence
but through sacrifice
Death to self.
Life for others.
Shalom maker,
Transform us,
Renew us, resurrect us,
Until we all become
one family together,
from all the nations of the world.
I ask you too to prayerfully look at the unsettling news that you have read in the last few days and ask yourself what response God might ask of you to.
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