Saint Francis of Assisi, whose feast day we celebrate in this piece, is not an easy one to live with. He is deeply and simply radical, to the point where, when you examine his life, like the rich young ruler meeting Jesus, you must either shake your head and walk away, or give your everything to God. Perhaps that is the greatest sign that he was a true follower of Christ.
Francis made the Living Christ the centre of his being. His faith did not live around the edges of his life, it was his life. His goal, if he was aware of one in his utter humility and servanthood, was to allow Christ to live through him. He embraced lepers as well as poverty and saw God everywhere, not as a pantheistic inherent power, but by seeing creation as incarnation, not in competition with Christ, but in coherence with Christ, through whom all was made.
This moves me deeply as I grow in my own small faith, and find myself enraptured by the tiniest of God’s creatures and discover sisterly compassion for every morsel of suffering I see in the world. I thought that being virtually housebound with my illness and unable to socialise, that I would find myself hardening, becoming shielded from empathy. But the opposite has been the case. Last year I wept buckets over a tiny ladybird that hatched crooked from its cocoon that we had to put out of its misery. This year a piece of land covered in trees has been auctioned off behind the main road in my sightline and I am devastated, knowing that those beautiful, growing, living, breathing creatures and all who shelter there will be killed or made homeless.
It seems that if we make Christ and relationship with the Trinity through Him the centre of all, living a life where prayer is a priority rather than an option, we will always find our hearts softening. Love is heartbreaking.
Francis understood this better than anyone. He knew that the passion of the Christ was the ultimate suffering in heartbreak coupled with the ultimate love. His prayer before receiving the stigmata on Mount La Verna near the end of his life was,
My Lord Jesus Christ, I pray You to grant me two graces before I die; the first is that during my life I may feel in my soul and in my body, as much as possible, that pain which You, dear Jesus, sustained in the hour of your most bitter Passion. The second is that I may feel in my heart, as much as possible, that excessive love with which You, O Son of God, were inflamed in willingly enduring such suffering for us sinners.
Love and pain are soulmates in the Christian life. We cannot have the one without the other. There is no eternal life without difficult death, no overcoming without the cross. The Garden of Gethsemane cannot be got around or avoided, no matter how much we try to kid ourselves. But what a love we are compensated with, both to give and receive!
I have little in common with Francis. I struggle to rejoice in my physical weakness or my financial poverty, most days it all just feels too hard to bear. And I am nowhere near courageous or bold enough to pray such a dangerous prayer! Yet I do understand his offering to the world of a Christ-like model of setting everything aside but God: Deus meus et omnia (my God and my all) – another of Francis’ prayers. It seems unattainable in this life, such love and devotion, but like all conversions, though it may begin grandly, it goes on by a process of growth, unstoppable if we give our yes to it daily. And we may always stay little more than beginners next to the deep surrender that Francis became able to give to his saviour. But the important thing is to start, to continue, and to mean it: to learn to love and suffer and let each work together and interchangeably as joy and pain – for in the gospel life there is joy in suffering and pain in love as well as the other way around. To begin that metanoia transformation by giving up that very hardest of sacrifices, our stubborn and selfish will.
©Keren Dibbens-Wyatt 2016 Photo from Pixabay
St Francis of Assisi was a person who modelled God’s peace (shalom) in very radical ways. October 4th is St Francis Feast Day and so it seems appropriate to begin our October emphasis on shalom with a reminder of his life story and the ways it challenges us also be be radical proponents of shalom.
Francis’s goal was to imitate the life, and carry out the work of Christ in all he did. Ironically the prayers he is best known for Make Me An Instrument of Your Peace and Let Nothing Disturb Us, were not actually written by him, though they express some of the sentiments that we associate with his life.
What Is God’s Shalom?
God’s radical peace or shalom, a world in which all things are once more made whole is something that all of us long for but it is a hard concept to grasp, partly because we have never lived in a world in which God’s shalom dream is fully experienced, a world in which there is no death or disease, no oppression or exploitation of others, and no destructive acts towards creation.
Nicholas Wolterstorff says that at its heart, the Old Testament word shalom means “flourishing.” It embraces not just the flourishing of our personal lives but also our concern for the flourishing of all humanity as well as of God’s good creation. This, he believes is what the gospel is all about and what Christian education should also be about.
the goal of Christian education is to equip and energize our students for a certain way of being in the world, not just for a way of thinking, though certainly also that, but for a certain way of being – a Christian way, not one of your standard American ways of being. Suppose further that you agree with me that this way of being can be described thus: to pray and struggle for shalom, celebrating its presence and mourning its absence. How do we do that? What is the pedagogy – and indeed, the curriculum – for education with that goal?
Discipleship exposes our practices and our beliefs to the scrutiny of the Gospels. The life, death and resurrection of Christ becomes the lens through which we view all things – big and small – not so that we can disengage from the world but so that our thinking, and our actions can all be changed to be more like Christ. One of the mysteries of our faith is the continual transformation that God, acting through the Holy Spirit, continues to bring about in our lives and in our world.
That any of us can change our thinking is a miracle. That any of us can be transformed from the self centered, self absorbed people we are without Christ is incredible… that alone convinces me that God is still at work in our world, educating all of us to live the eternal shalom world that will one day break into ours in all its glory.
Educating for Shalom
So how do we more fully live into God’s dream of shalom?
1. Articulate the dream as often as possible. I used to teach a class on urban transformation which revolved around the concept of shalom. I would ask students what their neighbourhood would look like if God’s shalom was fully realized. They usually started with the religious stuff like a church on ever corner but the longer we talked about it, the more they started to express their real dreams for transformation – jobs and homes for everyone, harmonious relationships between neighbours, restoration of polluted streams, overcoming of crime, beautiful gardens, colourful street murals, community events that drew the community together.
2. Educate yourself on God’s dream for shalom. Learn more about God’s dream for shalom as it emerges in the Old Testament and is expressed through the life of Christ in the new. This has become the central theological study of my life. It began 25 years ago as I grappled with the reality of the poverty I had seen during my years on Mercy Ships and the affluence I now experience in life in America. I expressed some of my learning several years ago in the booklet Shalom and the Wholeness of God, but I find myself constantly challenged my new aspects of God’s desire for wholeness and flourishing.
Over the last few months at St Andrew’s Episcopal Church here in Seattle, we have started using the following words as part of our liturgy:
While Jesus lived among us he stood up for women and children, he touched the untouchable, healed the sick, and welcomed those who had given up hope of being included. Through him we see a path not only to our own freedom, but a path to the liberation of the whole world. He taught us that it will not be in the brutality of violence that our world will be saved. Rather it will be in showing kindness to our neighbour in standing up against injustice, in returning hate with love, in transforming one heart at a time. It will be in the simple but holy task of dining together, sharing bread and wine, truly seeing one another as beloved by God.
Repeating these words each week is imprinting them in my mind and helping me to think of other ways to embrace this dream. Tomorrow we will publish our Top Ten Books on Shalom. I challenge all of us to read these books and others that help immerse us in God’s real purpose for our lives.
3. Reorient our lives to reflect God’s shalom. It is not easy for any of us to grasp the radicalness of God’s dream and live each day as its advocates, but we need to accept this challenge.
Plan a shalom meal at which you talk about God’s dream for flourishing. Read through the wonderful description in Isaiah 65: 17-25 of God’s shalom world. Sit in silence with your eyes closed imagining what this could look like in your life, neighbourhood and God’s world. Discuss this with your friends. Now watch the video below which I put together several years ago as my own expression of shalom living. Is there a way that God is challenging you, your family and your friends to make this dream more central to your lives. What are one or two action steps you could take to move your life and priorities in this direction?
Thank God for blessings
Here in the northern hemisphere it is the season of harvest and thanksgiving. It is a time when we all like to count our blessings and remind ourselves of the goodness of God in providing these.
Today’s prayer is one that I wrote for our community meeting at the Mustard Seed House. After we read it together we had a time of sharing about the many blessings in our lives.
Get a group of friends together to celebrate the summer harvest and the bounty of God’s provision. What are you grateful for? What are the blessings that you are aware of at this season?
For more harvest and thanksgiving prayers check out Harvest Prayers and Resources.
by Lilly Lewin
by Lilly Lewin. All rights reserved.
One of my prayer practices is to pray while walking my dog. I started this practice in our neighborhood in Cincinnati, continued it the four years we lived in California, and I have started again in my new neighborhood here in Nashville. It’s an amazing prayer practice that doesn’t take extra time because I would be walking my dog anyway. During the years that I walked the Wonder Spaniel I was opened to pray for neighbors I knew and those whom I didn’t. I asked God to show me how to be available to my neighbors and what the needs were around me.
I prayed for health and peace in homes. I prayed for jobs and favor. Eventually my neighbors figured out that I was a praying person and would ask me to pray for specific things. I wasn’t creepy. I didn’t stop and lay hands on mailboxes or anything like that, I just walked my dog and prayed for each home I passed by and the people in those houses. If I knew of specific needs of neighbors, like someone was sick or needed a new job, I would pray for those things. Our local high school happened to be just around the corner, so I had the opportunity to pray for the teachers and the students and the principal and staff.
This prayer practice opens my heart to my neighbors and my town and opens me to what God is already doing in my neighborhood. My walk now includes a view of downtown, so this has encouraged me to pray for our mayor and our city council and for church leaders to really make a difference in our city for justice and the least of these.
by Lilly Lewin. All Rights Reserved.
Nashville is experiencing a tremendous boom right now but there is a tendency for people to forget those without access and those who need help. I pray that the people who know Jesus will begin to get out of their church buildings and into action for God’s kingdom and truly make an impact for the three L’s as my husband Rob says, “ the least, the lost and the lonely.” So my encouragement for all of us is to get outside this fall and walk the dog. And if you don’t have a dog, just get out and take an intentional prayer walk around your neighborhood. As you pray for your neighbors allow God to surprise you with gifts of beauty along the way…a bird, a flower, a sunset, etc. I’d love to hear about your discoveries, so email me at freerangeworship@gmail.com.
Check out my website freerangeworship.com for more creative prayer ideas.
This post is part of our September Creative Prayer theme.
I was angry. It seemed to be happening a lot lately. And I wasn’t just angry for a few minutes, I seemed to stew all day long. That’s when I began to realize something was wrong inside me, and it needed to change.
Our emotions and attitudes are often indicators of a need to stop, pay attention, and spend time listening to God about the deeper things going on in our lives. While most of our creative prayer practices this month have been fun, this one’s a bit more of a challenge. Spend some time reflecting on your attitudes this past week. Now ask yourself:
Are there areas in my life that seem to stir me up and stick with me like old gum on the bottom of my shoe?- Are there situations that so get under my skin that they infect my attitude and tarnish the way I relate to others throughout the day?
- Is there, say, a social media platform that, when I go on it I find myself getting angry and lashing out with words I’d not normally use, or sharing memes I know are hurtful or demeaning to others who don’t share my perspective?
I’m getting better, but every once-in-a-while I cross the line on Facebook. A few years ago I posted a cynical comment on Facebook regarding an event in the news, expressing some frustration. In response, a friend asked this question, “How do we effect change among (others)? Heck, how do I effect MORE change in myself?” Those questions stirred within me as I wrote a more cool-headed, thoughtful reply. Three years later those same questions continue to stir in me, precisely because they are essential questions for those of us who follow Christ and take his call to discipleship seriously.
Here’s how I responded:
I think you touch on two very important aspects of change: education and attitude. I’m in a love-hate relationship with Facebook; it’s great for getting in touch, and staying in touch, with friends, new and old, but it also is filled with bumper sticker-type proclamations that tend to feed extreme views and fuel anger, cynicism, and division. I admit, I’m part of the problem and have quit reading many of the inflammatory articles and memes that appear in my timeline.
I’m attempting this change in myself: If a post gets me angry, I’m trying to force myself to peer underneath my emotions and ask, “Why?” Am I falling into an intentional trap laid out to tick me off? Or is this a legitimate issue to be upset about? If it’s legit, how can I better respond in a way that moves toward understanding rather than alienates?
My role, as a follower of Jesus, is to be an “ambassador of reconciliation”. Too often I’m an ambassador of discord as I allow myself to be manipulated by media, provocation, and my own unexamined attitudes and emotions.
In other words, to effect change in others requires change first in me. I’m convinced this is the beginning step in personal, spiritual, and social change – and it’s not a one-off event, but an ongoing awareness of my internal attitudes, emotions, motivations, and underlying assumptions.
Once I acknowledge this and begin to put it into practice, I’m (more) ready to begin engaging in healthy spiritual practices which can further shape my inner character. [One might argue that our first spiritual practice should be to come before God with this kind of open, confessional-repentant attitude.]
I’ve come to realize how various spiritual practices can easily become just an extension of our broken and often cynical nature if we do not begin with the foundational (and ongoing) process of personal examination. Without this ongoing examination, I put up roadblocks to the work of the Spirit in my life and cripple not only my own spiritual growth but also my ability to walk effectively alongside others.
With the right attitude engaged, I can look again at how best to be an agent of change in a way that does not also intentionally or unintentionally alienate many of the people I’m trying to communicate with. It now becomes more possible for me to be an agent of education and change because I’m allowing God to shape my heart and mind around God’s purposes and God’s methods of healing and reconciliation in the world.
Well, these are nice words and thoughts… Now to live into them! This is my personal challenge as I journey forward. Believe it or not, I have been trying to change, but the combination of passion about various extremely important issues and the accessibility (especially through Facebook) of radicalized “news” articles and memes make it a real challenge to maintain a clear and open attitude. Enter community – good and trustworthy friends who can help hold me (us) accountable to our deeper calling.
As I now read back over these words, I’m stunned by both the simplicity and the complexity of my undertaking. The actions themselves are quite simple; the complexity is where emotions and habit enter in. To move forward I must be intentional about all my interactions, especially those that take place online.
Why “especially online”? A few years ago, while talking with a friend, I made the analogy of Facebook posts being like driving on the freeway. Because of the imagined anonymity or distance, people become more aggressive, acting in ways they never would in a face-to-face encounter. What I failed to realize at the time was how much I was also referring to my own online presence!
It Begins at Home
Jesus offers us a very simple, yet complex, invitation: “Come, follow me.” This is an invitation to discipleship, to spiritual formation. This is all about transformation, and that requires a desire to change. My friend’s question, “How do we effect change in [others]?” cannot really be answered until we honestly begin to answer his second question, “How do I effect change in myself?” It begins at home, in our hearts and minds, as we truly open our lives – our motivations, assumptions, pre-conceived notions, prejudices, and attitudes – to God and to a small community of followers.
Or as Jesus once put it:
“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your neighbor’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your neighbor’s eye.” (Mt. 7:3-5)
Sure, Jesus is talking about passing judgment here, but isn’t that precisely where our attitudes often go astray? What, after all, causes me to respond to those I might disagree with by posting a meme that belittles their view or a snarky comment that’s demeaning and hurtful? If I am truly an “ambassador of reconciliation”, if my motivation is to love God with all I am and to love my neighbor as myself, how can I even begin to justify many of my actions and reactions on social media?
So here is my final creative prayer practice challenge for the month: spend time on your favorite social media platform. Look back through your posts, reposted memes, and comments. Sit with them. Bring them before God.
- How do they fit with who you are in Christ?
- How do they align with your call to be an ambassador of reconciliation?
- What attitudes were evoked inside you when you posted?
- Can you identify your motivation for posting as you did?
- Can you identify some of your own underlying assumptions that may have added to conflict or division?
- How might you respond differently, not to avoid disagreement or dealing with important issues, but to work honestly at building understanding and dialogue?
This is difficult work. I’ve gotten so much better at responding the past couple of years. But truth be told, I still fail. I fail more often than I care to admit. But when I do fail – and realize I’ve failed – I also try to go back and admit where I messed up and apologize.
Am I the only one wrestling with this? Judging by the posts I’ve seen the past couple of days my guess is, no. What are your thoughts?
We’re nearing the end for this month’s theme, “The Prayerful Imagination: Praying Creatively for a More Meaningful Connection with God and Others”. This has been a thrilling collaboration of writers coming together from all around the globe to share their insights. We wanted to make sure these great posts are easy to access so have collected them all here on one page.
A big thank you to all our contributors, to those who have commented, and to those of you who’ve helped share these rich posts with your network of friends.
Early this month when we asked for ideas on on creative prayer posts, one person suggested how to foster creativity in kids. Today’s meditation began as that post, but then I realized that we all need this kind of help.
In her book Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art, Madelaine L’Engle reminds us that we are all born artists endowed with rich unfettered imaginations. Our senses are in touch with being rather than doing. As we grow, she believes, we are corrupted by the dirty devices of the secular world where myth and fairy tale must be discarded. The vivid purple clouds and yellow skies of childhood give way to the real world of white clouds and blue skies. Leaves are made of molecules and atoms, rainbows are caused by refraction of light. Life is pigeon holed into a rational scientific understanding of the world, in which God if God exists at all can also be confined to a small box of life that we open on Sunday or for a few moments each morning.
Madeleine goes on to say,
We write, we make music, we draw pictures because we are listening for meaning, feeling for healing And during the writing of the story, or the painting, or the composing or singing or playing, we are returned to that open creativity which was ours when we were children. We cannot be mature artists if we have lost the ability to believe which we had as children. An artist at work is in a condition of complete and total faith.” (Walking on Water p181)
Surely this is part of what it Jesus means in Matthew 18:3 when he tells us we must become like little children. To enter God’s and embrace God’s worldview we must learn to be creative again and see as children see, breaking away from the dirty devices of the secular world and discovering the awe and wonder of God’s dreams and promises for the future.
So today’s post is about how to stir creativity in all of us to return to that childlike wonder. Here are some suggestions that I have found helpful in this process:
1. Give people time to be creative without interfering. Many sites on fostering creativity in kids suggest unstructured imaginative play –unencumbered by adult direction, and not dependent on a lot of commercial stuff. Adults too need this kind of stimulation to foster creativity. Making a mess, getting dirty, colouring, playing sports, are all rejuvenating practices that free us from inflexible thought patterns and routines.
In our hectic lives, many of us focus so heavily on work and family commitments that we never have time for pure fun. Just because we’re adults, doesn’t mean we have to take ourselves so seriously and make life all about work. Maybe we even need to hand some of the planning over to our kids. I wonder what kids would suggest if rather than telling them to make an Advent wreath we asked them to come up with a new to celebrate Advent and Christmas and made sure they had plenty of time to do that.
The trick, John Cleese says, is in making the space to engage in childlike play without relying on childish spontaneity—he recommends scheduling time to be creative, giving oneself a “starting time and a finish time” and thereby setting “boundaries of space, boundaries of time.”
2. Give people permission to fail & reward failure. So much of our activity is designed for success. Failure is something we teach people consciously or unconsciously, to be afraid of.
“There is no such thing as failure — failure is just life trying to move us in another direction,” Oprah counseled new Harvard graduates. Creativity often flows out of so called failure. Jesus seeming failure – death on the Cross was actually his greatest success.
Over the next few weeks finish the day by asking yourself, your friends or your family: What mistakes did you make today? Then share your own failures, laugh about them together. Have some fun. Now look back over the “failures” of your life. What creative impulses did they stir? What new directions or new ministries did they give birth too? Plan a party to celebrate these.
3. Give people freedom and space to make a mess and be willing to get messy with them. “Cleanliness is next to godliness” is not a biblical verse. That might come as a huge shock to some of us and I know that messiness can be a challenge for some, but maybe tidiness is something we all need to let go of for a season so that we can find the freedom of expression God desires for us. Evidently sitting in a messy room makes us more creative. Maybe playing paintball, making mud pies and preparing a very messy meal are creative acts that have an important purpose that we have not yet recognized.
4. Let your colleagues and congregations imagine their own story – don’t be bossy and imagine the story for them. Read one of Jesus parables and let your congregation write or draw, whatever interested them that they remembered, rather than giving them specific details from the reading that someone else found important. Consider taking the season of Lent next year to go through several stories about Jesus ending during Holy week with the stories of Jesus walk to Jerusalem and the crucifixion. Ask congregation to imagine games, and activities to go with each of the stories. It will give new life to their faith and new understanding of who Jesus is.
5. Encourage people to create sacred spaces. As many of you know my office desk has become a sacred space for me and I love to create new contemplative gardens that can draw my attention throughout the day and invite me to pause and reenter the presence of God. They have become wonderful nourishment for my soul and their themes remind me of the work God is doing in my life.
We all benefit from sacred spaces created out of the issues we are grappling with. Sit for a few minutes and imagine what your own scared space could look like. What music would you include, what fragrances – maybe some incense or other aromas, what visual cues? I think you will be amazed at the creativity that emerges and the strengthening of your faith it encourages.
6. Answer Questions with Questions. Emphasize process rather than product. One way you can do this is by asking questions about the process – Did you have fun? Are you finished? What did you like about that activity?
Jesus often asked questions rather than giving answers. Questions invite active responses. They give us permission us to think, imagine and come up with our own creative solutions.
7. Celebrate innovation and creativity. Cover your walls with art and other evidence of creative expression. I love churches that have artists painting during the service and then post them around the church or encourage sharing of stories, music and other creative expressions. It stirs all of us to think more creatively and imaginatively about our faith. Embracing new technologies, new forms of artistic expression, new possibilities for spiritual practices enables all of us to grow in our faith to find change exciting, not over-whelming or intimidating.
8. Give people the opportunity and the permission to express “divergent thought.” Encourage your friends and colleagues to disagree with you, to engage in constructive arguments. Encourage them to find more than one route to a solution, and more than one solution to a problem. When we think there is only one way to pray, to read the bible or to express our faith we become rigid and eventually our faith stagnates and we cease to grow.
9. Teach people skills like cooking, gardening, knitting, carving wood, painting. I love to cook and have done so since I was very young, but my mother was stick to the recipe type of person. It was only when I married Tom and watched him take a recipe and depart from it with his own unique, creative flair that I started to branch out and experiment myself. Some of my favourite recipes have sprung from the creative expression.
We love to watch others creating but it is even more inspiring to engage in these creative acts ourselves and then give them our own signature.
10. Never stop learning. Natural curiosity and creativity go hand-in-hand. Part of what the internet has taught us is that the world is a big, complicated place and there’s always something new and exciting to explore. Maybe you want to pick up a new language, master a new skill or explore a new creative prayer practice. The more things you know, the more you’ll have to draw on whenever you’re trying to solve a task or grappling with your faith. The more research you do, the better you’ll understand the process of discovery.
Creativity is at the core of who God is and wants us to be. I hope that you will take some time to explore these tools for creativity and draw closer to God in the process.
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