The Lenten prayer for this week is written by Trappist monk Thomas Merton. It is from fromThoughts in Solitude (1958).
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.
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.
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As a thirty-year old woman, I look at my peers falling off the church wagon one by one. Many of them were raised in Christian households where moral issues were black and white. Events like the creation story and Noah’s ark were taught as literal history and any questioning of these stories was a questioning of God’s power. They were told to blindly accept God’s will. God does what God wants. Richard Rohr might call this narrative early God-talk. Early God-talk is a religion without inner journey.
Now take these same children and grow them up a little. Send them to college. Teach them about evolution, poetry, and even mathematics. It’s no wonder they’ll begin to question the religion of their childhoods. Wait until someone they dearly love dies and see if they’re satisfied with hearing it was God’s will. Good-bye God of our infancies. It was nice knowing you, but now I have real information. I’m running away.
Emotional cutoff. It’s the name of a theory of the family therapist, Dr. Murray Bowen. According to Bowen, children who are emotionally cutoff try to ease their pain by withdrawing or running away, denying the importance of their parental relationships. They try for a fresh start with their own isolated, nuclear families, leaving the older generation behind. Instead of feeling free, Bowen’s research shows a person who cuts off from his parents actually only increases the anxiety in his life.*
My generation is perhaps the most cutoff generation. We have what Bowen calls token relationships with our parents. We pay them obligatory visits to keep things civil, but there’s no real relationship. Although cutoff can feel like the answer initially- I can’t argue as much with dad if I move away to New York, right?- it only perpetuates anxiety and the cutoff phenomena in each subsequent generation. My generation is not just cutoff from its families, but also from the Christianity of our childhoods. We want to run fast from ignorance.
Just like Bowen’s research shows cutoff raises anxiety in family systems, spiritual cutoff can only lead to an increased spiritual anxiety.
I had my own spiritual anxiety in my early twenties. I was raised in a tradition that claimed God is good, all the time. I returned from working as a teacher in rural Tanzania where I witnessed the devastation of AIDS. I wondered, was it God’s will these villagers would not have good preventative education or medical care? Why does God leave the rest of humanity begging for the scraps of the privileged? A good God would not will his people to die. I thought I could be free from this liar of a God. The people in my life may not have noticed my cutoff. It’s not like I went of the deep end or anything. That’s not what cutoff always looks like. Instead, I had a token relationship with God. I kept things civil, but there was no depth to my spirituality.
Is the way to spiritual reconciliation returning to what we thought as children? Absolutely not. I’m not a proponent of ignoring the critics inside us. Stuffing away our doubts would only make for a very shallow faith.
Psychologist and theologian James Loder says there’s four steps to spiritual development. These could lead to our reconciliation with God, if we so choose. First, we awaken to the reality of the power of God, recognizing the abyss between ourselves and God, but still knowing God is present. When I returned from Africa, everything I knew about God was turned upside down, but I could never completely deny God. Somehow I knew there was still a force larger than myself.
The next step is purgation. In purgation, we have a longing to move deeper into the life of God. During my purgation, I found a church community that was comfortable with my doubt. Next comes illumination, an acceptance of God’s embrace. God’s embrace was a loving group of people that doubted alongside of me. I knew God was with me in my doubt.
Finally, Loder’s fourth step of spiritual development is toward unification. This step is a lifelong process that’s the opposite of cutoff. A professor of mine always reminded us the best thing someone could do to stop an unhealthy pattern in a family was to start with himself. The child who was once cutoff, but longed for reconciliation, could start with a brave phone call to his parents just to say hello. What could this brave “phone call” look like to God?
Loder’s process of spiritual development is lifelong. Daily, I push myself to practice toward unification. Instead of fearing my doubts and cutting off, I move deeper into them within a safe community. During this lenten season, the abyss between ourselves and God may seem especially deep. But instead of trying to rid ourselves of Lent’s anxiety by running away, let’s bravely move towards the anxiety. We remember Lent ends with Easter, God’s ultimate reconciliation with humanity. We move towards Easter, not without uncertainty, but with the promise we will be reconciled again with God.
*Without a doubt, there are cases where permanent cutoff is necessary. In abusive relationships, for example.
Bowen, Murray, M.D., Family Therapy in Clinical Practice, p.382, 433-434.
Loder, James E. The Logic of the Spirit: Human Development in Theological Perspective, pp.65-70.
Rhor, Richard. Yes, And…Daily Meditations, p.8.
Meredith Griffin writes from her home in Galveston, Texas. Her writing is influenced by psychology, nature, biblical text, and her two young children. She writes at meredithmariegriffin.wordpress.com.
Until 2005, I lived in the United States with a “green card,” the document that allows immigrants to live and work, but not vote, in the country. At a young age, my children thoroughly enjoyed looking at my “green card” – which is not green in color – that carried a bold title “Resident Alien.” “Ha! Ha! Mommy is an alien!” And those babes born on American soil would laugh their heads off.
To be an alien is to be an outsider, to be separate and excluded, and to be without hope of belonging to and fully participating in the larger circle (Ephesians 2:11-12). Before Jesus Christ gave himself on the cross, this was the world Jews and Gentiles lived in – the Jews were in, and the uncircumcised Gentiles were out. In fact, Paul was writing this letter to the Ephesians while in prison, because he was falsely accused of bringing Gentiles into the area of the temple beyond the dividing wall (Acts 21:27-29), that area that only those who were “in” were allowed to enter.
Nevertheless, in just a few verses later (Ephesians 2:14-15), Paul goes on to boldly declare: “For [Christ] himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new άνθρωπος (translated “new man” in NIV, “new kind of human being” in the Message).
Almost 2,000 years after Paul wrote these words, how is the church in America doing in the business of racial reconciliation?
Nashville-based LifeWay Research conducted a study of church segregation, the results of which were published in Christianity Today 1/15/15. The researchers surveyed 994 churchgoers as well as 1,000 Protestant senior pastors. They discovered that more than half disagree with the statement, “My church needs to become more ethnically diverse.” And those who oppose increasing diversity do so with passion.
Ed Stetzer, Lifeway’s Executive Director, said, “Surprisingly, most churchgoers are content with the ethnic status quo in their churches… Yet, it’s hard for Christians to say they are united in Christ when they are congregating separately.”
In 1963, not long after giving his now-famous speech “I Have A Dream,” Martin Luther King Jr. said, “We must face the fact that in America, the church is still the most segregated major institution in America.”
King’s dream was by no means “original.” When Christ uttered “It is finished” on the cross, the curtain in the temple was “torn in two from top to bottom” (Matthew 27:51). Jesus’ “purpose was to create in himself one new ανθρωπος” (Ephesians 2:15). This purpose was so important to him that he was willing to give his life for it.
He also said, “A new command I give you: Love one another… By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34). But how can we love one another when our worshippers are so divided along racial-ethnic lines, when whites, blacks, Asians, and Latinos do not even intersect, let alone sharing leadership and power, with one another?
As we journey through the Lent season of 2015, what pierces my heart is not the fact that segregation still happens in our churches. What is disturbing is the fact that a great majority of churchgoers do not see any need to change! A great number of churchgoing, professing Christians have totally missed the “purpose” Christ died for!
Perhaps this Lent the church in America needs to hear a call to reflect on what Christ died for, and to repent of our failure to live out that “purpose.” For if you love [only] those who love you, what credit do you earn? Aren’t even the run-of-the-mill sinners doing this? And if you hang out only with your own kind, how are you better than the pagans? (Matthew 5:46-47, my translation)
Bio
Theresa Froehlich is a native of Hong Kong. She has been in the professional roles of accountant, pastor, and life coach. She is married to Hervey Froehlich, and they have two young adult children.
Confessions of a Book Worm
I adore books. I am often at my happiest reading, researching, studying, pondering; or curled up escaping from my own world for a while. Study and rest through books are both great gifts, and whilst I may need to tweak the emphasis of one over the other from time to time, there is nothing wrong with loving the rustle of paper.
However, since Lent is a time of confession and simplification: I realise I am guilty of a kind of spiritual flirtation.
I frequently fall into the habit of scanning and hunting through paragraphs, chasing a meaning I can clutch to myself. I can have times where I race through my reading pile as a consumer, quick to come to a critical summation of an author’s central point without properly reading the whole, or dismissing a work as interesting in an intellectual sense but not pertinent to me as Wisdom that I need in my life right now.
The same impulse drives me to double up on my spiritual practices: Lectio Divina with the Psalms, followed by a thought for the day from a recognised ‘heavyweight’ author, followed by reading a couple of blogs, followed by flitting to a couple of ‘inspirational’ Facebook sites, followed by reading my current ‘Christian’ book, followed by studying my current ‘non- Christian authored but pertinent to spirituality and the arts’ book, followed by a period of intercession…. Did I really write ‘double up’?
How is it possible to discern God in all of that at once?!
My last sleight of hand is to make it seem to myself as if I am doing spiritual ‘work’, filling a journal with my reflections and practicing creative writing, when actually all I am doing is copying out copious numbers of quotes with absolutely no pause or application at all.
This is spiritual tourism at its worst: an unthinking regurgitation of the supposedly sacred in the pretence of practicing personal holiness.
(And yes, I get angry at myself for doing it.)
As in all consumerism, this relentless pursuit of the ineffable is driven by anxiety, in turn driven by unacknowledged or repressed desire. In my case, I am eager to learn, but when that eagerness arises from a shadow place, I know I have fallen into a muddle-headed way of approaching my God.
The heart-breaking fact of the matter is that I do ‘game play’ even whilst calling myself a contemplative.
And it is not as if I do not know the corrective: that the Grace I seek is to be found in the here and now.
Stop the merry-go-round, you do want to get off.
Bow down, this moment, you are on holy ground.
Your Beloved beckons.
Loving-kindness and Rest await you.
There are as many methods of spiritual ‘stopping’ as there are people, but the method I have long been attracted to is Centering Prayer (which I came to via Thomas Keating). Practicing this kind of prayer on a daily basis recognises that I need the grounding such an approach gives. I am only too aware that I will be unable to create honestly with a camera or pen in my hand without such rootedness. For someone who has spent the vast majority of the last year in bed, in one place, it’s ironic that I need to be stilled. But to heal the skittering effect of pain, and its accompanying friends grief and frustration, I have come to accept such a calming, stabilising, focussing measure is very much required.
This acceptance is all part of the great movement of Reconciliation within me: am I willing to become present to God in the circumstance in which I find myself? Am I willing to enter into this circumstance and welcome whatever Wisdom God may reveal to me in it? Am I willing to be a witness to the presence of Hope underlying the ordinary, every day experiences of my life? Am I willing to announce that ‘God is in this’, whatever the ‘this’ may be, and however much that defies my own understanding?
Just as I am making small steps out of being in bed all day, perhaps I am making the smallest of steps into this prayer practice. I have at least begun to understand more about the inordinate amount of time I spend with my thoughts: scripting conversations for the future or commentating on past events, (telling myself I am thinking awfully profound thoughts of course). I am learning how these words expand to fill all available space as soon as I decide to sink into silence. I can’t say I am hearing God’s voice as if on a new DAB radio, I can’t even say I have corrected my tendency to scan too many outlets at once and overload my system; but now at least I am trying to intentionally create a space in between, around, above and below, my own words.
A space wherein the Voice, who is in and of all things, might echo.
A space in which I pay attention to that sound above all other.
(William of St Thierry)
Kate Kennington Steer is a writer and photographer with a deep abiding passion for contemplative photography and spirituality. She writes about these things on her shot at ten paces blog.
One of my favourite books is Parker Palmer’s A Hidden Wholeness. Drawing on Thomas Merton’s phrase there is in all things a hidden wholeness, Parker explains that:
Wholeness does not mean perfection: it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life. Knowing this gives me hope that human wholeness — mine, yours, ours — need not be a utopian dream, if we can use devastation as a seedbed for new life.
The idea that there lies within all of us the seeds of God’s wholeness is both heart warming and challenging. This image of God within us, the child of God’s new creation of love and peace and mutuality, has been birthed and wants to live and grow. Allowing it to grow to wholeness is a deliberate choice, one that means accepting and being reconciled to this image of God within us and also to the image of God within others.
Making that choice, Palmer argues, requires that we create spaces within ourselves and between us and others where the soul feels safe enough to show up and make its claim on our lives.
What is your response.
Sit quietly for a few moments resting in the loving presence of God. Read the prayer above several times. What characteristics of God have been birthed in your life and want to grow into wholeness? Is it love, generosity or compassion. Is it a passion for justice or love of creation? Where has the Holy Spirit been nudging you to be transformed into the image that is emerging within you?
Sometimes we don’t want to be reconciled to God’s image. There are times when I would rather be selfish than loving, times when I want to hold onto what God asks me to share. There are times when I am aware of this image emerging but resent it – I look back to the leeks and garlic of Egypt with longing and wish that I could go back. To allow God’s wholeness to emerge means putting to death all that resists the ways of God. It is a struggle of denial.
What is your response?
As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world… as in being able to remake ourselves. -Mohandas K. Gandhi
We do not really remake ourselves. It is the spirit of God working within us that remakes us. The amazing thing is that we can be transformed. Hate becomes love. Selfishness become generosity. Anxiety becomes trust.
Listen to the music below. Imagine yourself fully transformed into the image of God. What do you think your transformed self could look like? Where have you resisted this transformation to the image of God within you? What places of brokenness in your life might God be asking you to let go of to more fully embrace this image?
Write down your impressions and what God is asking of you during this season of repentance and reconciliation.
The following contemporary translation of the Lord’s prayer is adapted from one that was sent to me a couple of years ago. I am sorry that I do not know where the original comes from. Its words really spoke to me as I considered my journey into Lent this year.
Our God who is in heaven,
And all of us here on earth;
The hungry, the oppressed, the excluded.
The rich, the poor, the young and old.
Holy is your name.
May your reign come.
May your reign come and your will be done:
In our choice to struggle with the inequalities of this world,
And to confront greed and the desire for power in our selves,
In our nation and in the global community.
May your reign come.
Give us this day our daily bread;
Bread that you have given us abundantly
Bread that we are called to share,
And that we must distribute fairly, ensuring security for all.
May your reign come.
Forgive us our trespasses;
Times we have turned away from the struggles
Of other people and countries,
Times we have disregarded the pollution and destruction of your creation,
Times when we have thought only of our own security.
May your reign come.
Lead us not into temptation;
The temptation to close our minds, ears, and eyes
To the unfair global systems that create
Larger and larger gaps between the rich and the poor;
The temptation to think it is too difficult
To bring about more just alternatives.
May your reign come.
Deliver us from evil;
The evil of a world where violence happens in your name,
Where wealth for a few of us is more important
Than economic rights for all,
Where gates and barriers between people
Are so hard to bring down
May your reign come.
May your reign come, for yours is the kingdom,
the power and the glory forever and ever. AMEN!
Tom celebrating getting another year older.
Welcome to a feast of innovation, imagination and reconciliation! Christine and I are kicking off this new blog series by hosting A Feast of Innovation in our home next Saturday night with about a dozen friends. We’ve asked our friends to each share some social innovation they are involved with that we will share with you.
As each of our friends share their examples we will feast on a wonderful Mediterranean meal that Christine is preparing. In coming weeks I will share a sampling of examples from our friends. These will include everything from a new blog site on sustainability to a chocolate café church plant next door to new office buildings for a Seattle startup called Amazon. I am also working on a book on social innovation and I will be sure to also share some tasty bits I’m coming across in my research.
At the end of the feast Saturday night we will also celebrate another year in my life journey. Thankfully my gift of disorientation has not taken over my life yet and I still don’t need a walker when I skate around the 3 mile course at Greenlake here in Seattle.
As we gallop into spring 2015 I want to hear from you! What is happening on the creative edge in your life, community or congregation? I find that many people are suffering from malnutrition because they’re simply not aware of the creative ways, God is igniting people’s imaginations. I want to address this widespread malnutrition by posting uniquely creative savory posts every week that we can all enjoy feasting on. I am particularly interested in creative stories that bring reconciliation in our society or innovative ways to care for God’s good creation. Would you help me prepare delicious fare for this online feast?
I will draw from your innovative inputs every week to serve up for my other friends to enjoy. What imaginative stories or examples can you send me this week? I also plan to serve up a little humor for dessert with each post. So will you also please send stories about outrageous moments in your life and struggles that we can serve up for dessert every week as well?
Please join us at Social Innovate.. Join the Feast!….this week and every week!
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