I have just finished reading Kathy Escobar’s new book Faith Shift. It is a great read particularly for those who do not feel comfortable in their church or faith tradition.
Kathy points out that growth and change are natural parts of our relationship with God. She helps us to understand and feel comfortable with being spiritual refugees, unpacking the stages most of us experience as we question, let go of and hopefully reform our faith. She talks about fusing, shifting, unravelling, severing,returning and ongoing rebuilding, sharing stories and practical insights that can help all of us move onward in our spiritual journeys.
As I reflected on Kathy’s experiences, I realized that faith shifting has been a way of life for me. I embraced the charismatic movement in Australia, unravelled in the refugee camps in Thailand and have rebuilt numerous times through the exploration of new streams of faith and spiritual life.
Every time I am confronted with a new injustice, or a new faith perspective, I start to faith shift again. Each time I find God unveils a new aspect of Godself and my image of God shimmers with new vibrancy.
As Kathy says at the end of her book:
The path for spiritual refugees like us rarely leads back to where we were. Usually it takes us around the next corner, and the next, further and further into the unknown, into diversity, mystery and freedom. (200)
That is certainly my experience. Learning to trust the path ahead even though we are not sure where it will take us is scary, but it is also exciting, because it does lead us toward a bigger, better relationship with God, others and ourselves. It opens up for us a greater understanding of a God who is far bigger and better than we can ever imagine.
Thank you Kathy for vulnerability and willingness to share honestly your struggles and journey. It has blessed me and I am sure will bless many others too.
For more information on the book check out this great interview Jamie Arpin-Ricci did with Kathy.
Sunday was my birthday and I decided that it was time to rearrange the sacred space in which I sit each morning to reflect, meditate and study the scriptures. The Christmas season is well past so I have put away my nativity sets and Advent icons but Lent is still a few weeks away and for some reason the season of epiphany just does not have the symbols I wanted to help me focus. To be honest I struggled a little with what to use as the focal point for this season and for a while wondered if I should bother at all. Then I realized, for me birthdays are a time for remembering and I decided my sacred space needed to reflect that.
As you can see I ended up with a fairly eclectic collection of items – a family photo, a new orchid we bought for my birthday, a couple of the rocks I have painted as meditation exercises and some of my rock and shell collection, what I call my gathered memories. Then I added a cross made for me by a young friend a few years ago and some of the objects I have collected from mission organizations I have been involved in. Last I added a candle to light my way each morning.
In Numbers 15:38-40 God talks to the Israelites about the importance of remembering, and like me, the Israelites needed objects to help them remember.
“Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘Throughout the generations to come you are to make tassels on the corners of your garments, with a blue cord on each tassel. You will have these tassels to look at and so you will remember all the commands of the Lord, that you may obey them and not prostitute yourselves by chasing after the lusts of your own hearts and eyes. Then you will remember to obey all my commands and will be consecrated to your God.
So over the next few weeks I will bask in the memories of friends and family, of gathered things and good deeds done.
Any space can be made into a sacred space, it just takes a little time and intentionality. It takes time to reflect on what is important to both us and God. It takes intentionality to review what we sense God is saying and work to bring it into being. And it takes intentionality to stick with what we set up and use it in the ways we feel God is directing us.
What helps you remember the special people and special events in your life? When was the last time you set aside space and time to remember and thank God for these people and events?
You can probably tell that Barbara Brown Taylor’s book Learning to Walk in the Dark, has really impacted me. I continue to think about what she says and this morning was struck by how much more intimate walking in the dark is. Relying on touch and smell and sound requires a closer more involved posture.
We touch someone as a show of affection, as a way to comfort and sometimes just to get their attention. Sounds seem crisper and clearer in the dark than in the light. Smells are intensified sending us unexpectedly into the joy and pleasure, or the despair and fear of memories past.
Walking in the dark also slows us down because we need to be more careful about where we place our feet. We are afraid to step in a hole or on a rock. We don’t want to stumble and fall down. Each step needs trust – trust in our instincts, trust in the one who made path we tread, and trust even in the benefits of stepping into the unknown.
No wonder Jacques Lusseyran, whom i talked about in yesterday’s post, found that negative emotions like fear and hate destroyed his ability to walk in the dark. No wonder love and joy and gratitude provided light by which he could walk in the the dark without stumbling.
How much struggle and pain do we create for ourselves because we want to get out of the dark. We look for the light at the end of the tunnel rather than looking for the light in the tunnel. In the process we increase our fears and anxieties.
I could not help but think about this as I read this article by Jack Levison about the impact of the shootings at Seattle Pacific University last year. Students and faculty walked through their grief in a healthy way, not allowing themselves to become isolated by fear. A couple of weeks ago they hosted Tent city, a group of Seattle’s homeless population. Jack comments:
What a tragedy it would have been, however, had we left grief behind and bowed to fear. SPU might have done that. SPU might have reconsidered their invitation to Tent City 3 and succumbed to misinformed and misguided questions: Who needs tent-dwellers ruining the grass of our lovely main quad? Who needs to be greeted by honey buckets and tarps and plywood floors squashing the mud of a Seattle winter? Who wants their college kids rubbing shoulders with drunks and drug addicts?
Jack believes that their ability to welcome and embrace this city of tent dwellers was partly because of their response to the shootings last year. They had indeed learned to walk in the dark and be illuminated by this special light.
So my question for all who feel they walk in darkness today is: How are you responding? Are you allowing fear and bitterness to obscure the light, or are you inviting the intimacy of God’s light to shine in the darkness?
My own meditations on this resulted in the following prayer:
Lord, let us learn to walk in the dark,
In the places where light is dim.
And we cannot see,
But must move slowly to not stumble.
Lord, let us learn to walk in the dark,
Attentive to touch and sound and smell.
Let us cherish the intimacy of your inner voice,
The gentle love of your presence,
Lord, let us learn to walk in the dark,
Where each step needs trust,
And it takes faith to move.
Behind us, before us, around us, inside us,
Let us learn to see the inner glow of your light.
Lent is only a month away and it is time to get ready. This season is not about giving up chocolate or T.V. It is about confronting our brokenness and embracing a life fully integrated with God’s will for restoration and wholeness.
Don’t be distracted by busyness, worry or work. If you live in the Seattle area we hope you will Stop Playing Games and join us for a day of reflection and creativity. I will once again facilitate this pre-Lent retreat.
Awaken the hunger within you for deeper intimacy with God. Experience a morning of reflection, contemplation and inspiration that will encourage you to journey toward our celebration of Christ’s resurrection with renewed focus and faith. Learn from the rich presentations and reflective insights how to deepen your prayer life, draw closer to God and become instruments of God’s healing and wholeness in our world.
In the afternoon get your creative juices flowing. Exercise the insights and skills you gained to create your own spiritual practices for Lent and Easter.
What: Stop Playing Games And Return to Our Senses For Lent
When: February 14th, 2015
Where: Union Church Kakao Cafe
415 Westlake Ave N,
Seattle, WA 98109
Full-Day: 9:30a.m. – 3:30p.m. Cost: $50.
Half-Day: 9:30a.m. – 1:00p.m. Cost: $30.
Includes lunch!
Facilitated by Christine Sine, Mustard Seed Associates
Hosted by Union Church
Yesterday’s post was inspired by my reading of Barbara Brown Taylor’s latest book Learning to Walk in the Dark an inspirational book in which she questions our tendency to associate all that is good with the light of day and all that is bad or evil with the darkness of night. She argues that we need to move away from our “solar spirituality” and ease our way into appreciating “lunar spirituality” (since, like the moon, our experience of the light waxes and wanes). Through darkness we find courage, we understand the world in new ways, and we feel God’s presence around us, guiding us through things seen and unseen. Often, it is while we are in the dark that we grow the most. Barbara explains:
The way most people talk about darkness, you would think that it came from a whole different deity, but no. To be human is to live by sunlight and moonlight, with anxiety and delight, admitting limits and transcending them, falling down and rising up. To want a life with only half of these things in it is to want half a life, shutting the other half away where it will not interfere with one’s bright fantasies of the way things ought to be. (55)
I have long been aware of how much more my own spiritual growth is accelerated by seasons of darkness. I know too that in the garden seeds germinate in the dark, and plants even grow more quickly at night then they do in the daytime. A rhythm of darkness, as I explained in a recent post Are You Getting Enough Sleep, is essential for us to function properly. And as I read Learning to Walk in the Dark I realized that it is even more essential than I thought.
I was particularly struck by the author’s recounting of the story Jacques Lusseyran, a blind French resistance fighter.
The problem with seeing the regular way, Lusseyran wrote, is that sight naturally prefers outer appearances. It attends to the surface of things, which makes it an essentially superficial sense. (105)
Our eyes skid over objects and glide quickly over things that we do not properly attend to. Being blind made him attentive to everything. And he noticed that when he was sad or afraid his inner light decreased. When he was joyful and attentive it returned. The best way to see the inner light was to love. In 1944 Lusseyran was captured by the Nazis and shipped to Buchenwald. He discovered that when he let himself become consumed with anger, he started running into or tripping over things. When he learned to love and live at peace with his circumstances, the inner light brightened and he could find his way without difficulty. As Lusseyran says:
If we could learn to be attentive every moment of our lives, he said, we would discover the world anew. We would discover that the world is completely different from what we had believed it to be. (106)
Learning to be attentive to all that is around us, is one of the challenges of life. Yet as Barbara Brown Taylor asks:
If you do not have the time to pay attention to an ordinary table, how will you ever find the time to pay attention to the Spirit? (106).
This has reinforced my desire to take time to notice. To run my hands over surfaces and allow them to speak to me. To listen to sounds that I usually ignore and hear what God would say through them. To inhale the aromas of God’s world and allow them to stir my spirit. This is my resolution for this year and this book has challenged me to pursue it.
I took this photo of the sun shining through the clouds from our prayer tower a couple of days ago. At first I was really frustrated because I could not get a clear view of it without the interfering cable, telephone and other wires that got in the way. I tried to zoom in but the image became fuzzy and unfocused. I thought of walking to a place where the wires no longer got in the way but I knew that by then the sun would have set.
I thought about doctoring the image on photoshop to get rid of the wires, but that seemed like cheating. These wires represent the infrastructure of our society. They carry electricity, and internet. They give us light and connectivity. They are as much a part of our landscape as the sun and the clouds are. They are there, and they are there to stay.
As I reflected on this I wondered: How often is my view of the sun obstructed by the framework of our society? How often is my view of God obscured by my connectivity and the work I give my time to?
Yes I know the clouds obscure the sun too, but, at least on the day I took the photos, the sun still shone through. The clouds added to the beauty of the sky, they did not detract from it. The wires, on the other hand, seemed ugly and out of place.
It is only when I pause to gaze on the beauty of God and God’s world that I also become aware of the ugly wires in my life that obscure my image of God. At other times they don’t even register on my consciousness.
This morning as I sit here reflecting on this I would like you to reflect on two questions with me:
What else that I don’t even notice, obstructs my view of God because I don’t take the time to gaze beyond it to the beauty of God?
Where has my image of God become unfocused because I have tried to ignore these obstructions?
What could Ido to change this?
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