Today’s post in the series Seeking Help Through the Faith Shifting Process. is by Robert Rife.
Robert Alan Rife, is the Minister of Music and Worship for Yakima Covenant Church in Yakima, Washington. He graduated from Spring Arbor University with an MA in Spiritual Formation and Leadership. He is a singer-songwriter, studio musician, choral director, poet, and liturgist. He maintains two personal blogs: Innerwoven and Robslitbits. He also blogs at Conversations Journal and for CenterQuest. Robert describes his vocation as exploring those places where life, liturgy, theology, and the arts intersect with and promote spiritual formation.”
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Historically, I have HATED the process of discernment. Why? Because it has a profound prerequisite: self-love, which requires self-knowledge which, in itself, reveals a second, foundational prerequisite: wisdom. As an often-confused adoptee, such golden gifts weren’t always forthcoming, especially when I was younger.
A common characteristic of adoptees is fear of rejection. One would think this to be self-evident since rejection, at least in broad terms, is what we have experienced even in utero. Although that probably overstates it a bit, people like me have a terrible time in the decision-making process because it includes elements that are not in our wheelhouse. For example, intentionality, which presupposes determination, which presupposes confidence, which presupposes freedom, which presupposes a general sense of acceptance, which presupposes a universe more or less benevolent, which presupposes…well, you get my point.
This process gets ramped up exponentially early in our lives when, perhaps at college, we’re not only trying to figure out where God would have us, what it is we are to be about, who we are as people and with whom we are to spend our lives, if anyone. Too much unthinking advice gets bandied about in times like these. One’s friends, equally confused, tell us, “take care lest you find yourself outside the ‘perfect will of God.’” Great, let’s add a little more fear to the mix! Worse still are the mating rituals to which we must all prescribe. They are often rituals designed to actually keep us from really getting to know ourselves let alone another human being since they, too, are built on suspicion, regret, fear and…more fear. Faith as one big ‘what if?’ or ‘should I?’
Well, I am not about to singlehandedly untie the God’s-will enigma in a simple blog post. However, allow me at least to share three gifts of great worth that have helped remove my fear of discernment.
First, as a guy now 50 years old, I have some history of decision-making. All I can say is, God’s got this. My worst decisions, ever, seem to have been redeemed quite nicely in the hands of a loving and particularly creative God. This pares down decisions not to right and wrong but good and better.
Second, it’s not just up to me. The next time some misguided but well-meaning soul comes up to you and says, “I just really feel God told me…,” let your response be, “Interesting. And to who else has God told this?” God speaks to us in community. We can get impressions and experience joy or caution, but it will be through others that the stick of God’s will gets sharpened to a finer point.
Finally, avoid a theology that dictates God’s will as the head of a pi
n stuck in the center of a bull’s eye viewable from a full moon while facing east on Tuesday afternoons in a leap-year November. Such is not a theology at all but a control mechanism built on fear. If all is grace, then so is our process of discernment.
In the economy of God we do not trip blindly into that dark night. We dance blithely in the arms of a particularly good dancer, unafraid to take the lead and with whom every spin is ultimately in the “right” direction. So dance away, little pilgrim!
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What is your greatest fear related to the will of God?
How are you engaging God in community to best discern God’s present and future for you?
Pray this: “Lord of all the universe, my past, present and future are cupped in the palm of your eternal hand. Help me to face them all with courage and confidence, recognizing that you are benevolent and strong and will never leave me to face any of it alone. Lord, since you redeem all my “mistakes” I can relax and simply dance with you in peace and unspeakable joy. Through Jesus, the one leading me on this dance floor…Amen.”
With you on the journey, Rob
Time to reflect:
Find a quiet place, if possible where you can see outside to the beauty of God’s world. If not, focus on the photo above or listen to the Youtube video below. Make yourself comfortable. Sit with your hands in your lap, palms up. Close your eyes. Take a few deep breaths in and out and sit, relaxed in the presence of God allowing the love of God to embrace you. Listen to the music. Relax. Say the prayer printed above and listen to the video.
The seasons are changing. Here in the northern hemisphere the leaves are changing colour, and the cool mornings make us aware that winter is on its way. This weekend the temperature reached 80F, probably for the last time this year. Here in the Pacific NW the days are shortening and though I know winter is coming I am not yet ready to let go of summer. For many, it is a start of a new school year. Others are beginning new jobs, moving house, facing health challenges. It is an unsettling time with doors opening and closing.
How often I wonder do I miss the beauty in front of my eyes because I am living with regrets for what is past? Not just in the changes of the season, but in the changes of my life.
Every season has its beauty, but if my eyes are focused on summer then I miss the beauty of an autumn day with leaves red and gold, and I am not ready for the new and frosty beauty of winter either.
What is your response: What are are you holding onto from a season that is past? Are you hankering after youth or health, or a job you have left? Are you struggling with the changing seasons? Write down what you are afraid to let go of on a piece of paper. Light a match and burn the paper. As it burns release the past to God.
Now imagine that Christ is holding out his hand to you and inviting you into a new season, with its own promise and beauty. Even in seasons of suffering and trauma there is beauty.
A friend told me recently that her mother’s brain tumour is the best thing that has happened this year. Her mother is schizophrenic and has lived most of her life on the streets. Because of her tumour she has been admitted to a nursing home, is on meds and my friend has been able to develop a relationship with her for the first time in her life.
What is your response: What have you missed? Sit quietly listening to the music and ask God to open your eyes to beauty of this season. What is God showing you? Write it down. Sit quietly for a few minutes to allow the peace of God to flow over you. Then say the prayer above to finish your time.
This is a new practice that I started last week. Each Monday I will post a new meditation. Check out last week’s here:
I am posting these in conjunction with a series on Spiritual direction which I also began last week with this resource list.
The Abundance of Jubilee
Yesterday Tom and I drove down from Portland Oregon to Eugene, past field after field of hay harvested and stacked. We also drove past fields of pumpkins ready for harvest. It made me realize that summer is indeed upon us, most of the harvest is in and we are storing up for winter. It reminded me too of this beautiful poem by Gerald Manley Hopkins:
SUMMER ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks arise
Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour
Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier
Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?
I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,
Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour;
And, éyes, heárt, what looks, what lips yet gave you a
Rapturous love’s greeting of realer, of rounder replies?
And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder
Majestic—as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet!
These things, these things were here and but the beholder
Wanting; which two when they once meet,
The heart rears wings bold and bolder
And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet.
And a few other resources you might like to check out:
1. This excellent is an excellent list of harvest resources from Christian Concern for One World. The organization is based in the UK so the resources all come from there but It gives some great suggestions for us to consider no matter where in the world we are.
2. Lord’s Prayer has some good resources from both Catholic and Anglican traditions as well as some prayers and craft suggestions for children.
3. My friend John Birch at Faith and Worship has this resource list as well as this great Harvest Thanksgiving liturgy.
4. And another beautiful prayer for the season.
And my own prayer for the season:
God we thank you for your harvest which feeds us so many times each day.
We are nourished with your forgiveness and hope
We are sustained with your strength and patience
We are filled with your grace and compassion
God we thank you for feeding us with a harvest of plenty
We are restored through your generosity and healing
We are replenished with your abundance and joy
We are reminded of your selfless abandon
God we thank you for feeding us with the bread of heaven
Your gift of Christ sustains our lives
His presence restores the promise of your love
His life fills our hearts with your everlasting light
God we thank you too for filling us with the water of life
May we drink deeply that our thirst may be quenched
May your river continue to flow
Over us, in us, through us
And out into the world you love.
Yesterday’s post by Lynne Baab made me think about the whole concept of community, leadership and spiritual direction which is something that I am very interested in.
A couple of years ago I was interviewed by a M Div student for her class on leadership. I told her that for me leadership was not a position of privilege or of prestige but rather one of discernment and encouragement. I said that I felt the prime function of a Christian leader is to enable others to become all that God intends them to be. I talked to her about our use of the Quaker discernment process and the group decision making structure we have set up to encourage cooperation and mutual support within our team. She was excited by this concept and commented – This is leadership as spiritual direction.
I have thought a lot about this since we talked. What is leadership meant to look like? What was it that made Jesus leadership special? Our modern concept of leadership, even of Christian leadership is a very hierarchical and very much based on position and prestige. It is not about listening but tell.
The concept of leadership as spiritual direction turns this on its head just as Jesus does when he talks about the servanthood nature of leadership. It places the advancement of our team members ahead of our own “be thinking of others as better than yourselves” (Philippians 2:3) and it makes us as leaders responsible for nurturing our team members in ways that nourishes their spiritual development as well as their physical accomplishments. Jesus rarely told his followers how to do something he asked questions that enabled his disciples to find the answers that God had already placed within their hearts.
To be honest in some ways I am less sure now of what Godly leadership is meant to look like than I was 10 years ago partly because I realize that spiritual leadership is not a job but a journey. It is a journey into intimacy with God. It is a journey into the kingdom of God. It is also a journey into the company of others. Spiritual leadership is not about individual success, in fact I don’t think it is about individuals at all. Spiritual leadership is about community, about enabling others to become the people God intends them to be so that together we can become the community of shalom that God intends us to become.
This is a concept that it key to the way that we help followers of Jesus move into the future. It is also a key to our being witnesses of mutuality and love to those around us. I am more than ever convinced that leadership and spiritual direction should go hand in hand. In both leading and following we nurture and guide each other towards the image of God.
So as you reflect this morning ask yourself:
- How do we rethink our leadership models so that they are more like spiritual direction than hierarchical power structures
- How do we encourage community building and spiritual formation as part of our leadership models so that we see the transformation of all we work with
- Where are the resources to help this happen – I would love to hear from you on this and am looking for books and online resources that can help me further develop my thinking
Today’s post is by Lynne Baab who has encouraged me to focus on spiritual direction over the next few months. Talking about communal listening is a great place to start this. As Lynne says, individualism has too great an influence on our faith.
Lynne M. Baab is the author of numerous books on spiritual practices. This post is adapted from her latest book, The Power of Listening: Building Skills for Mission and Ministry. Visit Lynne’s website and blog for information about her books and articles she’s written.
Imagine you’re in a committee or church board meeting, and you’re discussing a possible new direction for mission. You long to experience God’s guidance in the decision. What can you do as a group to hear God speak to you?
In my last post on Godspace, I addressed the question of how Christians hear God speak. In this post I want to narrow down to consider how we hear God speak to us communally. A few years ago I interviewed 63 ministers and congregational leaders in the United States and the United Kingdom about listening, and one of my interview questions related to communal listening to God’s guidance. I’ll summarize two of the issues the interviews raised in my mind.
- I heard a lot of stories about listening to God communally through the Bible. Many congregations have small group Bible studies where participants wrestle with God’s voice to them in scripture. I heard about congregations where people gather during the week to talk about the sermon scripture for the next Sunday. Some congregations have feedback times during or after the Sunday service for reflection on how God spoke through the sermon. Some congregations are experimenting with reflective ways of engaging with the Bible, such as lectio divina.
The stories powerfully illustrated numerous communal settings focused on the Bible in congregations. The outcome of all this reflection and discussion of the Bible seemed to be guidance for individuals. What seemed missing was communal engagement with the Bible for the sake of hearing God’s guidance for a community. I’ve participated in many Bible studies and lectio divina sessions at church board meetings and elder retreats, and we’ve had great conversations about God’s voice to us individually through a Bible passage. What would it look like to begin there, but to continue on to consider how God might be speaking to us communally through the passage about directions for our congregation’s mission? No one in my interviews talked about doing that.
- In my interviews, I heard a lot of confusion between consensus and discernment. Consensus decision making is becoming more prominent in many business and church settings, because decisions made by consensus generally have strong buy-in by the parties involved, and often more needs are met by consensus decisions than by other kinds of decisions. Consensus decisions play a role in discernment, but they are not the same. Consensus tries to address as many of the needs and concerns of the people present as is possible, while discernment attempts to figure out how God is guiding. Surely God wants needs to be met, but meeting needs and hearing God’s voice are often not the same thing.
Discernment relies on prayer in many forms, communal wrestling with the Bible, and engagement together in spiritual practices such as fasting, retreat and silence. The people involved in trying to discern God’s direction need to know consensus skills, because they need to listen to what each person is hearing from God and build consensus around it. But discernment begins and ends with trying to hear God’s voice and direction, not trying to meet the maximum number of needs. (I wrote more about the role of spiritual practices in consensus and discernment here .)
These two patterns I observed in the interviews worry me. Both patterns indicate the way that individualism, so rampant in the wider culture, has affected Christians. And I myself am not immune to those forces. Engaging in consensus, a good thing to do, nudges me toward considering how I can negotiate to meet the needs I’m concerned about. Looking to the Bible for guidance for my life and doing it communally with others, another good thing to do, can keep me in an individualistic place where I’m listening to God for my sake rather than the sake of my community of faith. O Lord God, give us love for each other and a commitment to your body, so we can listen to you for the sake of our communities as well as for our own sakes.
The focus for the next few months on Godspace will be spiritual direction, a good preparation I think for the Advent season and Christmas. It is also a good follow on to the emphasis in the last few months on hospitality.
What on earth is spiritual direction some of you may ask? The very idea for some, connotes a desire for control, authoritarian and dictatorial. For others it sounds like an other worldly mysticism they want nothing to do with.
As I mentioned in my initial post: Seeking Help Through the Faith Shifting Process:
Wikipedia defines spiritual direction as: the practice of being with people as they attempt to deepen their relationship with the divine, or to learn and grow in their own personal spirituality. It is a discipline that has emerged in many spiritual traditions, using language specific to that tradition.
In Christian faith spiritual directors are known by many names – soul friends, mentors, or my favourite – Kathy Escobar’s lovely term spiritual midwives. Some find spiritual direction through personal encounters, others seek help through their favourite blogs, websites or Bible apps. Anyone who supports us as we notice and reflect on God’s presence and activity in our daily lives, encouraging us to grow our faith and live into our calling, can be considered a spiritual director.
Margaret Guenther in her inspirational book Holy Listening, likens spiritual direction to the act of hospitality.
Spiritually, we cannot make it through the desert or across the frontier alone, but must depend on the kindness of strangers. Yet those strangers upon whom we depend are not really strangers, but our sisters and brothers in Christ. They are the hosts, the givers of hospitality, who sustain us on the journey, our spiritual friends and directors. (10).
She talks about the need of any host to prepare for their guests by cleaning house and encourages any potential spiritual director to start by enlisting the help of someone who can lead them through their own path towards awareness and wholeness. Accepting the hospitality of another is essential before we can offer it ourselves. Otherwise, she emphasizes, the pathway is a dangerous and open to self deception.
Guenther reminds us that hospitality is sharing our space with others. Therefore it should be as welcoming as possible, a space, almost a sanctuary, secure from interruptions. It should be unhurried, yet with set limits.
guests cease to be guests if they come to live with us. (22)
And just as hospitality was traditionally extended to people on a journey, so is spiritual direction.
It always a story of a journey, always a story about relationship with God – whether the directee is fleeing the Hound of Heaven, or lost, or yearning, or living among the swine and eating their husks.
The director’s task is to help connect the individual’s story to the story and thereby help the directee to recognize and claim identity in Christ, discern the action of the Holy Spirit. (32)
Later in the book Guenther likens spiritual directors to midwives, bring to birth the life of God in the soul – beautiful imagery of the process that all of us need to go through, not once but time and again in our lives. And as we move towards Advent and our preparation for the birth of the Christ child, what better time to think about our own need for new life to be birthed within us. I highly recommend this book to anyone exploring the art of spiritual direction.
Spiritual direction is more about learning to ask the right questions than to give the right answers and as we begin this journey to learn more about spiritual direction let me ask you:
What are the questions stirring in your heart that could give birth to new aspects of God’s life within you?
Today’s resource list was compiled from suggestions given to me by my blog and Facebook followers. A special thank you to Terry Clees who provided me with the bibliography for her dissertation and to so many others who contributed. I asked for out of the box suggestions and appreciate the rich variety of these – from books and websites on the traditional spiritual direction to children’s books, liberation theologians and postmodern thinkers. As you can imagine this is not a comprehensive list but hopefully it gives all of us a place to start, no matter what our faith perspective.
I have not personally read all these books, but may go broke acquiring the new books it has added to my reading list. Where possible I have also included a review of the book especially if it is not one that I am familiar with. If you know have reviewed one of these books or have others to add to the list please leave a comment below Enjoy – we are always working to improve these lists!
Books
Addison, Howard A., and Barbara Eve. Breitman. Jewish Spiritual Direction: An Innovative Guide from Traditional and Contemporary Sources. And check out the publisher’s website: Jewish Lights Publishers
Bakke, Jeannette A. Holy Invitations: Exploring Spiritual Direction. Check out this article, “Making Space for God” on Christianity Today.
Barry, William Francis, and William J. Connolly. The Practice of Spiritual Direction.
Brenner David G. Sacred Companions: The Gift of Spiritual Friendship and Direction .
Brother Lawrence. The Practice of the Presence of God.
Demacopoulos, George E., Five Models of Spiritual Direction in the Early Church. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007.
Foster, Richard J. Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth.
Geunther, Margaret, Holy Listening: The Art of Spiritual Direction.
Hart Thomas N., The Art of Christian Listening.
Keating, Thomas. Foundations for Centering Prayer and the Christian Contemplative Life: Open Mind, Open Heart ; Invitation to Love ; The Mystery of Christ. This is an anthology of three of Keating’s most inspirational works.
Kurtz, Ernest and Katherine Ketcham, The Spirituality of Imperfection: Storytelling and the Search for Meaning or check out this review.
Leech, Kenneth. Soul Friend: Spiritual Direction in the Modern World.
Linn Dennis, Sheila Fabricant Linn, Matthew Linn. Sleeping with Bread: Holding What Gives You Life.
May, Gerald G. The Dark Night of the Soul: A Psychiatrist Explores the Connection between Darkness and Spiritual Growth. And check out this review.
McLaren, Brian D. Naked Spirituality: A Life with God in 12 Simple Words. Check out this book review.
Merton, Thomas. The Seven Storey Mountain
Nouwen, Henri J. M., Michael J. Christensen, and Rebecca Laird. Spiritual Direction: Wisdom for the Long Walk of Faith.
Palmer, Parker, A Hidden Wholeness, Check out my review.
Peterson, Eugene H. The Contemplative Pastor: Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction. Check out this review
Phillips Susan S, Candlelight: Illuminating the Art of Spiritual Direction.
Rohr, Richard. Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011. Read this review.
Thompson, Marjorie J. Soul Feast: An Invitation to the Christian Spiritual Life. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005. Check out my review.
Trina Paulus, Hope for the Flowers.
Valters Paintner, Christine. Awakening the Creative Spirit: Bringing the Arts to Spiritual Direction. Read this review.
Websites
Spiritual Direction – Ignatian Spirituality
Spiritual Directors International.
The National Association for Christian Recovery
Shalem Institute – Spiritual Guidance Program
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