Giving Space For Soulwork
by Jonny Baker
I lead a training course for pioneers, that is people who are setting out to start something new in mission. A focus on the gift of who you are has become core to what we do as part of what we call mission spirituality. I didn’t expect this when we set out – after all it sounds like pioneering is all about activity but we have found that the best pioneering or indeed the best anything is most likely to flow out of paying attention to your own sense of the person God has created you to be and how he is affirming and calling you out of that. It sounds simple but it can be extremely difficult. We are all fractured and wounded, more perhaps than we know or like to admit and it is far easier to keep the front stage shiny and bright rather than risk have a look back stage and God forbid make ourselves vulnerable by allowing others to come and have a look back stage. But this journey towards the brokenness of our inner selves is essential if we are to become more fully who we are, which is our life’s work. We talk about this with students as ‘soulwork’. Lent it seems to me is a season that is a gift to us to do some of this journey, this paying attention and soulwork.
With our pioneers we strongly encourage two practices that are tried and tested in our faith that serve to aid this which are spiritual direction and retreat. I was in danger of being a hypocrite and couldn’t ask students to engage in things I wasn’t doing myself. So the last four years have seen me build both practices into my own life in a more committed rather than sporadic fashion. These practices are changing me.
Spiritual direction is a space for intentional conversation about what’s is going on in relation to faith and life, somewhere to reflect on what is happening in relation to you and God. At it’s best it is an accompanying and a listening from someone who is wise in the ways of the soul (by which I mean the whole person of course, but perhaps especially what is at the core) and the Spirit. It’s not counselling or therapy though those are wonderful gifts too because it’s lens is a life of friendship with Christ. The person I see doesn’t actually like the word direction but prefers the notion of being an accompanier, a listener, a soul friend. Have you got a space where you are able to have intentional conversation with someone about this sort of stuff?
The last four years retreats have taken me to Lindisfarne, to an uninhabited Scottish Island, to an Ignatian retreat centre for two periods of extended silence on guided retreats, and very shortly on pilgrimage to visit some of the sites of Celtic saints in Ireland. My life is hectic and it’s partly the nature of modern life but it’s also the kind of person I am. I am an achiever, somebody who loves to get stuff done. But retreat enables me to breathe again, to stop, to disconnect and to be. Just switching off the technology and setting up automated replies on phone and email is heavenly. Sometimes in retreat I have bumped in surprising ways into God, into what I have come to call the Presence of Silence, and at others it’s just been good to get away and not so much takes place.
Silence is key, though some find themselves more at home in it than others. I was first convinced of this by watching The Big Silence, a TV series which took people on an 8 day silent retreat. They were from different walks of life and not particularly religious. But for all of them in different ways once they had slowed down somewhat they seemed to notice things about themselves and their lives – whether to do with deep longings, restlessness, vocation, grief, woundedness, who they are. It just surfaced whether in memories, dreams, prayer, or from seemingly nowhere. Perhaps this is why some people seem afraid of silence, we’re actually afraid of facing ourselves? But what was lovely is that stuff surfaced in an environment that felt safe for those people because it was guided and it was in the Presence of Silence which is a presence of unequivocal embrace and acceptance by the Love That Loves Us, a presence that enfolds and holds us in our own vulnerability and woundedness. I found the same to be true – in silence stuff surfaced in my life in the area of my own sense of self and who God has called me to be, and in particular my own broken self. For example through a dream I met a part of my self that I had shut away for 17 years. I think it took silence for it to get my attention and to begin a healing process. This photograph is a coat I wore on that retreat and it became a symbol for me of being wrapped around by God’s love and held together in my brokenness.
blog http://jonnybaker.blogs.com
photos http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonnybaker/
pioneer course – http://pioneer.cms-uk.org
Jonny is passionate about contextual and global mission and the particular edge he brings is the imaginative connection of the Gospel to contemporary culture. He is a creative communicator. He particularly connects with pioneers, leaders who have the gift of not fitting in as they are called by God to new forms of mission and ministry often beyond the edges of the church. Jonny works for the Church Mission Society and has done for the last 11 years believing that cross cultural mission is a gold mine for ministry in our own contexts now. The main focus of his work in the last few years has been setting up and leading the innovative Pioneer Mission Leadership Training. This has been very exciting with all sorts of creative pioneers engaging with it who are starting new mission projects. Jonny is a member of Grace, a creative church that was part of a movement in the UK that became known as alternative worship. He is author of Alternative Worship, a collection of resources from that movement, and more recently Curating Worship exploring lessons for leadership out of those creative communities. See http://pioneer.cms-uk.org , http://about.me/jonnybaker for more info.
Today’s first prayer is attributed to St Teresa of Avila, the great Carmelite reformer and nurturer of St John of the Cross, though it is not found in her writings and was probably actually written by Mark Guy Pearse and Quaker medical missionary Sarah Elizabeth Rowntree. (Thanks Teri Petersen for pointing me to this article that explains). However it is such a beautiful prayer that it definitely needs to be part of our Lenten collection.
I have always found inspiration from the lives of those who have gone before. Their footprints provide places for me to stand and words and prayers encourage and strengthen me as I too seek to move forward into the ways of God. It seems appropriate that we celebrate the lives of some of these women during this season of Lent.
Teresa of Avila is one such person. In her classic The Interior Castle she says: “Let nothing disturb you. Let nothing frighten you. All things pass. God does not change. Patience achieves everything.” I have decided to add this book to my Lenten reading as I guiltily realized yesterday that there are presently no women on my list and yet much of my inspiration comes from women.
In many ways Teresa of Avila was a very ordinary person – struggling with some of the same life challenges we struggle with today. But out of that struggle came a rich inner prayer life that continues to inspire many today.
Here is one of my favourites of her prayer/poems. Read it through several times. Listen to the beautiful musical rendition at the end of the post. Allow their truths to take root in your heart. As you read this prayer and listen to the music may you too consider what action God may ask of you as a result of reading and meditating on them
“Christ has no body now, but yours.
No hands, no feet on earth, but yours.
Yours are the eyes through which
Christ looks compassion into the world.
Yours are the feet
with which Christ walks to do good.
Yours are the hands
with which Christ blesses the world.”
Music by David Ogden
This second prayer IS from Teresa of Avila’s writings – Enjoy.
your kindness melts my hard, cold soul.
your beauty fills my dull, sad eyes.
Teresa of Avila (1515-1582)
Photo: By Peter Paul Rubens – Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Bilddatenbank., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5096194
Pilgrimage
By Esther Hizsa, from Stories of an Everyday Pilgrim (unpublished)
Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem.
– Luke 9:51b
Ash Wednesday
He’s on the road
waiting for me
today we begin
a forty day walk
to Jerusalem
I lace up my shoes
and follow
from a safe distance
but it’s bound to happen
His eyes will catch mine
and I must summon the courage
not to look away
for in His loving gaze
questions arise
memories
hopes
and fears
and we will
carry them all
to Jerusalem
Bio
Esther Hizsa lives in Burnaby, B.C. with her husband Fred. They have two children and two grandchildren. Esther works part time at as the associate pastor of New Life Community Church, has a Master of Divinity degree from Regent College, and is a trained spiritual director (SoulStream). But her first call is to writing. Her work been published in the MB Herald, SoulStream website and her blog, An Everyday Pilgrim http://estherhizsa.wordpress.com/.
This morning I came across this beautiful prayer by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of my heroes who always challenges me with what it means to follow Jesus as we walk towards the cross. It formed the centre of my meditation this morning – so challenging knowing where his journey led. This prayer was used as one of the Lenten meditations in The Mosaic Bible
I Cannot Do This Alone
O God, early in the morning I cry to you.
Help me to pray
And to concentrate my thoughts on you;
I cannot do this alone.
In me there is darkness,
But with you there is light;
I am lonely, but you do not leave me;
I am feeble in heart, but with you there is help;
I am restless, but with you there is peace.
In me there is bitterness, but with you there is patience;
I do not understand your ways,
But you know the way for me….
Restore me to liberty,
And enable me to live now
That I may answer before you and before men.
Lord whatever this day may bring,
Your name be praised.
Amen
Tomorrow – March 12th – is Phyllis Tickle‘s 80th birthday and I wanted to pay tribute to this amazing woman.
No one has been more important to the contemporary renewal of liturgical prayer than Phyllis. Her Divine Hours, designed to invite individuals into the ancient practice of fixed-hour prayer or liturgy of the hours introduced many of us to this most ancient spiritual discipline. Her work whet the appetites of many of us for a more formal approach to prayer and set the standard for other contemporary prayer manuals.
More than that Phyllis is a wonderful person whose delightful personality and love of life has been an incredible inspiration to me and to many others. What a wonderful legacy she has given us in both life and ministry. Many blessings to you Phyllis on your 80th birthday.
“And in the end, we were all just humans… drunk on the idea that love, only love, could heal our brokenness.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
Only one fix remains,
In all of what brokenness contains,
Only one thing will do,
It’s what we hold to be true.
Love is that thing that’s truthfully real,
It’s what we know will always heal,
So brokenness need not be despair,
Because the Son of God does care.
Love is personified in the historical tradition and in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ – God the Father’s Son.
If we wish to be healed – to have our brokenness reconciled – we ought to fall in love with a Saviour who fell in love with us to the point of dying on a cross. And grace does more! Although we cannot live a life of redeemed perfection, yet, we are forgiven and understood as we live our broken lives. God knows it’s not our fault. We are what we are and we are who we are.
As we journey with the Lord Christ into our brokenness, we decide to accept ourselves for whom and what we are. We give up trying to be better. We decide that God must know. We know that God knew what he was doing in being crucified. Acceptance for the facts we have accepted by faith is a grand blessing. It sees to it that there is an abiding peace we enjoy from within. God planned us to be redeemed, broken and doubting and unlovable, but redeemed in the same breath – accepted and dearly loved.
Love will address our ills and it will fix us, but what matters most is Personification of love – that Jesus is the actual Author and Producer and Finisher of this love that sacrifices itself. And healing unto wholeness is a blessing granted to the person who has been gifted access to love, precisely because they have chosen for it. They opted for life out of death.
Love comes into our lives freely and enthusiastically when we welcome it.
To say that we can seek to love and seek to be loved is the manifest evidence of the healing touch of God.
We can know in our brokenness that love works by knowledge of things past, as well as those things future, by the way we handle the present. We ease into feelings of joyful acceptance, where they are possible, in our grief, and in times of advancement we ponder reflectfully.
The only ‘fix’ for the brokenness of the inner self – the vessel that needs God – is the only one that works. But we must praise God there is one way – Jesus, the Way, the Truth, the Life (John 14:6).
Brokenness is what makes salvation the beautiful contemplative experience it is. Just muse over it now! We have need of a Saviour. We knew it by the way he loved humanity enough to die for it; for each and every single one.
Jesus heals the broken, in this life by the knowledge that God cares enough to love us into redemption, and in the next life by providing us room to be with him so that we finally transcend our brokenness in the fabulous reality of resurrected perfection.
We can be ever fascinated by God’s love, that, he who stooped and scooped us up, has accepted our worst and has believed in our best.
***
There is something infinitely helpful in the brokenness of the inner self. It is Christ’s finished and redemptive work of the cross. Redemption into God has seen us delivered where we were once vanquished, pardoned by the Judge of all judges, and restored to more life than we can comprehend.
© 2014 S. J. Wickham.
Originally posted at http://epitemnein-epitomic.blogspot.com.au/2014/02/my-brokenness-his-love-my-healing.html
Bio
Steve Wickham is a Baptist Pastor in Perth Australia who holds Degrees in Science, Divinity, and Counseling. His passion is encouraging people to become the best they want to be.
When I was diagnosed with M.E. (Myalgic Encephalitis, or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome as it is now more commonly called) in 1989 I was a teenager with everything to live for. And yet, as I walked home from school one September day, my steps slowed and slowed until I staggered bent double into our house, feeling like I had aged 60 years in ten minutes. I never attended school again. But my headmaster’s reaction was that there was nothing wrong with me. He, like many of the other raft of medics from a range of different specialisms I was to see in the next two years, concluded:’ It’s all in your head.’
Once you have been told something often enough, particularly by those in a position of expertise and ‘authority’ over you, you take it deep inside yourself. My plaintive cry ‘but I don’t want to be like this’ held no value in their eyes. The fact there was a huge disconnect between what I was feeling in my body and what they were telling me was just in effect something I was making up, drove me to believe that indeed it was my head, my mind, that was at fault: I felt I was going mad. And so my heart very nearly broke and my spirit was utterly crushed. Despite all the fantastic loving support from family and close friends, still, the insidiousness of the little phrase ‘it’s all in your head’ (meaning it is actually somehow my fault that I am ill and that subconsciously I want to be ill): that belief has taken over twenty years of therapy to excavate from my soul. I carry within myself the brokenness that has engendered such self doubt over the years.
The consequences of this inner-soul quaking are numerous and wide ranging. I hope that I look on myself and others, indeed the whole of creation, with a little more compassion; although I am only too well aware that I often do not look hard enough for the pain and damage in others, and I still, God forgive me, often fail to take this into consideration when I am too quick to judge them.
Mostly where an understanding of brokenness reveals itself to me is in my creative life, where I am drawn to look below the surface of things, asking myself, and those who look at my work, to pause, however fleetingly, to find where God is in all of this. So I now understand why I have always been drawn to rust, and peeling paint, and barbed wire coils, and skips full of discarded objects, since I first started taking photographs as a teenager, even before I was ill. Perhaps a connection with frailty has always been ‘in my head’?
In the last year Christine Valters Paintner wonderful book Eyes of the Heart introduced me to the ancient Japanese art of wabi sabi, a deliberate expression of imperfection and impermanence; beauty is found in incompleteness, in humble things, and needs to be searched for in the least expected places. It demands a change of heart and mind to look through the surface of the world.
Sounds like Kingdom thinking to me.
And so now I have a contemplative name for what I have been attracted to for many years – it’s not just all in my head.
I was reminded of this at Christmas when a friend who is a wood-turner gave me a bowl he had made of Lacewood. (Lacewood is another name for London Plane trees, so called because the pressure they are under when they grow and form a new branch leave ‘wounds’ patterned like lace.) He said he had to give me this bowl because the beauty of this particular one was to be found in this wood’s scar tissue: that the so called ‘flaws’ are all about new growth happening. Needless to say I cried.
And it reminded me too of the comfort I draw from Richard Rohr’s story that the Navaho Indians always leave a deliberate ‘mistake’ in the pattern at the corner of their woven rugs so that the Spirit can enter in: all such rugs are considered incomplete without the Spirit embedded within them.
This is the ultimate Gospel paradox: we cannot be whole until we see, really recognise, the scars, the flaws and the brokenness are all part of the new creation we are called to be.
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.
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