Art by Emmanuel Garibay Used with permission
Last week I shared this quote from Business Secrets of the Trappist Monks:
It is as though the materialism that has a death grip on this culture has taken our spirituality as well. Most of what’s called spiritual is actually humanistic if you think about it. People don’t want the adventure of God on his own terms or for his own sake. They want a better world, a happier life, better relationships and all the trimmings that go along with it….. We’re urged to seek God because this human good will come of it. People don’t realize “because” implies that the end is the human good and Truth (God) merely the means” (19)
It keeps coming back to my mind. How often do I pray because I want something from God, rather than because my heart aches for deeper intimacy with God? How often do I use God as the excuse for my own self centred agendas?
Some prayers are so obviously hedonistic they make us squirm when we hear others talk about them – praying for a parking place, or going on a Jesus spending spree where we expect Jesus to guide us to great bargains. But others are more subtle. Even desiring healing of loved ones can have a self centred purpose, after all illness and death disrupt our lives physically, emotionally and sometimes spiritually. If God healed more frequently life would be so much easier.
Or perhaps we want to see people in Africa fed and freed from starvation. We hate those images of starving children, their pain and suffering disrupts our lives. Yes, some of our response comes from the compassion of God welling up from within, but for many the uppermost emotion is: If God would just do something I would not have to respond and I could get rid of my guilt and once more feel at easy in my comfortable materialistic lifestyle. Sometimes these emotions reside in our subconscious rather than conscious minds, and as long as we are too busy to reflect on why we want something to change we are never aware of our self centred motives.
One of the commonest excuses I use and that I hear others use for not taking adequate time for God or with others is: but I enjoy what I am doing. I love my work. Unconsciously what we are saying is – My personal need for satisfaction in my work takes priority over my need to spend time with God.
Sometimes we even rope God into the equation – there is so much need God must intend me to burn myself out by responding to that need. The underlying subconscious thought – without me God cannot answer this need.
And then there is the excuse – But I have to feed and house my family. Again a very true statement and one that has many of us up at night consumed with anxiety. This believe it or not is one of those legitimate prayers. In the Lord’s prayer we regularly say Give us this day our daily bread. The problem is that we don’t expect God to provide bread for today we expect provision for the next 10, 15 or 20 years and we want to see where it is coming from NOW.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not suggesting that we don’t save for the future, though that is a way of life that some are called to, but sitting in the place of discernment, trusting that God will show us what we need to know now in order to provide, does not come easily to us. And we get uncomfortable because God might make it very clear that some of what we want for the future – like second homes, bigger cars and expensive vacations – may not be in God’s best plan for us. Even our desire for a bigger church, better paying job or higher profile ministry may not be in God’s plan – especially not if it takes time away from our number one priority – seeking God not for what we want but for what God wants – intimacy with us in every moment of the day.
What would our lives look like if we spent more time seeking God for God’s sake alone? How would it change our priorities, our time management, our use of resources? How would it affect our friendships? These are some of the questions I continue to grapple with. I hope you will take time to grapple with them too.
I don’t usually post on Sunday but wanted to share this prayer just posted by my friends at In His Footsteps.
Today’s post is by Kimberlee Conway Ireton, author of The Circle of Seasons: Meeting God in the Church Year and a newly released memoir, Cracking Up: A Postpartum Faith Crisis. This essay is a repost of last summer’s reflection on her family’s holiday by the sea.
Jesus said, “Love one another as I have loved you.” –John 15:12
If you asked twenty good men today what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness.
But if you had asked almost any of the great Christians of old, he would have replied, Love.
You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance. The negative idea of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestions not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love.
The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire.
If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak.
We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mudpies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
—C.S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory”
The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses
I think back on my Stop Slavery series earlier this year and how I almost didn’t write it. But since God was clearly nudging me in that direction, I wrote the posts. I published them.
Looking back, quite apart from the money we raised for Love 146 and IJM, I see so much joy that came out of that act of obedience. It felt good—joyfully so—to write those posts. It was joy-giving to see so many of readers of my blog rally around these girls and help end their exploitation. Many days, I came home from the coffee house after writing those posts and responding to blog comments almost giddy with happiness.
And that felt wrong. After all, these girls’ lives are hellish. Why should I be so happy simply for shining a little flashlight on their plight? It’s not about me, after all. I shouldn’t be getting anything out of this. My joy seemed to negate and make null the good I was doing. Almost as if my gaining anything by a given act automatically makes that act suspect.
Lewis would say that I have placed a priority on Unselfishness, as if my going without were what mattered. As a Christian I must be selfless. I must not seek my own good. I must take up my cross and be miserable.
But that is not what Jesus did. Yes, he took up his cross. Yes, he walked the dark road to the cross. But he did it for Joy. He did it for Love.
…for the sake of the joy that was set before him [Jesus] endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God. —Hebrews 12:2
Parenting my four is not an act of unselfishness. It is an act of love. It is love that prompts me to feed my kids good food and read them good books. That I get to enjoy the good food and the good books, too, in no way negates the love I show in feeding and reading with them. If anything, my enjoyment enhances the love. It shows them they are not simply loved but also enjoyed and enjoyable, that they are people I delight to be with.
I want to make Love my litmus test. Not: is this unselfish? But: is this loving?
As often as not, the love I show will redound upon my own head in joy, as it did when I wrote the stop slavery posts. That’s okay. That’s better than okay; that’s good. That’s the way it’s supposed to be: like the loving and being loved within the Trinity.
Love does not count the cost, it is true. But then, it doesn’t have to—because Love is wrapped up in joy. Love sees the joy of the other and looks at that, rejoices in that, rather than focusing on its own gift or sacrifice. Love doesn’t even think of the gift in terms of sacrifice, because Love experiences the beloved’s joy as Love’s own.
Jesus, for the joy set before him, endured the cross.
When the joy of giving, of loving, far outweighs any so-called sacrifice, this, too, is the path of the cross. It’s the obedience that leads to Life. It’s the love that leads to Joy.
It’s the holiday by the sea.
Photos by Doug Ireton. Used by permission.
A repost from Kimberlee’s archives.
This morning I had the privilege of being a part of a Farms, Food and Faith networking meeting held at Seattle University in conjunction with Seattle Tilth and members of faith communities and congregations interested in growing, harvesting and distributing food.
This is the second such meeting we have held. The first meeting was at Seattle Tilth, already familiar to me because of the amazing array of resources they provide. That meeting connected me to a number of organizations like Lettuce Links, in the area some of which I mentioned in this post.
Today’s meeting was another rich experience of learning. I was awed by the scope of Seattle University’s edible landscape program. As early as 1994 they were recognized for their pollution preventing grounds practices. They now have a number of gardens well worth a visit. Their edible plants range from an entire Orchard to an occasional blueberry plant in the landscape that provides a snack for any person that walks by.
Another initiative I learned about is the Edible Churchyard Program at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. I know it is a little far away for most Seattlites to visit but those in the New York area might like to look it up. It is training hundreds of seminarians to incorporate food justice and growing into their future work as community and faith leaders while also converting parts of the campus into models for urban growing.
Another interesting program is Growing Groceries Mentorship Program which trains volunteers to help make existing community garden projects sustainable.
We recognize that churches, synagogues, mosques and other places of worship often have underutilized resources. Churches often have land that sits idle except at Easter when the easter egg hunt is on. Other places of worship have kitchens that only get utilized for coffee hour after services. Congregations have volunteers some of whom may be passionate cupboard gardeners. All have spiritual resources and even financial resources that could be used to help us grow more of our own food and share it with neighbours, food banks, the homeless and other ministries.
This is an exciting opportunity that I hope will encourage the few of us who are already passionate about growing our own food to ignite the smoldering embers in others within our congregations.
I know that Seattle is not alone is developing such initiatives and I would love to hear from others who have been involved in similar ventures.
In the next few weeks we expect to move this blog to a new site. Maybe it won’t look quite like this but we are moving. Definitely time to get rid of those ads I have no control over and to expand our capacity to add video, apps and who knows what else.
The name of the blog remains the same – unless you think it should change and have a creative idea for a new name, but we do need to choose a new url. Not surprising godspace.net; .com ; .us and all other possibilities are all taken – in some cases not being used but grabbed by someone who hopes we will come and buy it from them. Anyhow that is another issue. So what should our new url be?
We have thought of:
godspace-light.com (or net or who knows what)
godspace-MSA.com to link it to our existing MSA site of which this is a part.
Do you have other suggestions? And do you think the name of the site should change? If so let us know your suggestions.
Micha Jazz of the Contemplative network and St Cuthbert’s Oratory wrote this response to my post yesterday The Big Question We Never Ask. I didn’t want it to get lost in the comments and decided to repost it here. Micha is a long committed associate of MSA. We have journeyed together through many joyful and challenging experiences, learning from each other and helping to shape each other’s faith.
Micha and Jayne Jazz
I find that what you speak of is in fact a learning that emerges through life alone. I dislike the way my youthful enthusiasm and excitement in finding Christ carried with it the ‘oughts’ and ‘shoulds’ that were the unseen, though larger part, of the iceberg of evangelical Christianity that provided my portal into Narnia.
Whilst I was initially amazingly successful within that evangelical, charismatic construct initially, I very slowly came to realise that in fact it was consuming me – my time, my energy, my resource and my imagination. The opportunity to step out and back that the unanticipated sickness of my lovely wife, Katey, provided, in fact enabled me to begin to search for the God who might lay behind the superficial survival faith I had embraced and also preached and taught to many others as both evangelist and church pastor.
Suffice to say the journey was challenging, not least because God was interested in my wasting time with him whilst I was constructed through education, cultural context and Christian church experience within England, to work out my faith, yet without either fear or trembling. I was over familiar in my approach to God, without realising God was in fact a stranger to me – whilst unbeknown to me, II was fully known by God and that was enough as far as God was concerned. Step one, learning to rest content solely in being a sinner loved by God.
So what a journey began, one that required years of unlearning and personal deconstruction, mostly in the private space, all against the painful background of accompanying Katey in her walk with progressive multiple sclerosis until her death in 2008. In this time, usually fighting, often angry and always making judgments, I also discovered what it means to be still and to know my creator.
This story continues – utilising the liturgy of the hours daily as a core rhythm of waiting on God – whilst learning to paddle in the shallows of the contemplative life. I now long to learn to swim and recgnise that God carries me out of my depth – always and only to be found in the depths of his love. For me to live is indeed Christ yet I cannot yet say my heart does not hanker after conformation to the world I knew and have significantly left rather than transformation to live in God’s world, God’s way enjoying the God-filled life.
The journey continues – the story unfolds – the narrative is crafted.
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