Mt Rainier from the air
Tom and I only have a couple more days in Sydney before we head back to Seattle. I am so looking forward to heading home. I know I am home when Mt Rainier appears in the plane window. Seeing our dog, the garden, our new community members. Hearing about all that has happened while we were gone and getting ready for a very full summer. These too make me feel I have come home.
Heading home I think and my heart swells, but there is an ache too because Sydney is also home. I will miss my family, the birdsong, the smell of eucalyptus in the air. I will miss the memories of what I grew up with, the familiarity of a culture that is still ingrained in my being.
In our highly mobile global world my situation is not unusual. Many of us have several places we call home. Some collect passports like souvenirs. But a sense of home, of belonging, of knowing who we are is important. And if that belonging is not connected to a physical location, then the spiritual roots, the longings that keep us headed towards God’s home, the eternal shalom world, become even more important. Knowing who we are in God and the destination towards which God calls us is an essential foundation for our faith.
Richard Foster calls prayer finding the heart’s true home and as I sit here getting ready to head back to Seattle I find myself looking toward that home rather than a physical destination. In the next couple of weeks Tom and I will go away for one of our quarterly spiritual retreats. This is part of the rhythm of our life that keeps us rooted in the purposes of God. It is a particularly important practice after a busy trip like this one has been because it helps us to view all that happens through the lens of our faith rather than through the lens of our busy activity.
What are the spiritual practices that make you feel at home with God? What is the “home” the destination toward which you are moving?
When Sue read my book Return to Our Senses, she told me she was at first stunned, horrified and appalled by my suggested approach to God. I talked about an intimate, loving relationship which seemed indecent and inappropriate. She had been taught that God was almighty, all powerful, and holy and in humble gratitude she felt she needed to grovel at God’s feet.
She told me that she slowly realized that she had a distorted view of God that was loveless and legalistic. It had placed her in a miserable cage, a self imposed prison from which she is slowly being unravelled.
Unfortunately Sue’s experience of God is not unusual. I grieve for the many sincere Christians who have been taught that God is holy but not loving, powerful but not caring, forgiving but not really forgetting. And as a consequence we live in fear of a God who judges our every action and always finds us lacking.
Part of my grief is because I too grew up with a legalistic and very austere God. My own journey toward belief in a loving, compassionate God was slow and at times painful, painful only because I had to allow God to transform my own hurts and insecurities to make room for the love and compassion God wanted to reveal in my life.
First my participation in a caring Christian community in which love was practiced. I continue to be inspired by the healing power of community. In spite of our imperfections which often mean that Christian community seems less loving than we would like it to be, we still experience more healing together than we ever will as isolated individuals. Second reaching out to help others. In healing others we often discover our own healing. Third, a willingness to change. Probably the most challenging step in discovering that God is loving and caring is admitting that our rigid, legalistic view of God is wrong. A God who makes lots of rules may not be easy to love but is much easier to follow than one who allows us the freedom of discovering and setting our own boundaries.
So how do you approach God? What has helped you to recognize the God who is love?
Why do you write and use written prayers I was asked at a recent workshop? Aren’t said prayers dead prayers? Aren’t spontaneous prayers the only living prayers? Isn’t the Bibe the only acceptable written word to be studied, memorized and quoted?
These are important questions that all of us need to think about as we shape our prayer life. I grew up thinking that spontaneous prayers were the only acceptable form of prayer. After a while I noticed that some of these prayers were rambling, unfocused and a little like the babbling of a child – without real meaning or purpose. At first it didn’t seem to matter. Speaking in tongues reinforced this. Praying without understanding was seen as a mark of deep spirituality, but it wasn’t always satisfying.
Praying the psalms helped, but I realized there are other prayers that can be just as relevant and enriching. I slowly started adding written prayers and liturgies, some of them hundreds of years old, to my prayers. Their meaning resonated in my heart and my prayer life took on new meaning. Then I started adapting these to better meet my own needs and finally I started writing my own.
I love the times when spontaneous prayers bubble up from within me. I still love to speak in tongues, but there are times when prayers written by others are more powerful than anything my mind can produce. This is particularly true when I am grappling with pain and suffering, disaster and disease. The pain in my heart seems to incapacitate my mind. Grasping for the words that others have written is the only appropriate offering to God.
There are other times when writing and reciting my own prayers is even more enriching. Especially when I want to establish a new habit, I find that writing prayers I then recite to remind me of that habit helps move it into my heart. Like this prayer I wrote a couple of years ago when I was trying to establish boundaries in my life:
God may I live within limits,
Of my body, my mind, my spirit.
God may I live within limits,
Of my calling ,my community, my capacity.
God may I live within limits,
Of who I am, and who you call me to be.
Said prayers and spontaneous prayers can both be dead prayers and they can both be living prayers. It is how we use them that breathes life into the words we say and personally I think that variety is the spice of life – a spontaneous prayer here, a written liturgy there, an ancient prayer somewhere else. All have their place and I encourage you to experiment.
Australian cartoonist Michael Leunig always inspires me with his profound spiritual insights, prayers and cartoons. I thought that you might appreciate what was in a card I was given this weekend.
As a reminder of the different ways we can look at the world.
Cartoon by Michael Leunig
God help us to change.
To change ourselves and to change our world.
To know the need for it.
To deal with the pain of it.
To feel the joy of it.
To undertake the journey without understanding the destination.
The art of gentle revolution.
Amen.
This week’s collection of prayers on the Light for the Journey Facebook page.
God my heart has heard you say:
Come and talk with me.
And my heart responds: Lord I am coming.
Be my light for the journey,
Lead me along the right path,
Show me your love,
Teach how to live.
(inspired by Psalm 27).
Christine Sine https://godspacelight.com/
Breathe in all that is of God,
Love, joy peace, compassion.
Breathe out all that is not of God,
Fear, anxiety, worry, greed.
Breathe in all that is of God,
Mercy, justice, righteousness,humility,
Breathe out all that is not of God,
Selfishness, injustice, indifference, acquisitiveness.
Sit quietly before your God and breathe in life.
Christine Sine https://godspacelight.com/
May I love what you love O Lord,
And wrap my heart around your purposes.
May I turn my work towards justice,
And practice mercy in all I do.
May I set free those I have bound,
And seek to heal those who are broken.
May my spirit ache with compassion,
And soul desire your righteousness.
May your glory shine through all I am and do,
That others may see and respond to the God who is love.
Christine Sine https://godspacelight.com/
The blesséd in your eyes
are not those who have everything
but those who consider
without you
they have nothing.
Not the rich in earning,
but the rich in spending
who give their lives for you.
Your ordinary saints,
being your hands
and words
in their ordinary lives,
doing extraordinary things
with all that you have given them.
The blesséd in your eyes
are not those who desire honour,
but those who seek to serve.
Thank you for the servants in your kingdom.
I was recently sent this link to the U2 song Where the Streets Have No Name as a contribution to the series . I was powerfully impacted by Bono’s quote, another powerful example of how a sacred space can be created in the most unexpected places, places in which God walks through the room.
“We can be in the middle of the worst gig in our lives, but when we go into that song, everything changes. The audience is on its feet, singing along with every word. It’s like God suddenly walks through the room. It’s the point where craft ends and spirit begins. How else do you explain it?” – Bono, Los Angeles Times 2004
What can I give back to God for the blessings he poured out on me
What can I give back to God for the blessings he poured out on me
I lift high the Cup of Salvation as a toast to our Father
To follow through on a promise I made to you from the heartI want to run, I want to hide
I want to tear down the walls that hold me tonight
I want to reach out and touch the flame
Where the streets have no name
I want to feel sunlight on my face
I see the dust cloud disappear without a trace
I want to dance dance dance in the dirty rain
This video of Where the Streets Have no Name is a wonderful (and evidently illegal) clip of U2 performing on a rooftop.
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Check out the other posts in this series
Creating Sacred Space Do We Really Need Churches
Every Garden Needs A Sacred Space
Reclaiming a Sacred Space – Cheasty Greenspace: A Place of Goodness and Grace by Mary De Jong
Creating a Sacred Space – Stir the Senses
A Garden of Inspiration – A Story of Leo Tolstoy
Symbols and Elements that Weave Together a Sacred Space
Why Being Spiritual may be More Important Than Being Religious by Rob Rynders
Celtic Spirituality – What Is The Attraction?
In the Barren Places: Finding Sacred Space for the First Time – James Rempt
A Tree My Most Sacred Space by Ryan Harrison
Sacred Buildings by Lynne Baab
Sacred Space – Listening to the Trees by Richard Dahlstrom
Sharing a Sacred Space by Daniel Simons
Many of you know that I love breath prayers and I thought you might enjoy this one which I wrote last week
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