Looking in the right place

A colleague of mine and I were recently chatting about fostering an active spirituality in our congregations. He said, "We're so busy living the life we believe we're suppose to live, we don't have (or take time) to discover the life God has already created in us." Yes, we too often live the shoulds and oughts that keep us always looking elsewhere than where the life we seek is really taking place--right here, now . . . within us.   The Holy Spirit offers an inner witness, if we know where to look.

If this is what you're looking for, I recommend a remarkable series called: Bridges to Contemplative Living with Thomas Merton. It's an 8 booklet set of 8 sessions each for private or group reflection. I'm using it in my spiritual formation course at the university now and plan to use it in the congregation in the future.

The second in the series is called "Becoming Who You Already Are"--a journey into the revelation of God in us.

For those seeking to go deeper still, the author of the 14th century Cloud of Unknowing (an English spiritual director), writes a little book called, "The Book of Privy Counsel." Here's a link to a lovely new translation of both Privy and the Cloud. In the second chapter he summons us to focus not on what we are, but that we are. That is a spiritual practice with revolutionary consequences.

Here's what I've said and written recently about the merit of the 14th century for an active spirituality today.

A life worth following

Stories show us how to live, and in her writing, Nora Gallagher does just that. Here's a link to a book that is proof that "the road to the sacred is paved with the ordinary"--precisely what I try to point to in all my writing.

Things Seen and Unseen: A Year Lived in Faith Nora Gallagher

So, I recommend this little tale of faith about which Booklist says, "Gallagher's account is more than that of a woman rediscovering faith in God.  It is also a glimpse into a sort of practical mysticism."

On this Palm Sunday, I invite you to open wide the gate of your heart and welcome the Mystery, Who comes in such ordinary ways that others are quite likely to miss or dismiss Him.

Our calamitous century and the fire of prayer

I'm a few pages into a book that looks very promising.  My friend, historian, Steve Varvis, suggested it.  And it's highly regarded. Barbara Tuchman's a Pulitzer prize winner, and in her book, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, she hands us a tale that does what historians do best--she helps us live better today in light of the past.  Superbly and beautifully written, the book follows the life of a single 14th century knight, Enguerrand Coucy VII: ("the most experienced and skillful of all the knights of France") and through him shows us what the 14th century was made of.

Tuchman initially wrote to learn "the effects on society of the most lethal disaster of recorded history--that is to say, of the Black Death of 1348-50, which killed an estimated one third of the population living between India and Iceland."  But researching the period she found that more than this single and lethal disaster, the 14th century was itself a disaster--it "suffered so many strange and great perils and adversities that its disorders cannot be traced to any one cause; they were the hoofprints of more than the four horsemen of St. John's vision, which had now become seven--plague, war, taxes, brigandage, bad government, insurrections, and schism in the Church."

Here's a paragraph that really arouses my interest:

"Although my initial question has escaped an answer, the interest of the period itself--a violent, tormented, bewildered, suffering and disintegrating age, a time, as many thought, of Satan triumphant--was compelling and, as it seemed to me, consoling in a period of similar disarray.  If our last decade or two of collapsing assumptions has been a period of unusual discomfort, it is reassuring to know that the human species has lived through worse before."

She wrote those words in the mid-1970s.

The book ought to enjoy a resurgence of interest today.  Especially among us who are assaulted by the fear tactics of political and religious ideologues telling us the sky's falling on top of us.  The Swiss historian, de Sismondi called the 14th century "a bad time for humanity."

The 21st century could very well be as calamitous as the 14th.  But humanity survived that "bad time" well enough to have forgotten it entirely.  What's more, suffering produces spiritual fire.  In England alone, the 14th century produced some of the greatest spiritual teachers our history knows--Richard Rolle, Walter Hilton, Julian of Norwich, and the anonymous monk who wrote The Cloud of Unknowing.

If that was true then, it's likely the Holy Spirit's up to the same mischief today.  In fact, I'll bet on it.

Prayer: a few choice words

We've entered a turbulent century, but it's not the first time in history people have faced such difficulty. The 14th century (see this excellent book on the subject) was every bit as challenging and yet it produced some of the most enduring spiritual teaching in history. In this brief video I explore the gifts of the 14th century English Christians who excelled at interior prayer--in particular, the author of The Cloud of Unknowing.

A few choice words are mighty expressions of genuine prayer. Learn to utter simple words and awaken a profound experience of prayer in the midst of your active life.

The God Who Cradles Us

Today, the church secretary brought in her new baby boy. She showed him all around. And we did not disappoint---cooing and adoring this two week tiny bundle capped with auburn hair. Mother beamed, radiant with the glow of motherhood.

The child found his way into the arms of a single woman, who held him adoringly, reveling in the mystery of this fruit of another's womb. She laid him back in his mother's arms only after she's finally tired of holding him and swaying gently in the manner that seems to come to all women instinctively.

And I saw in the flesh what the Christian saint, Julian of Norwich, saw in the Spirit six hundred years earlier. Raptured in a holy vision, she "saw that God rejoices that he is our father, and God rejoices that he is our mother" (Revelations of Divine Love, Long Text: 52), who cradles each of us, looks lovingly into our infant faces and whispers: "I love you and you love me, and our love shall never be divided," (LT: 58).

Likely this is just what Isaiah saw too, then preached joyously at just such a time as ours when folks needed to know they were held and would not be forgotten, neglected, or discarded by divine Love (Isaiah 49.14-16).