The Lenten Fast

We have entered the Lenten Season.  Traditionally at this time, the call is for Christians to “give up something for Lent.”

It’s a good tradition, for reasons I’ll discuss in a moment.  And so I’ve been giving a lot of thought to what I might give up.  In the past, I’ve given up things like television programs, and tried to use my time more wisely.  This year, I’ve thought about my desires to be healthier and considered giving up say, sodas, or those runs through the McDonald’s drive-through.

These types of choices, the giving up sweets or caffeine or fast food, are common choices for the Lenten fast.  Moreover, presumably, those Christians who do follow through with such Lenten sacrifices do experience some health benefits.  But I began to wonder: laudable though such a goal might be, is physical health or losing weight really the true purpose of Lent?

The early Church developed Lent as a preparation for Good Friday and Easter.  It was modeled on Jesus’ 40 days of fasting in the wilderness before he was tempted, and was designed to bring us into the experience of Jesus’ suffering.  It was a time of mourning for sin, remembrance of our mortality, confession, and purification.

And that’s appropriate.  It is a sadly common practice in some churches now to give the impression one must be always happy.  Contemporary worship music is too often relentlessly optimistic and upbeat, with any mention of sadness or suffering resolved, at sitcom-like speed, by the end of the chorus.  By contrast, the 40 days of Lent allow one truly to mourn for sin and the suffering of the world, and to identify with the suffering of Jesus.  By Good Friday, one is truly aware of the misery of sin and the necessity of the cross.  And then, a light dawns on a very early Easter morning, and the wildest, most joyous celebration of the Christian year begins.  Without the preparation of Lent, there is no way to experience the raucous, visceral joy of Easter.

Lent, therefore, is a purging, a dying before being born again.  It is a repentance of the old us and a renewing of the new us.  It is a reminder that we are a new creation, and a seeking to live as that new creation, newly born children of Easter, co-heirs with the risen Christ.

Given all of that, a Lenten fast that just helps me lose weight or cut out some minor addiction would not really live up to its purpose.  Lent (like all Christian practices) is supposed to help me live more like a new creation and to become more like Christ.

I’ve decided this year, therefore, not merely to give up something for Lent, but to make a thorough-going Lenten change.  For these 40 days, my aim is to look for God in every person I encounter.  Naturally, this will be outrageously much harder than it sounds, and I expect to fail often.  Moreover, this is a serious “sacrifice” for me, in this sense that I will be fighting off my critical and judgmental nature.  I tend to hold myself to very high standards, and then, completely unfairly, tend to apply those same standards to others.  I am too quick to see people’s flaws. This year, for the 40 days of Lent, at least, I’m going to try a different outlook (and who knows – maybe it will stick).  I’m going to try, as I enter into the suffering of Christ, to see people as he did.  When people seem to me to be petty or lazy or foolish or selfish or mean I’m going to look past those appearances for the image of God in them, and treat them accordingly.  And I hope, when I am exhibiting all of those bad qualities, as I almost always am, that people will look for God in me, too.  God’s there, deep within, sometimes almost buried, but for Lent, at least, I’m trying to dig God out.

Let’s all give each other a little grace this season.  We’re all fighting our egoic desires for these 40 days.  “I invite you, therefore . . .  to the observance of a holy Lent . . .”

One Thing the Buddha has to Teach to Christians

For the record, I don’t think that all religions are basically the same—and I don’t see how any serious student of religion can think that.  That’s not to deny the obvious truth that all religions have things in common and some similarities.  But it’s because of those differences that I think the various religions have things to teach each other.

Buddhism has always fascinated me, and I think it has a great deal to teach my tradition—Christianity.  One of those teachings comes from the stories of the life of the Buddha.  According to Buddhist tradition, Siddhartha Gautama grew up as a prince, surrounded by unimaginable luxury.  His parents, intending him to be a powerful ruler, purposely kept from him any ugliness or suffering that would upset his view of the world.  One fateful day, however, the young prince ventured out from beyond the palace walls, and encountered for the first time a frail, elderly man, a diseased man, and a decaying corpse, and was suddenly made aware of the sad realities of suffering and death that stalk all humanity.  It is this realization that drives Siddhartha to become an ascetic, eventually pursuing the path to enlightenment.

It’s critical that Siddhartha’s encounter with suffering was so life transforming.  Siddhartha recognized that something was wrong with the world, and that some great change was needed.  As such, there is a strong theme of compassion, as a basic religious practice, that winds its way throughout Buddhist teaching.

Compassion has a place in Christianity, too; over and over the Gospels report Jesus having compassion and reaching out to hurting people.  Buddhism and Christianity have an ethic of compassion in common.

In 21st century American Christianity, we have, I want to suggest, by and large lost that ethic of compassion.  Our unique contribution to historical Christianity, that of fundamentalist Evangelicalism, has placed all the focus on the cross of Christ, to the virtual exclusion of the life and teachings of Jesus.  The rampant individualism that defines American culture added a corrupting layer to Evangelicalism, erecting a theological throne for the idea of “personally accepting Jesus,” which quickly becomes distorted into a personal responsibility to accept Jesus—one that each individual can, perhaps must, pursue in isolation from others.  The guiding paradigm of Christianity, then, has become the personal responsibility to accept Jesus in order to go to heaven when one dies, effectively divorcing heaven and earth, this life and the next.

Indeed, too often our connection between Christianity and the world in which we live, aside from trying to convince other people to accept Jesus (or more often, simply condemning those who don’t) has become conflated with civil religion: go to church, be a good citizen, work hard, don’t do anything naughty.  The ethic of Christianity has been reduced from compassion to merely being nice.

And that allows us to go through this life largely untroubled by the suffering around us.  Oh sure, we’re concerned that people should accept Jesus and go to heaven—and sometimes, there is some legitimate compassion in that desire, in its own theological context.  But placing all the emphasis there often causes us to lose concern for the this world and the real people who live in it.  We might take umbrage when someone commits some naughtiness, and we sometimes rail about various moral “issues” in games of political football.  But we are largely satisfied living comfortably as well-off people in a ridiculously wealthy nation, and Christianity becomes a concern for the next life, not for this one.

We are not troubled by how broken this world really is, mostly because we kind of like it here.  We give everyone personal responsibility to accept Jesus and then leave it at that, busy living our own lives and enjoying ourselves.  We shake our heads at the man sleeping in a doorway but shrug our shoulders and murmur, “Well, that’s the way it is.”  We complain about the high cost of giving free meals to schoolchildren, suggesting that their parents should take more responsibility for their lives.  More grossly, a political party supposedly dominated by those calling themselves evangelical Christians is able to cheer at the suggestion that someone might die because they don’t have health insurance.

We may occasionally give a few bucks to a man holding a cardboard sign on a street corner and pat ourselves on the back for doing a good deed, a random act of kindness.  But it doesn’t really bother us—it doesn’t cause our hearts to break—that there are people standing on street corners with cardboard signs.  We are so satisfied with life and our lucky places in it that we forget that something is really wrong with this world, that this miserable little planet desperately needs help.  Nothing causes us to weep with compassion anymore.

And that’s what the Buddha can teach us.  He reminds us to open our eyes and see the suffering around us—the same way Jesus lived.  The Buddha saw that there was an immense problem, saw that life was broken, and did not rest until he found some answers for it.  If we follow Jesus, who lived with compassion, who wept for the pain humanity endures, we cannot live otherwise.

The Time Between Times (Reprise)

(I originally posted this piece for New Year’s 2011, but it so well expresses my thoughts and feelings at this time of year–and I’ve gained a few new readers these past 12 months–that I thought it worth posting again.  I hope you enjoy it; I welcome your comments.  Happy 2012!!)

The ancient Celtic peoples, from what we know of them, made little distinction between the natural and the spiritual worlds.  Faeries, banshees, and gods were considered just as real, and just as likely to be present, as trees and animals and human beings.  As part of this worldview, they were especially interested in the “times between times”: dusk, dawn, the beginning of spring and end of winter—any period of transition in the world.  These times between times were said to be especially meaningful, when the world between natural and spiritual was especially thin, and anything might happen.

This concept fascinates me.  I’ve always loved liminal places (places where the line between natural and spiritual seems thin and especially permeable): cathedrals, ancient ruins, etc.  But I have not given as much thought to liminal times.

Today, of course, marks the day (in the Gregorian calendar, anyway) we consider to be the first day of the New Year.  I have long considered New Year’s Eve and Day to be my favorite holiday, and I think this is so because I enjoy the sense of transition, that being present for the passage of time, observing the passing of the old and coming of the new.  I suppose that waiting for midnight on New Year’s Eve is a lot like being in the time between times, liminal time, watching the world change.

But the problem with New Year’s, like many things in our contemporary culture, is that is too scientific.  At 11:59:59 it is 2011, and then at 12:00:00 it is suddenly 2012.  There is not really much time between times; there is only one time, and then, all at once, another.  We have not given ourselves much breathing room to observe the transition.

And we do this with so many things.  One moment, one is a student, and then one hears one’s name read and receives a diploma, and then one is not a student any longer.  One walks into a church single, take vows, and then one is married.  The work day begins promptly at 8 and ends at 5, with an exactly 60 minute lunch.  We have everything so carefully measured, so exactly timed, that we do not even notice the changes.

But life, real life, where it matters, is not like that.  Organic things do not follow clocks.  There is no exact time when a child becomes an adult (laws about turning 18 and 21 notwithstanding).  Rather, there is a time between times, when one is both and neither.  We do not instantly go from day to night, but watch the sunset and the falling shadows of dusk.  Spring is already on the way before winter is fully over.  And because we can’t measure these things exactly, they are easy to miss.  We are in one time, and then we realize that we are in another time, and we don’t even remember making the transition.

And really, all of life is a time between times.  We are always transitioning from one thing to another, whether we realize it or not.  Usually, mired in our circumstances, we do not realize it.  But whatever is is already passing away, and whatever is coming is already coming.  If we stopped to be in the moment, to be mindful of where and when we are right now, we would realize that the moment is passing.  Whatever we are enjoying now will not last forever, and whatever we are suffering will not last forever either.  Change, impermanence, is the true nature of things.  We are always in the time between times.

And if one is a follower of Christ (and I am not assuming, dear reader, that you are, and I certainly welcome your views whatever your spiritual or religious persuasion), the idea of living in the time between times is especially meaningful.  Some of us in the Christian world get very wrapped up in “end times,” while others of us point to the spirituality of now.  But both of these viewpoints have their truth, of course.  We are in the present, the now, and it is a time between times.  We are living between the time of Christ’s first and second comings.  He has been here and is still here in Spirit and his influence is still being felt and he is coming and is on his way.  We are between times.  We can take comfort and rejoice in the now, because it is passing away.  What is coming is already on its way.

The Great Reversal

During Advent this year I’ve been meditating on the Magnificat, the Song of Mary as she reflects on her pregnancy and the pivotal role her son will play in human history.  For those not familiar with this piece (and even if you are familiar with it), this song of praise bears quoting.  It is recorded in the Gospel according to Luke, chapter 1, verses 46-55:

“With all my heart I glorify the Lord! In the depths of who I am I rejoice in God my savior. He has looked with favor on the low status of his servant. Look! From now on, everyone will consider me highly favored because the mighty one has done great things for me. Holy is his name. He shows mercy to everyone, from one generation to the next, who honors him as God. He has shown strength with his arm. He has scattered those with arrogant thoughts and proud inclinations. He has pulled the powerful down from their thrones and lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty-handed. He has come to the aid of his servant Israel, remembering his mercy, just as he promised to our ancestors, to Abraham and to Abraham’s descendants forever.”

As we, too, prepare for the birth of Jesus, the Christian seasons of Advent and Christmas butt up against our culture’s celebration of christmas.  I use lowercase lettering purposefully in the latter, because, of course, christmas as it is currently celebrated has very little to do with Christ or what he was about.

Now, this is not another polemic against the ridiculous “war on Christmas” that has some Christians up in arms.  Whether one says “Merry Christmas” or puts up a nativity scene or lighted tree has very little to do with one’s relationship with the only begotten Child of God.  God will not someday judge us on which holiday phrase we use to greet one another every December.  In fact, the record of both Old and New Testaments seems to suggest that God is not all that interested in the little rituals of our so called holy days.

Rather, God has a radically different agenda in mind.  Our celebration of Christmas usually consists of three things:  the basest and most violent level of crass commercialism, keeping an accumulated mix of cultural and family traditions, and a vague spirit of wishing well to others (as long as they don’t interfere with our lives or what we want to buy).  But Mary understand what God is up to.  The imminent birth of Jesus, she realizes, means that the mighty one has done great things: he has scattered the proud, lifted up the lowly, filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty-handed.

Christmas begins the Great Reversal that is the Kingdom of God.  The poor, the unemployed, the alien, the criminals, and the needy suddenly find themselves elevated to places of prominence, while the rich and powerful are dethroned.  Humility becomes the route to greatness, and surrender the path to freedom.  Turning the other cheek (refusing to defend ourselves) becomes the answer to violence.  Shepherds (our socio-economic equivalent would be sanitation workers) and foreigners (who practiced astrology and probably didn’t even belong to the right religion!) get the news of the birth of the Savior before everyone else.  Fishermen and revenue agents will become apostles and bishops.  A homeless man will save the world.  Everything that we thought mattered—our race, our religion, our bank accounts, our weapons—all are trumped by love, mercy, grace, humility.  People with no hope suddenly have hope.  Dying will be the route to new life.  Arrest and execution as a criminal will lead to victory.  And the Almighty God, King of the Universe, is born as a baby in a barn.

Everything we’ve ever thought about the way the world works is wrong.  Everything we thought important is worthless.  Jesus didn’t come to preserve our traditions, to honor our ludicrous use of wealth, or even to wish us greeting-card style “peace on earth.”  He came to turn our world upside down, to upend all our values.  He came to change everything.  He came to bring the Kingdom of Heaven to earth.

Advent and Christmas then, are rightfully times of celebration – but among other things we should celebrate that everything we thought we knew was wrong.  Everything is different, everything is changed because of the baby born in Bethlehem.  Thanks be to God!!

To help us get in the right mindset, I’d like to share a video that’s been floating around the internet.  It captures the spirit of the Great Reversal, challenging all our assumptions.  It’s a bit long (10 minutes), but absolutely worthwhile, and it will make you weep for joy.

Have a blessed Holiday Season!

The Rhythm of the Seasons

I haven’t posted much for a while.  I could blame the holidays and all the busyness that comes with this time of year, as well as some other urgent projects I’ve taken on recently.  And all of that would be perfectly true.  The whole truth, however, would also include the fact that I’ve been in a bit of a dry spell with all of my writing, and it’s been difficult to grind anything out.

I’m trying though, to remind myself that dry spells are only natural.  There is a season for everything, as the teacher of Ecclesiastes reminds us.  Everything ebbs and flows.  This is true in writing: some days, inspiration flows and I cannot write the words fast enough; some days, I am scraping the bottom.  The rhythm of the seasons is evident in our spiritual lives as well, and dry spells will come in our spirituality as in everything else.  As long as we live this mortal life, there will be both peaks and valleys.  There is no permanent dwelling on the mountaintop.  Sometimes, our spiritual practices will seem dry and dusty, and we simply will not sense the moving of Spirit in our lives.

The trick with seasons, whether in writing or spirituality or anything else, is to learn to navigate the tides gracefully (if you’ll permit me to mix my metaphors).  When everything feels right: the writing is flowing freely, riding high on a wave of inspiration; each spiritual practice seems to provide fresh insight or rich peace—go with it.  Enjoy it.  But we also have to recognize that dry spells are part of the rhythm—and this is where the real balancing act comes in.  Dry spells are uncomfortable.  We will not feel the same inspiration or peace or ecstasy or whatever as we did in the previous season.  But dry spells, too, are only a season, and that means we cannot give up.  There are times to let things go, but generally, with something as deeply integral to the core of one’s being, such as a spiritual practice (and writing, for me), gentle perseverance is called for.  We cannot beat ourselves up for the dry spell, angry that things are not as fresh as they were before, and yet, we must keep showing up.  I keep trying to write, even when the words seem only a string of tired clichés (and mixed metaphors!).  And I keep showing up for spiritual practices, trying again and again, waiting for the dry spells to be over.  Eventually, like all seasons, they pass.

This recognition of the ebb and flow of life runs counter to our culture’s twin pincers.  On one hand, we are driven to produce, produce, produce, ceaselessly and without any loss of quality, as if we are machines and there are no dry spells.  On the other hand, especially in relationships, as well as other endeavors, we are encouraged to give up as soon as it no longer feels good.  Neither approach recognizes the natural seasonality of life.  We must keep showing up, but must also be patient when showing up does not always provide the same results.  There should be neither blame nor surrender.  There is simply the rhythm of the seasons.

The Prayer of St. Francis

With the upcoming holidays and the resultant crazy schedule, I’m not sure I’ll be able to get a regular posting up here on the blog this week.  So I thought I would share one of my favorite prayers.  Many of you are probably familiar with this prayer already, but it bears repeating, as all classic prayers do.  What is prayer, after all, but repeating our surrender and reaffirming our relationship to God over and over again?

I wish all of you peace over the holiday weekend.  May this prayer be meaningful for you.

“Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy.

“O, Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love; for it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; it is in dying that we are born again to eternal life.”  ~St. Francis of Assisi

Real Spirituality: Dirty Diapers, Angry Bosses, Traffic Jams, and Nosy Neighbors

I’m not a very spiritual person.  I worry too much, falling into feverish anxiety at the slightest concern.  I get too angry, harboring malice in my heart for the slightest irritation.  I spend too little time in prayer and meditation.

It certainly doesn’t look very spiritual.  And it isn’t.  I wonder, though, if our ideal of spirituality is skewed.  One of the primary definitions of spirituality that seems to be operative in our culture now has to do with imperturbability, maximization of one’s life satisfaction, a constant look of vaguely otherworldly peace on one’s face.  It seems we owe more of our idea of spirituality to medieval paintings of Christian saints or statues of the Buddha in serene meditation than to any actual understanding of spirituality.

Spirituality, like any other aspect of our life as human beings, cannot be divorced from the rest of life.  Serenity and satisfaction might be more or less occasional by-products of regular, longstanding spiritual practice.  But those things should not be mistaken for spirituality itself.

Real spirituality, in all traditions, is about transcending the ego to connect with something or someone larger and greater.  In my tradition, that of Christianity, that Someone is the mysterious triune God, who defies all understanding and yet invites us into loving relationship.  All Christian spiritual practices eventually lead us to this God, and in God our egos are transcended and purified.

Once again I hasten to add that this does not happen in a vacuum.  Real spirituality happens in midst of dirty diapers, angry bosses, traffic jams, and nosy neighbors.  Spirituality is defined not so much by how peaceful we feel, but how we respond to the challenges of life that God (or karma or the universe or fate or the gods, depending on your tradition) has allowed into our path.  What do we do with the dirty homeless man on the street corner?  How do we respond to the driver who cuts us off and almost clips our car in the process?  Do we see the hand of God in the screaming child, the nerdy coworker who won’t leave us alone, the officious bureaucrat who tells us we have filled out the wrong paperwork and must go to the back of the line?  Are we more and more connected to God, and thus less and less concerned with ourselves, and more and more loving towards other people (all of whom God made and loves)?

The other thing about spirituality that we don’t often acknowledge is that it is a constant work and struggle.  We never quite get it right, never completely arrive.  We are always striving, always growing, always walking a little further up and further in.  The appearances are not always pretty, and there will be many times we look nothing like the haloed saints or enlightened Buddha.  But spirituality is a messy business.  That’s why it takes place in real life, in the real world, where we really live.  No matter how we feel, no matter whether we or others think of us as “spiritual people,” if one day we realize we are more dependent on God and more compassionate for others and less concerned about ourselves, we will know we are on the spiritual path.  Step by step.  We take a few moments or a few hours even for our dedicated spiritual practices, then we go into our regular lives to practice spirituality.  That’s the real thing.

Spiritual Sampling

I love free samples.  Walk around the food court at the mall or any grocery store at the right time, and one can try little bites of all kinds of foods one might not try otherwise.

The sad truth, though, is that one can’t make a meal out of the free samples.  One can go around only so many times, and all those little bites simply don’t add up to much.  Eventually, one needs a full meal.

I see my love of sampling–trying new things–show up in many different areas of life.  As a perpetual student of one kind or another, I can feel myself salivate whenever I look at course catalogues from colleges and graduate schools: I’d like to try that class, and doesn’t that subject look interesting, and I’ve always been fascinated with that. . . you get the idea.  Once again, the sample versus meal problem arises; if one is going to complete an educational program, one actually has to focus on getting all the components of that program.  If one’s purpose is to obtain a degree, endless sampling of little bits of everything without getting a complete menu of a few key things simply won’t do.

There is a growing tendency now in Western culture, especially, I think, in the United States, to carry the sampling mentality into our spirituality as well.  If one is as fascinated with spirituality as I am, there are so many interesting options to try!  And I don’t necessarily mean different religions, although there are a plethora of those available as well.  I’m really referring to the multitude of spiritual practices available to us.

There is the Jesus prayer, centering prayer, the Ignatian exercises, labyrinths, the rosary (both Roman Catholic and Anglican versions!), the stations of the cross, lectio Divina, spiritual direction, numerous types of Bible study, chanting the Psalms, Taizé worship, the Daily Office (again, multiple versions), keeping the Sabbath (in one form or another) monastic retreats. . . and on and on it goes.

And that is just a list of specifically Christian practices!  One can also explore vipassana, tonglen, singing bowls meditation, the Silva method, A Course in Miracles, various spiritual aspects of yoga, various spiritual aspects of holistic health practices, zazen, Holosync, the Sedona Method, Sufi turning or spinning, shamanism, sacred drumming. . . just to name a few.

As an inveterate spiritual sampler, I’ve tried many, but not all, of these practices.  Many who consider themselves spiritual can no doubt relate.  There is some value in this sampling, of course.  One has to find what works for oneself, and we are all different.  Regardless of our religious or spiritual beliefs, we each have to find the practices that best help us along our spiritual paths, and some experimentation can be of great help in this task.

The danger, of course, is that we can become mere samplers—spiritual junkies, if you will—rather than truly spiritual people.  However else we might define it, I think most of us would agree that spirituality is much more about depth than breadth.  Simply dabbling in a little of this and a little of that can be fun, but it only makes one an experienced dilettante, and not someone truly spiritual.

The truly spiritual people are those who have found a few practices that work for them, and then have actually practiced them for many years.  That is why we call them spiritual practices, after all.  As Fr. Thomas Keating, one of the major teachers of centering prayer, quipped once, “And after you have practiced centering prayer for 40 years, you’ll become a much more likable person!”

Our constant desire for novelty, for trying new things, for learning more, can get in the way of our ultimate goal of spiritual growth.  There is no substitute for commitment, and we will make little progress if we are constantly on the lookout for the next thing we haven’t tried or experienced.   By all means, let us experiment.  But in all the experimenting, all the sampling, let us not forget the need for solid, basic, nourishing, regular and constant spiritual meals.

Soulful Yearnings

I’ve only just learned in the past few days that my undergraduate alma mater, Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa, now has a prayer labyrinth available to walk on a regular basis and is also offering prayer retreats and teaching centering prayer and other contemplative spiritual disciplines as part of their campus ministry to students.  This is an exciting development, and shows a clear commitment to spiritual formation on Northwestern’s part.  Northwestern, I should clarify, is a Christian liberal arts college affiliated with the Reformed Church in America.  Their commitment to the spiritual growth of students has in the past included regular chapel services, mandatory religion classes as part of the liberal arts core, and the offering of dorm Bible studies and off-campus service projects.

To the credit of these efforts, there were many students whose spiritual lives were profoundly touched by Northwestern’s ministries.  But there were others of us, myself included, who sadly found the college’s spiritual life dry and incomplete back then.  The vast majority of the spiritual life then often felt stubbornly intellectual, or else purely social, rarely touching the heart.  The college’s spiritual offerings seemed to speak only to certain levels, too often failing to penetrate to the core of our beings.

But now Northwestern seems newly prepared to develop deeply the interior lives – the true spirits – of students.  These newest spiritual formation programs hold promise to take Northwestern’s ministry to students to a much deeper and richer vein.  Spirituality has moved from the head to the heart.  I offer Northwestern my warmest congratulations and best wishes on these new spiritual endeavors.

Of course, when I attended Northwestern, some 15 years ago now, the labyrinth, centering prayer, et al. were unknown, both to me and to the campus.  Back then, I had no idea how to develop an interior life or how to shape my soul – I didn’t even have the vocabulary for such needs.  I only knew a yearning for a deeper, more intimate, spiritual connection.  Without having any kind of spiritual disciplines or tools at my disposal, I remember spending a lot of time sitting in the college chapel late at night, alone, praying aloud (but not too loudly).  Sometimes, like the Psalmist, I would rant and rail, hurling angry words at God, demanding God’s answer to various problems and difficult situations.  Other times, I would sit and talk about my day, as one might talk with a friend.  Many times I found myself pouring out complains and sorrows.  I had no idea how to listen to God, or how to still my incessant stream of thoughts and emotions that erupted into verbose prayers.  I only knew that I needed God, and that there was a shallow dryness in my soul that I could not remedy.  In keeping with the intellectual, scholarly approach to spirituality I was absorbing, I thought my problem was one of theological belief, and I dove into theology, philosophy, and apologetics, seeking answers.

I wish I had known then that what I was seeking was not answers, but relationship, true soul communion with God.  Yet even had I known this, I had no idea then how to conduct such a relationship, assuming as I did that God spoke only in propositional, intellectual language.  I did not know the silent ways God shapes our souls and communes with our spirits in the silence of contemplation, or the way that contemplation then informs both our requests of God and our actions in the world.

I know I wasn’t alone.  There were many of my friends who, like me, had no idea how to connect with God, and as a consequence were even beginning to doubt that God was there to connect with in the first place.  The problem was our lack of education regarding the tools of the soul.  It is a problem that still grips much of Western Christianity.  For too long, much of Western Christianity has been beholden to purely intellectual understandings of spirituality.  That is why we spend so much time in our churches, Christian colleges, and seminaries teaching theology, philosophy, and Biblical studies, and so little time, if any, on spiritual formation.  Even the American Evangelical tradition with its insistence on “accepting Jesus” and “beginning a personal relationship with God” very often fails remarkably at teaching people how to carry on that relationship from day to day.  Indeed, a common theme in Evangelicalism is the need for discipleship/spiritual formation – but when churches attempt to carry this out, it is more of the same read-and-analyze, question-and-answer, fill-in-the-blanks intellectualism that does virtually nothing to bring people into closer, more fulfilling union with God.  Churches in the West most often don’t have contemplative prayer; they
have Bible or book studies.

Bible and book studies aren’t bad, and they have their place.  It is important for Christians to know how to think like God.  But that is only a beginning, an entryway, for knowing God, becoming like God, and enjoying communion and union with God.  Only the contemplative disciplines take us further up and further in.

What is happening at Northwestern is, I hope, starting to happen at Christian ministries and institutions (colleges, churches, et al.) across the country and the larger world of Western Christianity.  We are rediscovering ancient practices that have been heretofore locked away in monasteries and in dusty books of Christian history.  We are becoming re-acquainted with Christianity’s contemplative, mystical tradition, and the life giving, soul shaping tools it has to offer.  My fervent desire is to see these tools made available and taught well to an ever widening audience, especially to church leaders and teachers.

There are still young college students like I once was, yearning for spiritual connection, calling out to God from the heart.  Now, at last, we have something to offer them.

“Saying Grace” by G. K. Chesterton

My friend Beth recently discovered this marvelous quote by G. K. Chesterton and posted it on her blog.  I think Chesterton has it right.  Everything is miracle; everything is gift.  We are grateful far too little.  Let us give thanks (say grace, in Chesterton’s words).

“You say grace before meals.

All right.

But I say grace before the play and the opera,

And grace before the concert and pantomime,

And grace before I open a book,

And grace before sketching, painting,

Swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing;

And grace before I dip the pen in the ink.”

G. K. Chesterton, from an early notebook (mid-1890′s)