Lisa Colón DeLay | Spiritual Formation and the Way of the Desert Elders
Resources, Guidance, Products, and Services for personal growth, spiritual formation, and community connection
Topics pertain in some way to the unseen realm of Reality, the inner world, or the Divine, most often in a Christian and ecumenical context with the assumption that all people are in reality, beings with and of spirit.
What is spiritual formation?
The Spiritual Formation Discovery (event) is presented by Imago Christi an international and cross-cultural spiritual formation ministry of Church Resource Ministries (CRM). Imago Christi develops spiritual formation resources and coaches Christian leaders around the world.
If you’re interested in attending the Imago Christi Lancaster PA event, please let me know.
I just loved this photo by Marek Paluch (found on MSNBC).
It’s likely this critter is NUTS.
(The hit show GLEE is a drama-comedy that breaks out into a musical number and choreography several times per episode. In other words, it’s basically just like real life.)
All the world is a stage?
Only if people find you annoyingly dramatic.
Or, fantastically entertaining.
Or, small and furry…
It’s important to have our “break out” moments, our passionate interaction with the universe, and have a certain kind of flourish that gives us an awareness of being fully alive.
What was your last “Glee moment”?
Arizona isn’t the only place struggling with immigration issues. My county in Pennsylvania is too.
Some drunk teens, in a nearby town, beat a Mexican man to death, and their (mind you, local-and NOT exactly urbane) peers on the jury fully exonerated them all. Whether the man was an illegal immigrant is not the main issue. (Many have said, “If he was in his own country it wouldn’t have happened. He got what was coming to him.”) His life was taken by thugs, a proper punishment is important.
The Feds have stepped in, and a different outcome for the teens may occur. There is lots of corruption tied to authorities in that region as well. (The latest of that news here.)
This problem of groups and individuals taking out their aggressions on weaker or less powerful people is actually a spiritual problem. It takes many forms, most typically some sort of bullying, but also an attempt at degradation is a classic symptoms. I think, in some ways, we all can do it. Yelling at the kids, railing on other drivers, malicious talk, and of course beating someone up with your karate moves.
I call it Piñata Syndrome: It is s when one person (or group) takes it upon himself (or themselves) to mistreat or abuse another, hoping to get some candy in the end (so to speak).
Who are other famous piñatas in history?
The most amazing human piñata of all?
I’d say Jesus Christ. He took our beating (and death sentence), by those hoping to “get candy” (or some sweet deal) from doing so.
Here’s the twist, you may not like as much: Jesus asks his followers to do the same as he did. Self-sacrifice. “Take up your (piñata) cross, and follow me”.
Are we treating people (or groups) like piñatas, or are we being a piñata, in some way, for the sake of Christ?
What are some other examples of piñata syndrome?
It’s quite possible that my parents inadvertently trained my brain to be more philosophical then it might have been ordinarily.
I remember countless times after doing something naughty or foolish, my parents would ask me a daunting question “Why, did you do that?”
I’m not sure what kind of answers they were expecting. I would wonder why they would ask that.
Those answers were far beyond what my child brain could tackle.
Inwardly I would think, “HUH? Well, that’s a good question, I guess. I probably should have asked why to myself before I did it. It seemed like a good idea at the time. How should I know why I did it? Do they know why? If so, why don’t they just tell me? Will there be some kind of quiz later, or something? If they do know why, why did they looked so puzzled? And basically pissed off. Am I supposed to figure it out for them? …..ugh. But, now that I’m thinking of it, I do wonder why.”
I would usually answer, “I don’t know.” Deep inside I would wish and hope the scrutiny would not last too long. (It probably would lead to a “spanking” a.k.a. whoop the daylights out of me.) But, I also thought, if I did know, wouldn’t truthful answers incriminate me? What could I really come up with in all honesty, “because I wanted to,”?
Mainly through the sheer number of inquiries, I developed the feeling that the answer to “why” had importance. I started on a path toward “hack philosopher”…
“Why would people wish to put meat into ball shapes?”
“Why would chewing gum before supper truly ruin supper itself?”
“Why was, ‘because I said so’ considered an acceptable reason for adults to give me, but never good at all for me to reply to them?”
When troubles or suffering would come, I would instinctively ask “why”?
Maybe learning a lot of things would give me these sought for questions. I tried that a bit. (I still love roving around libraries on a quest of discovery.) After a good deal of learning, one day it came to me:
“Almost all the really crucial questions that ask ‘why’ have quite unsatisfactory answers.”
Or, the answers get debated widely, and are rarely agreed on. Or, the “answers” have the kind of complexities that don’t make one feel better about things. At all.
All this preparatory ‘why’ work…for what? Zip. More or less.
Instead of those sorts of questions, I moved on. “What does asking why tell us about us, and why we should want to know in the first place?” That seems like a much bigger question, with the kind of answer that will make a difference.
We want things to make sense. We want purpose and something to believe in that won’t let us down. We want to count on something. Will a concrete answer provide this? It seems most concrete answers only produce more questions. Of course, I was only satiated with pat answers for a short time. (I do believe I was also trained to understand that challenging answers was either a lack of faith, or a flaw in character.)
It’s been a new path for me to have a certain serenity that understanding may begin when the intricacies that the why questions remain in creative tension with discovery and mystery.
And so “why mystery?”
For me, it’s about knowing things in terms of relationship, not facts. The facts can be manipulated, massaged, or up for grabs. But, true trust, based on an ongoing and lavish love, surmounts what facts never satisfy.
God is why.
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A friend’s comment spoke volumes to me, so I wanted to devote a post on the idea.
“The key to spiritual growth is otium sanctum, so hard to trust in our world that values efficiency and quick results.” -Doug Jackson (Excerpt of his comment on the previous post.)
On page 85 in his book, Spiritual Direction and Meditation, Thomas Merton explains otium sanctum:
Now the Fathers of the Church well understood the importance of a certain “holy leisure” [or] “otium sanctum.” We cannot give ourselves to spiritual things if we are always swept off our feet by a multitude of external activities. Business is not the supreme virtue, and sanctity is not measured by the amount of work we accomplish. Perfection is found in the purity of our love for God, and there is plenty of time for it to mature.
Otium Sanctum is part of the not doing– It’s the “hard work” of that. The notion is paradoxical certainly, but bluntly revelatory.
How do you “not do” in your life, or for God which brings you to greater maturity?
Do you think God does or does not function with otium sanctum?
If so, how?
Thanks for your participation on this one.