Category: Spirituality

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.

on Waiting…

This Sunday marks the start of the season of Advent 2015.

The predominant theme of Advent is WAITING in expectation.
It’s a timeless theme.

stranded-new-york-workers-wait-patiently-in-a-long-line-to-use-a-phone-booth-to-call-home
(Before mobile phones, if a bus broke down you had to find a pay phone and wait your turn to call for rescue. These folks don’t seem too upset by it.)

 

Waiting makes up a big portion of our lives, doesn’t it?

Whether it’s waiting in line or in traffic or waiting for an occasion or certain situation–we do a lot of waiting.

For me, a focus on waiting pulls me out of the present moment to a moment that exists in theory. It involves hope or anxiety. Or both.

The prisoners I minister to have a life centered on waiting for their freedom. They routinely tell me that keeping busy is the best way to conquer the burden and stress of waiting.

 

But a closer interaction with the experience of waiting can unearth and reveal deeper spiritual longings that can both call us into a richer walk of faith and engender the growth needed to more fully surrender to God.

 

If we just stay busy we can miss the gifts that come only through waiting.

Because waiting is such a huge part of the human experience, it’s no wonder that Christianity has long interacted with this theme as a entry point into bigger spiritual conversations and concepts. It is through this struggle we gain growth and maturity in our walk of faith.

Patience is rarely, if ever, attained by any other means than practice.

Waiting is that practice.

Waiting on the Lord is a vibrant theme in Scriptures too, right?

Most of the stories in the Bible include the aspect of waiting. Abraham and Sarah (and many others) wait for offspring, David waits on the Lord for deliverance, the prophets wait for God’s promises to be fulfilled, Paul and the other apostles do a lot of waiting in prison, and in the season of Advent we acutely encounter Mary’s waiting for the Savior, Jesus. She is the vehicle God has chosen to birth the Prince of Peace. It’s a nine month process–on the heels of thousands of years of waiting for the Messiah.

This delivery involves a lot of anticipation and waiting.

And so too does most anything else of worth. These many stories echo our own pain and struggle.

I appreciate Mary’s expression of gratitude during her wait (a.k.a. The Magnificat-see the video below to hear “Mary’s Song” sung my John Michael Talbot). We can use her example to help us along.

Gratitude produces joy that makes waiting easier.

Waiting aptly exposes our traits of impatience, also. It works to refine us.

Henri Nouwen once wrote, “Impatient people are always expecting the real thing to happen somewhere else and therefore want to go elsewhere. ”

Rev Adele Ahlberg Calhoun recently wrote,

Waiting is how God gets at the idols of our heart. Waiting addresses the things we think we need besides God to be content: money, comfort, expedience, success or control.

TODAY’S NUGGET:

It’s a powerful lesson we find in Advent. Meditate on the longings of your heart and cultivate the seeds of advent there. Expectantly wait for God to fulfill his promises with a heart of trust and gratitude.

Notes from Dr Batluck-Don’t Grow Weary of Doing Right

The CEO of the Teen Challenge Training Center near Bethel, PA spoke at the recent prisoner graduation (LIFE MINISTRIES) ceremony at FCI Schuylkill. Dr Joseph Batluck.

Batluck_-_Formal_portrait

I wanted to take some time to post the highlights from his talk because they impressed me. It wasn’t just a good message for inmates, but for all of us.

THEME

Galatians 6:7-10

 Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life. And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all, especially to those who are of the household of faith.

 NOTES:

We will harvest what we sow.

Bad seed reaps bad.

Good seed reaps good.

Don’t grow weary of doing right.

Even in doing right we will grow weary.

The Christian Walk of Faith is like a stool with four legs.

1. Reading the Bible

In it we learn who God is.

2. Prayer

Communication with God.

Don’t pray boring prayers. If your prayers are boring they don’t do any good.

Let the Psalms be your prayers if your prayers have gotten dull.

3. Accountability

Fellow believers build us us and help to make us more like Christ.

We must find someone to be honest with and get encouragement from. Iron sharpens iron.

4. Service

In service to others we become more like Christ. It’s not about us.

The walk of faith moves through three components:

First: CREATION

Re-birth into a new identity and connection to Christ through faith a repentance.

Second: FORMATION

Through discipleship and obedience we are formed within and beomce more like Christ

Third: DIRECTION

God directs our paths and our life. We follow him in faith and allow God to be in charge. We rest in his provision and care for us and he decides where we go.

Don’t grow weary of doing right.

Self- Righteous: What other people are

It’s a good thing you aren’t self-righteous, or this would be a tough article to read.law

 

…so, I had a fascinating discussion with a friend about “modern-day Pharisees” in the church and what can be done about it.

(This issue extends far beyond the church and people of faith. In short, we may and do all suffer from self-righteousness somehow because we all fall prey to self-deception.)

There’s no way to recapture the conversation I had, but I hope that my noting the highlights is interesting to you.

 

Summary: Self-Righteous, Pharisee-types seem to be what other people are…this little twist makes getting rid of the problem very hard.

• In short, a pharisaical person is self-righteous.
– The assume they are in the right, doing right, alright. Am I right? Right!

• Most people think they are right most of the time.
– Few people think, “I’m usually wrong and you and others are usually right.”

• People feel they believe the truth, not lies. (Sounds obvious, sure, but consider the greater implications.)
– Obviously, we can’t all be right, but this doesn’t really entering our minds as applying to us.

• Most people believe that OTHER people are self-righteous / pharisaical, not them.
(or if they are pharisaical, it’s only sometimes. The situation doesn’t really trouble them.)

• Self-Righteousness is a delusional episode of the sin pride. It pivots on one losing track of one’s own ongoing and un-remedied sinfulness, as well as one’s blindness to the guilt and weight of that sin.

(Thus, we become self-satisfied with our level of goodness and immune to the devastating implications of sin in any unmitigated form. I’m just great and I’m happy about it. I’m not like you!)

• Unhealthy pride is a universal human malady.

– Whoops, that means it applies to ME and YOU. eesh.

• Recognition of one’s sin that move one toward humility to repent (to God and others) is one of the only sure-fire cures, albeit a temporary one.

—

If you care to weigh in on the topic, go right ahead.

What is the best remedy for pride, in your opinion?

-L

The Religion of Liberation

(Dura Europos - Fresco from 2nd C Synagogue Jews cross the Red Sea pursued by Pharaoh.)
(Dura Europos – Fresco from 2nd C Synagogue Jews cross the Red Sea pursued by Pharaoh.)

 

The Jewish people have a big event, a central story, that encapsulates what the Jewish (and Judeo-Christian) faith is about:

Crossing a sea: Crossing from slavery to LIBERATION

“Let my people go!”

This is the cry of (the Jewish) God, the Living God, through Moses; and it’s really the cry of freedom in every human heart.

So what do we want to be liberated from?

Oppression.

Yes, of course.

…and oppression takes many forms.

But, we tend to also want liberation from authority…and that’s not what God has in mind. That misses the mark and produces precarious results.

In fact, the best liberation we can have is one that happens internally.

Our heart is liberated from sin and death and then we receive peace and life.

This is no marginal quality of our faith tradition. Liberation is found not in fleeing something (or someone) but in returning.

A homecoming. A reception by the Father for the children he loves.
Liberation must always be about fleeing to someone (the One).

…and that someone isn’t just another warden in a different prison, but One who wants our peace to be fully realized.

It’s about community identity and belonging.
Each brings freedom and saves us from ourselves.

 

Sometimes we suppose liberation means freedom to act autonomously and unilaterally for our own interests.
True liberation is the antithesis of that.

When I consider, in this very moment, what I hope to be liberated from in my own life, it seems to concern being free from believing lies. Lies about myself, others, and any sorts of ignoble things that imprison my future in a jailhouse of smallness.

A confined place that is missing the grandeur of what it means to be a sentient being enjoying the majesty of creation that a benevolent incomprehendable Being has fashioned.

The Myth about Roots.

My dad told me that trees have roots that go down as far as the tree is tall. That was an impressive statement and it stuck with me for a long time.

It was, of course, untrue.

He didn’t know much about trees. He was, by his own admission, a “city boy”.

I don’t blame him; lots of people think tree roots go deep.

They don’t.

Any photo of a knocked down tree makes it clear.
See? Roots go out not down.
(The mistake about roots becomes pointedly obvious.)

fallen_tree

Tree roots reach out, not down.

Roots aren’t so much much like anchors hold the tree to the ground, but rather more like feet planted in the soil, in all directions, to create stability and nourishment. They can extend nearly as long as a tree is tall.

The California Redwoods seem even more impressive now, don’t they?

Forests are interconnected places where trees stretch out their roots and touch the other trees nearby, below the surface.

A web of root holds a forrest together as if the trees are playing a long game of forest footsie.

The takeaway:

Like the myth of tree roots, the roots of community don’t go down either–in ideal circumstances.  Instead, they go out, or the forest dies.

On Sunday, I’ll go back to church for the first time in 2 months. My work schedule has kept me away, but I’m happy to go back and remember everything I need to remember all over again:

• Who I am in God, in community, and in the scope of human history and the Church worldwide and over the course of eons.

Maybe I’ll learn something new about me, or about church (God’s people), or about what sacred ritual does for me.

I haven’t been separated from this weekly occurrence (for this long) in over 20 years. I’m wondering what it’ll be like to go back. (The next post -or a short series- will get into that.)

My thoughts are forming like questions:

• Will I sense the roots of others stretching out to meet me?

• Will my absence have been noticed at all?
(If a tree falls in a forest…er, um, never mind.)

• Will everything be the same or nothing, or will I be the only one who has changed?

• Will I realize how much I’ve missed it, or be surprised that it hasn’t mattered like I thought it would or should?

• Am I really part of a forest, or am I more like a lone tree on a hill?

Whatever happens, I want to be the tree that stretches out into the stream, into the living water, for nourishment and life.

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Jeremiah17:7-8
“Blessed is the [one] who trusts in the LORD And whose trust is the LORD. “For [s]he will be like a tree planted by the water, That extends its roots by a stream And will not fear when the heat comes; But its leaves will be green, And it will not be anxious in a year of drought Nor cease to yield fruit.