I have circled around the word velocity recently as a descriptor of my spiritual state. Velocity describes the reality of a life which gets ramped up slowly, subtly, without my noticing. As life's velocity increases, insidiously calling for more -- more time, energy, attention -- daily existence begins to feel out of sync, careening wildly from moment to moment. Velocity keeps its foot pressed to the gas pedal.
I remember a phone conversation with a mentor decades ago, the man who was most responsible for my vocational path, who influenced my choice of seminary, who was an early role model in so many ways. Separated by miles, I asked him over the phone how he was doing. I still remember his answer these decades later: "I'm lurching from crisis to crisis."
I knew then, as I know now, that "lurching from crisis to crisis" is no way to live life deeply, though I knew from experience exactly what he was suggesting. I've lurched from crisis to crisis aplenty in my own life -- often wearing the lurch as a badge of honor -- and I suspect you recognize lurching as a part of your own experience, too. Especially in the West, lurching is assumed to be the norm, not an aberration. In fact, if pressed, many of us would insist we don't have a choice, believing pedal to the metal is "just the way life is for me."
Like riding a super-train, I can live at such velocity that I observe the landscape through which I travel as a blur, as here-one-second, gone-the-next. I become a traveler speeding through the terrain as swiftly as possible.
That kind of velocity also means I lose touch with people. Connections get frayed. I don't have time for conversation. Actually, I don't have time or patience for anyone or anything not traveling at the same velocity at which I am traveling.
Family members don't respond to texts quickly enough to suit me.
Being put on hold by someone at the mega-corporation and listening to elevator music for an hour feels like an insult to my self-importance.
Deadlines I had not anticipated feel like an affront, a personal insult: "Don't they know how busy I am?"
Emails go unanswered for days.
Excessive velocity has all sorts of ripple effects on me.
About 20 years ago, I read Henri Nouwen's words: "Without silence and solitude it is impossible to live a spiritual life."
You can frame Nouwen's statement -- which has proven accurate, at least in my own experience -- in any number of ways.
**Without time to be still, life will be a blur.
**If you don't make space to ask, "Who am I?" and "What am I doing?", the oughts, musts, and shoulds will consume you.
**Without silence and solitude, life will be an endlessly repetitive cycle of lurching from crisis to crisis.
**If you don't pause to sit still regularly, you can never truly know the "you" who lives inside your skin.
**If some external thing, some external person, or some external norm determines your velocity, you will miss the one life that is hidden inside you.
** If your existence is all strategy, time-line, and accomplishment, you'll never connect with people in a life-giving way. People will be your accessories or they will get in your way.
I walked over an acre of land yesterday in about two hours. For several months I've been on the speeding train, so over dirt and rock I walked slowly. I had no agenda but to set foot on as much of the soil as possible. I wasn't trying to accomplish anything. I felt no compulsion to hurry. I merely wanted to walk, to notice, to listen. The late Gerald May called it "the power of slowing."
Several things stood out to me. I'll mention one.
The birds (Cardinals, Eastern Bluebirds, among others), the plant-life (60 foot oaks, irises, hostas, rose bushes, and pine trees coming up volunteer), the clouds, breeze, and drizzling rain . . . all did not care one bit about my velocity, about how busy I have been . . . not one care that my tax return needs to be tended to, that I have phone calls to make, appointments to keep, details about life that require some strategic maneuvering on my part.
Schedules and plans and "lurching from crisis to crisis" don't mean a thing to the created world . . . the created world which, after all, has a wisdom all its own. Only I, as the human in that setting, had felt the compulsion to travel faster than a human is made to travel.
Whether my velocity allows me to participate in this other, more inviting world or not, creation goes on singing, breezing, drizzling, foraging.
At question, at least for me: "In which world is my deepest, hidden self most invited to participate?"
Showing posts with label Henri Nouwen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Henri Nouwen. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 3, 2018
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
For the Lenten Fence-sitters
We've been into Lent less than a week, and I haven't yet made a conscious "I'm-giving-up-blank-for Lent" decision. I thought about giving up Fleetwood Mac for these weeks, but backed off that . . . or Hopkins' poetry, but that didn't work for me, either.
I am, though, finding meaning in some reading . . . some material that is providing material for meditation and reflection.
I'll list below a few of the things available that I've found helpful through the years.
**Journey to the Center, by Thomas Keating.
**Show Me the Way, by Henri Nouwen.
**Wondrous Encounters: Scriptures for Lent, by Richard Rohr.
**Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter. Authors of the short articles include folks like Merton, Bonhoeffer, Kierkegaard, C. S. Lewis, Amy Carmichael, Kathleen Norris, Wendell Berry and many more.
**This year I'm following some postings at www.atheismforlent.net. It draws on the thought and work of ikon (Peter Rollins) in Belfast. The postings at the site actually come from ikonNYC. If you follow ikon and Rollins, you'll appreciate the site. If you don't follow ikon and Rollins, check it out.
**I've written some meditations around the daily scripture texts, trying to approach the texts as spiritual story and wisdom. I've called it Scattered Seeds, and it is available online at http://www.chapelwood.org/Event_Display.cfm?Event_ID=1617.
**I'm also writing a short piece each day, posted at www.dailylent.blogspot.com.
That should be enough to keep you engaged. Don't do everything. Choose something to follow, find your own rhythm, and then follow it through.
I am, though, finding meaning in some reading . . . some material that is providing material for meditation and reflection.
I'll list below a few of the things available that I've found helpful through the years.
**Journey to the Center, by Thomas Keating.
**Show Me the Way, by Henri Nouwen.
**Wondrous Encounters: Scriptures for Lent, by Richard Rohr.
**Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter. Authors of the short articles include folks like Merton, Bonhoeffer, Kierkegaard, C. S. Lewis, Amy Carmichael, Kathleen Norris, Wendell Berry and many more.
**This year I'm following some postings at www.atheismforlent.net. It draws on the thought and work of ikon (Peter Rollins) in Belfast. The postings at the site actually come from ikonNYC. If you follow ikon and Rollins, you'll appreciate the site. If you don't follow ikon and Rollins, check it out.
**I've written some meditations around the daily scripture texts, trying to approach the texts as spiritual story and wisdom. I've called it Scattered Seeds, and it is available online at http://www.chapelwood.org/Event_Display.cfm?Event_ID=1617.
**I'm also writing a short piece each day, posted at www.dailylent.blogspot.com.
That should be enough to keep you engaged. Don't do everything. Choose something to follow, find your own rhythm, and then follow it through.
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Waiting Is a Moment, Too
Spiritually speaking, waiting may be the most difficult practice for the maturing Christian . . . at least for persons in Western culture. Culturally, we are more practiced at impatience and immediate gratification than we are with sitting still and waiting.
Passivity is frowned upon.
There are few more condemning, more damaging things to say about a person than, "He's lazy!" or "She's lazy!"
As a people, we have subscribed to the guilt-inducing admonition that says, "Don't just stand there. DO SOMETHING!!" The implication is that action is better than inaction, and even wrong-headed or misguided action is better than doing nothing.
The prayers and scriptural words that invite us to "wait on the Lord," seem like a foreign language. We don't know how to do that. We want to take action, to cause something to happen, to rush toward the job completed.
Waiting Is a Moment, Too
Waiting, if we take it seriously, often refers to the time in-between, or the season just before the big thing happens. Much of our human experience of waiting is like this. We think of waiting moments as wasted time or in-between time before the really important thing happens.
So when I wait in a doctor's office (in the "waiting room"), I'm biding time until the important meeting with the doctor.
Or when I wait in an airport terminal, I'm passing time until I board the plane, which is what I really came to the terminal for in the first place.
Or when I wait for guests to arrive at my house, I'm idle until the important time with the guests begins.
Or when I'm waiting for test results from the lab, I'm twiddling my thumbs until I receive those important results.
In each scenario, we approach the waiting time as a prelude to something else. And that "something else" is usually what we deem to be the important stuff.
But waiting is a moment, too. It is not just the lull before the next thing happens. Something is happening in the moment of waiting that is valuable for its own sake, and not just for the sake of what comes next.
[In a religious or a faith context, our language betrays us at this point. People say things like, "God showed up," or "God will meet me there." The language suggests that God is not present in every time and in every place. In fact, God is present in all times and in every space. That means God is just as present in the waiting, in the threshold moments, as in the next big thing we are waiting upon.]
Waiting is a moment, too, a moment in which God is real and present and stirring and inviting. It is not the preparation for something else, but the now in which God is to be experienced in all God's fullness.
Waiting for the Unexpected
I find that people feel they can wait if they have two pieces of information:
First, how long will I have to wait? If I know how long the "waiting" will last, it seems to make the waiting bearable.
Second, for what am I waiting? If I know the shape of the thing to come (the "payoff"??), I'm more likely to wait in order to experience the thing I have anticipated.
Waiting that is consistent with the biblical tradition, however, is most often waiting upon something that is unknown. Most biblical waiting does not come with an attached time-frame, nor does it come with an expected outcome. Persons in the scriptures often waited decades for a promised fulfillment . . . and entire peoples waited centuries for promises to be fulfilled. God didn't guarantee results over a particular span of time. And neither did God always give just what the people expected.
In fact, one of the signs of the presence of the Holy Spirit was the surprise with which God's Spirit acted. At Pentecost (Acts 1 - 2), the disciples were looking for the coming Kingdom of God. When the Spirit came upon them, they got instead tongues of fire and empowerment for the task ahead of them.
The difficult practice of authentic waiting does not promise time-frames, nor does it guarantee specific outcomes. What comes to us at the end of our waiting is borne of the Spirit of Surprise, and it comes in the larger timing of God.
I think it is this kind of waiting that most rubs up against our notions of being in control of our lives and how we plot our life-arches and trajectories. God's Spirit is not subject to our conjectures and our plotting. So our waiting is to be different.
Henri Nouwen called this "open-ended waiting." He meant that what comes at the end of the waiting is not determined by us. It is determined by God, and if we are going to perceive it and participate in it, we must wait with openness. Our hands must be open, and our hearts. Otherwise, we will miss whatever it is that happens on the far end of our waiting. I am invited to wait and to stay open, not to set my sight on a fixed or a determined outcome. This is the way we participate in the work of the Holy Spirit in our world.
Waiting Is Not a Formula for Success
I need to say one more thing about waiting. I want to encourage you not to make a formula out of this waiting process, so that whenever you need something or want something, you pull it out of your pocket and use it to your benefit. "Waiting upon the Lord" is not a formula for your success, or a strategy to be used for your own benefit, or a tool with which you can manipulate God to give you what you want.
Waiting is a life-stance, a posture with which we are invited to live life with God. This stance recognizes that waiting is a moment, too, a moment in which God is present and active, and not just a prelude to the next big thing.
This stance recognizes that there is not a time-frame given for our waiting . . . it is, after all, a life-stance.
And it recognizes that God's Spirit of Surprise often graces us with the unexpected, so the stance includes open hands and open hearts to receive whatever God brings our way.
This is the posture for the person growing into a deeper, more rooted connection with God.
Passivity is frowned upon.
There are few more condemning, more damaging things to say about a person than, "He's lazy!" or "She's lazy!"
As a people, we have subscribed to the guilt-inducing admonition that says, "Don't just stand there. DO SOMETHING!!" The implication is that action is better than inaction, and even wrong-headed or misguided action is better than doing nothing.
The prayers and scriptural words that invite us to "wait on the Lord," seem like a foreign language. We don't know how to do that. We want to take action, to cause something to happen, to rush toward the job completed.
Waiting Is a Moment, Too
Waiting, if we take it seriously, often refers to the time in-between, or the season just before the big thing happens. Much of our human experience of waiting is like this. We think of waiting moments as wasted time or in-between time before the really important thing happens.
So when I wait in a doctor's office (in the "waiting room"), I'm biding time until the important meeting with the doctor.
Or when I wait in an airport terminal, I'm passing time until I board the plane, which is what I really came to the terminal for in the first place.
Or when I wait for guests to arrive at my house, I'm idle until the important time with the guests begins.
Or when I'm waiting for test results from the lab, I'm twiddling my thumbs until I receive those important results.
In each scenario, we approach the waiting time as a prelude to something else. And that "something else" is usually what we deem to be the important stuff.
But waiting is a moment, too. It is not just the lull before the next thing happens. Something is happening in the moment of waiting that is valuable for its own sake, and not just for the sake of what comes next.
[In a religious or a faith context, our language betrays us at this point. People say things like, "God showed up," or "God will meet me there." The language suggests that God is not present in every time and in every place. In fact, God is present in all times and in every space. That means God is just as present in the waiting, in the threshold moments, as in the next big thing we are waiting upon.]
Waiting is a moment, too, a moment in which God is real and present and stirring and inviting. It is not the preparation for something else, but the now in which God is to be experienced in all God's fullness.
Waiting for the Unexpected
I find that people feel they can wait if they have two pieces of information:
First, how long will I have to wait? If I know how long the "waiting" will last, it seems to make the waiting bearable.
Second, for what am I waiting? If I know the shape of the thing to come (the "payoff"??), I'm more likely to wait in order to experience the thing I have anticipated.
Waiting that is consistent with the biblical tradition, however, is most often waiting upon something that is unknown. Most biblical waiting does not come with an attached time-frame, nor does it come with an expected outcome. Persons in the scriptures often waited decades for a promised fulfillment . . . and entire peoples waited centuries for promises to be fulfilled. God didn't guarantee results over a particular span of time. And neither did God always give just what the people expected.
In fact, one of the signs of the presence of the Holy Spirit was the surprise with which God's Spirit acted. At Pentecost (Acts 1 - 2), the disciples were looking for the coming Kingdom of God. When the Spirit came upon them, they got instead tongues of fire and empowerment for the task ahead of them.
The difficult practice of authentic waiting does not promise time-frames, nor does it guarantee specific outcomes. What comes to us at the end of our waiting is borne of the Spirit of Surprise, and it comes in the larger timing of God.
I think it is this kind of waiting that most rubs up against our notions of being in control of our lives and how we plot our life-arches and trajectories. God's Spirit is not subject to our conjectures and our plotting. So our waiting is to be different.
Henri Nouwen called this "open-ended waiting." He meant that what comes at the end of the waiting is not determined by us. It is determined by God, and if we are going to perceive it and participate in it, we must wait with openness. Our hands must be open, and our hearts. Otherwise, we will miss whatever it is that happens on the far end of our waiting. I am invited to wait and to stay open, not to set my sight on a fixed or a determined outcome. This is the way we participate in the work of the Holy Spirit in our world.
Waiting Is Not a Formula for Success
I need to say one more thing about waiting. I want to encourage you not to make a formula out of this waiting process, so that whenever you need something or want something, you pull it out of your pocket and use it to your benefit. "Waiting upon the Lord" is not a formula for your success, or a strategy to be used for your own benefit, or a tool with which you can manipulate God to give you what you want.
Waiting is a life-stance, a posture with which we are invited to live life with God. This stance recognizes that waiting is a moment, too, a moment in which God is present and active, and not just a prelude to the next big thing.
This stance recognizes that there is not a time-frame given for our waiting . . . it is, after all, a life-stance.
And it recognizes that God's Spirit of Surprise often graces us with the unexpected, so the stance includes open hands and open hearts to receive whatever God brings our way.
This is the posture for the person growing into a deeper, more rooted connection with God.
Friday, July 8, 2011
Thoughts on an Integrated Life
I'm trying to make sense of some things for the sermon I'm to preach this weekend. I've moved -- gladly, I'll say – away from preaching three times a week, and more during certain periods of the calendar, to preaching maybe once a year. I don’t mind that at all.
I don’t need to do it any more, but I don’t mind doing it, either.
[At one point of life I think I would have said, “I need to preach” but would not have admitted what a big piece of my ego was tied to that act and the accompanying affirmation. Today I probably need not to preach more than I need to preach!]
So it’s not the preaching that I’m trying to make sense of today. I’ve been wrestling for weeks, though, with this idea of “missional living,” which is the topic that five of us will be dealing with in a month of sermons. The terminology is fairly new, as best I can tell. When I ask those who use the phrase what it means, I either get blank stares, textbook-quoted answers, or statements that don’t seem very new and original.
In fact, “missional living” seems very much like what we called “discipleship” when I was a teen-aged Christian. We talked about following Jesus and did some things that in hindsight seem just about as radical as what some of the “emergent” and “missional” folks are talking about today. That was 35 years ago.
In more recent days I would have talked about living an “integrated life” or a “congruent life,” that is, a life that is seamless, non-compartmentalized and unified. One of the terms used today would be "non-dual" (as opposed to dualistic, either/or, compartmentalized).
The core issue that the five of us will wrestle with this month in sermon form is this: “How do I live into a life-giving rhythm that includes both an intimate coming-to-Jesus and an ongoing offering of myself in the world for God, for good and for the sake of others?”
The first part of the rhythm is an inner movement. The movement toward God means stepping toward the Center.
The, the movement into the world flows outward. Most earnest Christians live well in one or the other, but have difficulty finding a rhythm that includes both the inward and the outward.
I don’t have bunches of answers, only lots of hits and misses.
In re-reading Henri Nouwen’s The Selfless Way of Christ a couple of months ago, I did see again how crucial the question is. Nouwen, a Dutch Roman Catholic priest, wrote honestly about his own struggle to live an integrated life. He, too, had questions about this rhythm of encounter/experience with Jesus (inward movement) which became the basis for mission/witness (outward movement).
Here are some of Nouwen’s thoughts:
“Yet this witness, which takes the form of preaching and teaching, of celebrating and counseling, of organizing and struggling to alleviate the suffering of our fellow human beings, is a true witness only when it emerges from a genuine personal encounter, a true experience of love. We can only call ourselves witnesses of Jesus when we have heard him with our own ears, seen him with our own eyes, and touched him with our own hands.
“The basis of the mission of the twelve apostles was not their knowledge, training, or character, but their having lived with Jesus. Paul, who was not with Jesus while he was traveling with his disciples, encountered him on the road to Damascus. This experience was the foundation on which all his apostolic work was built.
“There has never been a Christian witness whose influence has not been directly related to a personal and intimate experience of the Lord. This deep and personal encounter can take as many forms and shapes as there are people, cultures, and ages. Ignatius of Antioch, Anthony of the Desert, Gregory the Great, Benedict, Bernard, and Francis, Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Martin Luther, John Wesley, George Fox, and John Bunyan, Charles de Foucauld, Dag Hammarskjold, Martin Luther King, Jr., Thomas Merton, Jean Vanier, Mother Teresa, Dorothy Day – all these witnesses have seen the Lord, and their actions and words emerge from that vision.
“Thus, ministry and the spiritual life belong together. Living a spiritual life is living in an intimate communion with the Lord. It is seeing, hearing, and touching. Living a life of ministry is witnessing to him in the midst of this world. It is opening the eyes of our brothers and sisters in the human family to his presence among us, so that they too may enter into this relationship of love.
“When our ministry does not emerge from a personal encounter, it quickly becomes a tiring routine and a boring job. On the other hand, when our spiritual life no longer leads to an active ministry, it quickly degenerates into introspection and self-scrutiny, and thus loses its dynamism.”
[Henri Nouwen, The Selfless Way of Christ: Downward Mobility and the Spiritual Life (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2007), 14 - 16]
I don’t need to do it any more, but I don’t mind doing it, either.
[At one point of life I think I would have said, “I need to preach” but would not have admitted what a big piece of my ego was tied to that act and the accompanying affirmation. Today I probably need not to preach more than I need to preach!]
So it’s not the preaching that I’m trying to make sense of today. I’ve been wrestling for weeks, though, with this idea of “missional living,” which is the topic that five of us will be dealing with in a month of sermons. The terminology is fairly new, as best I can tell. When I ask those who use the phrase what it means, I either get blank stares, textbook-quoted answers, or statements that don’t seem very new and original.
In fact, “missional living” seems very much like what we called “discipleship” when I was a teen-aged Christian. We talked about following Jesus and did some things that in hindsight seem just about as radical as what some of the “emergent” and “missional” folks are talking about today. That was 35 years ago.
In more recent days I would have talked about living an “integrated life” or a “congruent life,” that is, a life that is seamless, non-compartmentalized and unified. One of the terms used today would be "non-dual" (as opposed to dualistic, either/or, compartmentalized).
The core issue that the five of us will wrestle with this month in sermon form is this: “How do I live into a life-giving rhythm that includes both an intimate coming-to-Jesus and an ongoing offering of myself in the world for God, for good and for the sake of others?”
The first part of the rhythm is an inner movement. The movement toward God means stepping toward the Center.
The, the movement into the world flows outward. Most earnest Christians live well in one or the other, but have difficulty finding a rhythm that includes both the inward and the outward.
I don’t have bunches of answers, only lots of hits and misses.
In re-reading Henri Nouwen’s The Selfless Way of Christ a couple of months ago, I did see again how crucial the question is. Nouwen, a Dutch Roman Catholic priest, wrote honestly about his own struggle to live an integrated life. He, too, had questions about this rhythm of encounter/experience with Jesus (inward movement) which became the basis for mission/witness (outward movement).
Here are some of Nouwen’s thoughts:
“Yet this witness, which takes the form of preaching and teaching, of celebrating and counseling, of organizing and struggling to alleviate the suffering of our fellow human beings, is a true witness only when it emerges from a genuine personal encounter, a true experience of love. We can only call ourselves witnesses of Jesus when we have heard him with our own ears, seen him with our own eyes, and touched him with our own hands.
“The basis of the mission of the twelve apostles was not their knowledge, training, or character, but their having lived with Jesus. Paul, who was not with Jesus while he was traveling with his disciples, encountered him on the road to Damascus. This experience was the foundation on which all his apostolic work was built.
“There has never been a Christian witness whose influence has not been directly related to a personal and intimate experience of the Lord. This deep and personal encounter can take as many forms and shapes as there are people, cultures, and ages. Ignatius of Antioch, Anthony of the Desert, Gregory the Great, Benedict, Bernard, and Francis, Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Martin Luther, John Wesley, George Fox, and John Bunyan, Charles de Foucauld, Dag Hammarskjold, Martin Luther King, Jr., Thomas Merton, Jean Vanier, Mother Teresa, Dorothy Day – all these witnesses have seen the Lord, and their actions and words emerge from that vision.
“Thus, ministry and the spiritual life belong together. Living a spiritual life is living in an intimate communion with the Lord. It is seeing, hearing, and touching. Living a life of ministry is witnessing to him in the midst of this world. It is opening the eyes of our brothers and sisters in the human family to his presence among us, so that they too may enter into this relationship of love.
“When our ministry does not emerge from a personal encounter, it quickly becomes a tiring routine and a boring job. On the other hand, when our spiritual life no longer leads to an active ministry, it quickly degenerates into introspection and self-scrutiny, and thus loses its dynamism.”
[Henri Nouwen, The Selfless Way of Christ: Downward Mobility and the Spiritual Life (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2007), 14 - 16]
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