Had lunch with Wes today and we discussed this idea that
many 30-somethings (among others) share a common sentiment that there is “something
more”.
Often times that “more” that is so frequently referred to is
“more” depth in relationships and authentic community, but that alone doesn’t express
the fullest sense of the “more.”
I feel that most of the “more” has to do with
something deep in our gut that is real and personal but seldom gets drawn out or
invited out to share in the company of trusted others. The “more” is the characters we become when
we’ve journeyed into the wardrobe, but we often deny those inner characters because most
of the communities we chum around in choose to live as if Narnia never has and never will exist. We’ve learned that to appear relatively sane and safe in the world we need to attempt to deny the "more" and find a "real-world" role to fulfill. I’m currently reading Parker Palmer’s, A Hidden Wholeness, who
says, “…the closer we get to adulthood, the more we stifle the imagination that
journey requires. Why? Because imagining other possibilities for our lives
would remind us of the painful gap between who we most truly are and the role
we play in the so-called real world.” (p15)
Angie, JP, and I just returned from our usual mid-summer trip to Indiana to visit the folks. Lots to catch up on now- fund raising push, lots of Missio and Adullam related stuff to get done, so blogging will likely take a bit of a back seat for a few more days. Lots o' thoughts swirling around but man, I need some time for prayer and reflection before trying to make sense of any of them...
The
purpose of these stages is to lead the individual toward inner reflection and
personal examination, which allow them to set life/character goals for
themselves. It also is intended to help guide the process of asking the
universal questions “Am I good?” and “Am I lovable?” which precedes or
sometimes follows the questions “Is God good?” and “Does God love me?”
I'd like to process two phrases that have been circling in my consciousness the last few weeks. I've been randomly texting these to some friends of mine with a few interesting responses in return. And if you'd take a few minutes I'd like to hear how you feel about these two...
"She (Grace) travels outside of Karma" from the U2 song, "Grace" (All That You Can't Leave Behind 2000)
"Papa (God) is especially fond of you." from The Shack by Paul Young
"America may possess the world's largest infrastructure for nurturing human spirituality, complete with hundreds of thousands of houses of worship, thousands of parachurch organizations and schools, and seemingly unlimited products, resources and experts.
Yet, a new study from Barna Group identifies an underlying reason why there is little progress in helping people develop spiritually: many churchgoers and clergy struggle to articulate a basic understanding of spiritual maturity. People aspire to be spiritually mature, but they don't know what it means."
Every other Thursday
evening at Pearl Street Grill I spend a couple hours with three friends in a
discussion revolving around each other’s life story. We’ve been on this
discussion since the beginning of this year in which each individual takes a couple
weeks to tell their story in its entirety. This past Thursday we discussed how we’d like our
story to be told differently five years from now. In other words, what are some aspects of our
character and current perspective that we’d prefer to be tweaked and re-aligned in the
next five years? Interestingly, for all of us it came down to two things:
Knowing God is good and a deeper knowledge of his love for us.
Another key chapter I
recently read in The Shack gets at the heart of our longing in the following pivotal interaction between the characters of Mack and Jesus...
I've had the privilege of listening to Richard Rohr twice in the last two months. Yesterday's talk at Montview Presbyterian Church was titled, "The Path of Descent." The following are simply the notes and one-liners that I jotted down during his talk.
4/25 Notes from Richard Rohr's "The Path of Descent"
Quoting Meister Eckhart – “The spiritual journey is much
more about subtraction than addition.”
The style and preference of the human ego is validation,
accumulation, and climbing the ladder. (A journey of ascending)
Most religions have been about belief and belonging (forms
of ascending) and not about transformation
The trajectory of the catholic church started with the
catacombs and traveled toward the basilicas (origin in Latin “royal palace”)
These two Rich Mullins quotes resonated with me this morning after yesterday's opportunity to speak to my friend Jim's class of high school juniors as well as another good Wednesday night at the Network Coffee House.
"God has called us to be lovers and we frequently think that
He meant us to be saviors. So we “love” as long as we see “results.” We give of
ourselves as long as our investments pay off, but if the ones we love do not
respond, we tend to despair and blame ourselves and even resent those we
pretend to love. Because we love someone, we want them to be free of
addictions, of sin, of self—and that is as it should be. But it might be that
our love for them and our desire for their well - being will not make them
well. And, if that is the case, their lack of response no more negates the
reality of love than their quickness to respond would confirm it." (From An Arrow Pointing to
Heaven p. 165)
“It is noticeable that in both
stories (feeding of the 4,000 & 5,000 in Mark) Jesus not only feeds the
crowds; he involves his disciples in the feeding. The closer we are to Jesus,
the more likely it is that he will call us to share in his work of compassion,
healing and feeding, bringing his kingdom-work to an ever widening circle.”
“The Christian life, as a
disciplined rhythm of following Jesus, involves not onlybeing fed but becoming
in turn one through whom Jesus’ love can be extended to the world. Of course our resources will seem, and feel,
totally inadequate. That is Jesus’ problem not ours; and these stories indicate
well enough that he will cope with it.”
"Receptivity without confrontation leads to a bland neutrality that serves nobody. Confrontation without receptivity leads to an oppressive aggression which hurts everybody."
- Henri Nouwen
"Spirituality is not a formula; it is not a test. It is a relationship. Spirituality is not about competency; it is about intimacy. Spirituality is not about perfection; it is about connection. The way of spirituality begins where we are now in the mess of our lives."
-Mike Yaconelli
"But that doesn’t mean community is easy. For everything in this world tries to pull us away from community, pushes us to choose ourselves over others, to choose independence over interdependence, to choose great things over small things, to choose going fast alone over going far together." -Shane Claiborne
"Nothing that we despise in the other man is entirely absent from ourselves. We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or don’t do, and more in light of what they suffer."
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For while knowledge defines all we currently know and understand, imagination points to all we might yet discover and create." Albert Einstein
"Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." Howard Thurman
"A nation that continues to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
-Dr. Martin Luther King
"Our relationship with each other is the criterion the world uses to judge whether our message is truthful--- Christian community is the final apologetic."
-Francis Schaefer
"It is not allowable to love the Creation according to the purposes one has for it, any more than it is allowable to love one’s neighbor in order to borrow his tools."
Wendell Berry
"All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers. Each one owes infinitely more to the human race than the particular country in which he was born."
-Francois Fenelon
"Ministry cannot be about maintenance, but it is about gathering, about embrace, about welcoming home all sorts of and conditions of people; home is a place for mother tongue, of basic soul food, of old stories told and treasured, of being at ease, known by name,
belonging without qualifying for membership."
-Walter Brueggemann
"Many poets are not poets for the same reason that many religious men are
not saints: they never succeed in being themselves. They never get round to
being the particular poet or particular monk that they are intended to be by
God."
"In order to become myself I must cease to be what I always thought I wanted
to be."
-Thomas Merton
"God spoke to Balaam through his ass, and God's been speaking through them ever since. So, if God chooses to speak through you don't think to highly of yourself."
-Rich Mullins
"We must become holy not because we want to feel holy but because Christ must be able to live his life fully in us."
Mother Teresa
"I am deeply convinced that the Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self."
Henri Nouwen
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