Harar Quixotic

Flying Jesus Day

2012-05-17T18:00:00.004-04:00

I believe …
Jesus Christ…
was crucified, died and was buried;
he descended into hell;
on the third day he rose again from the dead;
he ascended into heaven,
and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty;
from there he will come to judge the living and the dead.

I think Ascension Day brings completion to our meditation on the Paschal Mystery. This is the work of spiritual formation. It is the stuff of discipline that brings us to transformation. With Christ we were crucified, died and were buried. We have died to ourselves and have new meaning brought to our every little death. We also enter into the Paschal Mystery when with Christ we can safely descend into the hell of our past pain and traumas. I remember reading Parker Palmer talk about the mystery of depression. He quoted Annie Dillard saying we are invited to ride the monsters all the way down off the rim of the world to find God. Then the Paschal Mystery invites us to look up.

I love to gaze at the sky. I love a clear blue day with a few high cumulus clouds. They give me a sense of how high is the sky. I realize that I am looking through literally miles of air. There is a height to the sky. I was telling a group of kids in chapel this yesterday and a girl interrupted me laughing and said, “You’re wearing green slippers.”

“No,” I said, “They’re shoes.” Imagine thinking my immensely cool Toms were slippers!

I went on to tell them about how I love to look up at night at the stars. I mean, if you think you get a sense of distance from the clouds, imagine how far you are seeing when you look at the galaxies! And to think that is where Jesus went. I mean where do we always think of heaven as being?

Again the girl laughs at my slippers. “But we’re supposed to be looking up not down at my slippers (I mean shoes),” I quipped. Then I remembered what Dallas Willard said about the Jewish conception of the heavens. “So why did Jesus go into the heavens?” I asked. “So that he could send us the Spirit and show us that he would always be near us, because the heavens start way up at the stars and galaxies and come right down under my green slippers.”

Ascension takes the Paschal Mystery and leaves us looking up. We learn to let go and yet live in a spirit of expectation. “This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11b NIV). In about 10 days we get a glimpse of that Paschal reality as our guarantee, the Holy Spirit, is shed abroad in our hearts.

A Blessing For My Neighborhood

2012-04-15T17:38:00.000-04:00

It is a cool day, yet the air is thick with dew. The clouds drift to the east in patches of light and dark. They are surprisingly fast. Only a slight breeze stirs the tops of the trees that line the street. A jumble of cars park under the trees in front of close fitting houses. The rain threatens, but children continue to play in protest, bouncing basketballs down the sidewalk or threading bicycles between cars. The porch on a day such as this is an attempt at comfort in the midst of confusion. The confusion of jumbled parked cars mirrors the jumble of clouds drifting off in the eastern sky. Even the direction is wrong; the clouds seem to be running away from their home in the sunset. The birds seem angry at one another as they chatter in the branches, trying to assert their territory.

A car with the horn of a train blasts at a couple of preschool children playing at the end of a drive way. The woman driving echoes the blast,

“Where the f*** is your mama?!”

“I don’t know,” the by replies take a step toward the road.

“Get the f*** out of the road!” The woman blasts back. “What’s wrong with you! These two are playing in the f***ing road!” she blasts in the direction of an unseen neighbor. And she is gone, apologizing to the other drivers, and cursing the children.

Is there something in the close fitting houses, in the oppressive clouds, in the unrefreshing breeze that is affecting us today? Is something external making birds and neighbors alike flare with anger? Or is it something within? Do we overflow with pain and contempt, heavy with it like the humid air?

Father, I offer this blessing for my neighborhood. May the streets here lined with trees and close houses be filled with joy. May the chatter of birds and squirrels mix with the giggles of children. May neighbor smile at neighbor and feel the knots of brotherhood constrain their hearts. May the transforming power of Christ lift the oppression that hangs over my street like the dense cloudbank that threatens rain. Tear open the sky! Bless Bay City.

My Holy Week

2012-04-09T11:43:00.002-04:00

"I may never pass this way again."

I kept telling myself this as I went from church to church. When I am attached again to a congregation, how would I be as free to hang out with other churches?

Maundy Thursday, I missed my chance to go to St. Alban's healing service. The kids swimming lessons kept us too late. So we had communion at our community dinner. That was great, but we should have had a foot washing.

Good Friday, I felt the sorrow and needed a service. (I have been accused of being a church addict this week.) We missed the noon time services, but I ran into Pastor Isaac Chung from Westminster Presbyterian at Populace Coffee, and they were having a 7:00 Tenebre service that Ella and I went to. Ella was very impressed with the progressive darkening of the sanctuary and our leaving by our lighted candles.

Saturday I spent with the folks at Trinity Episcopal church. This was the first Easter Vigil service I have been to. It is similar to praying vigils at the monastery. Communion and the word made this service awesome and got me dreaming of doing a vigil service that actually lasted all night.

Sunday morning was busy. I went to the sunrise service at Carroll Park. This is put on every year by the youth at First Presbyterian. The service started at 6:45. I loved watching the clouds light up with reds as the sun rose in the East, while the moon hung large and orange in the West. Another great feature of this service was the family friendly nature, with an egg hunt, donuts, and hot chocolate and coffee to drive away the chill.

Since it was still early I headed back to Westminster for their 8:00 service. Then home for breakfast where I discovered that the daughter of our church planting partners was in the hospital in Midland receiving an appendectomy. Elaine grabbed some flowers from the flower bed and we took off for the hospital on our way to church. The kids went with Grandma, and met us at church.

Sharing Holy Week with so many congregations as a stranger made me really appreciate the body of Christ in its vastness and diversity. All these disparate people were celebrating the same reality of the resurrection. I am grateful to be a part of such a body and rich tradition.

Hosanna!

2012-04-04T15:29:00.001-04:00

This Palm Sunday I was struck by the power behind this word. Hosanna is a cry meaning "save now, I beg you!" That this cry of desperation is also the cry of exultation the crowds shout, appropriating Psalm 118, as Jesus enters the city hit me.

Sunday night I went to the College and Career Connection at CCC with much stress. I am underemployed and finances are getting to a place of hopelessness. Yet, here I am to worship with a bunch of fiery brands for whom worship is a thing of righteous abandon. Hosanna became for me the cry of abandon it was for the crowd that day Jesus rode into town. Save me I beg! For you are the King! You are the one who owns the cattle on a thousand hills! You have all provision and can supply my family's every need! You are worthy to be king of my life! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the Kingdom come! All of that is wrapped up in the cry Hosanna!

What a way to start Holy Week!

The dessert and the Paschal Mystery

2012-03-12T13:44:00.000-04:00

See what other thoughts on Lent are on the MSFL blog.

Sister Ginny, my spiritual director, suggested that I spend some time in the dessert with Jesus. She sensed in our conversation that it would be a good picture of where I am emotionally. I have been mourning some deaths lately. I lost a dream job at the local coffee shop, where I was roasting and making sure the coffees were of highest quality. It wasn't for a bad reason, either, the owner just grew to appreciate how much he wanted to continue to do the things he hired me to do. Still, I loved that job and mourn its death. I also mourn my sense of direction, or at least clarity of what I am doing. I am waiting. Elaine and I are part of a church planting team here in Bay City now, but what do I do while we wait to get started? And where do I find meaningful work to support my family? I am in the desert.

I am reminded that Lent is an invitation to the desert. We are invited to spend 40 days with Jesus in the wilderness, just as he spent 40 years with the Israelites as they wandered. We are invited to do this in preparation for our baptism into his death and resurrection, our entry into the Promised Land.

This is not an easy place to dwell, the desert. It is a wild place, where shadows of crosses spread across the sand and snakes ply their schemes. The scenery in this wilderness is uncomfortable to look upon, and yet that is precisely why we are here to gaze on the things in the desert places. We are entering into the Paschal Mystery. This is the mysterious way God takes death, the death of God’s son, Jesus, and makes life, eternal life for all people. We are invited to enter into this mystery with the deaths in our lives. Not only the big deaths of loved ones, but we enter also into the mystery with the death of our dreams, our youth, or a job. We are invited to gaze into the mystery and let God transform our deaths into life.

We are reminded of the story of the Israelites who complained on their way through the wilderness. They grumbled saying they wouldn’t eat the food that God gave them – that they wouldn’t take another bite, they would just lie down and die. God in his justice answered their prayer. The last bite they would have to take would not be manna but a bite from a snake. Then they would indeed lie down and would die.

Moses prayed, asking God to save his people. The Lord told Moses a strange thing. He told Moses to make a copper copperhead, a serpenty-serpent as fiery red as the burning of their bites and fever. Anyone who looked on this image of suffering, this thing that had become death in the eyes of the people, would be saved. They had to stare death in the eyes to receive their healing.

“And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,” Jesus says, “so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life” (John 3:14-15 NRSV). This is good news for our spiritual formation. Lent invites us to put away our triumph for a time and recall the suffering. It invites us to participate, to fellowship in the suffering of Christ.

Centering prayer is a good practice for this reason. We can begin by closing our eyes, and breathing deeply the dessert air around us. Borrowing form the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius, we can enter into the story for a moment, turn our eyes to the cross, feel the desolate wilderness, lock eyes with death. Then as we kneel at the foot of the cross comes the most important part of centering prayer. We must let go of our agenda. We must let die all of our desires for what we want from God. We are in the wilderness, away from all that distracts and calls our attention. Even our good desires and good thoughts of God must give way so that God can do as God pleases in our hearts. We must even look over the shoulder of Jesus on the cross and turn our gaze on the awful abyss of mystery: God. Lent is an invitation well suited for dwelling there for a time. Don’t hurry. Lock the eyes of your soul on God, through the suffering, and pour your love on God.

The erotic foundations of Love

2012-02-10T14:29:00.000-05:00

This month we are talking about love over on the Spirtual Formation and Leadership blog.

Love is a many splendored thing, so the crooners tell us. We are familiar with the Greek thoughts on the subject, three classifications: Eros, Phileo and Agape. Agape is the unconditional perfect Love of God. Phileo we know as the brotherly love, the best Peter could muster when Jesus asked if Peter loved him. Eros has a dirty, unacceptable quality in our minds equal in essence to lust. I submit that this descending valuation of love isn’t true to the God who is love, nor perfectly helpful to our spiritual formation.

Let’s take a stab at reframing these distinctions. Instead of descending into a well of depravity, lets ascend to the heights of love from a base that is imparted into our very hearts by the Creator. Rather than maligning erotic love as dirty and shameful, let us instead recognize it as the foundation of love, a needfulness placed within our souls. Erotic love is that longing from within that recognizes its need and reaches out for fulfillment. It is what Ronald Rolheiser calls The Holy Longing, the divine madness. It is a definite grace that sends us searching for something to fill that longing, that soul-ache until it find its succor in God.

Phileo builds on that longing, but also recognizes the longing of the heart of the other. It places value on the other for who that person is, and originates from that value. It is a conditional love, conditional on the value of the other person to the loving heart. Peter is perhaps not so poor a lover when he tells Jesus that he phileos him. He values Jesus for the remarkable loving being he is as the exact representation of God’s being.

Agape then builds on eros and phileo. It loves with all the longing and tenderness that values the other, but does not stem from either. It is unconditional and unending. It loves as a reflection of the character of God that is unending and undiminishing regardless of what we do. This is not, then, some ethereal love, devoid of emotion or affection. It subsumes and overwhelms the layers of love that we, as human lovers, are most familiar, transforming it into something divine and transcendent.

Viewed in this way, we can, along with mystics like Hudson Taylor, see in the Song of Solomon a beautiful love story between God and God’s bride. We can celebrate with mystics who flirt with the divine madness, the caresses of God in ecstatic union without falling into a sensualist trap that seeks to debase and deride our experiences with God. Such a trap makes God into something small and familiar devoid of mystery and majesty that God’s nature demands.

Poor Folk

2012-02-04T16:29:00.000-05:00

Poor Folk by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is a collection of letters between a poor civil servant and a ruined ill young woman with an unfortunate past. The charm of the story lies in what is not said. What happens when the two are together? How do the emotions, just hinted at in the letters, drive the story? The final letter is left unfinished. How does the story end? The possibilities excite the imagination and carry the reader away into Dostoyevsky's world. Even without his characteristic lush descriptions of place and people, even without any dialog, Dostoyevsky's genius shines.

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New schools

2012-01-03T11:11:00.000-05:00

This morning we brought Foster and Ella to their new school. It brought back memories and anxieties from the first days of new schools in my childhood. I remember the first time I visited my classroom in Northfield, being pegged as a nerd. O the days clinging white knuckled to the doorframe of the girls bathroom, straining against being pushed in!

On our way up the stairs to Ella’s class, she exclaimed, “This is better than my old school! We didn’t have an upstairs.” I remember the embarrassment of being in a bigger elementary school for half of fourth grade and after three or four weeks still afraid of going to the library by myself, afraid I’d loose my way. I remember the teacher’s exasperation when I asked if my friend Dean could accompany me. What a blessing it was to have some ready made friends from church at that new school!

I hope Foster and Ella find friends quickly and no bullies. Foster had a substitute teacher today. Unfortunately nothing was prepared for him. He had no locker or desk. The substitute did her best to find to find a temporary place for him in a class of thirty. I can only imagine how his regimented methodical mind adapted to a world with no place for him or his things.

The Church and all its Blemishes

2011-12-26T13:27:00.002-05:00

We've been talking about this over on the Spring Arbor Spiritual Formation blog.

Renovation of the Church: What Happens When a Seeker Church Discovers Spiritual Formation by Kent Carlson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read Renovation Of The Church against the backdrop of resigning as pastor of my church. Kent Carlson and Mike Lueken brought me to much introspection and healing, in the face of that transition, with their theology of church. I identified with their struggles and could feel the pain of their transition. A few times their words stopped me in my tracks and brought tears to my eyes as they spoke straight to the wounds in my heart.

After eight years at our church it was becoming clear that our vision of a church that embraces life in the kingdom wasn’t being embraced. We faced the heartbreak of a congregation that would rather cease to be than come to new life. I struggled with my fruitfulness at this church. If Jesus said that Father is glorified in my bearing much fruit (John 15:8), I want to bear fruit! Renovation challenged me again in my struggle, was my expectation of what fruit looked like too tied to measures and metrics? Was it pride that made me want to leave when I felt rejected?

In the midst of the pain inflicted by the backlash to what turned out to be our final push to vibrancy, I held dark thoughts about the dear saints in our pews. It was a healing corrective to hear that the church was to be a messy place, that we aren’t called to make a sect of the in-crowd. They reminded me of my opportunity to bless those who curse you.

As I mentioned earlier to Rob, this reminded me of Ronald Rolheiser’s comments on Sarx in The Holy Longing. The flesh (sarx) that Jesus tells us we must eat to be his is the messy troublesome flesh of his body, the church. We must participate in the imperfect masterpiece, or as Switchfoot pens it, “the beautiful letdown” that is the church. Mike writes, “Our hearts grow bigger for God by worshiping next to they guy who hates to sing, doesn’t know the words and things the tune is lame. We are spiritually better off being in a community with both the committed and marginal” (107). Over the years I have found it difficult to worship where I don’t trust that guy next to me to be longing for intimacy with Jesus.

Last night I went to the Christmas Vigil service at an Episcopal church a few blocks from our new home. I sat behind a couple of young ladies who were clearly there because one of them belonged to the family filling that pew. Their sidelong glances betrayed their mild disdain for what was happening in the service. I remembered Mike’s words and I silently blessed them from behind. In the midst of those who might have been there only to satisfy relatives or admire music and the memorial poinsettias, we did together hear and respond to the Gospel!

I write this on the first Sunday that I haven’t been the pastor of a small church in eight years. I am still mourning the loss as well as enjoying the freedom. I greatly appreciated Kent and Mike in their honesty and transparency. In their story I know I am not alone in my pain or my joys. I rejoice to see Oak Hills as an example that what we’ve been wanting and talking about for so many years is possible. It is a great joy for those of us dreaming of spiritual formation in the church. I also can’t help but appreciate a couple of guys who have so fully imbibed Dallas Willard’s thoughts, they can’t help but spill out on the page. That makes them feel like old friends to me.

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Peter Asher Coffees

2011-11-18T14:14:00.003-05:00

Recently, I had the opportunity to sample a couple of coffees by upstart indie roaster, Peter Asher Coffees. I pulled some shots of their Northern Italian Espresso blend. My first impression was the lightness of the roast. Compared with the darkness of the roast currently in the hopper,


Northern Italian on right

Peter Asher shows off an indication of its roasting philosophy. Clearly there is an attempt here to find the peak roast for the bean, rather than going for a dark smoky flavor. The second thing to strike my attention was the crema. Holy crap there was a lot! High holy crema made up nearly all of the double shot by the end of the extraction. The flavor of the shot was pretty true to its name. It has a bright quality, perhaps a bit sweeter and less dry than its Italian counterpart. Care has to be taken not to under-extract this shot; its sharpness is a bit offensive if the shot is sour.

Northern Italian flavor profile.

Compare the shape of the flavor profile to this one I sketched of Illy Espresso in Europe

I also pulled a shot of their Black Velvet Blend. This was a very dark roast with a lot of oil to give luster to the bean. It was strong in the mid and low tones with a bit of tart.

Black Velvet as espresso extraction

It makes a decent espresso, but how is it as a drip coffee?

In drip form the Black Velvet blend really shines. The sharp peak mellows to a caramel drizzle. The mouth-feel and body are satisfying, supporting the deep richness of the smoky dark roast. The dark roast does not, however, eliminate all the distinctiveness of these beans. The tart experienced in the espresso extraction becomes a playful dance on the tongue in the brewed form, and the mid-tones still possess a woody quality. This cup tastes like fun: rich, satisfying and yet playful. There is a definite nostalgia that is evoked in me by this flavor. It tastes like an emotion—happiness. I have tasted this quality before. In fact I am reminded of a good peaberry Harar.

Dossier of a coffee spy: Chicago

2011-09-07T14:39:00.001-04:00

While on sabbatical, I made it a point to sample all the espresso at as many shops as I could. My many trips to Metropolis Coffee earned me the moniker Coffee Spy by the staff there. Here are my findings

In the many shops I tried in Chicago, I only found three different espresso blends: Metropolis “Red Line,” Intelligencia “Black Cat” and a blend by Coffee and Tea Exchange, a Chicago company.

A pour-over at Metropolis

Metropolis

Metropolis Coffee was perhaps the most impressive shop I visited. Metropolis’ roasting operation extends to many shops and retail locations. Yet Metropolis has but one location, fiercely committed to the Edgewater neighborhood, without the common aspirations to franchise. Their commitment to detail makes me as happy as a giddy Quixote gazing on his peerless Dulcinea. I so enjoyed my experiences here, I returned many times in spite of there being so many coffee shops and so little time. Whether it’s starting an iced coffee with a bit of velvety steamed milk, or putting five minutes of attention into a pour over drip coffee, it is the preparation excellence that makes this shop shine. Their Red Line espresso, named after the train line that takes Edgewater downtown, is intensely mid-toned, chocolaty and resinous with bright tart sparkles in the end. I think modern day vampires might also find this exquisite espresso a nice substitute, as it reminds me a little of the sanguineous flavor for which they so pine.

New Wave Coffee

While at the Milwaukee Ave arts festival, I went to this shop a couple times. They served Metropolis espresso in a festive and artsy atmosphere so appropriate to the neighborhood. The hipster vibe was pleasant and their treatment of Metropolis’ offerings was nicely done.

On afternoon a walk down Clark Street brought me to a couple more coffee shops, Koppi and Coffee Studio.

Koppi a Traveler’s Café

Walking in this shop transported me some mid-oriental market place. In the front windows were low tables with cushions to recline by. They focused on their world food offerings and their espresso from Coffee and Tea exchange was on the upper end of adequate. The atmosphere was so killer there, however, that I can see why it is an area favorite.

Coffee Studio

Back up Clark toward Edgewater I found Coffee Studio. They were serving Intelli’s Black Cat espresso. I had a friendly conversation with the barista about my espresso experiences so far in Chicago. We both agreed that the Black Cat was strangely mellow that day. Black Cat has a deep low end and usually has a tobacco smokiness.

Today that earthy quality was muted. We could only speculate that it was because of the extraordinary humidity that Chicago was subjected to during that heat wave. The atmosphere was more refined here than most of the other shops I visited. Clean lines and modern finishes gave it an upwardly mobile feel.

Caffe Streets

My doppio and cortado at Caffe Streets

On our way home from Minnesota, I was able to hit one of the many shops I missed during our stay. I chose to go to Caffe Streets, which is the progeny of Barista Champion Mike Philips. This is the most refined coffee shop I have ever visited. Rich woods are layered on every surface from the counters to the ceiling. They serve Black Cat along with one or two single origin coffees as espresso every day. I sampled the El Salvadoran Santa Anna from Handsome Roasters as a single origin espresso. While lacking the roundness of a blend, it held up quite well to the extraction. It produced a tart flavor in the mid to treble range. I also tried the Black Cat in a cortado. The Cortado is a Chicago standard that I haven’t run across elsewhere. It is about half espresso and half steamed milk (espresso cut with milk or a very short and strong latte). Caffe Streets uses a local low-temperature-pasteurized milk steamed into a velvety micro-foam that melds exquisitely with Black Cat’s harsh sweetness. It is served in a short breakfast tumbler with beautifully wrought latte art.

Caffe Streets bar with drip tower

A specialty I didn’t have time to try, the Neat, is a cold slow drip iced coffee produced in a tower of beakers and tubes the sight of which geeked my poor heart out.

Next time I’m in Chicago I need to remember to try Wormwhole (the home of Mocha Puffs), Chava, and Ipsento. Have any others I need to try? Leave a comment.

Sleepless nights

2011-08-13T10:55:00.000-04:00

During the three weeks we spent in Chicago, our sabbatical was restful. We focused on enjoying community life and learning how it works. Now that we are staying with my parents, it seems that the weight of our responsibility for the church is upon me again. I feel like now is the time for us to work on dreaming and planning.

Last night I was agitated and stressed. Elaine didn’t seem ready to do this work and I was feeling the stress of it. I mused and fumed, dared to dream and abandoned all hope in turn. I remembered, before we left, how I recognized that it would take faith to leave the church in God’s hands. Last night I was worrying again that there might not be a church to come back to. I remembered prayer times at The Nidge. There was a sandy pot where one could leave a candle burning. I wished I had that available to me – to leave my need and prayer before God in a tangible way and put my care back in God’s hands. It was about two in the morning when I found a solution. I turned the light on in the bathroom and left that light burning as a prayer before God. Understand I know my prayer is always before God, but tonight I needed a way to walk away, leaving it there before God.

Even after the stress left me, I still couldn’t sleep. Other projects came to mind. I began redesigning a spinner ring, planning the custom pieces I would need machined. I pondered how to create an automatic bell to chime for times of prayer that would also be kinetic art. Wherever I turned, my brain wouldn’t let me sleep.

Living in Community

2011-07-22T01:30:00.000-04:00

I am starting to get a sense of the joys of living in community as well as the work involved. My favorite feature of community so far is evening prayer, especially when followed by a community meal. This is where living together for the sake growing in Christ really shines.

Today I made porcupine meatballs. I made one batch in our normal way and tried another batch as a vegetarian dish using black beans. Apparently the rice I used was not of the par-boiled variety so they wound up kind of crunchy. But the real joy was sitting together at a picnic table by the street curb enjoying the meal together even as the rest of the neighborhood passed by, seeing the clouds reflect the setting sun and the fireflies joining us to entertain the kids. It is an idyllic life.

It is also a lot of work. I can see already how difficult it can be to keep channels of communication open. It has been especially difficult with the intense heat this week, we spent the last couple evenings in our air conditioned room rather than chatting. Last night we had a wonderful reading of the first half of Othello, but I was strangely withdrawn not even daring to read. It will be interesting to see how the next weeks play out and if what binds me loosens its grip. I think three weeks may be just about right. One is over too fast, like a vacation. Two is comfortable. By three we ought to have gotten to the real work of living in community under a spiritual rule.

Union and Communion

2011-07-19T17:54:00.005-04:00

The Union and Communion by J. Hudson Taylor
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a surprisingly mystical work from the founder of the China Inland Mission. I found it passionately written. Taylor takes a look at the Song of Solomon through the eyes of a Christian Mystic. He identifies with the bride enraptured in her bridegroom, sick with love. In her he finds the dramatic experience of the believer, at one time caught up in union with Christ, at another feeling the pain of separation because of her own heart "prone to wander."

Taylor also betrays a glimpse of his own soul. This hero of modern missions has the heart of a mystic - not one caught up in the navel-gazing which causes many to impugn the mystics, but one whose ardent love for his Beloved stirs him to action.

When she is separated from him for the second time, the bride tells the daughters of Jerusalem how lovely he is, her heart inflamed and faint with love, growing more so as she tells it. (SS 5:9-16)

The LION of the tribe of Judah is to His own bride the KING of love; and, with full heart and beaming face, she so recounts His beauties that the daughters of Jerusalem are seized with strong desire to seek Him with her that they also may behold His beauty.

This is why Hudson Taylor went to China! His heart was so full of his savior's beauty that he had to share it. In comparing the church to the bride of Solomon, he also declares that this is the experience of every Christian, to be so wholly in love with Christ that mission flows from the heart like honey from the comb.

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A mistake I often make.

2011-05-26T23:01:00.001-04:00

I often inadvertently confuse these two words. For the record, this is a man wearing a cassock:

And this is a man wearing a Cossack:

A Screamo Easter

2011-04-23T00:24:00.005-04:00

There are three Sundays in particular that cause me consternation: Christmas, Easter and Pentecost. These celebrations are so meaningful to me and the christian faith, that I struggle to communicate them with creativity and pathos appropriate to their inherent specialness.

Easter is coming in a couple days and my soul wants to scream He Lives. The music for the season communicates powerfully with their words but the tunes are reminiscent of marshmallow peeps.

The best rendition of Christ the Lord Is Risen Today that I could find is this one. It is up beat and modern, but in a smooth jazz/r&b sort of way. To communicate the joy and rapture that ought to be bursting from our hearts, the jazz should be rough and the blues sexy. I feel like if I gave voice to my soul I should scream it out half choking on the emotion - I want to hear P.O.D. or Blindside's rendition!

We cannot celebrate Easter hard enough! Death, the grave and hell conquered by the unfathomed awful rising of the triumphant King!

The Aesthetic Thread

2011-04-11T16:37:00.001-04:00

I have come to see an aesthetic thread running through my life. It is there in my tastes in music, art, literature, food, and drink. The spectacular thing is that this thread resonates with my passion for God like the string on a violin.

Holy Longing marks my relationship with God. I have a passionate desire for intimacy with my Divine Lover that has its root in Eros and stretches for Agape. There is a bittersweet quality to our intercourse, my God and I. When I feel surrounded by God’s presence I feel joy and comfort, satisfaction and wholeness, but I also feel tears well up and a lump come to my throat. I rest in God’s presence and at the same time I mourn that I am not consummated and consumed in divine rapture. I have chosen words that may shock the reader with erotic connotations. This is appropriate because the holy longing I am describing is wholly a function of Eros. It is the divine spark and divine madness spoken of by philosophers and mystics alike.

Because of this foundational longing in my heart for the divine, my soul is stirred by aesthetic experiences that remind me of that relationship. Like the sent of a lover these qualities evoke in my soul the emotions and connection I have in God. They can serve as avenues into God’s presence and touchstones returning me to awareness of my love and position in God.

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

The experience that has given me the most insight into this aesthetic thread is that of my search for great espresso. As I have gotten more into espresso I have found that there is a particular flavor profile for which I am searching. It has rumbling bass tone that dominates and wrestles with my tongue. It is a tough sensibility. I have come to see in this rumbling my desire to be mastered by the Divine. It cries with my soul, “Batter my heart three person’d God!” This flavor profile also has a clean fresh treble to balance and finish the experience in sweetness. It was a great epiphany to recognize that I taste God in that shot. How apt that baristas call the best shot they have ever pulled a god shot.

In music this quality has its expression in passionate, emotional digging in. I love to play the Bari Sax because it so effortlessly digs in with a growl. This is also why I love my jazz not smooth but rough. I love blues and the vocal turns of Ella Fitzgerald. Sing to me of the soul’s deepest longings! Lay down the boogie and play that funky music, please!

I love the bittersweet tang of Russian literature. Take this ending to a short story by Anton Chekhov. Aptly titled "A Dreary Story," it chronicles the thoughts of a dying man and focuses on his fatherly love for his ward, Katya.

A silence follows. Katya straightens her hair, puts on her hat, then crumples up the letters and stuffs them in her bag -- and all this deliberately, in silence. Her face, her bosom, and her gloves are wet with tears, but her expression now is cold and forbidding. . . . I look at her, and feel ashamed that I am happier than she. The absence of what my philosophic colleagues call a general idea I have detected in myself only just before death, in the decline of my days, while the soul of this poor girl has known and will know no refuge all her life, all her life!
"Let us have lunch, Katya," I say.
"No, thank you," she answers coldly. Another minute passes in silence. "I don't like Harkov," I say; "it's so grey here -- such a grey town."
"Yes, perhaps. . . . It's ugly. I am here not for long, passing through. I am going on today."
"Where?"
"To the Crimea . . . that is, to the Caucasus."
"Oh! For long?"
"I don't know."
Katya gets up, and, with a cold smile, holds out her hand without looking at me.
I want to ask her, "Then, you won't be at my funeral?" but she does not look at me; her hand is cold and, as it were, strange. I escort her to the door in silence. She goes out, walks down the long corridor without looking back; she knows that I am looking after her, and most likely she will look back at the turn.
No, she did not look back. I've seen her black dress for the last time: her steps have died away. Farewell, my treasure!

After lovingly developing these characters and their reliance on and love for one another this parting is a bittersweet ending to the story. It is typical of Chekhov and demonstrates the peculiar Russian outlook on life that dwells in the space between longing and fulfillment.

Even the foods I love have this savory quality to them. Take the exquisite balance of flavors in a Greek meal. The refreshing taste of rice with white raisins, domadales: stuffed grape-leaves with their citrus tones, savory lamb, and buttery spanikopita. What a God-filled meal!

Image via Wikipedia

In art and architecture I find the aesthetic expression in the voluptuous curves of modernist design, the heroic images of art deco portraiture and the fashion of steampunk. The nostalgia that is evoked in me by the styles and sensibilities around the last century resonate with my longing for eternity. I find in those moments of nostalgia, a train whistle, the fragrance of spring blossoms, a thin place between the temporal and eternal, and it excites in me that which has been made eternal and longs for eternity. The expression of retro-futurism found in steampunk and the like are echoes of my search for God in the ancient practices of the Church and her mystics, while reaching to the future where God’s promises wait for me, all by experiencing God in the present through aesthetic avenues as well as intangible and apophatic avenues.

The great danger in aesthetics is that these experiences of food, drink, sights, and sounds, will become a sensual substitute for the reality they represent. When we turn to food to fill the holy longing, we become gluttons. Drink makes us addicts. Sights and sounds and pleasurable touch make us sensualists guided by the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes. But when our love is focused on the One who loves us best, these can be the aesthetic thread that connects us with the passionate reality that is God.

hope

2011-03-04T16:05:00.002-05:00

What accounts for this hopeful feeling that fills me today? Crazy consolation. I feel as though dreams might really come true. What a wonderful God-feeling.

Flitting and fluttering passions

2011-02-27T20:30:00.000-05:00

My Confession, Psalm 131

¹ My heart is ~~not~~ proud, LORD,
my eyes are ~~not~~ haughty;
I ~~do not~~ concern myself with great matters
or things too wonderful for me.

Praying this Psalm this morning was a mirror showing me the condition of my heart. Passions have been swirling around in me clamoring for change. I have what I still consider God-given ideas and desires. Passions to help people hungry for spiritual depth, to craft a new church that embraces the ancient symbols and experiences while living in a vibrancy of Pentecost. I want to see a contemplative and experiential ministry to children and their families out of that church. I want to minister to kids again. I want to live in neo-monastic community with others hungry for the same things. All these things swirl around and my haughty eyes see no way that they can be done. Not here. If these things are indeed from God they come from a depth of mystery. They are too great for me. They require patience to unfold in God's wonderful timing. How I need God's peace to enter the troubled waters of my soul! The rest of Psalm 131 is my need and my goal.

² But I have calmed and quieted myself,
I am like a weaned child with its mother;
like a weaned child I am content.

³ Israel, put your hope in the LORD
both now and forevermore.

Brother Leach, this week, told me that these frustrations will never leave. In ministry there is always something more God is calling us to, stretching us to, stretching our communities to. I need the quieting. Years ago talking about spiritual formation would send my soul a twitter with excitement. Looking back at how my masters program in spiritual formation has changed me I see that those fluttering passions have settled into a deep well within me. I need the same peace about church planting, about the future.

Parents as Spiritual Directors

2011-02-03T11:15:00.010-05:00

Then little children were being brought to him in order that he might lay his hands on them and pray. The disciples spoke sternly to those who brought them; but Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.’ And he laid his hands on them and went on his way.[1]

Who would doubt Jesus’ sincerity about wanting children to come to him? Yet the actions of many in the church imply that we don’t believe children can really access the depths of relationship with Christ. There are challenges associated with the spirituality of children, to be sure, but against them stand the very nature of God and ancient practices that can assist children on the way.

Challenge

When I was a teenager I was delighted to be ministering to children. I felt called to children’s ministry as a child and as a teenager I was already realizing the dream. However, one Sunday morning shook my convictions so violently that, for a time, I abandoned the thought of ministry to children. A new pastor had just taken over the children’s ministry that I had been running with some friends. I was helping her this particular Sunday when she invited the children to respond to a salvation message. I saw many children finding places of prayer, asking Jesus to be their Savior. Instead of producing joy, this event rocked me to my core. Many of these children were already saved and had in the weeks and months before been finding places of prayer to deepen their relationships with God and seek the baptism in the Holy Spirit. I was immediately faced with the question: Can children understand this spiritual life? Is the richness of relationship with the triune God available to them?

Today, I am the father of five-year-old Foster and seven-year-old Ella. This challenge comes home to me as I attempt to use all of my training as a children’s pastor to help them find their own experiences of God. Ella is naturally more interested in the things of God. Foster is younger and is at a stage where “Jesus things” are boring. Exploring Foster’s spirituality with him is even more challenging. I have come to believe that the wealth of spiritual relationship is for them, yet those questions from my teen years spur me on to study how that spiritual growth happens.

Worldview

The stakes are high. The majority of people who come to faith in Christ will do so as children. At the same time the church is facing high numbers of young adults abandoning their faith as they enter college. Their worldview is challenged, and for many, who have made a black-and-white, inflexible structure of beliefs and ideas, their faith will topple.

George Barna gives a litany of statistics profiling the children of our nation. Fewer than three out of ten fourth graders read at grade level. One in ten teenagers report to having had sex before their thirteenth birthday. One of every ten eighth graders smoke daily and one out of three were drunk in the past year.[2] While Barna points out that these statistics don’t represent a crisis, and children on the whole do pretty well in spite of messy lives, he says, “Our nations children will struggle to maintain a healthy balance in life.”[3] The trajectory of statistics suggests that, “The end result of growing up in this challenging culture will be a country of adults whose standards have been lowered and whose sensitivities have been blunted.”[4] Barna suggests the missing factor, on which all these problems hinge, is spiritual health.

Rational Theology

The church has wrestled with what to do with children from the earliest days. There have been many questions. Are children born innocent or guilty? What happens to an infant who dies before coming to Christ as savior? Does infant baptism redeem them? All of these questions have influenced the way that the church has dealt with the challenge of forming faith in young ones, and the church’s responses have created many challenges over the years. The challenges became that much more stark during the enlightenment when theology and spirituality became increasingly rational.

Two Extremes

The major solution to the questions posed by the church was the age of accountability. This idea proposed that children are in a special state of grace until such time as they can discern right from wrong. There has never been a consensus about what age that would occur and it has been left mostly subjective. Theologians come to this idea from two perspectives, the inherent innocence or guilt of the child. The early church, before the time of Augustine and his contemporaries, emphasized the child’s innocence.[5] For the early church it was this innocence that Jesus was commending to his followers as a subject for imitation. Augustine and some of his contemporaries argued for the immediate baptism of infants because their fallen nature would condemn them in death. The two extremes then are that children are innocent and nothing need be done for them, and that children are sinful and unbaptized children will not enter the Kingdom. In between these extremes is the special status of children before the age of accountability.[6]

The response of the church to these ideas falls on a continuum from inaction to zealous evangelism. If one holds completely to the innocence of children the danger is that no effort or value will be placed on developing the spirituality of children. Inaction is also the possible outcome of those who, trusting in infant baptism, leave the child’s spirituality alone until confirmation. The same can be said of those who trust in a Christian family environment to protect a child. On the other hand, the revivalists of the enlightenment came to see children as the objects of intense evangelism, focusing on conversion, and then again possibly leaving the spiritual formation untouched.

Revivalist approach

During the enlightenment, revivalists were calling people to repentance and conversion. They expected that men and women would come to rational terms with their sinfulness and turn to God. As the enlightenment came to a close, revivalists came to question the practice of leaving children in their sinfulness until such a time as they could have a conversion experience because they had reached a level of mental reasoning.[7] Figures such as D. L. Moody, Charles Finney and Edward Payson Hammond began to increase their efforts at evangelizing children. Yet the enlightenment/rationalist attitude toward children prevailed in church thought, as theories of cognitive development seemed to limit the kind of rational thinking about God in which children could be expected to engage.

Developmental theory

For years the church followed modernist thought, birthed out of the enlightenment, that spiritual development required high level, abstract reasoning skills, and was reserved for thinkers, intellectuals and academics. It was not for the average Christian, let alone the child. This thought dominated the research of children’s spirituality during the cognitive period of thought (1960-1990).[8] Based on the work of Jean Piaget, the prevailing thought of this period suggested that children developed in stages. The cognitive ability to reason with the abstract doesn’t occur until adolescence. If that is the mark by which children are seen to have access to the spiritual richness found in Christ then young children would be excluded.

Fortunately for those interested in the spiritual development of their children, Piaget does not have the last word. Erik Erikson’s stages of development offer insight into ways parents and other adults can help the child experience God. In each of Erikson’s stages there is a core conflict being addressed by the individual with one of two outcomes. In infancy the conflict is between trust and mistrust. The parent then can aid the spirituality of the child by helping him or her learn to trust mom and dad. As the toddler begins the struggle between autonomy versus shame and doubt the parent can help the child learn self-control without losing self-esteem. Children at this stage learn they have a will and also how to submit to the will of another. From four to six the child struggles between initiative and guilt. Not only does he or she test boundaries but also develops conscience. These are important parts of the development of the child morally and the parent can offer guidance through these and every stage of life under his or her care.[9]

Stage theory has its limitations, however. Many people looked to the developmental stages offered by Piaget, Erikson and others to determine how best to nurture the spirituality of children. One problem with this is that “a descriptive account of what is does not automatically lead to a prescriptive account of what can or should be.”[10] Building lessons and methods based on generalized ideas about the cognitive level of a group will leave children who are ahead or behind the mark frustrated. On the other hand children can often rise to a challenge set before them.

Another note is that much of the research into what children could experience spiritually was based on what they said about their spiritual experiences. This is limited by their ability to use language. One cannot assume because the child’s ability to express a spiritual experience is limited, that the experience itself is limited.[11]

Along came the recent work of Rebecca Nye and David Hay to answer these concerns. They found that behind the language and descriptions of the children there was a common thread. The core of the spirituality of children, they found, was a relational consciousness. Those experiences that were spiritual in nature were times when the child had a heightened consciousness of his or her relationship to the reality around them. The exciting thing to note is that this is not directly tied to cognitive development. Nye and Hay’s research demonstrates that the core of spirituality is available to children and can be nurtured. The challenge then is how do adults best nurture the unique spiritual lives of children? There is a wealth of material that has emerged recently about children’s spirituality and the implications for formation.

Theological Foundation

There is no better place to look for a foundation for our treatment of children’s spirituality than in the very nature of God. In his breathtaking book, The Knowledge of the Holy, A. W. Tozer bookends his discussion of the attributes of God by drawing the tension between two chapters, “God Incomprehensible” and “The Open Secret.” These two attributes will serve us well as we approach the spirituality of children.

The incomprehensible God

God is completely other. Our minds cannot conceive of something so outside our experiences. Tozer notes, that even the mythical creatures of lore are nothing more than fanciful versions of creatures known to human experience in nature.[16] In God there is no such point of reference that can accurately capture who God is. We make comparisons in order to understand truths about God, but they are sorry approximations of the reality of the Transcendent.

Faced with the awesome reality of God, our minds completely fail. No creative imagination of child or adult can create majesty so resplendent as to be worthy of God. No amount of logic and systematic theology can draw the outline of God’s boundaries. Volumes have been written and myriad traditions guard numerous sacred truths, and yet God is not known in true fullness.

For many the idea that God is ultimately beyond our mental capacity is disconcerting. We have learned to distrust mystery and fear that which we cannot know. How can we be confident in our relationship with God if we can never know God fully? For those who wonder if children can have access to God before they have the capacity to comprehend God, however, this is good news. Children are in good company! Not one of us can apprehend God with our minds.

Apophatic Spirituality

Words sometimes get in the way of our understanding of our experiences with God. This is true for adults as well as children. Apophatic spirituality is an ancient way of approaching God without words. This way affirms that God cannot be apprehended by the intellect but can be apprehended by love.

The fourteenth century English mystic who wrote The Cloud of Unknowing, spoke of putting all the good and valuable things under a cloud of forgetting and placing our naked intent before the cloud of unknowing.[17] We are invited to “beat upon that thick cloud of unknowing with the dart of your loving desire and do not cease come what may.”[18]

Try to understand this point. Rational creatures such as men and angels possess two principal faculties, a knowing power and a loving power. No one can fully comprehend the uncreated God with his knowledge; but each one, in a different way, can grasp him fully through love. Truly this is the unending miracle of love: that one loving person, through his love, can embrace God, whose being fills and transcends the entire creation. And this marvelous work of love goes on forever for he whom we love is eternal.[19]

I am reminded of Hay and Nye’s work in children’s spirituality. Words often limit the child’s ability to describe the spiritual experience. In some cases, even the religious language became a fall back to which children retreated to hide from the reality of what they experienced.[20] Apophatic spirituality is about apprehending God with love. This resonates with the core of children’s spirituality as found by Rebecca Nye: relational consciousness. Even without the higher, abstract, reasoning capacities garnered in adolescence, children still experience the spiritual as relationship. For Christian children this means experiencing their love for God and God’s love for them. Five-year-old Foster can say, “Do you know how much I love my whole family? As much as I love Jesus!” In that statement he is aware of his special relationship with his family and with God through Jesus Christ. That is intensely spiritual, though he and children like him may struggle with their young minds to understand the nature of that relationship.

The constant voice of God

While no person can apprehend God by his or her intellect, God delights in revealing the Divine nature to us. God’s voice is constantly speaking and self-revelation is almost a compulsion for God. It seems to me that all of creation exists so that God can express God’s Divine nature. Scripture is the story of God with us, God’s self-revelation, and also contains evidence of God’s compulsion. God walks with Adam. God covenants with Abraham. God speaks to Moses as to a friend. In the ultimate act of self-revelation, God became man in the person of Jesus Christ who is the “radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being.”[21]

At the end of his chapter “God Incomprehensible,” Tozer says that while we will never know what God is like in God’s self, we can know the things God has revealed.[22] “The Open Secret” is that we each may know God in relationship.

To know God is at once the easiest and the most difficult thing in the world. It is easy because the knowledge is not won by hard mental toil, but is something freely given. As sunlight falls free on the open field, so the knowledge of the holy God is a free gift to men who are open to receive it.But this knowledge is difficult because there are conditions to be met and the obstinate nature of fallen man does not take kindly to them.[23]

The conditions that he describes are the disciplines. The voice of God is constantly speaking to us. It rolls on like a river from eternity past. The disciplines put us in a place where that grace can wash over us. The voice of God’s self revelation, as Tozer put it, is like sunlight surrounding us and bathing us in its light. Children are constantly surrounded by the speaking voice of God. It may speak to them from the beauty of nature. It may even come when wrapped in wonder over the water running from a tap.[24] The voice is constantly speaking, though we may not always recognize it. Adults and children, alike, benefit from someone who will help them listen.

Biblical Philosophy

Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. And the Lord called Samuel again the third time. And he arose and went to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” Then Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the boy. Therefore Eli said to Samuel, “Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak, Lord, for thy servant hears.’”[25]

In this story Samuel hears the voice of God for the first time. It takes three interruptions of his sleep for Eli to realize what was happening, but he is finally able to help his young charge recognize the voice of God.

Scripture repeatedly affirms that God speaks to children. To the child, Jeremiah, God says,

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
And before you were born I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet to the nations.[26]

Jeremiah protests that he is too young to speak to the nations, but God affirms that God has placed Jeremiah even as a youth over nations and kingdoms to deliver God’s word.

To Timothy, Paul writes,

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.[27]

Often we exalt the testimonies of those who have dramatic adult conversions. How much more wonderful is it, however, for a person to be able to say with Samuel or Jeremiah or Timothy, I have known the voice of God since I was a child?

God’s use of the family

Timothy was the child and grandchild of godly women. Paul is reminded, as he writes 2 Timothy 1:5, of the sincere faith of Timothy’s grandmother Lois, and mother Eunice. God used Timothy’s family to stir in him “a sincere faith.” The family is God’s chosen instrument to form the faith of little ones. In Deuteronomy 6, Moses instructs parents to pass on the commands he is giving them. The imagery he uses is continual, daily and creative. Parents are to talk when they get up and when they lay down, when they walk on the road and when they stay home. The commandments are to be written on the walls and gates and tied to their hands and foreheads. There is symbolism and constant reminder offered through the context of the family.

Barna reports that, “four out of five parents (85%) believe that they have the primary responsibility for the moral and spiritual development of their children, but more than two thirds of them abdicate that responsibility to the church.”[28] God has uniquely equipped the family with nearly constant contact and given them the tools to nurture spiritual formation. The church has never found a better way and must help families fulfill this high calling.

Model

How then can parents help children come to recognize the constantly speaking voice of God? There is a strategy for doing just that, which has been practiced for centuries: Spiritual Direction.

Spiritual Direction

Spiritual direction is a relationship in which three people enter into a conversation: the person seeking direction, the director and the Holy Spirit. There is one purpose to this meeting, helping the person recognize the voice of the Spirit. The director listens and asks questions of the person while all the time listening to the Spirit. The person tells about his or her experiences with life or prayer where they might be conscious of the relationship with God. The director simply helps them see and hear more clearly and pay attention to elements of richness they might otherwise miss.

Brief overview

This relationship is different than counseling or coaching. In those contexts two people meet before God to pursue a human goal, while in spiritual direction, the person and God meet in the presence of a witness, the director, to pursue God’s goal.[29] The director is another set of eyes and ears, a mirror to reflect the conversation back to the person experiencing God’s voice.

The spiritual direction meeting, then, is a place of prayer. When I sit down with my daughter, Ella, for spiritual direction, we light a candle and spend a little time in silence to become aware of the presence of Jesus. I want to establish an atmosphere of prayer. Both the director and the person need to approach direction with this attitude of prayer. Prayer is when “the human heart discloses itself to God and is open to listen and respond.”[30] In spiritual direction the director is invited to listen along.

Effective spiritual direction meetings depend on both people intending to listen attentively for the Holy Spirit, which leans more toward patient waiting than active striving to hear God. Prayer becomes a mixture of activity and passivity: an active intentionality to be available to the Spirit and a passive open willingness that invites God to set agendas for spiritual direction conversations. Directees do not need to have what they describe as an outstanding or successful prayer life. But they do need to be willing to pray regularly and explore the Spirit’s invitations. The willingness of directors and directees to continue to pray and seek God even when prayer is not satisfying or comfortable is essential for spiritual direction to take place.[31]

The role of the director is to ask questions that help the person recognize where God might be speaking, and at same time listen to the Spirit speaking in order to give feedback or direct questions to where God would have them go. The job is not an easy one. It takes full active attention to the person telling about his or her experiences with God. At the same time, the director is listening with wrapped attention to the stirrings of the Spirit. From the Spirit, the director may sense what parts of the person’s story are important, what to press, and where to ask questions. The director may also hear from the Spirit a special word of encouragement or direction for the person. The director must also have a high view of the individual sitting across from him or her. Thomas Merton writes, “A true director can never get over the awe he feels in the presence of a person, an immortal soul, loved by Christ, washed in His most Precious Blood, and nourished by the sacrament of His Love.”[32]

Parents as spiritual directors

In order to minister to children, I am convinced one must approach them with just the kind of awe and humility Merton writes about. We must be convinced that the spiritual needs of our children are as important as our own and that the charge of nurturing that spiritual formation is a high and holy calling. Spiritual direction can be an intimate setting, as the sharer and the director both lay their souls bare to receive from the Spirit. It is appropriate for parents to serve in this very intimate position.

After centering into the presence of Jesus, the director usually asks something like, “So, where have you felt close to God this week?” However, it could be a month since the last meeting. That is common for adults, who have full hour sessions, but I have found in directing my own children, that fifteen to twenty-minute sessions, weekly, work out better.

The child then goes on to tell the stories about where they have felt God. It may be a special time at church, or maybe they felt Jesus playing with them, or helping them with their schoolwork. Often the discussion centers on some experience of prayer. If the child doesn’t have experiences from which to draw, the parent can help the child with these experiences throughout the week. Going on prayer journeys from The Praying Family or exploring disciplines from Habits of a Child’s Heart may be very helpful here.

The parent as director listens to the story, asking questions for clarification. Here, the parent must resist the urge to correct the experience or interject a moral lesson. The role of the director isn’t to teach but to listen and draw out from the child conclusions about where and how God is speaking to him or her.

Spiritual direction is also helpful in times of stress or crisis for the child. When Ella was having a hard time at school, spiritual direction became a safe place for her to rest in the love of daddy and Jesus. When we found out that she was being bullied, I led her through a healing prayer meditation where she actually took her bullies to Jesus! She was imagining Jesus was with her, and she asked him where he was when she was being bullied. Jesus showed her that he was right behind her, following her every step. This is an image she can take with her, and when she feels threatened or hurt she can lean into Jesus or turn and give him a hug.

For a parent to become good at directing his or her children, it is important that they find a spiritual director themselves. The direction sessions will not only help them find where God is speaking to them but introduce and strengthen techniques and methods for being a good director. A parent may also want to find an experienced director to supervise the parent’s direction of his or her children. A supervision relationship helps the director see blind spots in his or her own life that may affect the ability to effectively direct the child. A supervisor normally listens to a recounting of the director’s session with an ear to what is happening in the director and between the director and God.

Conclusion

The spiritual direction approach is consistent with what we have discovered about children’s spirituality. Spiritual direction like this may well be the missing component to the spiritual development of children. They get the cognitive lessons through Sunday school, devotions and stories, but the relational consciousness can be developed through conversations like these. As we build a foundation of experience of relationship with God, we help children find something that cannot be taken away. A worldview can be challenged, beliefs can be shaken, but when a child experiences his or her own relationship with God, that story can never be denied.

Bibliography

Allen, Holly Catterton, ed. Nurturing Children's Spirituality: Christian Perspectives and Best Practices. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2008.

Anthony, Michael J, ed. Perspectives on Children's Spiritual Formation: Four Views. Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2006.

Bakke, Jannette A. Holy Invitations: Exploring Spiritual Direction. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2000.

Barna, George. Transforming Children Into Spirtual Champions. Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 2003.

Barry, William A., and William J Connolly. The Practice of Spiritual Direction. New York: HarperCollins, 1982.

Beckwith, Ivy. Postmodern Children's Ministry: Ministry to Children in the 21st Century Church . Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004.

Butts, Kim. The Praying Family: Creative Ways To Pray Together. Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2003.

Coles, Robert. The Spiritual Life of Children. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1990.

Hart, Tobin. The Secret Spiritual World of Children: The Breakthrough Discovery that Profoundly Alters Our Conventional View of Children's Mystical Experiences. Makawao, HI: Inner Ocean Publishing, 2003.

Hay, Robert, and Rebecca Nye. The Spirit of the Child: Revised Edition. Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2006.

Hess, Valerie E., and Marti Watson Garlett. Habits of a Child's Heart: Raising Your Kids With the Spiritual Disciplines. Colorado Springs: Navpress Publishing Group, 2004.

Johnston, William, ed. The Cloud of Unknowing and The Book of Privy Counseling. New York: Doubleday, 1973.

Mapes, Patricia, and Greg Mapes. Raising Spiritual Children: Cultivating a Revelatory Life. Dayton, OH: Nexus Institute, 2009.

Merton, Thomas. Spiritual Direction & Meditation. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1960.

Ratcliff, Donald, ed. Children's Spirituality: Christian Perspectives, Spirituality And Applications. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2004.

Stonehouse, Catherine. Joining Children on the Spiritual Journey: Nurturing a Life of Faith. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1998.

Temple, Gray. "Spiritual Direction in the Episcopal Tradition." In Spiritual Direction and the Care of Souls, by Gary W. Moon and David G. Benner, 78-95. Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2004.

Tozer, A. W. The Knowledge of the Holy. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1961.

Yust, Karen Marie. Real Kids, Real Faith: Practices for Nurturing Children's Spiritual Lives . San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004.

[1] Matthew 19:13-15 (NRSV).

[2] George Barna, Transforming Children Into Spirtual Champions (Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 2003) 18-21.

[3] Barna, 26.

[4] Barna, 26.

[5] Holly Catterton Allen, ed., Nurturing Children's Spirituality: Christian Perspectives and Best Practices, ed. Holly Catterton Allen (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2008), 64-66.

[6] Donald Ratcliff, ed., Children's Spirituality: Christian Perspectives, Spirituality And Applications, ed. Donald Ratcliff (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2004), 55.

[7] Michael J Anthony, ed., Perspectives on Children's Spiritual Formation: Four Views, ed. Michael J Anthony (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2006), 26.

[8] Allen, 26.

[9] Catherine Stonehouse, Joining Children on the Spiritual Journey: Nurturing a Life of Faith (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1998), 48-58.

[10] Allen, 32.

[11] Robert Hay and Rebecca Nye, The Spirit of the Child: Revised Edition (Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2006), 60.

[12] Michael J Anthony, ed., Perspectives on Children's Spiritual Formation: Four Views, ed. Michael J Anthony (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2006), 14.

[13] Tobin Hart, The Secret Spiritual World of Children: The Breakthrough Discovery that Profoundly Alters Our Conventional View of Children's Mystical Experiences (Makawao, HI: Inner Ocean Publishing, 2003), 7.

[14] So Ratcliff (Allen, 34.), and others in Children’s Spirituality (Ratcliff).

[15] William A. Barry and William J Connolly, The Practice of Spiritual Direction (New York: HarperCollins, 1982), 21.

[16] A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1961), 10.

[17] Tozer, 15.

[18] William Johnston, ed., The Cloud of Unknowing and The Book of Privy Counseling, ed. William Johnston (New York: Doubleday, 1973), 55.

[19] Johnston, 50.

[20] “On the other hand, the disadvantage of encouraging children to talk in religious terms was that it tended to trigger off impersonal ‘learned’ responses rather than reference the child’s personal experience” (Hay and Nye, 88).

[21] Hebrews 1:3

[22] Tozer, 16-17.

[23] Tozer, 180.

[24] Hay and Nye, 122.

[25] 1 Samuel 2:7-9a (RSV).

[26] Jeremiah 1:5 (RSV).

[27] 2 Timothy 3:14-15 (RSV).

[28] Barna, 77-78. Also Allen, 255.

[29] Gray Temple, "Spiritual Direction in the Episcopal Tradition," in Spiritual Direction and the Care of Souls, 78-95 (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2004), 91.

[30] Jannette A. Bakke, Holy Invitations: Exploring Spiritual Direction (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2000), 39.

[31] Bakke, 39.

[32] Thomas Merton, Spiritual Direction & Meditation (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1960), 34.

Midnight machinations

2010-09-05T23:41:00.001-04:00

This is the time of night, it seems, that I make resolutions and have grand plans of action. It is too bad that my mind picks the time my body needs to sleep to be most active. A couple nights ago it was a desire to get Foster's room in order. Tonight I am making plans to be productive: praying the hours and doing lectio divina on the texts for each day. Maybe by writing it down,the resolution might linger until morning?

Is change coming?

2010-08-26T17:22:00.000-04:00

Three weeks was a long time to be away. It was so good for me. I come back to the house, not with a depressed listlessness, but a restless contentment and an expectation of what is to come. I feel alive again.

Elaine and I have called this Summer a time of transition. We have no idea what that means, only a sense that something needed to change. As we spent time together on our trip our sense became more clear. Change is coming and we are both open to it. We still have no idea what that will look like. We are not actively looking, the door will have to present itself and open on its own accord by the power of God.

My dad is helping to plant Crowne Pointe church in Bloomington. They meet in the auditorium beloning to Cedar Valley Church (or as I knew it Bloomington AG). We went with the kids to Real Kids FX (Family Experience) an integrated service before the regular services. I was in love. Children's Pastor, Jesse Baumgartner, has found a way to put my philosophy of ministry into action! The service opened my eyes to how my family ministry model can be fit into the expectations of an existing church. It also showed me how I could feel comfortable being part of the pastoral team in a large church setting. I could totally see being the pastor to the families in the FX service, or even seeing it as a church plant that the big church mothers.

There seems to be a big jump from where we are to that kind of place where I can engage in my passions. Will God transform our church into the place I flourish? or will it be a church plant in Bay City? or will God move us to a metropolitan area like Kalamazoo or Traverse City? Time will tell. For now we wait on the Lord (Isaiah 40:31).

Listlessness and the Consuming Fire

2010-08-12T18:19:00.002-04:00

Lately I have felt listless and depressed. Without the challenge of my Masters program to occupy my time, I have become acutely aware of the tedium and slow death inherent with just hanging on. My feelings over the last couple months are spoken eloquently by this quote via Jamie:

"...it is always easier to busy ourselves than to merely exist. Even important and useful work can distract us from remembering who we are, and what our deeper purpose might be. Monastic wisdom insists that when we are most tempted to feel bored, apathetic, and despondent over the meaninglessness of life we are on the verge of discovering our true self in relation to God. It is worth not giving up, because when we are willing to do nothing but 'be,' we meet the God who is the very ground of being, the great I AM whom Moses encountered at the burning bush." [Acedia and Me - Kathleen Norris].

I want to hide from these words. I have cherished my darkness, grieving the loss of a stage of life. I have felt unprepared to stare into the burning bush. Yet even in the midst of the paschal mystery, Christ is there. These last couple weeks leading up to vacation have been an easing of the darkness for me.

Today I retreated into the consuming fire. I made my way to Northfield and enjoyed an americano in reverie. I really love Northfield or the romantic dream that is Northfield in my mind. Mom told me this morning that my cousin Jon is talking about planting a church in Northfield with a friend. Here again I enter the paschal place. I have long harbored a dream of doing just that. It doesn't seem likely that we will leave the Michigan District to come back to Minnesota, still it is hard to give up a dream.

I went over to Carleton College and walked the Stewsie Island Labyrinth. In the center I sat with God and gave up my dreams. As I walked the path out - the path of ministry to the world, I felt God offering me encouragement for ministry in Sebewaing. I could use my newfound love of spiritual direction when visiting with people, but I have resisted doing it. God challenged me again to obedience. This challenge would have seemed convicting, even condemning since fear has made me disobedient for so long, had it not been for God's laughable word a few weeks ago "I trust you." God trusts me?! Back in the car, the words of Switchfoot go straight to my heart:

Free,
Come set me free
Down on my knees
I still believe you can
Save me from me
Come set me free
Come set me free
Inside this shell
There’s a prison cell

And today I do believe God can save me from me.

A Monstrance

From the consuming fire of the sun beating on the labyrinth, I went into the consuming fire of Divine Mercy Adoration Chapel. The Catholic church in Faribault set this chapel up ten years ago for perpetual adoration. It's like the 24 hour prayer movement contemplative style. There I sensed the presence of God with power. It made me tremble. One neat practical application of Catholic Eucharistic Theology is the monstrance. The believe in the actual presence of Christ in the bread and wine. The monstrance is a display in which they can place the consecrated host so they can stand in the real presence of Christ.

I am not a practiced catholic, (not really a catholic at all, shh!) I haven't quite figured out how to genuflect. In the presnence of the monstrance I prayed these words:

You are my King
and I don't know how to honor You
You are my Lover
and I don't know how to love You
You are my Soul
and I don't know how to trust You

I imagined the presence of Christ being concentrated in that peace of bread in the center of the monstrance. (Why not?) If we can see the presence of Christ concentrated in a wafer, how much more in the real and visible body of Christ - each other.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu said,

"If you and I took our theology seriously, this is the point -- we bear God in us; we are sanctuaries; we are temples of the Holy Spirit. We shouldn't just shake hands and greet each other in the normal kind of way. We ought, each one of us, to genuflect before one another."

Somehow that thought brought me to tears. Perhaps it was a powerful realization that I am not alone, grieving my losses in some corner, but I am part of a living and active body. I have a place and so do those around me that my eyes see with distrust.

I can't sleep

2010-06-17T01:43:00.001-04:00

Tonight I enter into the Paschal Mystery as I once again mourn the death of a dream, as the steampunk incarnation of Live Wired Coffeehouse which was to be at The Whistle Stop appears to be laid to rest. Jesus Christ, draw me close to you in the fellowship of our sufferings and give me the strength to dream another dream.

Study cave proving successful

2010-05-12T23:10:00.000-04:00

Called convention and District Council took me away from my studies and consumed my attention. Needless to say, coming back I felt the stress of the final paper in my masters studies hanging over me. Sunday night my family graciously helped me transform my basement church office into a study cave - cleaning it, assembling a new desk chair, arranging a number of candles and stocking the fridge with a case of redbull.

This has done me good. I have been making strides in the last couple days. I have nearly completed my literature review and have a good start on my challenge section. At this pace I am pretty comfortable, unfortunately graduation feels like just another distraction as we plan to leave for the Spring Arbor area tomorrow night.