Category Archives: Spirituality
Mini-sabbatical: Gone to school (Part 2)
Hello Lovely Readers!
I’m on my way to Arizona for the second half of my training in spiritual direction. Just like last time, I’ll be posting daily reflections on Of the Garden Variety.
NOT like last time, I have a special treat for you! While I’m gone, I’m beginning a new series of guest postings called “Five Questions on…”
So lots to see here over the next couple of weeks. Come by and check out the variety of perspectives on HBTB issues like food, exercise, dating, church, and more!
Forward Friday: The Meaning of the Story of God
Originally posted April 6, 2012
One of the most significant elements in body theology is the actual, physical life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. That’s why Christmas, Holy Week, and Easter Sunday are so pivotal. We Christians are who we are because of who Christ is and what Christ did for us.
Sometimes looking at the big picture of the course of biblical history can help us understand the rhythm of the liturgical year. Although this year’s Easter celebration is over, let us not be so hasty to rush on to the next big thing. Let’s take some time to pause and allow the passing of this season to inform the season to come.
As you reflect this weekend on the passing of Holy Week and Easter and the coming of Pentecost, read back over some of the key elements of the story of God from our little flash Bible course to dig into the significance of what we are about to celebrate. Share your thoughts in the comment box below.
What stands out as particularly meaningful to you?
1. God takes evening walks with Adam and Eve in the garden.
2. Becoming aware of their nakedness and feeling ashamed causes them to hide from God.
3. God’s people become afraid of God and ask Moses to speak to God on their behalf.
4. God’s people are afraid even of the glory of God reflected on Moses’ face, so he has to wear a veil until the glory fades.
5. God instructs the people to build the Ark of the Covenant, where God’s presence will be confined among them.
6. The people never touch or open the Ark of the Covenant because it is so holy.
7. The Ark lives in its own tent among them, called the Tabernacle, where the people come to worship God.
8. After Moses, God speaks only to specific people God chooses, usually prophets, kings, or priests. These chosen few share God’s words with the people–who often do not listen.
9. To see the face of God is to die, and even the prophet Elijah–who asks to see God’s face–covers his face with his robe before meeting God at the mouth of the cave.
10. Once God’s people settle down in one place and begin to build houses instead of tents, God instructs King Solomon to build a temple for God to live in.
11. God’s presence is reserved for the Holy of Holies–a small area within the temple restricted from everyone where the Ark is kept, the entrance to which is blocked with a thick curtain.
12. Once a year, on the Day of Atonement, the high priest goes through an elaborate cleansing ritual in preparation to enter the Holy of Holies and sprinkle the blood of the sacrificed animal to atone for the people’s sins. (They even tie a rope around his foot each time in case he dies from the experience of being with God and has to be dragged out to be buried since no one else is allowed to enter the Holy of Holies, even to retrieve a dead body.)
13. Then Jesus is born, and he is called Emmanuel, which means “God with us.”
14. No longer is God among the people yet blocked from their access. Jesus lives with the people, learns and grows with them, eats and drinks, sleeps, speaks, heals, reprimands, and teaches.
15. Jesus says that those who see him and know him also see and know God.
16. Jesus is anointed at Bethany for his coming death.
17. When the people celebrate Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem–what we call Palm Sunday–they acknowledge that Jesus is fulfilling the long-anticipated role of the Messiah, the one who has come to save them and restore the original order as God intended.
18. Jesus washes his disciples’ feet as an example of their role in each others’ lives.
19. Jesus breaks bread and passes the cup of wine to his disciples to foreshadow his impending arrest and execution.
20. Jesus prays in the garden with his disciples nearby–by some accounts so fervently that the capillaries break on his forehead and he begins to sweat blood–not only that he might yet be spared his role as the sacrifice for the people’s sins but also that he accepts that role.
21. Jesus is arrested, abandoned and denied by his disciples, beaten, mocked, and sentenced to death by Rome’s most barbaric form of execution.
22. Jesus is forced to carry the crossbeam through the crowded streets of Jerusalem up to the site of his execution.
23. Jesus is too weak to complete the trip and collapses. A member of the crowd is chosen at random by the guards to carry the crossbeam for Jesus the rest of the way.
24. At Golgatha, Jesus is stripped naked (yes, as naked as he was born).
25. The guards attach Jesus to the crossbeam with iron spikes through his wrists and to the stake with spikes through his ankles and raised to hang between two thieves until his struggle for breath overcomes him and he gives up his spirit to God and completes the sacrifice.
26. At the moment of his death, there is an earthquake and the curtain separating the Holy of Holies from the rest of the temple is torn in half from top to bottom.
27. Jesus’ execution lasts only six hours, considerably less time than most people endured the experience.
28. Jesus is buried and mourned, and the disciples hide in fear that they will be arrested and executed next.
29. The women at the tomb discover Jesus’ resurrection early in the morning three days later. They become the first bringers of the good news (gospel) that Jesus is alive.
30. Jesus appears to his disciples and to many other people over the 40 days following his execution, eating and drinking with them and allowing them to touch him to prove that he indeed has retaken physical form.
31. Jesus ascends into the clouds after promising to send his spirit to be with his followers and to return again one day soon to bring the kingdom of heaven.
32. The disciples wait and pray until they experience the promised presence of the Holy Spirit during Pentecost.
33. The disciples become apostles, who preach the good news (gospel) that Jesus came back to life to all who are gathered in the street. Miraculously, each listener hears the words in his or her own language.
34. The apostles perform many other miracles by the power of the Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus, and many who hear believe. Thus the Church is born, and all who believe in the good news that Jesus came back to life are filled with the Holy Spirit…even the Gentiles!
Forward Friday: Double Belonging
I ran across the term double belonging during my training in spiritual direction in Arizona. If you’re not familiar (I wasn’t), it’s a relatively new term used to describe people who ascribe to one particular religious tradition (e.g. Christianity) but also learn from another tradition (e.g. Buddhism).
You may have even heard people describe themselves as Jew-Bus (Jewish Buddhists) or Buddha-palians (Episcopalian Buddhists). What would a Presbyterian Buddhist be called? Buddha-terian?
While I’m not advocating synchronicity, I do believe we have a lot to learn from each other, both within our own tradition and from people of other faiths. Particularly with people whose spiritual paths involve meditation, there are many similarities between different religious practices. Thomas Merton, for example, was well known for being influenced by Buddhist meditation techniques as he practiced and taught Christian contemplative meditation.
So let’s try a very simple and open-ended Forward Friday:
This weekend, take some time to explore other faith traditions in your area.
You could attend a Jewish temple or try a yoga class. If you’re not sure how to get started, try picking up a book from your local library on comparative religion or a specific tradition you’ve always been curious about.
Remember, this exercise is not designed to encourage you to embrace a new set of beliefs in place of your own or to create opportunities for proselytizing. Just be curious, courteous, and conscious of what pieces of truth you might pick up along the way.
Happy weekend, lovely readers! Come back and tell me all about it.
The sun doesn’t rise after all
During my recent travels, I saw a lot of sunrises and sunsets from the road, some beautiful, some obscured, some at dangerous angles to the driver. One thing I kept thinking about as I witnessed the journey of the sun across the sky each day was how we talk about what we see.
We speak from our own perspective. The sun rises, it moves across the sky, and then it sets. This statement is true. This statement is an accurate description of how we experience the sun. This is what we see. Everyone in every culture in every location in every age since the beginning of the world has experienced the sun this way, and I think it’s safe to say that everyone would generally agree that the sun rises, moves across the sky, and then sets.
Except it doesn’t.
The sun doesn’t move at all. The Earth is what moves. We move, not the sun. Science and astronomy teach us this truth. It is an accurate description of reality, but it does not describe how we experience the relation between sun and sky. This is not what we see. Everyone in every culture in every location in every age until at least the 1600s would call this truth a fantasy.
How easily we assume that our experience is not only true but also the only capital-T-Truth. How quick we are to dismiss a truth that does not match our experience as fantasy.
Our truth that the sun moves across the sky is true, except that it isn’t. It describes our experience accurately, but it does not describe what is very accurately at all. In fact, it describes quite the opposite of reality.
So now, when we talk about issues of faith, spirituality, God, and religion, I think about the sun. I think about the language I use to describe my experience and begin to consider that while my language is true to my experience, it might not be true to reality.
Maybe when we speak of God’s unchangeability, it is really we who are unwilling to change. Maybe when we speak of God’s unfailing, unconditional love, it is really our desire to be loved that we express. Maybe when we speak of God as male or masculine, it is really we who experience power and control through a paternalistic cultural lens.
The point is that we don’t know everything. No one holds the capital-T-Truth. We all hold pieces of the truth, and if we’re lucky, we are able to recognize more pieces of truth in others and hold onto them all. Until we’re willing to consider the possibility that we could be not only not completely right but also actually completely wrong, we will never be able to consider that someone else might hold a piece of truth we don’t have.
This is the value of ecumenical and interfaith perspectives. We look for our commonalities. We build bridges on our pieces of truth. We rub up against people whose experience is different than our own, people who dare to suppose the sun does not actually rise and set as it appears after all. We learn together. We grow.
We’ve come a long way since the 1600s. Everyone in the educated world, especially those who have access to telescopes and higher-level math, now agrees that the Earth moves and the sun does not. But not a single one of them would argue that the sun does not rise, move across the sky, and set every day, either.
One truth defines reality; the other truth defines experience. Both truths are pieces of the capital-T-Truth that we are all grasping for and falling short of regardless of our intelligence, education, or experience.
Next time you find yourself in debate about who is right, who is in, who holds the capital-T-Truth about faith, spirituality, God, or religion (or anything else for that matter), take a breath, look up at the sun, and remember to start with the pieces of truth we each hold — and build on that.
I’m Back! When it doesn’t feel like Lent…
I know, I know. I promised new posts for last week and didn’t deliver. Getting back into the swing of things after being in Arizona for two weeks proved more time-intensive than I expected. But now I’m back and ready to write!
If you’re wondering about my experience in Arizona, you can read my daily reflections over at my old spirituality blog: Of the Garden Variety.
This week I have a few disconnected thoughts to share with you lovely readers. Let’s dig into it.
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We are just under two weeks away from celebrating Easter. How is your Lenten season going?
For me, I’ve been so preoccupied with preparing for Arizona, being in Arizona, recovering from Arizona, and looking ahead to my next trip, that I’ve pretty much lost sight of Lent this year. Rather than a season of reflection, contemplation, and experiencing the disconsolation of being without, I’ve been rushing, working, and experiencing sensory and information overload.
So what do we do when our season of life does not match up with the church calendar? What do we do when the sermons and sharing of our community of God don’t resonate with our current experience?
I think we run into this dilemma more often than we like to admit. We experience loss, but our community is full of celebration. We experience rest, but our community expects more participation. We experience peace, but our community is full of unrest. We experience doubt and distance with God, but our community seems threatened by our questions.
Sometimes it’s so much easier to walk alone.
But community is central to our Christian faith for a reason. Yes, we need the freedom to be who we are and where we are on our spiritual journeys, but we also need the experience of community to help us grow and change. Community can be challenging, but it can also be revealing and healing.
When I think about participation in the community of God, I always return to Dietrich Bonhoeffer:
We can never achieve this “wholeness” simply by ourselves, but only together with others. – Letters and Papers from Prison
(If you missed it, you can find our 4-part series on community in Bonhoeffer’s writings here.)
We need each other not only to fully experience God but also to become fully whole in ourselves. I may not be in a season of life or a frame of mind to really engage in Lent this year, but being surrounded by a community of God that is engaged in Lent helps keep me linked to the seasons of the church year and reminds me that there is more to life than my momentary experience.
And who knows? Maybe next year I will be the one reminding my community just what the season of Lent brings to our experience of God.
That’s what community is all about.
Forward Friday: Seek the Hidden Life
This week we’ve been discussing what Lent is all about in the wise words of Henri Nouwen. We’ve looked at being ready, returning to God and our true identity, pursuing the hidden life, and being reconciled both to God and to others.
There are so many ways we could use what we learned this week to move forward toward a holistic body theology. But this weekend, let’s focus on what we need first to get it all started.
Seek the hidden life.
There are all sorts of ways we can pursue the hidden life that Jesus modeled for us. This weekend, look for opportunities to choose the hidden life over the praise of the world.
Here are some ideas:
- Make an anonymous donation.
- Get up early or in the middle of the night for some alone time with God, and don’t share your experience with anyone.
- Put a rubber band around your wrist and take a moment to pray (without anyone noticing) every time you notice it’s there throughout the day. If anyone asks about the rubber band, just tell them it’s there in case you need it.
- Perform a random act of kindness when no one is around to see or thank you. This could be anything from running the dishwasher to picking up trash on the sidewalk.
- Fast something. Whether it’s for Lent, for the weekend, or for a day, give something up, and make sure no one notices except you and God.
Reconciliation and the Hidden Life
On Monday, we looked at an excerpt from Henri Nouwen‘s Sabbatical Journey and unpacked some of his reflections about Lent. We focused more on the beginning and end of the passage, but today I really want to focus on what he says in the middle.
Jesus stressed the hidden life. Whether we give alms, pray, or fast, we are able to do it in a hidden way, not to be praised by people but to enter into closer communion with God. Lent is a time of returning to God. It is a time to confess how we keep looking for joy, peace, and satisfaction in the many people and things surrounding us, without really finding what we desire. Only God can give us what we want. So we must be reconciled with God, as Paul says, and let that reconciliation be the basis of our relationship with others.
I always love how honest Nouwen is about what it’s like to be human. He acknowledges all our fallen nature, our pride and guilt and selfishness and all the rest, yet he uses his own vulnerability to draw us into closer relationship with the Divine.
How often I fail at living the “hidden life” Jesus modeled for us. How easily I am distracted and motivated by the praise the world gives. How quickly I stray from the one thing I want. The psalmist calls it an undivided heart. John calls it remaining in God. Nouwen calls it communion with God.
It is only when we are living this hidden life that we are able to be in right relationship with others. It is only when we acknowledge our need for and accept God’s forgiveness that we are able to acknowledge our need for and ask for forgiveness from others or give them our forgiveness, even if they do not ask or acknowledge the need.
Lent is a time for reconciling ourselves to God and to others (not to mention to ourselves) so that when Easter morning comes, we are fully able to understand and celebrate the event that forever reconciled the world to God.
This process is big and important. It is difficult. It requires humility and honesty, vulnerability and transparency. It requires intention and space.
But the good news is, reconciliation starts with God, and with God, it is already finished!
That Loving Embrace
I’ve gotten in the habit of reading at significant moments of the church year the book Eternal Seasons: A Spiritual Journey Through the Church’s Year, a collection of writings from Henri Nouwen associated with the different times of the church year.
As always, Nouwen’s writings have the uncanny ability to focus my scattered thoughts and emotions and say exactly what I want to say about Lent:
I am certainly not ready for Lent yet. Christmas seems just behind us, and Lent seems an unwelcome guest. I could have used a few more weeks to get ready for this season of repentance, prayer, and preparation for the death and resurrection of Jesus…
Jesus stressed the hidden life. Whether we give alms, pray, or fast, we are able to do it in a hidden way, not to be praised by people but to enter into closer communion with God. Lent is a time of returning to God. It is a time to confess how we keep looking for joy, peace, and satisfaction in the many people and things surrounding us, without really finding what we desire. Only God can give us what we want. So we must be reconciled with God, as Paul says, and let that reconciliation be the basis of our relationship with others. Lent is a time of refocusing, of re-entering the place of truth, of reclaiming our true identity.
Two things most striking to me about this passage from Sabbatical Journey.
1) He admits he’s not ready for Lent. I love this honesty! It gives me the freedom to admit that I’m not ready for it, either. For all my efforts to slow down, rest, and develop a rhythm of life that creates space for the contemplative life I am pursuing, I find myself continually distracted by unnecessary things, preoccupied by the demands of the moment, and anxious about things that don’t really matter. It’s nice to know Lent can sneak up on even the best of us.
2) He defines Lent as the time for returning to God and reclaiming our true identity. The image that comes to mind is God with arms outstretched and a huge smile, eagerly awaiting my return to that loving embrace. I sense that God is excited about this time of year when we take time out of our day to call our wandering attention to the presence of God around us and within us, still knocking, patiently waiting for us to open the door.
It is only when we are safely in this loving embrace, flinging the door wide open and saying, “come on in,” that we are able to experience ourselves both as fully known and fully knowable. We are finally able to recognize ourselves as the beloved children of God, welcomed into the family as we all prepare together for the coming of Easter.
So maybe you’re not feeling ready for this season either. Maybe you’ve been distracted and rushed and overwhelmed. Well then, you’re not alone! You’ve got 36 more days to reconcile yourself to God and prepare for the death and resurrection of Jesus. You’ve got 36 more days to remember who you are, whose you are, and return to the loving embrace of the One who has been waiting for you all along.
Forward Friday: YOU define body theology
I’ve been thinking all week about Isherwood’s definition of body theology as created through the body rather than about the body. Our tendency is to relate to our bodies as something “other,” as a separate entity that is not the same as our “self.” As Isherwood says elsewhere in that chapter, our language betrays our perspective when we say that we have bodies rather than that we are bodies.
This weekend, take some time to reflect and perhaps journal on the following question:
How do YOU define body theology?
This question is more than a cognitive exercise in generating a pithy statement about what you believe the term “body theology” means or what the phrase evokes in you, though these are of course useful exercises as well. What I’m really asking here, what I’m encouraging you to ask yourselves this weekend, is this:
How does who you are as a mind-body-spirit being, designed by and created in the image of the Divine Being who defies all category and definition (including age, race, and gender), and believer in and follower of the way of the incarnate, flesh-and-blood, living-and-breathing, dwelling-among-us, crucified-and-resurrected Emmanuel (which means God-with-us) — how do YOU define body theology?
How is body theology defined through the unique physical human being only YOU can be? What does your experience of being alive in your own skin bring to the table? What does your body teach us about who God is and about who we are as the community of God? How is God made manifest in and through you that is only possible because you are a bundle of tangible flesh?
This is a big question.
Open yourself up to the possibilities presented by this kind of approach to theological reflection. Really sit with the reality God reveals to you. Write it down or talk through your experience with a trusted friend.
Then come back and share in the comment box below. What came up for you as you meditated on these questions?
Forward Friday: Create your own spiritual practice
This week we’ve been talking about finding spiritual practices within daily life, in everything from flossing to breathing. In the words of Rob Bell, everything is spiritual.
This weekend, take some time to create your own spiritual practice.
It doesn’t have to be hard work. We breathe without any intentional effort and only stop breathing with concerted effort and for an extremely limited time. So, too, spiritual practice can be just as natural and even just as involuntary.
All it takes is desire and decision.
Find a practice that feels natural to you. Maybe it’s taking a daily walk, reading a morning Psalm, making dinner, driving to work, or breathing. Make it something that is already part of your natural routine, something that you can use to call your attention to the holy and sacred in the normal pace of life.
Whatever it is, decide to make that activity — however innocuous or normal it may seem — your invitation to the Holy Spirit.
Try it and see what happens.
Then come back and share your spiritual practice in the comment box below.
Holistic Body Theology 