Category Archives: Spirituality
On Waiting
Advent is the season of waiting for the birth of Christ. For your reading pleasure, below are several excerpts on the theme of waiting from a longer piece on being left-handed that I wrote in 2009.
…My soy candle burns often in these succeeding months since my January decision to live into this season of waiting. I sit in my roommate’s rocking chair in the afternoons when I come home early from work and wait, watching the light flicker and the shadows it casts on the blank white wall. The darkness of the unknown is overwhelming, but somehow that little light flickering on the table shines on. I am surprised to realize how desperately I cling to my candle these days, staring into the glow as my body relaxes and my heartbeat slows. I breathe to the same line of my meditative prayer I pray with Mary, the mother of Jesus, as she responds to the angel’s astonishing announcement that she will soon give birth to the hope of the world: let it be to me according to your word. I sit. I wait, even though I haven’t figured out what I’m waiting for. The wax is almost gone. The candle burns low. I am still waiting. When the light burns out, I will buy another alternative soy candle. I will keep waiting. It is not yet time to move on.
*****
I found a carving I like of Jonah sitting in the whale, curled up like a child in the womb. I feel like an unborn child these days, being knit together in the darkness, waiting quietly in the secure warmth of the Mother for the birthing pains to come. Both the pregnant mother and the unborn child learn the same lesson—that waiting, far from the passive negation of responsibility and participation, can be the most active part of our spiritual journeys; it is during the waiting that we are moved, and it is only through the waiting that we can ever arrive at another place. I never really identified with the image of spiritual life as a journey. I always wanted to Get There Already, too impatient to appreciate the process. Ironic, then, that the process itself turns out to be the destination, for there is waiting at every stage of life; there is even waiting in death.
*****
Mary and Martha turn up again in the book of John, and this time every character has been waiting. Mary and Martha waited for a miracle. Jesus waited for the appointed time. Lazarus, well, he just waited for death. When their waiting had come to fruition, once again, old weakness gave birth to new strength. The gospels are full of accounts of Jesus’ healings, but only Lazarus can claim to be raised from the dead. There is so much death in me waiting for new life. My old self, the person I used to be way back down the path, is gone for good. I have laid my pretense at left-brained living to rest in the tomb of my soul. But my new self, the person I can just glimpse up the way, waving at the next bend, that self is yet to be. Right now I am still awkward, fearful, silent. Right now I am still searching for my voice. I will journey on, but right now I wait and rest. I am resting in my weakness….
*****
Sometimes we have to let disease and infirmity, the weaknesses of life, take over. Sometimes we even have to die and enter the tomb—rot there for days. Sometimes it is only after the rotting has begun, when we can make no mistake about the stench of our failure, that God chooses to arrive, to grieve, to breathe life in that miraculous moment when we are called by name and beckoned back into the story with those thrilling words: “Come out!” In my waiting I have discovered the gift of choice…. Even death can be a strength—or better, especially death—an opportunity for God to work in us a victory we cannot fathom. And then, the joy of new life, the joy of reunion. But first are the sickness, the dying, the tomb. Lazarus waited four days in his death. Four days of rotting flesh; four days of undeniable failure. Four days of total weakness as complete as the chaos of the waters before First Light—and then, the Voice of God.
*****
God has been teaching me as I wait in the tomb (or is it the womb?). I am waiting to be revived (or is it reborn?). This waiting, the tension between movements, is like the moment in a balancing act when the tightrope walker pauses midway, gathering strength for the rest of the journey. This moment of rest is the most crucial element of the journey; we wait for that same appointed time…. Without the waiting, we rush on and on until–….
29 Truths I would tell my younger self
I turned 29 recently and have been reflecting on my life’s journey thus far. I have come a long way personally and spiritually and am no longer the person I was when I was in high school or college. If I could go back in time and talk to my younger self, here’s what I would say:
29 Truths I would tell my younger self
- It gets better. I promise. Keep on keeping on until it does.
- Know who you are. When your identity is sure, you will stop believing the lies other people tell you about who you are.
- You are beautiful and worth loving. You will fall in love and get married sooner than you think. Live with confidence in who you are.
- Let people in. They may bring pain, but they may also bring healing and joy.
- God loves you. No, really.
- Stand up for yourself. Ignoring the problem behavior only makes them try harder to hurt you. Show some backbone and they’ll never have the guts to cross you again.
- Acknowledge pain others caused you, deal with it, and then move on. Pretending it didn’t hurt doesn’t make it true.
- You don’t have to be always right.
- You don’t always have to prove you are right to everyone else. Sometimes it’s more important to maintain a relationship and open conversation.
- It’s okay to let go. You don’t have to carry everything all at once.
- It’s okay to fail. The world will not fall apart. Plus, you can always try again.
- Practice self-care. Rest is as productive and necessary as work.
- You don’t have to take care of everyone all the time forever. Share the burden. Give people the opportunity to learn to care for themselves.
- Quoting Bible verses to support your argument to people who don’t read the Bible can be alienating. Meet people where they are.
- Allow people to be who they are, where they are in their personal growth, and trust that God will get them where they need to go in time. Offer people the same gentle patience God shows you.
- Instead of focusing on what divides, look for common ground, what unites people, and build on that foundation.
- Be willing to admit you could be wrong.
- Admit when you’re wrong.
- Your voice has power. Speak.
- Pace yourself.
- Don’t judge others. I know you think you don’t, but you do. Stop it.
- Have more compassion.
- Show more compassion.
- Life is not black-and-white. God is not black-and-white.
- Stop correcting people’s grammar out loud. People make mistakes. Don’t rub their faces in it.
- You think you’re motivated by love, but you’re not. You’re motivated by fear. Let go of the fear, and there will be room for the love.
- Own your mistakes. Say you’re sorry. Make it right. Pretending it didn’t happen does not make it true.
- All-or-nothing is easy, but it’s not healthy. Aim for the happy middle.
- Keep writing. It will save you.
The Spiritual Practice of Exercise…the long way around
When Borders was closing and offering 75%-off-all-products-and-fixtures-everything-must-go, my husband and I happened to walk by a branch in the Arcadia Mall on date night after we had treated ourselves to a luxurious meal at Cheesecake Factory. We were splurging because Matt had just received a promotion at work, and we were preparing to move to a place with NO Cheesecake Factory (gasp! where will we eat?).
We wandered around the store — a mess of piles and clearance bins and empty, dusty fixtures — and ended up in the health section. Although I have never been one for arbitrary exercise routines and workouts (I hate being told what to do, how to do it, and for how long.), I took a Pilates class in college that I really enjoyed. Out of curiosity, I picked up a Pilates video, and 10 minutes later I was walking out with five different DVDs and a complementary resistance band. After all, they were 75% off.
And they sat on a shelf gathering dust, along with my Yoga mat (Do they actually MAKE Pilates mats? I’ve never seen one for sale, but Yoga mats are everywhere.) and Pilates circle — leftovers from my college days when I thought I might actually have the discipline to exercise on my own.
Until this weekend.
You may have noticed I haven’t been around the blog much lately. If I were a better blogger, I would have had extra posts already written and saved for a rainy day, but I am not a better blogger. I am just me. So when I reinjured my neck and shoulder (a gift from an old car accident that just keeps on giving) and couldn’t move an inch for five days without screaming and sobbing, blogging was the last thing on my mind.
The first thing on my mind was how I couldn’t believe it had only been four months since the last time I reinjured myself. The rest of the time I spent alternating between despair that this will be my life forever (What happens when we have kids one day and I CAN’T stay in bed for five days?) and hope that there is something I can possibly do to spare my body further reinjury (Maybe there’s a magic surgery all the physical therapists and chiropractors I’ve seen have forgotten to mention). And I slept a lot.
And I thought about the cathartic post I would write for you lovely readers when I could bear to type again.
I was all set to write one of my lament posts so I could vent about how sucky it is to have a recurring injury and chronic pain. I was going to list all the ways my body has failed me and why I think I deserve better. I was going to complain about how limited I feel (I don’t even know HOW I reinjured myself this time around.), how depressing it is to feel 80 when I’m still in my twenties (technically, anyway), and how negatively the pain affects my spiritual life and walk with God (there’s a lot of anger, for one, and a sense of injustice).
I’m sure that post will get written one day, probably sooner than I’d like. It is recurring and chronic after all. But today is not the day for complaining and venting. Today is the day for solutions, for looking forward and taking charge of what I can do to aid my recovery. Today is the day I stop blaming my body for failing me and accept responsibility for the state I’m in. Today is the day I move on with my life.
At least, in theory.
Once I could bear computer work again, I did some internet research on my condition and how to treat (and hopefully cure) it. After a few hours, I came to the conclusion that the trained professionals in my life were not, after all, lying to me or hiding from me the magic cure I was hoping for. I was doing all the things the internet (and the doctors) told me to do.
All except one thing. I didn’t have a daily exercise routine targeting and accommodating for my injury.
In truth, I have been terrified of reinjuring myself through exercise and weight training. My rule of thumb has always been to baby the injured muscle as much as possible and hope that works. (Evidently hoping does not have the magical properties I was counting on.)
So this weekend I opened all those Pilates DVDs that have been gathering dust for almost two years. I pulled off all the wrapping and sticky stuff (How do people ever steal these things? They’re impossible to open!) and stuck them, one after another, into the DVD slot on my laptop. I fast forwarded through every routine on every disc and found the ones that would target my injury and best benefit my overall health without taking too much of my day or requiring me to sweat.
On Sunday morning, I woke up naturally (no alarm), made myself a cup of tea (Earl Grey, loose leaf, with a touch of sugar and a drop of almond milk), and followed along with the first routine: a five-minute segment on concentrated breathing while sitting on the edge of a chair.
And then I went about my day.
The hardest part of being all-or-nothing is taking baby steps. I’m terrible at moving incrementally. But what I am good at is planning ahead, and with the help of my husband (who always helps me keep the pace), I planned out my increments in advance. I couldn’t do all the shoulder stretching (I still can’t turn my neck all the way to the left, and putting my right arm behind my back is impossible if I expect to breathe at the same time.), but once my muscle recovers enough, I will be able to add in the “Pilates for Stretching” segment I picked out. Then once the pain subsides to its usual dull ache and tightness, I will be ready to add in the segment targeting arms and shoulders (though I’ll modify the exercises by doing the motions only without the weights).
That will make a total 25 minute exercise routine. Can I do this every day? Yes, of course I am capable. Will I? If I ever want to stop reinjuring myself at every odd moment, then yes, I will have to figure out how to motivate myself to be disciplined.
And here at the very end we get to the point of it all. Our physical activity is limited to — and inspired by — our mental and spiritual activity.
What has been blocking my ability to get into an exercise routine? My fear that exercise will hurt, and that it will make my body worse instead of better. It is also blocked by my distaste for being told what to do, which touches on a deeper fear of not being in control — in other words, the fear of being forced to submit to something that may cause me harm.
So, ultimately, my inability to experience healing in my body is a result of fear. As I try the morning concentrated breathing routine (which incorporates a brief moment of visualizing energy moving throughout the body), it will be important for me to allow the Holy Spirit to enter into my experience and cast out that deeply ro0ted fear with God’s perfect love. I have also decided to use a breath prayer spiritual exercise as I make my tea to prepare me for the breathing routine in which I will recite that verse.
In this way, I will incorporate my spiritual self (the breath prayer), my mental self (visualizing the Holy Spirit as the energy moving through my body and letting go of the fear that is holding me back), and my physical self (following the Pilates plan I have prepared). This spiritual practice, like all spiritual practices, requires intentionality, focus, and discipline.
This connection between the tangible and the intangible is what Holistic Body Theology is all about. Practicing the Spiritual Practice of Exercise (intentionally incorporating elements of the spiritual and the mental into the experience of the physical) is a perfect representation of holistic living into the complete and full life in Christ that we have been promised.
Go forth, my lovely readers, and do likewise.
Is Farting Spritual?
No.
And yes.
How do we define what physical experiences are also spiritual experiences? It depends on our perspective, motivation, orientation, and intention.
In The Practice of the Presence of God, Brother Lawrence talks about how he experienced God while doing something as mundane as scrubbing the big soup pots at the monastery:
So, likewise, in his business in the kitchen (to which he had naturally a great aversion), having accustomed himself to doing everything there for the love of God, and with prayer upon all occasions, for His grace to do his work well, he had found everything easy, during fifteen years that he had been employed there. (14)
Further, he talks about the denial of the flesh for the support of spiritual pursuit as having little positive effect in itself. Rather, it was his orientation toward God that had positive spiritual effect:
That all bodily mortifications and other exercises are useless, except as they serve to arrive at the union with God by love; that he had well considered this, and found it the shortest way to go straight to Him by a continual exercise of love, and doing all things for His sake. (15)
Not everything that happens in our physical bodies has spiritual benefit– and likewise, not everything that we attempt in our minds has spiritual benefit. What makes our actions and efforts spiritual is not whether they take place in the physical or mental world but whether they are oriented toward God.
In this way, eating lunch can be spiritual — or not.
Reading scripture can be spiritual — or not.
Washing dishes can be spiritual — or not.
Going to church can be spiritual — or not.
Taking a walk can be spiritual — or not.
Praying can be spiritual — or not.
Having sex can be spiritual — or not.
Singing a hymn can be spiritual — or not.
Even farting can be spiritual — or not.
I don’t know about you, but I have had some of my most profound experiences of God while sitting on the toilet or lounging in the bathtub. It may not be the most “appropriate” setting for meeting the Creator, but our God is not as disturbed by our basic bodily functions as we might have been trained to expect.
When we engage our bodies and minds together in an orientation, a mindset, a focus toward opening ourselves to the counter-cultural and unexpected work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, we might just be surprised at the avenues God uses to reach us with words of grace, mercy, conviction, and kindness.
Just like Brother Lawrence, we can learn to experience God while we are performing our least preferred tasks — like washing dishes. God is ready and willing to meet us in whatever moment we are available and listening — whether we are sitting in the church pew or passing gas in the privacy of our boudoirs. There is no situation in which God is not capable of entering and showing us more of who God is and who we are because of God’s presence in our lives.
So next time you let one go, take the opportunity to let God speak into and through the basic, bodily experience of being alive in Christ.
You might be surprised what God can do with a little breaking wind!
Holiness and Beauty: A Meditation
Being an amateur philosopher and a lover of the liberal arts, beauty and aesthetics have always fascinated me. The image of God as Creator, the ultimate source of creativity, has inspired unspeakable awe and wonder. The idea that beauty embodies holiness, or that we may find holiness in the experience of beauty (visually or through the beautiful act or the recognition of beautiful character), sends me back to my undergrad days, reading Socrates and Plato and Aristotle, meditating on the character and mind of God.
God’s holiness is reflected in the beauty of the earth God has created—with just a word! What creative power that Word holds! We, in response, can participate in that holiness when we participate in beauty—enjoying it and creating it.
Consider Isaiah 58:11 and Matthew 6:28-33. What do they tell us about God?
The nature imagery grabs my attention: the well-watered garden, the sun-scorched desert, the splendor of Solomon, the lilies of the field. And then the context of these verses strikes me: Isaiah 58:11 comes as a promise in the midst of fasting, observing the Sabbath, and serving the poor and marginalized. Matthew 6:28 comes in the midst of the sermon on the mount, as Jesus taught his listeners how to live and serve God.
These passages, these promises, require action on our parts. They require response!
Yet they also promise — in the midst of stress, grief, brokenness, doubt, uncertainty about the future — that God will sustain. They promise that whether we bear concerns of finances, employment, community, love, wisdom and discernment, gifts (creative, intellectual, or spiritual), God will provide.
My mind leaps from scripture to scripture.
Psalm 8—what are human beings that God is mindful of us?
Psalm 42—the deer pants for water.
Isaiah 6—the imagery-laden call in God’s throne room.
Revelation 22:17 – all who are thirsty come to the river of life.
1 Kings 10:23-25—an account of Solomon’s glory. Particularly with Solomon, I think it’s interesting that with all we can do and create on our own, with all the glory that Solomon amassed, it cannot hold a candle to the creative word of God that would speak a lily into existence.
God’s creativity and beauty, like God’s holiness, are so wholly other; yet we are made in the image of that creative and beautiful and holy God, and our words contain the power to create as well.
John 15:1-17—the fruit of the vine that results when we abide in the vine that is Jesus. It is from God that we get our creative gifts, but to use them properly and to their full abundance, we must remain attached to the God through whom flows that creative power. That holiness. That holy, holy, holy holiness. Otherwise we are nothing more than Solomon’s glory, amazing for a moment but lost forever after.
Psalm 29 – the beauty of holiness, this is not a new thought! The Israelites understood this deep connection between beauty and holiness, this innate part of God’s glory that must be recognized and responded to. This creativity is what we were created for (Gen 1-2), to bring forth fruit from the earth.
God provides. God sustains. God — by that creative word — speaks life into us, and we in turn are able to speak life into each other, into the world.
What a holy, beautiful truth.
The Compassionate Way (Part 1)
We’re coming to the end of Compassion: A Reflection on the Christian Life by Henri Nouwen, Donald McNeill, and Douglas Morrison.
Last week we looked at what it means to live a Compassionate Life through voluntary displacement. We established that displacement is not something to be achieved but to be recognized and that we can only recognize displacement within the community of God and when attentive to the loving voice of God in our daily lives.
But what does it look like to live a life of compassion through voluntary displacement?
Part Three: The Compassionate Way
Now the authors take their argument into the practical action of our daily lives. What does a compassionate life look like? In a word: discipline.
In the Christian life, discipline is the human effort to unveil what has been covered, to bring to the foreground what has remained hidden, and to put on the lamp stand what has been kept under a basket. It is like raking away the leaves that cover the pathways in the garden of our soul. Discipline enables the revelation of God’s divine Spirit in us. (88)
Learning to listen to the loving voice of God — and heed God’s unique call on our individual lives — is a practice that requires the discipline of patience.
Discipline is the effort to avoid deafness and to become sensitive to the sound of the voice that calls us by a new name and invites us to a new life in discipleship…The compassionate way is the patient way. Patience is the discipline of compassion. (89)
This is what Eugene Peterson would call A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. Compassion isn’t something we can obtain through an easy three-step formula or a crash course. Compassion is a lifestyle choice, one that takes our entire lives to learn to live out effectively. In a world of quick fixes and instant gratification, the last thing we are drawn to is the discipline of patience. God’s call to the compassionate life is radically counter-cultural. Before we can hope to act compassionately toward those who are hurt by competition, we have to learn to live a life marked by patience.
But this patience practice is not one of passive existence but passionate action:
Patience means to enter actively into the thick of life and to fully bear the suffering within and around us….In short, patience is a willingness to be influenced even when this requires giving up control and entering into unknown territory. (91)
[T]he New Testament presents the discipline of patience as the way to a life of discipleship which makes us living signs of God’s compassionate presence in the world. (93)
We aren’t, by nature or by culture, very patient people. Especially Americans who are used to keeping careful track of time and valuing punctuality and efficiency above all — we are trained to push and rush and make deadlines and fill every moment of our time with busy productivity to earn and to accomplish and to succeed and to finish first. But as Christians, we are invited into a very different experience of time with a paradoxical definition of productivity and accomplishment:
The discipline of patience is the concentrated effort to let the new time into which we are led by Christ determine our perceptions and decisions. (93)
In God’s management of time, patience is productive:
[Patience] is the experience of the moment as full, rich, and pregnant. (96)
As long as we are the slaves of the clock and the calendar, our time remains empty and nothing really happens. Thus, we miss the moment of grace and salvation…. [T]hrough patience we can live in the fullness of time and invite others to share in it. (98)
[W]e are constantly preoccupied with our free evening, free weekend, or free month and lose the capacity to enjoy the people we live and work with day in and day out. (99)
The Compassionate Way calls us to learn to pay attention to life around us. When our lives are defined by the discipline of patience, we find more opportunities to hear God in the daily movements and activities of our lives and answer our unique call to voluntary displacement we might have missed in our rush from one busy productivity to another.
Our culture has done us a genuine disservice in this area, which is why developing cultural discernment is so important to body theology. When we allow culture to dictate our values and assumptions, the lens through which we view the world is skewed toward the value of competition. Even within Christian culture, our lenses could use a good cleaning:
[W]e have accepted the idea that “doing things” is more important than prayer and have come to think of prayer as something for times when there is nothing urgent to do. (101)
Prayer is an expression of the discipline of patience and is the medium through which we hear the loving voice of God and experience intimate relationship with God. Rather than a last resort or a convenient time-filler, prayer
as a discipline that strengthens and deepens discipleship, is the effort to remove everything that might prevent the Spirit of God, given to us by Jesus Christ, from speaking freely to us and in us…we liberate the Spirit of God from entanglement in our impatient impulses…[and] allow God’s Spirit to move freely. (102-3)
[P]rayer as a disciple of patience is the human effort to allow the Holy Spirit to do re-creating work in us…It involves the constant choice not to run from the present moment…the determination to listen carefully to people and events so as to discern the movements of the Spirit…the ongoing struggle to prevent our minds and hearts from becoming cluttered with the many distractions that clamour for our attention…[and] the decision to set aside time every day to be alone with God and listen to the Spirit. (104)
Prayer is hard work, but it is also as simple as sitting (or standing, or dancing, or running) with our bodies, minds, and hearts focused on attending to the Holy Spirit — the loving voice of God. Prayer as the mark of the compassionate life is a truly counter-cultural practice because it requires the most difficult voluntary displacement of all: prayer displaces our own voices, desires, and actions with the voice, desire, and call to action of God:
To listen patiently to the voice of the Spirit in prayer is a radical displacement. (105)
We cannot hope to be effective as the Mother Theresas of the world if we cannot first achieve this inner displacement through patient, disciplined prayer. We cannot act — rightly, timely, compassionately — if we have not first established a lifestyle of prayerful listening to the loving voice of God. Only through prayer are our actions molded to the compassionate way:
[Prayer is] a growing intimacy with God [that] deepens our sense of responsibility for others…requires deep and strong patience…[allows us to] discover a limitless space into which we can welcome all the people of the world…[and] is the very beat of a compassionate heart. (107)
To be concluded on Wednesday!
Forward Friday: Listen to the Voice of Love
Displacement begins with the movement of the Holy Spirit in our lives, and it is that movement that we must be sensitive to if we are going to identify and join in the calling of God on our lives.
We’ve been going through Compassion: A Reflection on the Christian Life for the last couple of weeks. If you’re feeling moved by Henri Nouwen’s message of choosing voluntary displacement but are unsure how to start listening to the divine voice of love, I encourage you to check out Tim Hoekstra’s wonderful devotional Miles to Run Before We Sleep. All proceeds from book sales are donated to World Vision‘s clean water project in Africa, so you can’t go wrong.
As I’ve mentioned on this blog before, my husband and I know Tim (he married us in April 2011), and he is an unbelievably gentle and driven man of God with a passion for both running and racial reconciliation in the Church. His devotional provides readers the opportunity to think, pray, move, and discover the unique calling on each of our lives toward what Nouwen calls voluntary displacement.
Both of us are reading through the book ourselves and have already had some very unexpected insights. I may share some of my meditations here in the future, but for now, I highly recommend Tim’s book to anyone looking for guidance in recognizing the displacement in our lives.
If a devotional isn’t your thing, you may also find one of these books helpful in learning to listen to the loving voice of God:
The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence
Inner Voice of Love by Henri Nouwen
Let Your Life Speak by Parker Palmer
Sacred Compass by Brent Bill
Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer by Richard Rohr
If you need more suggestions, drop me a line! I’d love to chat more with each of you.
The Voice of Love
On Monday, we took a look at what Nouwen has to say about The Compassionate God in Part One of his book Compassion: A Reflection on the Christian Life.
Today I had planned to dig into Part Two: The Compassionate Life, but I haven’t been able to get past the end of Monday’s post:
The obedience of Jesus is hearing God’s loving word and responding to it. (34)
We are poor listeners because we are afraid that there is something other than love in God….[Jesus] came to include us in his divine obedience. He wanted to lead us to God so that we could enjoy the same intimacy he did. (38)
We are poor listeners because we are afraid that there is something other than love in God. We do not listen for God to speak because we have somehow internalized the lie that God does not love us, does not want our best, does not care infinitely more for us than we could ever hope or imagine.
We see ourselves in our sinful state, like Jeremiah’s filthy sash, unworthy of God’s mercy and forgiveness. We see God as full of empty promises, all rules and demands and impossible standards.
We think we are not worthy, not able, not enough. We think God is not faithful, not gentle, not loving.
But God has a different message for our ears. God has a different truth for our hearts. We are enough, enough for God. And God is loving, more than we can comprehend. Our God is the God of chesed and lovingkindness, of agape, of John 3:16.
When we listen — really quieten our hearts and minds, still our bodies — to hear the voice of God, do we expect to hear a voice of love?
Maybe we expect judgment, condemnation, demand, criticism, disappointment, unforgiveness. But these voices are not the voice of God in our lives. These are the voices of the world, of culture, of people we know, of our own harsh expectations and guilt and shame, of the lies of the enemy.
When we listen to hear the voice of God and truly hear the still, small voice — that voice, the voice of our gracious and merciful God, is a loving voice.
Jesus shows us by example what it looks like to hear the loving voice of God and respond with obedience. In the same way, we are enabled by our adoption into the family of God to hear that same voice — the loving voice of God — and are called to respond with the same obedience.
Dear lovely reader, if you hear anything other than love in the voice of God, if you are afraid there is anything other than love in God, know that there is freedom in accepting the truth of who you are and the truth of who God is.
The truth is that you are worthy, capable, and enough because you are a child of God.
The truth is that God is faithful, merciful, and loving.
The truth is that y0u can hear the voice of God — anyone can hear from God. And that voice is trustworthy and gentle and full of all the chesed and agape you can possibly imagine.
[Jesus] came to include us in his divine obedience. He wanted to lead us to God so that we could enjoy the same intimacy he did. (38)
Let us allow ourselves to be included and led so that we can enjoy intimacy with God as we have been designed to do.
Okay, next time we really will look at Part Two: The Compassionate Life.
Forward Friday: Prayer for the Rhythm of God
It’s been a busy couple of weeks, and time (and blog writing) got away from me. I’ve missed you lovely readers.
I don’t know about you, but I could use a few moments of stillness in the midst of all the busy-ness this weekend.
Take some time each morning this weekend to still yourself and enter into the rhythm of God. Notice how the prayer exercise below affects your body and your mind. How does it change the way you interact with the rest of your day?
Extra credit: Try this exercise each morning for the next week.
The following prayer exercise is from Body Prayer: The Posture of Intimacy with God by Doub Pagitt and Kathryn Prill (emphasis mine):
…[T]here is a rhythm of God — a rhythm that encompasses life, both the life we can readily see and the unseen life of the spirit. The rhythm of God beckons us, guides us, and dwells in us. When we discover the rhythm of God, we find the heart of God, the dreams of God, the will of God. As those who are created in the image of God, we are endowed with this rhythm. We can find it, step into it, and live in it. This is the kingdom of God — to live in sync with the rhythm of God….
[Pray this prayer aloud.]
The Lord our G0d
Sets our feet in spacious places,
Delivers us from evil,
Has given us freedom with the opening of his hand.
Let us lean into the future before us,
Let us follow the Way.Prayer Posture
Begin by standing with your feet together and your arms hanging at your sides. With either your left or right foot, lunge forward far enough to feel the stretch in your thigh. If you can, lower the thigh of the leg in front to create a ninety-degree angle in the bend of your knee. Switch legs after a while if you need to. Feel the rhythm of God in your muscles as they strain, in your legs as you switch positions, in your breathing, and in the breathing and sounds of those around you [if you choose to try this prayer exercise in a group setting]. As you let the rhythm created in the room around you expand in your mind, consider how the rhythm of God is all around us.
Holistic Body Theology 