Watching Boats

I wanted to share this meditation practice from Richard Rohr because it is very similar to a guided imagery practice I've found very healing to my soul. If I've got many things bouncing and buzzing in my mind in the morning I will try to place each thought and feeling into some kind of floating object. As it floats by I feel a letting go take place inside. Often I actively roll them down the hill into the water.

Take 10, 15 or 20 min (as much as you can stand!) of silence and solitude and try it, aware of the risen Jesus with you. 

Here is Rohr's version: 

Practice: Boats on a River

Most people have never actually met themselves. At every moment, all our lives long, we identify with our thoughts, our self-image, or our feelings. We have to find a way to get behind this view of ourselves to discover the face we had before we were born. We must discover who we are in God, who we’ve always been—long before we did anything right or anything wrong. This is the first goal of contemplation.

Imagine you are sitting on the bank of a river. Boats and ships—thoughts, feelings, and sensations—are sailing past. While the stream flows by your inner eye, name each of these vessels. For example, one of the boats could be called “my anxiety about tomorrow.” Or along comes the ship “objections to my husband” or the boat “I don’t do that well.” Every judgment that you pass is one of those boats. Take the time to give each one of them a name, and then let them move on down the river.

This can be a difficult exercise because you’re used to jumping aboard the boats—your thoughts—immediately. As soon as you own a boat and identify with it, it picks up energy. This is a practice in un-possessing, detaching, letting go. With every idea, with every image that comes into your head, say, “No, I’m not that; I don’t need that; that’s not me.”

Sometimes, a boat turns around and heads back upstream to demand your attention again. Habitual thoughts are hard to not be hooked by. Sometimes you feel the need to torpedo your boats. But don’t attack them. Don’t hate them or condemn them. This is also an exercise in nonviolence. The point is to recognize your thoughts, which are not you, and to say, “That’s not necessary; I don’t need that.” But do it very amiably. If you learn to handle your own soul tenderly and lovingly, you’ll be able to carry this same loving wisdom out into the world.

Adapted from Richard Rohr, Simplicity: The Freedom of Letting Go (The Crossroad Publishing Company: 2004), 94-95.

Pain As A Way of Knowing

I’ve been locked in a “cell” of sorts for a while, unable to write anything more than a few ideas down (actually this is laughable, I’ve started about 20-30 different posts, but am unable to finish them).
I suspect I’ve needed to stay hidden awhile, for the work of God in me to deepen. I feel like there may be some creative “water” starting to leak from under the surface, so hopefully I’ll write more regularly soon, Lord willing. In the meantime, I found this selection from Richard Rohr’s daily devotional, Radical Grace, particularly beautiful and haunting:

Suffering is the necessary deep feeling of the human situation. If we don’t feel pain, suffering, human failure and weakness, we stand antiseptically apart from it, and remain numb and small. We can’t fully understand such things by thinking about them. The superficiality of much of our world is that it tries to buy its way out of such necessary knowing.
Jesus did not numb himself or withhold himself from human pain, as we see even in his refusal of the numbing wine on the cross (Matthew 27:34). Some forms of suffering are necessary so that we can more fully know the human dilemma, so that we can even name our shadow self and confront it. Maybe evil itself has to be felt to understand its monstrosity, and to empathize with its victims.
Brothers and sisters, the irony is not that God should feel so fiercely; it’s that his creatures feel so feebly. If there is nothing in your life to cry about, if there is nothing in your life to yell about, you must be out of touch. We must all feel and know the immense pain of this global humanity. Then we are no longer isolated, but a true member of the universal Body of Christ. Then we know God not from the outside but from the inside! (p.209, day 218)

We’ve all known people (and been people) who stood “antiseptically” apart from suffering. People inevitably avoid what they don’t understand, and suffering is all about mystery and confusion and the loss of control. Antiseptic spirituality by definition doesn’t get its hands dirty, and prefers staying “numb and small.” For many people (most? all?) the feeling of loss of control can be maddening to the extreme.
What strikes me is not that we keep this “antiseptic distance” toward others (though we do), but to ourselves. I have been struck recently how much I still “despise” aspects of my life - painful, shameful aspects – when it is in those very places that Jesus calls me to himself. He puts on my sores and my stink and calls me to come fellowship with him. When I refuse, I consign myself to a parched wasteland of life lived without-God (Jer 17:5ff). I also lose touch with myself, preferring the paltry selves of my own making, the “scholar,” the “good Dad,” the “faithful employee,” etc. But these selves are not real, so God will have nothing to do with them. He waits for me to acknowledge my “actual self” which is broken and messed up, sinful, manipulative and dearly loved, forgiven and accepted. If I can embrace this self that is me, then I shall be on the road to receiving grace, for it is only to actual selves that God gives grace.
Gently, and patiently, God calls to us in all our pain and trials to know him and know ourselves in relationship with him. This is the only true life, eternal life (John 17:3). Thus, pain becomes a “way of knowing” the most important things in life: God, grace, what it means to be human, etc.
Hear what Job has to say about this at the end of his trials with God:

² No one can oppose you,
because you have the power
to do what you want.
³ You asked why I talk so much
when I know so little.
I have talked about things
that are far beyond
my understanding.
⁴ You told me to listen
and answer your questions.
⁵ I heard about you from others;
now I have seen you
with my own eyes.
⁶ That’s why I hate myself
and sit here in dust and ashes
to show my sorrow. (Job 42:2-6 CEV)

Wake Up to Presence

Sorry for my long absence on the blog. The Lord is doing many deep things that I just don’t have words for yet. Still trying to pray them into the grind of daily life, then maybe I can talk about them!

In the meantime, these words from Richard Rohr stirred my soul today.

“I promise you that the discovery of your True Self will feel like a thousand pounds of weight have fallen from your back. You will no longer have to build, protect, or promote any idealized self-image. Living in the True Self is quite simply a much happier existence, even though we never live there a full twenty-four hours a day. But you henceforth have it as a place to always go back to. You have finally discovered the alternative to your False Self.

You are like Jacob awakening from sleep and joining the chorus of mystics in every age. “You were here all along, and I never knew it!” he says (Genesis 28:16). He “anoints the stone pillow where this happened, and names Bethel or the house of God and gate of heaven” (28:17-18). Jacob then carries the presence with him wherever he goes. What was first only there is soon everywhere. The gate of heaven is first of all in one concrete place, better if carried with you, and best when found everywhere. That is the progression of the spiritual life.”

Adapted from Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self, pp. 7-8

The Perfection of Imperfection

I found this devotional reading from Richard Rohr stimulating today:

I bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever, and revealing them to the little ones.(Luke 10:21 and Matthew 11:25)

We grow spiritually much more by doing it wrong than by doing it right.That might just be the central message of how spiritual growth happens; yet nothing in us wants to believe it, and those who deem themselves “morally successful” are often the last to learn it.

If there is such a thing as human perfection, it seems to emerge precisely from how we handle the imperfection that is everywhere, especially our own. What a clever place for God to hide holiness, so that only the humble and earnest will find it! A “perfect” person ends up being one who can consciously forgive and include imperfection (like God does), rather than one who thinks he or she is totally above and beyond any imperfection.

It becomes sort of obvious once you say it out loud. In fact, I would say that the demand for the perfect is often the greatest enemy of the good. Perfection is a mathematical or divine concept; goodness is a beautiful human concept. We see this illusionary perfectionism in ideologues and zealots on both the left and the right of church and state. They refuse to get their hands dirty, think compromise or subtlety are dirty words, and end up creating much more “dirt” for the rest of us, while they remain totally “clean” and quite comfortable in their cleanliness.

Adapted from Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, pp. xxii-xxiii

What a great reminder, that God has chosen to “hide holiness” in imperfection so that only the little humble children can find it. Beware of cursing your imperfections, weaknesses and blights; God is there, calling you to holy ground. Can you see it? Can you hear him?

Lord, open my eyes and my heart to receive your holy love which comes not to my strengths, not to the place of my glory and successes, but to my weakest points of need, barrenness and sorrow. Thank you that you have designed things this way, so that normal people can get in on the life of God made available through Jesus.

Abruptly Jesus broke into prayer: “Thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth. You’ve concealed your ways from sophisticates and know-it-alls, but spelled them out clearly to ordinary people. Yes, Father, that’s the way you like to work.” (Matthew 11:25-26, The Message)

The Scriptures Must First Make Us Miserable

From the pen of Richard Rohr:

When the Scriptures are used maturely, they proceed in this order:

1. They confront us with a bigger picture than we are used to: “God’s kingdom” that has the potential to “deconstruct” our false and smaller kingdoms.

2. They then have the power to convert us to an alternative worldview by proclamation, grace, and the sheer attraction of the good, the true, and the beautiful (not by shame, guilt, or fear which are low-level motivations, but which operate more quickly and so churches often resort to them).

3. They then console us and bring deep healing as they “reconstruct” us in a new place with a new mind and heart. If you seek consolation as the first meaning of a Biblical text, you never get very far, because the small self or ego is still directing the mind and heart. As many have said before me, the truth will set you free, but first it must make you miserable.

Adapted from Preparing for Christmas with Richard Rohr, pp. 64-65.

What I love about this teaching is that it describes our experience as Christians really well in coming to the Scriptures as both fallen and justified (in Christ). In order for us to receive grace and resurrection life, we must first be deconstructed and killed – every day. My Lutheran friends would rightly point out that this is the purpose of the Law. Law must kill us before grace can resurrect us.

Let us not fool ourselves in thinking that we are always fans of the biblical text; indeed, deeply vast areas within us are still enemies of grace and die-hard rebels against God’s word. It is scandalous to have to admit that this will likely be the case until we die, but we must assert that we will never be fully cured of our God-hating rebellion in this life.

We must become aware of the “self” that we bring to the text of Scripture. This continues to be one of the biggest weaknesses in the evangelical, Baptist, Reformed circles in which I run. What we are unaware of will surely rule us. It is not just “proof-texting” we need to be wary of (going to the Scriptures just to prove ourselves right on something), but also our endlessly subtle attempts to manipulate God and his word for our ends. We must always, always, always remember that God is first; His word comes first and we respond; we must remember that we never “master” the Scriptures, they master us. They read us more than we read them! Let us listen to this divine reading, becoming aware of what motivations and affections are at work within us even in our attempts to know God better (especially here).

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12 ESV)

So, you have a quiet time? Why? For what purpose? What are you seeking? What do you want? Are you trying to prove something? Are you trying to convince God, yourself, or others that you’re more godly than you actually are? Get real. Most of the time you and I come to the Scriptures, we’re handling them falsely. You may think that I am too pessimistic, but I don’t think so. Only the real you can encounter the real God. Everything else is false self catering to a false god.

But even here, especially here, there is grace for us. The “God who is there and is not silent” will continue to pursue us, continue to speak to us until we learn to listen. I mean really listen. Shut up and listen. Grace is speaking, and if heard can lift your corpse up from the grave with a lightning surge of resurrection power, birthing new thoughts and affections that literally were not there a second earlier. This is the regular Christian life! Welcome to new creation.