Sacred Threshold ::

Throwing Things Away : :

I have a hard time throwing things away. I guess I am rather sentimental when it really comes down to it. I hold on to things maybe a little longer than others in my family. Everything seems to have meaning to me (or I can make something up if need be).

In the last weeks I have thrown away more things then I ever have before. As items from my father's house exited into the garbage, now useless because of age, long overdue for a tossing, I mourned their demise. Now I find myself remembering them, recounting them in my mind: the green metal file box my father kept in the closet; the books buried in the basement; the wicker furniture from the home on Raleigh; the two toy chests of my childhood. So many things to say good-bye to in such a short period of time.

But it is good work to be doing, actually long overdue. As much as so many things have been left "buried" all these years in the corners of the house, I have had things within my soul also "buried." This last month has unearthed much, stirred up the dust within, which I will need some time to continue to sort through.

For now it is good-bye to each "thing" as they come back to me in my mind. I consciously choose to release them to God one item at time. As much as these things have been carried inside me as part of the interior construct of who I am, now they need to be released, given away for God to hold.

With every ending, there is a new beginning.

Four Forces in Human Spirituality : :

According to Gerald May, in Care of Mind, Care of Spirit, there are four forces in human spirituality working in a dynamic interplay, potentially impinging or promoting our growth in God. Knowing what these forces are and how they may be at work in our current experience, can assist us in our continued intention for a God centered life.

Our longing for God--We have been created in the image of God, imago dei, deeply imprinted in the essence of who we are as creations of our Creator. Because of this fundamental truth, our souls long to re-unite with its Maker. We can call it the "God shaped vacuum in our hearts" or the longing within the child for the face of parent who bore him/her. However you describe it, we all have it. It is in all of us and "our hearts do not rest until they rest in Thee." This longing can be triggered by a circumstantial sorrow, a visionary or unitive experience, or spontaneously, "out of the blue." Our job is to recognize the the longing and give it room to grow in our soul.

God's longing for us--God desires to be re-united with His creation. It is the Father heart of God that initiates the longing for the Creator within us. God's longing for us in both a theological truth and experiential reality. This longing can be experienced as grace gift. For no apparent reason other than God's activity in our hearts, we know Something bigger, Someone Other is loving us. It may show itself in the simple faith of a child or the disabled. God's longing for us may be seen only in retrospect, after we sense a spiritual awakening in our hearts. The voice of another may help us here.

Our internal fears and resistances--"Spiritual life demands much that we are willing to give. It threatens to loosen our cherish attachments, to change or dissolve our frozen images of ourselves, and to reveal certain truths about ourselves that we loath to admit. Further, it asks sacrifices of our time, energy and resources; it demands our very hearts. It should not be surprising to find ourselves resisting that which we consciously most desire, or distorting spiritual truth into self-contrived figments that we hope might give us fulfillment without sacrifice (21)." Most of us will need someone alongside us to help us recognize these movements in our soul and then align with us in overcoming them.

Intersections with evil--Evil can take many forms. It is seen as the seeming good "angel of light" and conversely a blatant confrontation with darkness. "It can be expressed through societal and cultural constructs that encourage attachment to desire and self-aggrandizement" as well as a real spiritual forces that sabotage and distort our journey of faith. We may substitute our search for the true God with an idol god who demands less of us in transformation but costs us with much less of a life in the end. With submission to evil, willfulness of our own way replaces willingness of "Thy will be done" in our soul. Most of us need the help of an objective other to discern evil's face in our lives because of its intrinsic deceptive nature.

All four of these spiritual forces are at work at any one time in our lives. As a person grows and matures, these four forces are experienced in different ways. The goal of good spiritual direction is to recognize, discern, and then help the directee move with continued faith towards God. As we lean and rest in the good of our desire for God and God's desire for us, our ability to dodge temptations and overcome resistances increases. We can learn to recognize these four forces and name them for what they are in our continued desire to live a surrendered Christ life.

Oscar Romero : :

A great quote from Oscar Romero cited on The Corner...

Nothing we do is complete,
which is a way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us.    
No statement says all that could be said.    
No prayer fully expresses our faith.    
No confession brings perfection.    
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.    
No program accomplishes the Church’s mission.    
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.    
This is what we are about.    
We plant the seeds that one day will grow.    
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.    
We lay foundations that will need further development.    
We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.    
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.    
This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.    
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.    
We may never see the end results,
but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.    
We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.    
We are prophets of a future not our own.

Sitting in a Circle : :

We sit together in a circle once a month, talking, conversing, praying, and supporting each other's journey to who we are to each other and the church we serve. Call it a little unusual, maybe it is somewhat on the edge of crazy, to be hired to serve a people with a particular title but not really understanding what the title means.

For eight months we have been together in this way, creating space to listen and challenge each other. Big questions are asked with no rush to answer them concisely and correct the uncertainty inherently contained within them.

Call it a holy place, an experience of church for the church. Brave and courageous are the structures and leadership that support us. Careful and intentional are we who have been given space to explore and discover our calling.

The weight of our experience together hit me yesterday. Risking being real, confession was made. Risking being rejected, truth was told.

So what is a pastor? Am I one? Who am I called to be in relationship with? What does that look like? Where have I failed? What is God calling me to change? Am I a sheep dog or a shepherd?

As we closed, sharing the bread and cup together, bowing, kneeling, what was entrusted to us to nurture was poking through the earth as a seed to the spring sun. I could see it, there was life, God's life birthing the new.

Where ever God's people gather, He comes. When ever the desire for more of Him is felt, hope and faith is given.

Something really good is happening as we sit together in a circle once a month.

A Report from Blogland : :

With a few consistent taps on the keyboard, and some regular noticing of life as it happens, this place of respite and creativity has become both an imaginative outlet and a connection into a whole new world, a true sacred threshold.

It's been four months now since I began my adventure, which in blog time seems almost like forever. Here are some of my learnings:

• Post a lot if you want traffic (i.e. lots of visitors). No new posts=no new traffic. New posts=new traffic.
• Embed key words into your titles and posts to increase the variety of visitors from lands far, faraway.
• Stretch yourself and write about diverse topics.
• Short and concise is better than long and rambling.
• Link friends and peers to your blog. It not only helps you visit them often but also increases their visitation rate on their blogs/websites.
• Comment on other blogs then other bloggers will visit you back.

The instructions given to me at a young age was to treat others as I wanted to be treated. So if I wanted friends, I needed to be a friend. If I wanted someone to invite me to their house, I needed to invite them to my house first. Once I had a friend, I needed to keep on being a friend.

So to with blogging...

In blogworld, one must be civil, friendly, and good company. If you want to be a friend with someone, say "hi." If you want to keep a friend, stay active in the relationship and see where it goes.

I have made new friends here over these past months. I also am learning more about the inner lives of friends I already am in relationship with. It's great fun but also there is now a real place of connection that has not been there before.

To all of you who have entered the virtual room of blogland with me...thanks for visiting! The door is never locked and the coffee is always on...

Old Photographs : :

Recently my days have been filled with sorting and cleaning out my father's home. Each room contains its own tales, some known to me, some not. Traces of life are all around, especially when old photographs are found.

I am amazed how a small piece of paper with an image on it of a moment, a person, of long ago can instanteously bring you somewhere else.

"There I am...I'm two...Fourth grade...How cute...Mary, this is you...remember this? How about this one Dad? Where did you get that? I don't remember ever seeing this picture of Mom! Dan...Mr. Personality..."

The work of sorting is good work but it's hard work. I feel like I have been time warped somewhere else and then the somewhere else follows me, haunts me with multitudes of images and core memories that simmer up from the deep places within my soul. I am eating, sleeping, and waking a house on Browndale. It has become another layer of skin.

As I woke this morning, an old Amy Grant song came to mind.

Up in the attic,
Down on my knees.
Lifetimes of boxes,
Timeless to me.
Letters and photographs,
Yellowed with years,
Some bringing laughter,
Some bringing tears.

Time never changes,
The memories, the faces
Of loved ones, who bring to me,
All that I come from,
And all that I live for,
And all that I'm going to be.
My precious family
Is more than an heirloom to me.

It's good to remember.

May all our connections to the past be redeemed in Christ as they are integrated into creating what the future will bring.

Closer to Home : :

Nancy and Howard have a May 3rd court date for the adoption of IVAN from Russia! Keep on praying everything will be smooth sailing from here on out.

Joining Together : :

   
We are all hungry for relationships, to do and share life with others. Some of us are privileged with a family of origin--mother, father, sister, brother--who are in our lives in the right proportions, who genuinely love us for who we are. Others of us have created a nucleus of loving by marrying a spouse and bearing children. And there are some of us who have created a network of friends and acquaintances who with all the bits and parts fits together like a patchwork quilt of love around us. But I think there are still more of us who even with many different kinds of relationships, hunger for something else.

In the 80s, Scott Peck wrote about the stages of community formation in "The Different Drum." A true community is formed as it moves from pseudo-community with lots of hidden agendas; through chaos, with the need for honest sharing in the middle of pain and confusion; to willingly emptying oneself, empathically listening and learning to love; and into true redemptive community, where each individual is slow to speak, quick to listen, making space for the other more than themselves. This experience according to Peck and others, is ephemeral, fleeting, and so there is no "booth" built on the mountaintop but a continued and constant tending of the relational garden.

Ken Fong described the process of the creation of community like an orchestra tuning up with all the discordant sounds and then each person emptying oneself as he/she chooses to follow the lead of the conductor. Only after the emptying of oneself occurs, then can every part make music together. All of the instruments, large and small, work together toward the same end.

Like the orchestra, Christian community is formed when people come together to make music with whatever instrument they have been given. As they notice and follow their own desire to submit to the lead of the conductor, then music is made. Sounding more like a fifth grade band at first, it's only through long years of personal discipline, training, and sacrifice, of learning one's instrument with even more years of playing together with others is great and glorious music a possibility. And even then, each member must go home to their own bed at night to begin again the next day.

I am encouraged by what I hear. There is something underneath the surface of the waters which is stirring from deep places, ancient ruins. Let us not forget it is the conductor who is calling us, not our own selves. This cannot be another "need centered program," a quick fix, an external cloak to wear with logo stating "I am in the 'in' crowd," but a geniune response to Someone who has the capacity to make us one as we lay down our lives for Him and each other.

Freedom Attracts ::

"When you are interiorly free you call others to freedom, whether you know it or not. Freedom attracts wherever it appears. A free man or a free woman creates a space where others feel safe and want to dwell. Our world is so full of conditions, demands, requirements, and obligations that we often wonder what is expected of us. But when we meet a truly free person, there are no expectations, only an invitation to reach into ourselves and discover there our own freedom.

Where true inner freedom is, there is God. And where God is, there we want to be."

--Henri Nouwen

On Friendship ::

Yesterday I spent two hours with an old friend sitting outside on the patio at Caribou. While we sipped our lattes, we talked and laughed, noticing together what God was doing in our lives and the life of the church. It was good to be together, sharing our common call to live a Christ-life with integrity and authenticity.

Years ago we worked together in the same ministry. It was a season of growth and deepening for me in who I was and who I was not.

I have come to know God writes in circles. I have learned to trust Him in His faithfulness to me. The things, people, events, ministry involvements, that have been most me and nurtured my soul always come back. Now they never take the same form but somehow in God's goodness, they are given again, pressed down and overflowing. This friendship is like that.

Last night I met with a core group of the Spiritual Guidance Ministry at church. As we tended to what God is doing in the ministry, the deepness of the love and reverence we have for each other was evident. We are more than a core group of people overseeing and praying for a particular ministry, we are a community. We are co-laborers in the same field and friends to each other.

As we listened to God together for the silent whispers of the Spirit, God came. In the desiring His way and not our own, in the willingness to lay down our agenda together for what we thought should be, not only was there a sense of the enfolding power of God but another layer of being together as "friends" was bridged.

So to friendship, with all its many faces. It's amazing how God shapes and fashions us together as one as we follow Him into living our lives as individuals.