(I started to title this post "Losses and surprises," then realized that losses can be quite different from getting lost.)
Near the end of Sacred Compass, Brent has two chapters on what we might call the darker side of leadings. In the chapter "The Dark Path," he discusses what happens when we feel lost and alone, with no idea where our spiritual compass wants us to head.
This is not necessarily bad, Brent says, and certainly not unsual. A period of seeming "lostness" can be part of the journey. It can grab our attention and cause us to scrutinize our lives more closely. It also can be the result of living in a fallen world, where many terrible things happen that are outside of our control. A sense of being lost also can lead us back to God and hope in his provision.
We can also be surprised when our leadings take us into unexpected places, as Brent describes the chapter "West of Eden." These surprises, Brent says, can tranform us and help us learn to trust more fully in God. Mary, for example, was surprised when an angel told her she was to bear God's child. That was not her expectation at all. But she trusted and was transformed.
All of this underscores that when we follow leadings, we are ceding control of our lives to God. We are not leading. God is leading. That means we open ourselves to hardships we might have avoided but also to blessings we might not have imagined. I know that in my life, there have been moments when, although I heard an inner voice saying, be patient, wait, hold steady, don't act, I've felt that no, I can't wait, I need help now, I have to take matters into my own hands, now is the moment to panick. That's always been a mistake, and I now more faithfully heed the inner guide.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Night terrors and peace
Reading last week about banks getting government bailout money to lend and choosing not to lend it gave me the terrors.
At first, this little story merely me made me unhappy. If the problem in our economy is frozen credit, I thought, then we have to insist that the banks lend the money out. That money is not for the personal good of a group of bankers, but for the common good.
That night, I jolted awake with a night terror: What if the banks kept hoarding and not lending the money ... and the U.S. government, like Iceland, went broke? And chaos ensued and it was like Germany after World War I and we were wheelbarrowing our almost worthless dollars to the grocery store for a loaf of bread and skinheads took over and everything turned into an apocalypse, with no services, no health care, no food, people racing around the countryside with guns ... I was horrified that life as we know it might end. I had an inkling of what it must have felt like to be an early Quaker, with cataclysmic events such as a civil war and the beheading of a monarch, going on around you, upending the world you had always known. I found myself praying ---praying!!!--for nothing worse than a nice, orderly Great Depression. No, no, I thought, I'm not ready for the apocalypse.
Such are the night terrors. They tend to cast a pall on the day time routine as well. I worried.
But this past Sunday, at Stillwater meeting, I had a very strong sense of the presence of God. There is a humble, grace-filled spirit in that meeting. It felt, on Sunday, as if Christ were among us. And I felt, very deeply, that everything was going to be all right. I felt as if God were telling me, with certainty: Don't worry. Everything is going to be OK.
I don't know what that means, but the deep serenity and peace I experienced stayed with me for days.
But we of little faith. I got shaken yesterday as I read the newest Religion Newswriters Association newsletter. Jobs in newspapers, which were already in horrible shape, are continuing to drop like flies. Religion reporters are taking buyouts without having other positions lined up. People with far more experience than I are unemployed. I felt a sense of terror. The whole newspaper industry as we knew it is more or less finished, I decided.
Then I leaned into my experience of God and put things into perspective. The newspaper industry has been in a long, slow collapse since 9/11 and perhaps the dire economy has accelerated the industry's demise, but there's nothing new in what's happening. I left my daily paper job a year ago because I saw the writing on the wall. This is not the end of the world, and while I will continue to freelance if opportunities arise, I will also turn my attention to other things. Part of the reason I left my newspaper job was a feeling of constraint, a desire to break out into other forms of writing or being. Now I may have no choice.
But I digress. My point is that I have a strong sense right now of living in two realities that are more sharply delineated than ever: the more superficial, false and changeable world of darkness and the deeper and more serene world of light. I wonder if others are having the same experience?
At first, this little story merely me made me unhappy. If the problem in our economy is frozen credit, I thought, then we have to insist that the banks lend the money out. That money is not for the personal good of a group of bankers, but for the common good.
That night, I jolted awake with a night terror: What if the banks kept hoarding and not lending the money ... and the U.S. government, like Iceland, went broke? And chaos ensued and it was like Germany after World War I and we were wheelbarrowing our almost worthless dollars to the grocery store for a loaf of bread and skinheads took over and everything turned into an apocalypse, with no services, no health care, no food, people racing around the countryside with guns ... I was horrified that life as we know it might end. I had an inkling of what it must have felt like to be an early Quaker, with cataclysmic events such as a civil war and the beheading of a monarch, going on around you, upending the world you had always known. I found myself praying ---praying!!!--for nothing worse than a nice, orderly Great Depression. No, no, I thought, I'm not ready for the apocalypse.
Such are the night terrors. They tend to cast a pall on the day time routine as well. I worried.
But this past Sunday, at Stillwater meeting, I had a very strong sense of the presence of God. There is a humble, grace-filled spirit in that meeting. It felt, on Sunday, as if Christ were among us. And I felt, very deeply, that everything was going to be all right. I felt as if God were telling me, with certainty: Don't worry. Everything is going to be OK.
I don't know what that means, but the deep serenity and peace I experienced stayed with me for days.
But we of little faith. I got shaken yesterday as I read the newest Religion Newswriters Association newsletter. Jobs in newspapers, which were already in horrible shape, are continuing to drop like flies. Religion reporters are taking buyouts without having other positions lined up. People with far more experience than I are unemployed. I felt a sense of terror. The whole newspaper industry as we knew it is more or less finished, I decided.
Then I leaned into my experience of God and put things into perspective. The newspaper industry has been in a long, slow collapse since 9/11 and perhaps the dire economy has accelerated the industry's demise, but there's nothing new in what's happening. I left my daily paper job a year ago because I saw the writing on the wall. This is not the end of the world, and while I will continue to freelance if opportunities arise, I will also turn my attention to other things. Part of the reason I left my newspaper job was a feeling of constraint, a desire to break out into other forms of writing or being. Now I may have no choice.
But I digress. My point is that I have a strong sense right now of living in two realities that are more sharply delineated than ever: the more superficial, false and changeable world of darkness and the deeper and more serene world of light. I wonder if others are having the same experience?
Advice time: health
Last week it was a stomach virus; now it's a sore throat/cold. This can't go on ... actually, my fear, as I listen to the wind howl around the house, is that it could on. And on and on. So please, offer me your best advice for preventing and treating winter illnesses! Is it vitamin C tea, ecichinea (sp?), oil of organo ... all of the above, none of the above or let's try something completely different ? ... and in these hard times, are there economical preventatives (I suppose all preventatives are inherently economical, but you know what I mean ...)
Thanks from someone with a very sore throat!!
Thanks from someone with a very sore throat!!
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Sacred Compass 4: From Brent Bill
Yesterday, I e-mailed J. Brent Bill about his book, Sacred Compass, because I feared being too critical and wanted to hear his point of view. If he were a superstar author or someone whose work I had profound problems with, I would simply state my issues. However, as Bill is a fellow Quaker, and I am more or less on the same page with him when it comes to leadings, I thought I would hear would he had to stay.
Here's part of what he wrote:
"I worried about that some folks might read it [Sacred Compass] as a "step-by-step" book and that was certainly not my intention. As I say in the beginning, this is no 1-2-3 steps to finding God's will. What I was trying to offer were the various ways we can use to uncover our leadings (journaling, walking, cleaning house, etc) which is why I invited so many friends to participate in sharing their ways of getting close to God and listening to the Spirit. Such as my friend Marcella's dancing. A way that would not have occured to me -- nor probably speak much to me. But it does to this delightful Quaker woman and helps her greatly.
I worried a lot about outlining the steps of sensing, waiting, and acting -- but then tried to stress it was not truly linear. That these are all stages that often intwine and weave into a pattern of discernment -- while we act, we sense and wait. And so on. My intention was to show that there are things we can all do in the various stages/movements of discernment and some will speak to us differently than they would other people. Writing works much better for me than dancing like Marcella would. And I suspect that the reverse is true -- though I know she journals as well."
There is a fundamental rhetorical problem in writing about leadings. They tend to be non-linear, not logical and unpredictable. In fact, they jar us into labeling them leadings BECAUSE of their seeming oddness. If God is telling us to eat breakfast in the morning (which he probably is), we won't see that as a leading, because it's normal, it's what we would do anyway. However, if we had an overwhelming feeling that instead of eating breakfast, we should go stand in the middle of the road and hold up a sign saying "Love God," we would probably identify that as a leading because it is such a bizarre and uncomfortable thought.
Yet books, especially explanatory books, are by their nature linear and logical. Their goal is to impart clarity and order, not confusion and chaos.
So how to capture the essence of a leading? Spiritual biography is one way. You can follow a narrative and watch one person's story unfold, thus seeing how a leading works itself out. The problem with that form is its particularity. You're left to yourself to draw conclusions. One person's experience of a leading may be so particular that you can't draw general principles from it. Or it may miss a piece of the overall leading puzzle.
Another way is for the writer to strain to create a language to convey difficult concepts (for example, when Thomas Kelly refers to Jesus as the "hound from heaven" in Testament of Devotion, he's using unconventional terminology to convey his experience), but that can lose people in the process, especially people at the beginning of a journey.
Of course, the answer is that we need to read in multiple genres to get a full sense of what a leading is. Brent's book, he said, is aimed at non-Quakers, and is a good introduction to a way of understanding God's work in the world that may not be familar to people from other faith traditions.
I want to go a little bit afield and ask what spiritual writings have most moved you or what type of writing works best for you?
Here's part of what he wrote:
"I worried about that some folks might read it [Sacred Compass] as a "step-by-step" book and that was certainly not my intention. As I say in the beginning, this is no 1-2-3 steps to finding God's will. What I was trying to offer were the various ways we can use to uncover our leadings (journaling, walking, cleaning house, etc) which is why I invited so many friends to participate in sharing their ways of getting close to God and listening to the Spirit. Such as my friend Marcella's dancing. A way that would not have occured to me -- nor probably speak much to me. But it does to this delightful Quaker woman and helps her greatly.
I worried a lot about outlining the steps of sensing, waiting, and acting -- but then tried to stress it was not truly linear. That these are all stages that often intwine and weave into a pattern of discernment -- while we act, we sense and wait. And so on. My intention was to show that there are things we can all do in the various stages/movements of discernment and some will speak to us differently than they would other people. Writing works much better for me than dancing like Marcella would. And I suspect that the reverse is true -- though I know she journals as well."
There is a fundamental rhetorical problem in writing about leadings. They tend to be non-linear, not logical and unpredictable. In fact, they jar us into labeling them leadings BECAUSE of their seeming oddness. If God is telling us to eat breakfast in the morning (which he probably is), we won't see that as a leading, because it's normal, it's what we would do anyway. However, if we had an overwhelming feeling that instead of eating breakfast, we should go stand in the middle of the road and hold up a sign saying "Love God," we would probably identify that as a leading because it is such a bizarre and uncomfortable thought.
Yet books, especially explanatory books, are by their nature linear and logical. Their goal is to impart clarity and order, not confusion and chaos.
So how to capture the essence of a leading? Spiritual biography is one way. You can follow a narrative and watch one person's story unfold, thus seeing how a leading works itself out. The problem with that form is its particularity. You're left to yourself to draw conclusions. One person's experience of a leading may be so particular that you can't draw general principles from it. Or it may miss a piece of the overall leading puzzle.
Another way is for the writer to strain to create a language to convey difficult concepts (for example, when Thomas Kelly refers to Jesus as the "hound from heaven" in Testament of Devotion, he's using unconventional terminology to convey his experience), but that can lose people in the process, especially people at the beginning of a journey.
Of course, the answer is that we need to read in multiple genres to get a full sense of what a leading is. Brent's book, he said, is aimed at non-Quakers, and is a good introduction to a way of understanding God's work in the world that may not be familar to people from other faith traditions.
I want to go a little bit afield and ask what spiritual writings have most moved you or what type of writing works best for you?
Monday, October 27, 2008
Sacred Compass 3: Testing our leadings
Many years ago I saw a newsmagazine program about a young tent revival preacher. During the interview, he stated that God was telling him to raise donations so he could go the Bahamas in February.
It's hard not to laugh at such a "leading." (A leading is a Quaker term for what we believe God is telling us to do.) "God wanting me to go to the Bahamas in February" sounds just a tad like using God to justify our own self-indulgence.
In chapter 3 of Sacred Compass, J. Brent Bill discusses this all-important question: how do we know if our leadings are the voice of God or own desires masquerading as God's will? How do we tell the difference?
In what he calls "sensing lab experiments," Bill offers a series of questions to test our leadings: is the leading clear (can you put it into words)?, is it compelling (can you not not do it?), does it fit your life, will it change you, and does it come from God's love? As you ask these questions, you sift through your thoughts to try to get rid of what comes from ego or self-will. Part of sifting is waiting.
Interestingly, Bill writes that we can sift with our bodies as well as our minds. If what God leads us to do will be holy, then what does holiness look like, smell like, sound like, taste like? Is our leading congruent with that?
A fundamental problem with Bill's book is that while he's doing the good work of trying to draw a rational box around leadings and lead us through a step-by-step process of discernment, leadings have a wild, unpredictable quality that defies logic. Sometimes leadings don't "fit our lives." Sometimes they will seem, on the surface, to hurt people in our lives. Often I know a leading is a leading simply because it's not comfortable for me, but is a persistent thought that won't go away even though I keep trying to dismiss it because it doesn't "make sense." Thus, I found the best of Bill's queries on leadings to be "does it come from God's love?" Anything that arises from love of God or love of others is probably pretty close to a leading.
Unsaid, but so important in discerning if leadings are from God is the spiritual preparation work --prayer, listening for God in the silence, participating in and building spiritual community--that allows us to "hear" more clearly if a voice in our heads is from God. I have been with people who insist that what is clearly self-will is God's will. (I am sure I have been that person too.) Usually, in my experience, people who insist that self-will is a leading haven't done the spiritual work to discern the difference. This gets us back to waiting ... often what we call waiting is simply building up our spiritual muscles.
Finally, as Bill points out, we test a leading by acting on it. We live in a confused, messed-up world. In the end, we step out on faith.
I have followed leadings in my life, sometimes without knowing I was doing so, and marvelous things have happened that I could never have predicted. My life has been changed and enriched in ways that have left me amazed. In my darkest moments of doubt, I can lean into the real, lived experiences I have had of God's presence in my life (I suppose there is the off chance that is all "coincidence," but it's my rational mind that rejects that) and invariably my faith floods back. Do you have similar experiences of following God's leadings?
It's hard not to laugh at such a "leading." (A leading is a Quaker term for what we believe God is telling us to do.) "God wanting me to go to the Bahamas in February" sounds just a tad like using God to justify our own self-indulgence.
In chapter 3 of Sacred Compass, J. Brent Bill discusses this all-important question: how do we know if our leadings are the voice of God or own desires masquerading as God's will? How do we tell the difference?
In what he calls "sensing lab experiments," Bill offers a series of questions to test our leadings: is the leading clear (can you put it into words)?, is it compelling (can you not not do it?), does it fit your life, will it change you, and does it come from God's love? As you ask these questions, you sift through your thoughts to try to get rid of what comes from ego or self-will. Part of sifting is waiting.
Interestingly, Bill writes that we can sift with our bodies as well as our minds. If what God leads us to do will be holy, then what does holiness look like, smell like, sound like, taste like? Is our leading congruent with that?
A fundamental problem with Bill's book is that while he's doing the good work of trying to draw a rational box around leadings and lead us through a step-by-step process of discernment, leadings have a wild, unpredictable quality that defies logic. Sometimes leadings don't "fit our lives." Sometimes they will seem, on the surface, to hurt people in our lives. Often I know a leading is a leading simply because it's not comfortable for me, but is a persistent thought that won't go away even though I keep trying to dismiss it because it doesn't "make sense." Thus, I found the best of Bill's queries on leadings to be "does it come from God's love?" Anything that arises from love of God or love of others is probably pretty close to a leading.
Unsaid, but so important in discerning if leadings are from God is the spiritual preparation work --prayer, listening for God in the silence, participating in and building spiritual community--that allows us to "hear" more clearly if a voice in our heads is from God. I have been with people who insist that what is clearly self-will is God's will. (I am sure I have been that person too.) Usually, in my experience, people who insist that self-will is a leading haven't done the spiritual work to discern the difference. This gets us back to waiting ... often what we call waiting is simply building up our spiritual muscles.
Finally, as Bill points out, we test a leading by acting on it. We live in a confused, messed-up world. In the end, we step out on faith.
I have followed leadings in my life, sometimes without knowing I was doing so, and marvelous things have happened that I could never have predicted. My life has been changed and enriched in ways that have left me amazed. In my darkest moments of doubt, I can lean into the real, lived experiences I have had of God's presence in my life (I suppose there is the off chance that is all "coincidence," but it's my rational mind that rejects that) and invariably my faith floods back. Do you have similar experiences of following God's leadings?
Sunday, October 26, 2008
blogging and silence
It's been more than a week since I blogged, and I realize that my stated goal of blogging five days a week isn't always going to happen. I could give a lot of reasons why I haven't blogged lately and they'd all be true -- a stomach virus that knocked me out for two days last week, unexpected trips to Cleveland and Fallingwater, traveling to look at colleges with Sophie, my "depression" over the looming Depression ... oops, I meant "long, deep recession..." but these reasons don't entirely capture why I haven't been blogging. They're simply, as people like to say, diversions.
Really, I haven't blogged in a week because I've needed to be silent. Perhaps it's the Quaker in me. Do others have this experience of needing to be still? Of needing to listen? Of needing to process?
That being said, I do plan to pick up the blogging this week!
Really, I haven't blogged in a week because I've needed to be silent. Perhaps it's the Quaker in me. Do others have this experience of needing to be still? Of needing to listen? Of needing to process?
That being said, I do plan to pick up the blogging this week!
Friday, October 17, 2008
Sacred Compass 2: let your lives speak
Chapter two of Sacred Compass, Quaker J. Brent Bill's book about spiritual discernment, focuses on the Quaker concept of "letting your life speak." In the wider community, we might use the terms "actions speak louder than words" or "walk the walk, don't talk the talk."
Certainly a central tenet of Quakerism is that salvation is more than reciting a creed. To Quakers, how you behave in the world is of utmost significance. This reflects Jesus' statement that many who call him "Lord, Lord" and yet don't follow his teachings will not find their way to the kingdom of heaven.
Brent outlines some ways we can learn to let our lives speak. Most of them involve plugging into our intuitive, rather than our rational, selves. We let our lives speak by learning to be attentive to the signals we receive from our bodies: what are our bodies drawn towards? What makes us tense up? We also learn how to let our lives speak through our stories, our imaginations, our inclinations, our dreams and our opportunties. Essentially, Bill seems to be saying, don't let your head and intellect rule you, but develop a sensitiity to other cues that may be leading you closer to God.
When we are alert to what we are hearing about how God means us to lead our lives, we start to live more authentically and our lives become more congruent with God's will. We speak to the world more from the heart and more through our everyday activities. We listen to God all the time and adjust our smallest actions to reflect our sensitivity to God's compass. We become more like the great spiritual leaders in history in that we are more patient, we pray more, our spirits become more generous and we come to love the (seemingly) unlovely.
The phrase "letting our lives speak" can become an other-focused activity in which we attempt to arrange ourselves outwardly so that we look good to our peers. This can become dangerous, both in that we can become more focused on pleasing others than on pleasing God and because people who may not have a very deep spiritual center can learn how to arrange themselves to look like "patterns" of goodness. It can be very difficult to discern who is a "pattern," because we don't where people have been or how far they have come in their journey,
So I like Bill's focus on getting "letting our lives speak" through getting our internal houses in order. If we focus on aligning ourselves with God and responding to his promptings, our lives will speak to others without our having to worry about it.
Have people's lives spoken to you? How?
Certainly a central tenet of Quakerism is that salvation is more than reciting a creed. To Quakers, how you behave in the world is of utmost significance. This reflects Jesus' statement that many who call him "Lord, Lord" and yet don't follow his teachings will not find their way to the kingdom of heaven.
Brent outlines some ways we can learn to let our lives speak. Most of them involve plugging into our intuitive, rather than our rational, selves. We let our lives speak by learning to be attentive to the signals we receive from our bodies: what are our bodies drawn towards? What makes us tense up? We also learn how to let our lives speak through our stories, our imaginations, our inclinations, our dreams and our opportunties. Essentially, Bill seems to be saying, don't let your head and intellect rule you, but develop a sensitiity to other cues that may be leading you closer to God.
When we are alert to what we are hearing about how God means us to lead our lives, we start to live more authentically and our lives become more congruent with God's will. We speak to the world more from the heart and more through our everyday activities. We listen to God all the time and adjust our smallest actions to reflect our sensitivity to God's compass. We become more like the great spiritual leaders in history in that we are more patient, we pray more, our spirits become more generous and we come to love the (seemingly) unlovely.
The phrase "letting our lives speak" can become an other-focused activity in which we attempt to arrange ourselves outwardly so that we look good to our peers. This can become dangerous, both in that we can become more focused on pleasing others than on pleasing God and because people who may not have a very deep spiritual center can learn how to arrange themselves to look like "patterns" of goodness. It can be very difficult to discern who is a "pattern," because we don't where people have been or how far they have come in their journey,
So I like Bill's focus on getting "letting our lives speak" through getting our internal houses in order. If we focus on aligning ourselves with God and responding to his promptings, our lives will speak to others without our having to worry about it.
Have people's lives spoken to you? How?
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