Tag Archives: Dark Night of the Soul

Centering Prayer: A Conversation with Dr. Brian Russell

Dr. Brian Russell is the author of Centering Prayer: Sitting Quietly in God’s Presence Can Change Your Life, a uniquely rich resource for spiritual formation that draws on meaningful traditions of the church across centuries. For those sensing the need for fresh practices to widen or deepen their prayer habits, Centering Prayer beckons with wisdom that outlasts stale New Year’s resolutions. As Lent begins to appear on the horizon, Centering Prayer is poised to enliven the pilgrimage to Easter with practical, theologically nuanced guidance.

Recently Wesleyan Accent delved into the topic of centering prayer with Dr. Russell, who is Professor of Biblical Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary.  

Wesleyan Accent: At times, folks who are most familiar with Christianity as it is practiced in North American Protestant churches are surprised when they encounter something that seems new but is actually shared ancient tradition. Or people can spend thirty years active in a local church and still feel uncertain about how to pray privately. How would you describe contemplative prayer to them? And how would you describe centering prayer as part of that tradition?

Brian Russell: I can include myself in your example. I grew up in the church. I was forty-two years old (and thirty-six years into my Christian experience) before I learned about the contemplative tradition and began to practice centering prayer.

I think it is critical to emphasize that contemplative practices in no way replace traditional forms of prayer or the other means of grace that help us to grow in our relationship with God. I still pray with my own words or with printed prayers from Scripture and modern worship resources. The foundation for centering prayer is the faith delivered to the saints as witnessed in Scripture and embraced by believing communities.

Contemplative prayer is a form of prayer that focuses on being with God rather than using words to talk to God or make petitions of God or even to listen for God. Contemplative prayer is practiced in silence. We simply sit in silence apart from our own thoughts, desires, and concerns. Our intention is to experience God’s presence and love. In his book The Deeper Journey: The Spirituality of Discovering Your True Self, Robert Mulholland, Jr. defined contemplation as, “the practice of stilling ourselves before God, moving ever deeper into the core of our being and simply offering ourselves to God in totally vulnerable love.” (p. 97)

Centering prayer is a method for stilling ourselves for the potential of a deeper encounter with God through contemplation. God’s presence is always a gift; centering prayer is not a way of manipulating an encounter with God’s love. It is simply prayer done in silence without words.

But as soon as we sit in silence, we discover that our minds remain active and caught in continual thought loops. Silence is literally deafening because of our mental chatter. Centering prayer as a technique teaches a way to surrender our thoughts as we become aware of them. The goal of this surrender is the opening of ourselves to experiencing God as God beyond our thoughts.

How do we practice centering prayer? It’s simple to describe, but it takes patience and practice. Here are the basic instructions:

  • Select a prayer word that you can use to recenter whenever you become aware of your thoughts. I recommend that we use “Jesus” as the prayer word as it is Jesus before whom we are sitting in silence. However, others find words such as “love,” “surrender,” “Father,” and “Spirit” among others to be powerful.
  • Find a quiet place where you can sit comfortably for the duration of your prayer time.
  • You can practice centering prayer any time of day. I typically spend twenty minutes in centering prayer as soon as I finish my first cup of coffee in the morning. My wife Astrid and I sit together as a way of beginning our day.
  • Set a timer. I typically practice centering prayer in twenty-minute blocks. Select whatever time period you are comfortable with. I started with short three to five minute sessions and slowly worked up to twenty minutes.
  • Close your eyes and simply sit in silence. Whenever you become aware of a thought, feeling or image, simply say “Jesus” (or whatever word you chose) in your mind as a means of surrendering the thought. The goal is not mindlessness. It is not possible to shut off the mind. However, you will begin to experience short “gaps” in the endless stream of thoughts. It will be in these gaps where you may experience God’s presence in new ways. I say may because we cannot control God. We simply sit in silence with the intention to be open to God’s gift of contemplation.
  • At the end of the centering prayer session, relax for a few moments. I find it helpful to offer prayers of gratitude and then pray the Lord’s Prayer or one of my own.

WA: A while back I heard a great interview on the “economy of attention,” about how much your attention, my attention, is worth to companies. When there’s so much noise, when notification pings compete for our attention, when screens dominate our days, “centering prayer” seems exceptionally counter-cultural – and also seems like a way to quiet sensory bombardment. How does centering prayer help remind you you’re a human, not just a commodity?

BR: The practice of centering prayer is about being. There is no doing involved. Centering prayer teaches us to surrender our attention. We embrace the intention of sitting in silence in order to be with God. When our practice becomes habitual, we slowly become even more aware of the chatter in our minds and all of the noise in the world. But there will be a key difference: the disciplines of “resist no thought, retain no thought, react to no thought, and gently return to Jesus with our sacred word” go with us into the world.

Overtime, we begin to be mindful and present even during the busy-ness of our lives. The same discipline of learning to surrender thoughts to God in silence will carry over to how you listen to a colleague, family member, or friend who needs your attention; how you respond to the inevitable interruptions of life; how you react to conflict; and how you focus on your work. You will slowly find that you notice small details and experience the world in richer colors. Others will likely observe a more calming presence and availability in you.

In terms of the noise of our world, I’ve found that the more I practice centering prayer the more conscious I am of the subtle ways that our world robs us of our most precious gift to God and others: our time and our attention.

WA: Early in the book, describing the season in which you discovered the deep value of centering prayer, you comment that during your personal dark night of the soul, “my ability to think clearly had departed.”

What a word to so many people right now who are in shellshock from the past couple of years: nurses, doctors, pastors, teachers, those who are drowning in grief from the loss of loved ones. Alongside mental health tools like trauma-informed therapy and medication, what in particular might people find in centering prayer when they feel fractured or numb or horrified in their own dark nights of the soul?

BR: For me, centering prayer allowed me to find freedom from a mind that would not shut off. At the darkest parts of my season of the “dark night of the soul,” I didn’t need more information or mental stimulation. I ruminated non-stop on negative thoughts and worst-case scenarios. I was inconsolable.

But I found silence or, better put, silence found me, and in the silence I rediscovered the God who created me and who loved me unconditionally. Experiencing God’s unabashed loved for me when I felt at my lowest was transformational. God’s love cut through the noise. While I still experience times of incessant worry and anxiety, I gained an awareness of the excess and often negative chatter in my mind. In these moments, I sometimes encountered God’s loving presence directly; beyond words. I think that centering prayer can serve as a type of “Divine therapy,” as Fr. Thomas Keating described it. It does not substitute for human-to-human therapy or medication, but I believe it can work in tandem to increase their effectiveness. I’ve personally received tremendous benefits from trauma-informed therapy. In my case, I am certain that my long-term commitment to silent meditative prayer and deep intentional journaling greatly enhanced the results of therapy, as the Divine Healer had already broken up the soil of both the conscious and unconscious wounds that I carried.

WA: You mention in one place that in centering prayer, “surrendering our thoughts to God is our sole contribution.” I could imagine that statement causing some squirming; Americans so often take pride in our ability to put our best foot forward or feel that somehow we’ve paid our own way. We’re not always gracious recipients, preferring to be the ones building or giving. What do you think Christians need to learn or re-learn about our own poverty?

BR: Centering prayer allows us to see ourselves as God sees us. But to experience this level of awareness requires that we surrender even our thoughts (good or bad) to the God who loves us.

There are two deep and helpful truths that exist in a sort of paradox. These truths are expressed in the form of two prayers that I say daily. The first is the Jesus Prayer. It has ancient roots in the early church: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner. Amen.” The second is a modern prayer composed by Macrina Wiederkehr, a Benedictine monastic: “O God, help me believe the truth about myself no matter how beautiful it is. Amen.” I learned of this latter prayer from Maxie Dunnam.

The Jesus Prayer reminds us of our core lostness and ongoing necessity of God’s grace and mercy. There is no way to earn grace and mercy. We come before God empty-handed, with a posture of surrender.

But we also need to understand that God breathed life and abundance in each of us too. Wiederkehr’s prayer opens us up to the beauty and potential of a life surrendered to God in which we walk moment-by-moment in grace as persons created in God’s image. We are free to embrace our gifts and talents without the fear, guilt and shame that tends to either paralyze us and make us play small or drive us to earn or prove our “enoughness.”

WA: Traditionally, there’s this beautiful pattern of retreat and engagement, solitude and companionship, that push and pull spiritual formation like the coming and going of the tide. In centering prayer, when you brave silence with God and sit with what you find there, how does that shape the way you then go out and engage with others?

BR: One of my favorite quotes that I live by is from my mentor Alex McManus. He taught me: “The Gospel comes to us on its way to someone else.” The prayer of silence allows you to see yourself as God sees you. We discover both our need for grace as well as the beauty and potential within us. When we experience the gaze of God on our souls and discover God’s deep love for us as his sons and daughters, we begin to see others in the same light. In fact, encountering God in the silence and accepting the reality that we’ve personally been unconditionally loved and accepted transforms the way we see others. We are freed to love others as God has loved us. My mentor and former colleague Bob Tuttle taught me this: “Show up, pay attention; God has way more invested in our ministry than we do.”

So instead of silence and solitude being a practice that excludes mission, it is one that empowers engagement with the world. What I’ve experienced must be shared. Moreover, as God has changed me through the sanctifying work that occurs during centering prayer, I am free of more of my own “junk” that previously marred my witness and ability to serve as the hands, feet, and mouthpiece of God’s abundant and holy love.

Brian D. Russell, Ph.D., is Professor of Biblical Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary. Learn more about his role as Coach for Pastors and Spiritually-minded Leaders by visiting www.brianrussellphd.com.

Featured image courtesy Fragile James via Unsplash.

The Startling Poetry of Madeleine L’Engle

Before the rumblings began to emerge around New Years’ (stories dripping out slowly from halfway around the world); before awareness of trouble somewhere became the startling realization that trouble was here – we could indulge ourselves in becoming blasé about tradition. Habits are sly: sometimes, we’re lulled into the off-key sense that traditions are a way of controlling a season. We begin to see them as the point instead of as a waypoint. At Christmas, we mumble, “round yon virgin, mother and Child,” so that young hearers don’t whisper loudly, “what’s a virgin?” We don’t know what to do with the truly awful passage about Herod ordering the slaughter of Bethlehem’s toddler boys, so we skip it. Then we stare open-mouthed at the news when natural disasters erupt in December, scissors halted halfway through the Snoopy wrapping paper. For many people around the world, last December – despite weariness or tight budgets or influenza – was one of the last waypoints of normalcy. Even for people who don’t avoid the awkward or painful, this year has been a chaotic overthrow of everyday simplicity. What voice can sound clearly through the chaos? We live in a moment aching for the holy iconoclasm of the poetry of Madeleine L’Engle.

Best known for novels, the late writer Madeleine L’Engle – born in a year much talked-about lately, 1918 – showed a knack for discomforting the comfortable and soothing the overheated, displayed well in The Ordering of Love: The New & Collected Poems of Madeleine L’Engle. There is nothing controllable about life on this planet, her words seem to shriek; no family recipe to follow carefully that will alleviate the cosmic chaos. And after all, she was born at the tail-end of World War I, during the 1918 flu pandemic, a child during the ’29 crash, a teenager during the Depression, a young woman during World War II, a mother in the tumult of the 50’s and 60’s, a grieving widow as the Information Age picked up steam. Her experiences shout loudly to our current world.

But L’Engle’s poems also bear the time signature of sacred rhythms: many follow liturgical seasons, or lectionary readings, or high water marks of living, like births, weddings, baptisms, deaths. Others cobble amusing little sketches of the absurd habits of selfishness, or glee, or fear, or comfort. She speaks to God as brashly and fearfully as a child who dares to shout at her parent before bursting into tears. Her joy, rage, mirth, and disappointment are pinned into place with her regular, irresistible return to Creation, Collapse, Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection. For an author best known for books on time travel, Madeleine L’Engle shakes us awake now as much as she must have while she was alive.

Consider a few fragments from “Lines Scribbled on an Envelope While Riding the 104 Broadway Bus:”

There is too much pain

I cannot understand

I cannot pray

Here I am

and the ugly man with beery breath beside me reminds me that

it is not my prayers that waken your concern, my Lord;

my prayers, my intercessions are not to ask for your love

for all your lost and lonely ones,

your sick and sinning souls,

but mine, my love, my acceptance of your love.

Your love for the woman sticking her umbrella and her expensive

parcels into my ribs and snarling, “Why don’t you watch where

you’re going?”

Your love for me, too, too tired to look with love,

too tired to look at Love, at you, in every person on the bus.

Expand my love, Lord, so I can help to bear the pain…

It is startling to encounter words that so quickly, easily puncture the day to day patterns that trouble us – whether riding public transport or hopping on social media: “too tired to look with love, too tired to look at Love, at you, in every person.” Her honesty strips bare what phrases like “compassion fatigue” cover up. It is tempting to think that new technology or novel new realities are to blame – but for words like these, written decades ago.

In “Instruments (2)” the woman who managed to write and raise children at the same time confessed,

Hold me against the dark: I am afraid.

Circle me with your arms. I am made

So tiny and my atoms so unstable

That at any moment I may explode. I am unable

To contain myself in unity. My outlines shiver

With the shock of living…

A sense of precarious fragility often goes hand in hand with dripping, fleshy exuberance in her thoughts. Reflecting during a time of hospitalization, L’Engle writes in “From St. Luke’s Hospital (4),”

She comes on at night,

older than middle-aged, from the islands,

to answer the patients’ bells…

At first she was suspicious, cross,

expecting complaints and impositions,

soon tender and gentle,

concerned about requests for help with pain…

This morning she rushed in, frantic,

please, please could she look for the money

she had lost somehow, tending patients,

forty dollars that was not even hers.

She had kept it, in time-honored tradition,

in her bosom, and it must have fallen out

when she was thinking of someone else’s needs.

She scrabbled in the wastebasket,

in the bedclothes, panted from room to room,

returned to mine with a friend. We said,

“Close the door, take off your clothes, and see

if it isn’t still on you somewhere.”

She did, revealing an overworked body,

wrinkled, scarred; found nothing; had to leave.

In a moment when work, medical care, and working women are much in the news, Madeleine L’Engle presents us with sketches that honor womens’ labor – even one brief, sly wink at a casually maligned person from Scripture: “Martha,” the prosaically distracted sister busy with a meal.

Now

nobody can ever laugh at me again

I was the one who baked the bread

I pressed the grapes for wine.

In a year when suffering, depression, and despair threaten to blow the lid off of theoretical pondering on theodicy and the problem of evil, L’Engle charges in where churchgoers fear to tread, in these selections from “Love Letter” –

I hate you, God.

Love, Madeleine

I write my message on water

and at bedtime I tiptoe upstairs

and let it flow under your door.

When I am angry with you

I know that you are there

even if you do not answer my knock

even when your butler opens the door an inch

and flaps his thousand wings in annoyance

at such untoward interruption

and says that the master is not at home.

I cannot turn the other cheek

It takes all the strength I have

To keep my fist from hitting back

the soldiers shot the baby

the little boys trample the old woman

the gutters are filled with groans…

I’m turning in my ticket

and my letter of introduction.

You’re supposed to do the knocking. Why do you burst my heart?

I take hammer and nails

and tack my message on two crossed pieces of wood:

Dear God

is it too much to ask you

to bother to be?

Just show your hindquarters

and let me hear you roar.

Love,

Madeleine

What starts off like a cannonball blasted toward the stubbornly closed gates of heaven ends up landing with hoarse awareness: the fury driving her makes her own heart a target. I take hammer and nails and tack my message on two crossed pieces of wood. So then. Rage at the suffering in the cosmos inevitably illumines our own complicity. In that case, just let me see even a glimpse of your backside, God; let me hear your power roaring.

The years heavy with her writing were years of upheaval; chaos; swift change; suffering. Her thundering world gave way to these lines from “First Coming” –

He did not wait till the world was ready,

till men and nations were at peace.

He came when the Heavens were unsteady,

and prisoners cried out for release.

He did not wait for the perfect time.

He came when the need was deep and great.

He dined with sinners in all their grime,

turned water into wine. He did not wait

till hearts were pure. In joy he came…

We cannot wait till the world is sane

to raise our songs with joyful voice,

for to share our grief, to touch our pain,

He came with Love: Rejoice! Rejoice!

Whatever the pain, whatever the fear, whatever the work waiting to be done; whatever the mockery, whatever the fury, whatever the suffering – we cannot wait until the world is sane. Christ did not wait until the world was calm and well-mannered before he arrived; we cannot wait until the world is sane, we can’t pause for a more opportune moment to lift our voices, to rejoice.

L’Engle goads at every turn; upheaval is nothing new, no tradition can control it. Chaos, overwhelming loss, injustice, uncertainty – these are nothing new, no habits could contain them or master them. Millions of people around the globe would’ve been startled to realize last December that it would be one of the last calm or predictable months for a long time. Perhaps there was even a sense of boredom. In the absence – the stretching absence – of so much; in the absence of traditions, habits, routines, predictability, reasonable certainty, and guarantees, Madeleine L’Engle insists on the only stable reality: Creation, Collapse, Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection. Even while she is screaming at God’s silence, ultimately she lands, too tired to be cautious, in this reality:

He did not wait till the world was ready.

We cannot wait till the world is sane.

Featured image photo credit: Sigrid Astrada

Wesleyan Accent ~ Soul Posture for the Socially Distanced

Among many angles of spiritual formation during societal and global upheaval, these reflections from church leaders examine dynamics like community disruption and anxiety; the illusion of security in leadership best practices; pastoral wisdom from the Congo; and a community guide for praying during pandemic.

INDIVIDUAL SOUL POSTURE

Disruption, Solitude, Anxiety

How is it with your soul right now? Rev. Ashlee Alley Crawford, Clergy Recruitment and Development Coordinator for the Great Plains Conference of The United Methodist Church, took to social media to encourage reflection on the state of our hearts. She writes,

“The chaos of the external world means we’re all going to be staying home more in the weeks ahead. That’s perhaps a bit of a scary thing-not to mention that for many, that means loss of income and loss of essential connection with others. Is there a gift in the disruption of our rhythms? I absolutely believe there is, but it will not be easy. Thinking about those most financially fragile and finding ways to cultivate hospitality and generosity in this time will require something of us.

Not to mention that we’re likely going to be alone with our own thoughts a bit more. Solitude and silence as spiritual practices are the best teachers, but it can take a while to make friends with them. These new disruptions and the anxiety they produce tempt us into creating a hurry of a different sort.

But I’m convinced that this season of cancellations and more time on our hands-even though it’s most unwelcome-has a gift for us.”

Rev. Crawford’s insights on disruption, anxiety, community, and mindfulness are a timely call to lean into silence, or solitude, or self-awareness.

Deepening Character when Strategy Implodes

Meanwhile a gripping narrative has emerged from The Wesleyan Church, pivoting from personal quarantine to profound reflection. Rev. Ben Ward, Asia-Pacific Area Director and Director of Development and Communication for Global Partners, discusses imploding plans and emerging realization:

“On March 9, I was issued a home quarantine order from the Ministry of Health here in Singapore. This means I essentially can’t leave my bedroom for the next eight days. I was on a flight from Istanbul to Singapore on March 3. Apparently, a fellow traveler developed COVID-19 symptoms on the flight. The government began contact tracing to identify those who had close contact with the passenger, issuing quarantine orders. They tracked me down.”

Aside from the personal impact, Ward goes on to share the frustration of watching teams sent home and cancelling a major event that had taken months of resources and planning. With gracious transparency, he teases out a moment of clarity:

“Beyond the inconvenience the Coronavirus has created for me, it is also causing me to rethink what effective Christian leadership looks like.

I used to think an effective leader set a plan and then implemented that plan no matter what circumstances arose. Thinking through scenarios that could derail the plan and creating contingencies were essential leadership practices. If unforeseen events occurred and derailed the plan — well then, the leader must not have planned well enough.

But no one saw the Coronavirus coming. My best-laid plans were shipwrecked.

Ward goes on to share the keen awareness that,

“Planning is harder in the majority world than in the developed world. My Christian sisters and brothers in developing contexts have many more variables to consider that can derail their plans. I have enjoyed more stability than the majority of the world’s inhabitants. I repent of my arrogance, for thinking my hyper-planned-out approach to life is superior. I have more grace for my colleagues who keep loving, learning and leading in contexts marked by uncertainty and instability.”

He concludes with a sharp call to new perspective: “the thwarting of strategy is an invitation for God to do a deeper work of character.” (Click here to read Rev. Ward’s piece in its entirety.) What a beautiful posture toward spiritual formation when our best-laid plans go out the window.

When Lent Means Fasting from Easter 

Over the weekend I saw comments online wryly expressing that people hadn’t meant to give up quite this much for Lent. Today (March 16), tired pastors woke up to new CDC recommendations for the next eight weeks and realized that Sunday gatherings may be suspended over Easter. When I saw the comments on fasting and Lent, a memory stirred: last spring, Rev. Carolyn Moore asked me to write for her series on the Lordship of Christ, and I sent her “Jesus is Lord of the Valleys,” which expressly calls out what happens to fasting and Lent during upheaval, unpredictability, and loss. I wrote,

“Out of the corner of our eye, we have peripheral awareness of how close to being faith consumers we really are. We choose to go to a conference so we can grow spiritually. We choose to show up to Bible study so we can grow spiritually. We choose to read a book so we can cry or become more efficient or grow spiritually.

We choose.

We choose the parameters of our growth. Where we next discern/feel/think that God is leading us. What we will “give up” for Lent.  The problem is the insidious mindset that is entangled in our approach to faith: that we set the table, invite the guests, and choose the menu of our own spiritual growth. That we can choose what outcomes we want to see in our spiritual life. That we control how we want to be made Christlike. Lent changed from practices I chose to something outside my control, and I didn’t like it.

God allowed my chosen self-denial to be replaced with real desperation. I can’t guarantee you stability in this life. I can’t guarantee you won’t face tragedy. I can witness to the goodness of God, though…”

When the shape of spiritual formation is taken out of our hands – what is left? Grabbing onto Christ, proclaiming the goodness of God.

COMMUNITY SOUL POSTURE

Shared Prayer Guide for the Coronavirus Season

As we see the season of Lent turned inside-out, one way to witness to the goodness of God is through the discipline of shared prayer. Early on Rev. Pete Grieg shared a prayer resource as a community guide for praying about the impact of Covid-19. At the time, the likelihood of Coronavirus disruption had barely punctured American consciousness, but Grieg is quite in touch with global developments – the 24/7 prayer movement he helped to found stretches around the world. What seemed a bit early was, in retrospect, very timely: a lesson in itself perhaps. (Checking the calendar, “a bit early” in reality was just a week and a half ago.) Here is an excerpt:

“JEHOVAH SHALOM, Lord of Peace, we remember those living in Coronavirus hotspots. May they know your presence in their isolation, your peace in their turmoil and your patience in their waiting. Prince of Peace, you are powerful and merciful; let this be their prayer – ‘May your mercy come quickly to meet us, for we are in desperate need. Help us, God our Saviour, for the glory of your name.’ (Ps 79:8)

JEHOVAH RAPHA, God who heals, we pray for all medical professionals dealing daily with the intense added pressures of this crisis. Grant them resilience in weariness, discernment in diagnosis, and compassion upon compassion as they care. We thank you for the army of researchers cooperating towards a cure – give them clarity, serendipity and unexpected breakthroughs we pray. Rise Sun of righteousness, above this present darkness with healing in your rays. You are powerful and merciful; may this be our prayer – ‘Sovereign Lord, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for you.’ (Jer 32:17)

(Click here for downloadable slides for the entirety of this excellent prayer guide to use in community prayer – even if praying together occurs in virtual worship, and not in person.)

Spiritual Formation Lived in Shared Membership Vows

For congregations, Rev. Andy Stoddard reinforces community spiritual formation through the lens of membership vows, organizing congregational communication and resources through prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness, with resources linked in each. He writes,

“There’s an old hymn of the church that reminds us: “The church is not a building; the church is not a steeple; the church is not a resting place; the church is a people.” We all believe that, we all know that, but in a season of “social distancing” it can be really hard for us to remember what it means to be connected.  That, in many ways, is my worst fear. We need each other.  And we need the church.  The church will continue to be at work, and we each can continue to do our part, and remember vows that we made on joining the church. In this time, in this moment, we continue to need God and need each other.  I love our memberships vows, and I believe that in this time, as we keep faithful with our prayers, presence, our gifts, our service, and our witness, these vows will hold us together more and more.  I want to share some useful resources that can help you and me live into our calling in this and every season. This will be a growing list in the days to come.”

What a great way to order posture for the days to come: to remind people of who they are, what they have committed together, and who the church will continue to be.

When Prudence and Cooperation Are Spiritual Formation: Wisdom from the Congo

Often community is pictured locally; but people of faith constantly affirm the unity of the global church. We are part of a local-global connection tying us to believers around the world. We all follow Jesus: it’s that simple.

While weighing the challenges of Coronavirus-related restrictions, Rev. Beth Ann Cook reached out to a clergy friend from the Democratic Republic of Congo; he has pastored people, “in the midst of war, economic and political unrest, and a cholera epidemic.” She expressed, “I was so very grateful to be able to ask, ‘what do I do?’” He responded,

“In such a situation we ask people not to panic but to be prudent.

Help people as Christians to turn our faces to God in prayer and ask for his wisdom to face the situation.

Mobilize the community and congregation to follow instructions given by health authorities.

Develop an excellent communication network.”

The posture suggested by a pastor who has led during war, economic dives, and cholera? Be prudent rather than panic; help people turn to God in prayer and to pray for God’s wisdom; use influence in your region and congregation to follow health authorities; and invest in a strong communication network.

If energy spent in helping people to be a non-anxious, careful presence or promoting health authority protocol seems separate from spiritual formation, it’s not. Centuries ago, the Apostle Paul wrote to Christ followers on the edge of the Mediterranean, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

As we form and grow, Paul – and a pastor from the Congo – remind us of the value of practicing mental habits and choices that the Holy Spirit can empower and illumine: in the middle of difficult circumstances, we can take joy, let gentleness be evident to everyone, resist the nagging call of anxiety, and in every situation, present our requests to God through prayer with gratitude. These postures are both individual and communal, hammered out personally and corporately.

In Matthew 22, we read, “Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not?” But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, “You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? Show me the coin used for paying the tax.” They brought him a denarius, and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?” “Caesar’s,” they replied. Then he said to them, “So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”

Building a posture of humility includes mindfulness about Christians’ presence and witness in “the public square.” In times of outbreak, a response of simple humility might be, “of course we may have the right to do something, but we love our neighbors with the sacrificial love God has shown for all of us, and our actions must not ever be only about our own interests, real or perceived. And for the sake of our congregation and our community, we happily submit to anything that does not require us to deny Christ. We can easily worship Christ in our homes just as easily as we can in one building. We have nothing to fear by worshiping at home and serving safely wherever we can.”

The Discomfort of Spiritual Growth in an Outbreak: Wisdom from the 1500’s

About two weeks ago, Wesleyan Accent shared an adapted piece written during the Ebola outbreak, on Martin Luther’s pastoral responses to contagion in the form of the plague. People of faith don’t only have global connections during crisis; we affirm in the Creed, “we believe in the communion of saints…” The Body of Christ stretches across space and time and sometimes there is wisdom to be found from voices through the centuries.

“Even if people are accustomed to relative health and ease – or especially if they are – it is impossible to insulate any life from certain realities: illness, vulnerability, lack of control, mortality. Pastoral care during outbreaks is in part the quiet calming of deep existential fears usually ignored, avoided, or drowned out by many people in the Western world.

In addition to taking sensible precautions and exercising common sense and good cheer, we can outfit ourselves with wisdom from church history. Perspective is never so valuable as in a time of panic, warranted or unwarranted or somewhere in between. So let’s inoculate ourselves against denial, on one hand, and fear, on the other, with a visit to the Book of Common Prayer and a cantankerous German monk, Martin Luther.”

Luther gives counsel on the shape of prayer in the face of contagion; he offers frank advice on the social and ethical responsibilities of serving others if it puts you at risk; and he comments on pragmatic angles of dying well – a deeply ignored element of spiritual formation in the U.S. Despite the difference in what we now know of disease spread, a great deal of his insight translates remarkably well – and sometimes with unexpected kindness toward those who feel themselves faltering.

A Note to Tired Pastors

There are times that church leaders are tempted to grow discouraged; we know how much energy ministry can take when things are going well; will people turn toward their faith if there is no Sunday gathering, if the activity calendar suddenly goes silent? But activity and spiritual growth are two different things.

The question of whether people will grow or wilt may be thrown into clearer relief when business as usual is disrupted; but it’s not a new question, it’s an old question. And there is nothing that pastors have ever been able to do to guarantee that the people who often sit in the pews will push deeper into their faith in moments of chaos.

Fear that people will fall away from church because a time of outbreak occurs is the same fear that a person will fall away from faith because of a cancer diagnosis. We cannot inoculate believers from loss, challenge, or hardship. Some people may have casually engaged with faith communities, and they will become more invested, more active – they may even discover a call to ministry through this time. Others may have casually engaged with faith communities, and they will become less invested, less active – their belief may diminish in the face of self-preservation or trauma.

In your work to strengthen communications, encourage prudence over panic, support health initiatives, and lead into deep and regular prayer, be at peace. Do your best to support spiritual formation in the face of quarantine, and trust that while the congregation may look different when all is said and done, you will have new and more reasons to witness to the goodness of God than you can imagine right now. The well-being of your congregation and community is not all on your shoulders; so commit with boldness to stretches of rest, and let your spirit be formed.

Elizabeth Glass Turner ~ Valuing Your Pastors: Snapshots of Clergy Appreciation Month

It is October, which for pastors is Clergy Appreciation Month. Recently I polled clergy on their experiences of Pastor Appreciation in the midst of ministry. The results managed to surprise me.

I was curious to know answers to what I thought was a fairly straightforward, simple question: what’s one of the most meaningful gifts or gestures you received for Pastor Appreciation? As an afterthought, I included – or an awkward gift or gesture?

It was surprising to see the percentage of clergy who have never experienced any organized appreciation initiative, alongside the number who (though technically counted as having received Clergy Appreciation) received maybe one or two cards, years prior.

The point of surveying clergy was not to reinforce an idealized perspective of pastors. I’m rarely surprised by pastors, though it happens from time to time. But for every self-promoting or self-aggrandizing or corrupt or predatory pastor I’ve known, I’ve known many more who continue to show up week after week because they love God and they want people to see God, love God, and love others.

However, clergy burnout rates in North America are quite high, while available Sabbaticals are often under-utilized; a number of pastors leave ministry, and clergy mental health is frequently under assault. Recently, a tragic case of a high-profile pastor’s suicide hit the news. The factors contributing to burnout, clergy drop-out rates, and mental health struggles are complex, and no one event or initiative is a cure-all. Congregations should have high expectations for their pastors’ integrity, hard work, and growing maturity and leadership. Congregations have a right to expect to be treated with care, honesty, character, and respect.

But some of the gestures clergy have pointed out as most meaningful also reflect the particular challenges they face:

  • A pastor who receives a perceptive personal gift feels seen and known in what is often a lonely role
  • A pastor whose kids are included as recipients in Clergy Appreciation sees the hidden family cost and sacrifice being noticed and honored
  • A pastor who receives a deliberate daily prayer initiative senses renewed energy to face daily spiritual battles for which they crave Divine wisdom and insight
  • A pastor who receives specific notes mentioning examples of the impact of their ministry fights the fear that they’re not making any difference through the waves of criticism, tragedy, and pressure they encounter in the pews

In my informal poll, I reached out to North American Protestant Christian clergy, weighted heavily toward Wesleyan Methodist pastors working in local congregations (District Superintendents, Bishops, or General Superintendents were not included this time). They represent regions across the United States. The group includes both women and men in active pastoral ministry as solo, senior, or staff pastor or chaplain. Among responding clergy were Caucasian, Black, and Latino pastors. Pastors from multiple denominations responded, including AME Zion, AME, United Methodist, Wesleyan, Nazarene, and Episcopalian. Congregation size varied, as did denominational form of organization – congregational voting on a pastor vs episcopal appointment by a Bishop.

  • Roughly 65% of respondents have experienced some kind of recognition, gift, token, or event for Clergy Appreciation month, which is good. However, this ranges from getting a Hallmark card or gift certificate once or twice from individuals in a congregation, to organized events, lunches, gift baskets or sporting events tickets, to each staff member receiving a thousand dollars in gift cards.
  • About 20% of respondents had never served a congregation that observed Clergy Appreciation month but had received formal, organized recognition or appreciation at other times or milestones, like a milestone anniversary year at a congregation or when the pastor was moving away.
  • About 15% of respondents had never served a congregation that organized a formal recognition or appreciation initiative, either during Clergy Appreciation Month or at any other time.

Regardless of the monetary value of gifts, respondents repeatedly affirmed that some of the most meaningful gestures were personal, or illustrated what each member was able to give in their own capacity, or expressed the specific impact a pastor’s ministry had made.

Further, a couple of respondents explained that Clergy Appreciation is rarely or never observed in some particular contexts: church planting (where a congregation is new, not yet established, and often is completely unaware of Pastor Appreciation month), and chaplaincy positions (where a clergyperson is appointed outside of a traditional congregation in settings like hospitals/hospice, law enforcement or fire departments, athletic teams, or the military). For chaplains and church planters, there may be a higher likelihood of falling through the cracks, despite their roles being particularly heavy with crisis encounters (chaplains) and with entrepreneurial launch risk (church planters).

An aside: not all clergy want Pastor Appreciation recognition – sometimes they fear it looks self-serving to visitors, or they’ve grown to dread resentful comments about needing a salary at all or interactions that feel quid pro quo. Most pastors wouldn’t want the kind of “PreachersNSneakers” attention some celebrity pastors have been receiving about the perception of their wealth or what they do with it. But the vast majority of pastors serve congregations of fewer than 500 members, and the majority of those serve in churches with 200 members or fewer, so it’s unlikely the rural Illinois pastor down the street is rocking a $4,000 pair of shoes while layoffs are occurring across town.

While certainly care should be exercised, pastors as effective leaders must work toward being able to inhabit a place of comfortable, appropriate vulnerability. And that’s what being willing to receive something is: you are allowing yourself to be impacted by another person. This is a vital trait for clergy to exercise, who so often are the ones in the position of giver – giver of time, resources, counsel, insight, and leadership. When you let people give, it breaks down walls and barriers easy for wounded clergy to keep up; it reinforces to congregations the value of expressing and communicating gratitude, positivity, and appreciation; and it allows people to give from whatever scant resource they’re able. If you tell a church you don’t “need” anything from them, you’re robbing the five-year-olds of the opportunity to practice showing gratitude through their Crayola art. You’re telling the 85-year-old that she can’t do anything valuable for you, that she has nothing of worth that you need. And you’re telling people with limited income that their banana bread doesn’t have a point – when maybe that’s the best thing they have to give. So let them give it. Or else never preach on the feeding of the 5,000 or the widows’ mites again.

Here, then, are a few takeaways from pastors’ responses on what Clergy Appreciation gestures have been most meaningful (or sometimes most awkward). They’re relevant to leaders like District Superintendents or Bishops, active and retired pastors, and laypeople wondering where their congregation falls compared to other churches.

Pastors’ experience of Clergy Appreciation Month varies so widely it seems almost solely shaped by individual congregational lay leadership.

Church size, area of the country, denomination – none of these determine the likelihood of whether or to what extent a congregation will observe Pastor Appreciation. No one leadership style or pastoral personality or temperament seemed to shape the likelihood of whether or not a particular clergyperson had received gestures of appreciation. Sometimes length of tenure appeared to have some correlation – the longer a pastor had stayed in once place, the more likely they were to have been honored in some organized or deliberate way.

Pastoral Appreciation habits on a church-by-church basis seems further illustrated by the fact that some churches don’t observe any formal recognition of Clergy Appreciation Month in October, yet have a healthy practice of regularly encouraging their pastor at other times of year. Yet rather sadly, for at least one minister, a congregation with retired denominational leaders and pastors attending was the only church they served that hadn’t recognized Clergy Appreciation (perhaps illustrating the principle that, “a prophet has no honor in his own hometown”).

When denomination, region, and church size don’t significantly determine whether or not a congregation organizes regular Clergy Appreciation initiatives, the spectrum of experiences is quite wide. Lay leaders exercise a great deal of influence and leadership, and factors like congregational culture and health likely inform attitudes, proactive communication, and a sense of pride, ownership, and gratitude.

Consider some statements from currently active pastors:

“I did not even know it was Pastor Appreciation month. I do not think I have ever received a gift for it. Is that weird?”

“I only recall having received one gift from a lay person at one church I’ve served. It had a gift card, which was nice!”

“Church plant congregations have no idea about Pastor Appreciation month!”

“The best was tickets to an NFL game. It was on a Sunday, so the church gave us the weekend off! It was really nice.”

“My church decided to make Pastor Appreciation a really big deal one year (I had been at the church for six years). Normally, I might get a card or a gift certificate from random church members. This particular year, they gave me a different surprise every Sunday during October. The first week at the end of the service they gave me a big bucket full of goodies. One week, they gave me a big box full of notes of encouragement. So very thoughtful. They also bought a new desk for my office, repainted it, re-carpeted it, and redecorated it. They also gave me a framed picture of my face made out of words that describe me.”

“They gave each of us and the lead pastor over a thousand dollars’ worth of gift certificates to the dinner theater, the fanciest steakhouse, and a bed and breakfast.”

There are a couple of dynamics likely to produce an awkward Clergy Appreciation experience.

There are a multitude of ways to show appreciation with sensitivity, creativity, and personality, as some beautiful examples below show. However, a couple of situations can create awkward Clergy Appreciation experiences.

When a congregation recognizes a Senior Pastor to the complete exclusion of other staff members, it can be awkward for everyone. Consider these experiences:

“Only recognizing senior pastors makes it look like the congregation doesn’t think the other pastors are doing ‘real’ ministry.”

“My church has this sweet sign, Our Pastor is #1! A bit awkward though since it’s singular, and we have two pastors on staff.”

When themed gifts pile up for clergy who have to pack and move regularly. While teachers receive apple-themed decor, keepsakes, ornaments, dishes, and more, pastors sometimes have a similar challenge.

“My spouse gets awkward ones all the time. Just random crosses and church-y things that will collect dust.”

“Please, no more crosses or Bibles. I’m set!”

When social insensitivity potentially sours a well-intended gesture, pastoral appreciation shifts from being relaxing to presenting new challenges to be solved.

“It was great when people offered to watch our kids so we could have a date night – until it was a person we were not comfortable letting care for our kids. Declining was awkward in those moments.”

“One thing I’m aware of in our social media age is that some pastors are going to be in pain as they watch other churches shower their pastors with gifts, and then watch their church go silent. Pastors, out of a sense of excitement and gratitude, post it on social media. Sometimes, despite the good intentions, I wonder if it leads to comparisons as one pastor compares his $25 gift certificate to another pastor’s trip to Hawaii.”

Sometimes the awkwardness has a more sinister edge, so if your pastor seems a little wary during Clergy Appreciation month, remember occasionally there are circumstances going on behind the scenes, as with one respondent in active ministry:

“I have a stalker who is sending me things. The Superintendent is about to have a cease and desist letter sent.”

Despite the number of ways expressions of gratitude can become awkward, take them as helpful notes but don’t let them keep you from showing appreciation to your own pastor. As you’ll see below, even a short note can stick in the clergy mind for years and encourage a tired pastor to keep going.

The most meaningful gifts were personal, reflected individual ability to give from the resources they had, or included notes about how their ministry mattered or the impact of their work.

No one goes into ministry for the salary; still, it is moving to see what moves the average minister. Consider these creative gestures from a variety of congregations of varying size, with varying resources, and why they mattered to the pastors who received them:

“One year, our board planned an entire weekend of services including kids’ church, youth, preaching, music, scheduling volunteers. Our staff was invited to simply come and participate. It was amazing to come without responsibility and be a part of our morning worship services. It truly was a gift of time and appreciation. Imagine a whole week that our staff was able to realign our efforts because we didn’t have to plan weekend worship services. It was great!”

“I personally appreciate the thoughtfulness more now than I did in years past. Having gone through a tough pastorate, acts of service and love mean more to me than they once did.”

“One of the most meaningful gifts I have received for Pastor Appreciation month was a picture of my grandmother framed with a poem written by one of my members. My grandmother passed two years ago during Pastoral Appreciation month. The gift made me cry.”

“Honestly the money and gifts are always appreciated. But when people have written about the difference one has made in their lives…those make everything so worth it.”

“Our church does prayers for your pastors for the month of October with a prayer prompt each day. A lot of the cards and notes I get say that people are praying, and I believe they are, especially with the prayer prompts. They include our family in the prayers so that means a lot.”

“I had a church member who knew that I like deer meat, but also that I don’t like to hunt. He killed a deer and called me to pick it up, but all I had to transport the deer was my small compact car. So I stuffed this deer carcass into the trunk of a Corolla to have it processed. It was all pretty crazy! But it was an incredibly kind gesture.”

“The most meaningful was an appreciation lunch; there wasn’t enough in the budget to give cash gifts, but the members still wanted to show their appreciation. They decorated the hallway and tables with signs. The children made cupcakes for us. The most meaningful part was the gesture from the kids who made cupcakes, because it was the sense that everyone has the capacity to give – they gave from their hearts and their own means.”

“The most meaningful – I think what people have said in the cards they give me when they express their appreciation for my ministry, and the support they offer.”

“When I was single, one congregation brought me meals every day for a month.”

“This year they gave me a gigantic card that had lots of color and glitter, it was so me! I think that’s what I like best, it is so hard to get surprises past me, and they always seem to do it.”

“We’ve also had people get our kids gift cards, to take the family out for dinner – Steak n Shake and Wendy’s – it made them feel special, that they could ‘plan’ and ‘prepare’ dinner.”

“My most used gift – someone gave me and the other pastor each a large Yeti cup with our names on them. I used it all the time and never worried about losing it on Sunday.”

“Stained glass from old church windows (when they remodeled or repaired windows). We have these from two different church buildings. I get emotional just thinking about it.”

“I remember my children lighting up when they found a basket filled with goodies on the porch. It makes me happy when my kids feel loved.”

What a variety of ways to express appreciation for clergy.

Who can you thank this month? If you’re a layperson, have you thought about the pastoral staff at your church, or chaplains in your region? If you’re a pastor, have you thought about your District Superintendent or Bishop and how you can express appreciation without coming across as overly ambitious or self-serving? If you’re a District Superintendent or Bishop, have you thought about the chaplains or church planters in your care who are less likely to be recognized with organized efforts of appreciation?

This month, who can you thank?

And if no one has said it, or is likely to say it –

Thank you. For all you do, seen and unseen. For not giving up or growing embittered or coasting. For offering the gift of character and integrity. For carrying a spiritual burden for the people under your care. For not laughing at the Sunday Schoolers’ macaroni art. For staying calm while someone your parents’ or grandparents’ age sobs on your shoulder in grief. For accepting your 385th decorative cross with a smile. For carrying the knowledge of the heartbreaking Scandal that’s About to Hit before anyone else learns of it. For taking on seminary debt and still having criticism leveled at your preaching by people who themselves are terrified of public speaking or have never preached 52 times a year. For plunging that one toilet, again.

You are seen, and appreciated, and celebrated.

Thank you to all the clergymembers who took a few minutes to share their experiences.

Featured photo from justmeasuringup.com/kidsthankyoucards

Elizabeth Glass Turner ~ Consolation and Desolation: Old Wisdom for Tired Protestants

Summer is a season for seeing people we normally don’t get to visit much: family reunions in park pavilions, vacation at a camp where we hug people we only see once a year, travel to relatives several states away.

The widespread family of faith isn’t really all that different, and sometimes when the flowering tree is in bloom and the breeze moves slowly under the weight of humidity, we bump into spiritual relatives we don’t see very often. They are strange and familiar at the same time, like an aunt you see every few years who wears different clothes than your mother or grandma but carries recognizable features, a familiar laugh, an identical profile.

Now that we’re historically removed from burning each other at the stake, for the past half-century Catholics and Protestants have been venturing into the park pavilion with nervous, eager smiles, carrying potato salad and ready to try an afternoon’s visit for brief family reunions – so to speak. No, we still don’t share the Eucharist, yes, most Protestants still have deep misgivings about the fine line of venerating Mary or asking Mary to intercede, and praying to Mary as Co-Redemptrix; and yes, many Catholics still have deep misgivings about Protestants’ tendency to swing back and forth theologically with every knee-jerk trend under the sun; but you don’t bring up famous family fights of holidays past at the one time of year everyone’s together for a few hours, and overall ecumenical efforts on the parts of Catholics and Protestants have been a very good thing indeed.

Which brings me to Ignatius on a site largely shaped by Wesleyan Methodist theology. Sometimes you bump into a distant relative and wonder how you’ve never connected before. Ignatius is that guy.

Assuming you have Google and Amazon, one can let you research a bit about him on your own time; today, large likelihood of being Protestant reader, we’ll briefly sketch an appreciative note on his concepts of consolation and desolation. Some wisdom is deep and hard and rich but at the same time feels like good old-fashioned common sense: this is that kind of wisdom.

It cuts against the #blessed trend, it cuts against cynical pessimism, and it cuts against the insidious assumption that anything we experience in our life must result from our own smarts or stupidity, holiness or hollowness. It is deeply personal without being damningly individualistic.

Simply put, “For Ignatius, the ebb and flow of consolation and desolation is the normal path of the Christian life.” There will be times of consolation – when there is a sense of noticeable, personally experienced growth or blossoming, when God’s presence seems close and the means of grace seem easy and quick at hand. There will also be times of desolation – similar to the “dark night of the soul” – when, whether from wrongdoing, or attacks of the enemy, or times of struggle or challenge, God’s presence seems distant or even simply absent, when our growth seems stalled or the habits that sustain us feel unusually heavy.

Ignatius counsels that in a time of consolation, followers of Christ should practice gratitude; resist self-satisfied pride, by remembering how limited we were during seasons of desolation; capitalize on the presence or abundance of energy available; and determine not to back out on the resolutions we’re making while things are going well, when later they do not. If Ignatius had been a midwestern farmer, consolation might be described in part as, “make hay while the sun shines.”

He also counsels that in a time of desolation, followers of Christ should practice the habit of recalling God’s faithfulness in prior times of desolation; resist the temptation to see suffering as pointless; resist desolation through meditation and prayer; avoid making big decisions, “because desolation is the time of the lie—it’s not the time for sober thinking. That is, in our disheartened state, we’re more prone to be deceived”; pay attention to the spiritual insights found during desolation; and confidently look for the quick return of a season of consolation. If Ignatius had been a leader in Great Britain in World War II, desolation might be described in part as, “We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender…”

Yet Ignatius manages to avoid painting seasons of consolation and desolation as solely discerned by individualistic feelings, and gives wise counsel for how to discern when a choice, circumstance, or perspective moves us toward God and others, and when a choice, circumstance, or perspective is moving us away from God and others.

Overall, for Ignatius, Christians shouldn’t be surprised when desolation gives way to consolation, and we shouldn’t be surprised when consolation again gives way to a period of desolation; but, whether we perceive it or not at the time, God can use both to form and fashion our character and our loves, and the more prepared we are to encounter either season, the better we will endure the challenges that come with both abundance and affliction.

Do you know any tired American Protestants who might take heart from this old wisdom? It certainly has relevance for the constant question, “why do bad things happen to good people?” It has relevance for the “health and wealth” preachers. It has relevance for the “self-made man” portrayals. It has relevance for the depressive Goths tempted to believe that desolation is the season of truth, not the time of the lie. It has relevance for large church pastors who are too preoccupied with attendance, scale, and platform. It has relevance for the tired nun, the tired mom, the tired aunt. It has relevance for someone you know in your life who is going through something awful that you can’t understand.

Good things come to those who –

To those who what?

To those who wait.

“Wait,” Ignatius murmurs over a paper plate of fried chicken on a hot summer afternoon at the ecumenical family reunion. “Your time of consolation will give way – so store up now. Your time of desolation will resolve – so resist at every turn.”

(Good things come to family reunions, too.)

Sometimes, if you’re tired, finding an old relative (or a dead one) will give you some new perspective. Whether you’re in a season of consolation or desolation – thank God for Ignatius.

Aaron Duvall ~ Wrestling with God

Chera, my wife, was glaring at me with the type of fire normally reserved for people who tell her Christmas music should wait till after Thanksgiving.

“God is good,” she said.

I nodded, more than slightly annoyed.

“Say it,” still glaring.

“God is good,” I half-heartedly indulged her.

And then what I knew was coming.

“Say it like you mean it.”

I met her eyes smiling as best I could.

 “God. Is. Good.”

I affirmed something that I had said, from the pulpit no less, hundreds if not thousands of times. Something I had quoted in hospital rooms, promised to dying people, swore to college students during pastoral care times, and clung to during some of my darkest and scariest moments. Yet, as I was staring at my wife, who three days before had been diagnosed with what we were told was Stage 3 breast cancer, I no longer had his praise in my lungs, or on my lips.

We were preparing to go to a Sunday morning service at my home church in Ohio. Chera was going to be anointed. I was going to be expected to smile, to cry, to look grateful, to sound hopeful, when in reality I wanted to run. To avoid. At my worst I wanted to fight. In my arrogance and anger, I wanted a good old-fashioned wrestling match with God. And for that, I felt guilty.

We walked out the door of my parents’ home, where we had been staying since the diagnosis. We were 460 miles from what we now called home in New York. The different mattress had caused my hip to hurt. My three-year-old daughter, who was refusing to sleep on her own, was not helping the matter.

I didn’t want to go to church. I was empty. I was angry. And my hip hurt.

As we walked out, Chera looked at me and whispered, “God is good.  God is God.  And God is good at being God.” I nodded. I didn’t doubt that God was a good driver… I only wondered, if at times, he was asleep at the wheel.

I didn’t sing much during the service. My wife, three days past diagnosis, was raising her hands and crying; my daughter was doing the same. I was clenching my fists. I don’t remember the songs, the words, or even the melodies. I do remember the pain. In my chest. In my throat. In my hip.

We were called down to be anointed, and I walked down to the altar like a prize fighter approaching the ring. Maybe now I would get my answer; if not, I would at least get my showdown. I knelt.

And I broke.

The sadness, anger, and disappointment that flowed out eventually turned to questioning, and then begging. If we were having a fight, I was losing.

I’ve never heard a voice from God but I’ve always wanted to. I assume God sounds like James Earl Jones, or maybe Morgan Freeman. If I finally hear from God, and he’s a tenor, or as my Scottish soccer coach believes, speaks like Sean Connery, I won’t recognize him at all. But at that moment I got a deep sense that God was communicating to me, perhaps an echo of the previous conversation: “I am good. I am God. I am good at being God.  And I don’t sleep.”

“Sure,” I thought.

As my wife walked back to our pew, head held high, eyes shining, tears wiped away, I limped back, our daughter in my arms. After three days of calling God out for being silent and absent, I started to realize that I wasn’t ready to hear from God. I wasn’t ready to see him. Honestly, I wasn’t even sure what I would do if he actually showed up. But God did show up, as he always does. He showed up at the end of the sermon. Chera could tell you exactly what it was about. She probably has notes stored someplace. I on the other hand can tell you the last scripture reference. I can tell you because exactly as the pastor read Genesis 32:22-27, my hip started throbbing along with Jacob’s.

Yes, the last passage the pastor read was about a man wrestling with God and his resulting injury: pain in his hip. I think I might have audibly gasped from both the pain and surprise when she mentioned the words. And suddenly my world shifted.

“I am good. I am God. I am good at being God. I do not sleep, and I’ve always been right here.”

And I knew it to be true, because I had been wrestling with God for the past three days. And gracefully, mercifully, God had taken it easy on me. He had taken the words, the punches, the doubts, the frustrations, the elbow drops and body slams, and in return he had simply touched my hip.

At the end of their fight, Jacob clings to God in desperation, exclaiming that he won’t let go until God blesses him. It makes me wonder how often I missed a blessing because I avoided the wrestling.  It wasn’t until recently that I really felt I could fight with God. I’ve been angry before, and certainly disappointed, but this new season brought me to a place of engagement. I’ve often heard that in pain and crisis our natural instinct is to either run or engage with the “fight or flight.” My natural instinct over the years has been to run, or at the very least to clam up in pain. In college I nearly left the faith over some painful experiences, and during that time I simply shut down. No prayer, no engaging: just silence.

This time, instead of shutting down, I leaned in. I decided we were going to fight this out.  And in muscling up, I got closer than I ever had before. It was not in the silence that I was finding him, but in the fighting, in the lamenting, in the pain.  If God is in the redeeming business, if God is trying to use all things to redeem, it makes sense that he would use even our pain and anger to draw us in.

After the service, as I walked up the stairs into my parents’ house, my hip gave out on the second step and I limped. This time, however, I didn’t respond in anger. I responded in thankfulness. It was a reminder that although I had been silent, God had not. Although I hadn’t felt him, he was there. The distance I sensed certainly wasn’t on his part, and it took a wrestling match for me to draw close; that may have been the only thing that would.

I don’t know how long I’ll have this limp and pain. For now, it’s a reminder, a holy pain that testifies that sometimes God lets us limp, and that in the wrestling, we are not alone.

Elizabeth Glass Turner ~ Scripture You Forgot You Knew

It happens to all of us.

An old song or movie comes on, and somewhere, out of the depths of your dusty brain, a reflex kicks in. Before you know it, you’re singing words you didn’t know you remembered, or you’re quoting a line right before the actor says it. It’s like muscle memory, hidden deep beneath years of doctor appointments and oil changes, underneath coworker extension numbers and how far Abraham Lincoln was in the line of U.S. Presidents (he was 16th).

It’s startling to remember something you’d forgotten you knew. It comes like an unexpected flash, a glimpse into the mysterious world of the subconscious. Therapists are familiar with the phenomenon when a person accidentally spills into a verbalized assumption they’ve only ever tacitly held.

It’s amazing what our brain soaks up and “learns” even – or especially – when we’re not particularly trying to learn anything at all.

A few years back during a dark night of the soul, I rediscovered this truth. Hymns I’d long forgotten popped up unbidden in my thoughts. Scripture verses I’d forgotten I’d memorized as a child emerged out of nowhere. Prayers I’d learned, spoken by thousands of Christians over centuries, rooted my thoughts when I didn’t have the words.

I was remembering Scripture I’d forgotten I knew. To make domestic allusions, it was like finding pre-prepared dinners tucked in the bottom of the chest freezer; it was like finding a savings account put aside and forgotten; it was like finding just what you needed, right when you needed it.

These gifts of grace were just that: gifts, and grace. Teachers, VBS leaders, pastors, evangelists, my mom – they’d patiently told Bible stories, reviewed memory verses, repeated sermon texts. These were gifts to my soul, and they seeped down into my incredibly flexible, sponge-like little kid and adolescent brain. And they were grace: tokens of truth, strength, clarity, and peace, pointing to who God is, who God says we are, and how we can live on this planet. They were grace: mending broken times, calming troubled thoughts, infusing confusion with direction, sharing Divine love in human lack.

In my early years, when difficulties were relatively minor, by the grace of God and the kindness of many people, my mind was tucked with notes for later. When later came, and I didn’t have the mental energy to flip open my Bible and read for myself, Scripture was already buried deep in my mind, and it sprang up as if it had been waiting for just this moment.

Recently another Wesleyan Accent writer wrote, “Old Dogs, New Tricks: Neuroplasticity and the Renewing of Your Mind.”

Carrie Carter wrote,

Up until the 1970’s, scientists thought that certain functions in a brain were hard-wired. Any changes that occurred were the exception. However, as technology advanced and our ability increased to study areas of the body that were previously a mystery, it was discovered that our brains have the capacity to change their connections and behavior in response to new information, sensory stimulation, development, damage, or dysfunction.

So are the concepts of being “transformed by the renewing of your mind” and neuroplasticity intertwined? I think so, and here’s how: 

Paul’s exhortation is clear. After doing a quick word study on “renew,” the word means…exactly that. There are no other substitutions in the Greek for his use of “renew.”

In the culture Paul addressed – a culture fraught with immorality, the celebration of violence, and slavery, that crossed every line – how were these new Christ-followers to actually follow Christ? Up until that point, they knew no different lifestyle. How were they to change such embedded behavioral patterns and thought processes? Why would Paul even ask this of them? 

Because Paul knew it could be done. With the help of God’s brilliance in forming the brain with capacities to change, the presence of the Holy Spirit, and years of reconditioning and retraining, Paul himself was transformed by the renewing of his mind and did a 180-degree turn in his way of living.

Wow. Carter gives us hope: those times when we have energy and flexibility to engage deeply with our faith are enormously impactful. You don’t have to have a childhood in which memory verses are soaked up in order for God’s Word to work grace in your life: your brain can still adapt, refashion and reform new pathways and neural impulses that will serve you well, both now and later.

In other words, it’s never too late to reshape your thoughts; it’s never too late to memorize a passage of Scripture; you’re never too old, even if your brain feels flabby and less quick-witted than it used to.

In fact, engaging with Scripture now may be a saving grace later that you can’t imagine.

At one point I worked in a nursing home, where pastors rarely tread. One resident mourned her inability to simply read her own Bible: a stroke had impaired her vision, and she couldn’t turn the thin pages. When I had spare moments I would slip into her room and read to her. She was so hungry for it. I’d ask, “what would you like to hear today?” “Any of it – it’s all good,” she would mumble through her impaired speech. Tears would roll down her cheeks as she heard Scripture read to her.

On a different hallway, I once entered the room of a woman I thought was completely mentally absent. Even though I always tried to assume residents could comprehend more than they were able to communicate, I just knew this woman wasn’t communicating and was slipping into the twilight on the borders of death. But I went anyway and began to read from a Psalm.

Tears rolled down my cheeks in shock as she opened her eyes and spoke the words, long hidden in her brain, along with me. I thought I had chosen a Psalm at random. I tried to talk with her when the Psalm was done, but as soon as it was finished, she receded back into the twilight and said no more.

Have you remembered anything you forgot you knew? Has some long-buried truth emerged after years in the dark at just the right moment? It is grace. It is a gift.

The Word of God for the people of God…

Thanks be to God.

Elizabeth Glass Turner ~ A Cold and Broken Thanksgiving

From our archives, a Thanksgiving reflection for the brokenhearted by Wesleyan Accent Managing Editor Elizabeth Glass Turner.

 

And I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch
And love is not a victory march
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah

-Leonard Cohen, “Hallelujah”

Hopefully you’re having a banner year – one for the books. The stars align and everything’s coming up you. Babies smile at you, old people are grateful for you, good people respect you and bad people leave you alone. You have a lot to be thankful for. Make your gratitude list, have seconds of sweet potato casserole and pause to appreciate the moment.

Everyone goes through seasons, and some seasons seem to last longer than others.

This is for the people who aren’t having a banner year.

You miscarried.

You got laid off.

You shook your fist at cancer and it didn’t matter.

You picked up your kid from the police station.

You picked up your parent from the police station.

You found that text on your spouse’s phone.

You discovered untruthful gossip following you around.

You discovered truthful gossip following you around.

You arranged a funeral for someone.

You filled an antidepressant prescription.

You should’ve filled an antidepressant prescription.

The turkey is warm, but it’s a cold and broken thanksgiving. Shards of life lie mocking on the floor in the near-shape of their original wholeness and you catch a glimpse of your fractured reflection, a distortion of what was and what should be. And when you count your blessings it’s with gritted teeth or a sense of cruel, useless irony or a numbed, deadened mimic of routine.

What happens when the Mona Lisa is torn apart and the pieces don’t fit and you’re left with a grotesque Picasso? The features are there, but out of place, misaligned, foreign, unfamiliar. Nieces and nephews will recognize you as you walk through the door, but you know, deep down, that you’re struggling to find parts of yourself that you recognize as you sort through remnants, shards, rubble.

Happy Thanksgiving.

You compare your cold and broken thanksgiving to the vast suffering of the world to try to force perspective, to resist the darkness. I have a roof. I have food. My neighbors weren’t just bombed. 

But sometimes even Aunt Bev’s homemade pie tastes stale when your heart is re-breaking every few minutes while you make small talk.

For my days vanish like smoke;
    my bones burn like glowing embers.
My heart is blighted and withered like grass;
    I forget to eat my food.
In my distress I groan aloud
    and am reduced to skin and bones.
I am like a desert owl,
    like an owl among the ruins.
I lie awake; I have become
    like a bird alone on a roof.
All day long my enemies taunt me;
    those who rail against me use my name as a curse.
For I eat ashes as my food
    and mingle my drink with tears
because of your great wrath,
    for you have taken me up and thrown me aside.
My days are like the evening shadow;
    I wither away like grass.

Let’s all go around and say what we’re thankful for…

Your year flashes in bits and pieces in front of your mind and you search for a socially appropriate response that doesn’t include “good medical attention after a miscarriage” or “pro bono lawyers” or “insightful marriage and family therapists.”

Pass the stuffing.

Because you also know by now that faith and hope and love are more than a French bistro-style inspirational poster hanging in the dining room. They’re not feelings, they’re bedrock reality that keep you sane because you know they’re more than trite platitudes.

Here I raise mine Ebenezer
Hither by thy help I’ve come
And I hope, by thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.

Hither by thy help I’ve come. Here, through your help, I’ve come. Here, with your help, I’ve finally arrived. And I hope, because of your nature, to also arrive safely home.

Ebenezer: the stone of help. A memorial to overcoming by the grace of God. “A commemoration of divine assistance.”

Friend, do whatever you need to do to sit at the table, to steel your soul and give thanks. Giving thanks is a choice, whether you’re in an expensive subdivision or a soup kitchen or the smoldering ruins of your neighborhood. Wear something that makes you feel strong. Find a small phrase from a song or scripture and force it through your head. Set your phone’s alarm to go off regularly just to remind you to pray “Christ, have mercy,” or to reopen a loving email.the-great-thanksgiving-1

Put on your Superman boxers and set to work mentally constructing your memorial stone that etches onto the landscape the living reality of faith: here, in this foyer full of people, I raise a stone of commemoration. This year, by the grace of God, I made it to this foyer. By God’s help I made it to the church, which felt like a trek across a universe of pain. Here I stack my rocks that have been thrown at me, leaving me bruised and bloodied. I will stack them tall to scream at the cosmos that I’ve come this far by the goodness of God and that God willing, I’ll make it home.

It may be a cold and broken thanksgiving but it is not destroyed.

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. 

But just as we have the same spirit of faith that is in accordance with scripture—“I believed, and so I spoke”—we also believe, and so we speak, because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus, and will bring us with you into his presence. Yes, everything is for your sake, so that grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.

So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.

Eucharisteo: I give thanks. “This is my Body, broken for you for the forgiveness of sins. Eat this in remembrance of me.”

The Body Broken will strengthen and sustain us through any and every holiday meal: the Great Thanksgiving, the Eucharist, gives us the taste of Ebenezer. Here, at this place, I take and eat, here, at this place, I taste and give thanks for a broken Savior. By your help, God, to this place I’ve come.

Taste and see that the Lord is good…

Let’s bow our heads and say grace.

Hear I raise mine Ebenezer…

“How have you been? I haven’t heard from you lately.”

I’m taking rocks that have left me stunned and broken and crafting a monument from them.

I’m glad you’re here.

So am I. By the grace of God, I’ve made it this far. And I hope by God’s good grace, safely to make it home.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Justin Gentry ~ Finding Myself in the Poetry of Mary Oliver

For Jesus doesn’t change—yesterday, today, tomorrow, he’s always totally himself.

Hebrews 13:8, The Message

For as long as I can remember I have loved words. I read short novels at a young age and have always been comfortable expressing myself in front of people. I am an odd combination of bookish yet outgoing. It is the power of words that fascinates me. This combination of symbols on a page, or a screen in this case, can move you to feel any number of emotions, take you to any place in the past, or to worlds that have yet to exist. Words are lightning in a bottle.

This fascination may be why I was drawn to the pastoral vocation. Whether in a sermon, blog post or conversation, as a pastor I am required to use my words to create new worlds for people to walk into. It is an art and a delight when it works well.

Lately my interest has turned to reading poetry. I think I am drawn so much to poetry these days because over and above anything else poets are themselves. They speak from a raw, sometimes scandalous place that many of us don’t have access to. As a pastor it can be very hard to be yourself, yet it is essential if you want to have anything of value to communicate.41t2mzwj8pl-_sx297_bo1204203200_

Over the years there are dozens of poems that have shaped my inner life, but today I want to share two from self-titled “praise poet” Mary Oliver. I love that it feels like she has lived what she has written about. When she writes about forgiveness or venturing out into the unknown, you get the sense that she writes from experience. As I use my words to bring more of Jesus’ Kingdom into the world I don’t want it to seem like I am faking it for effect. I want to have lived to tell the tale I am telling you too.

I invite you to read both poems and sit with them for a bit before moving to my commentary. Maybe they have something to teach you that I have not yet thought of.

“The Uses of Sorrow”

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

 

Someone I loved once gave me

a box full of darkness.

 

It took me years to understand

that this, too, was a gift.

 

This very short poem, almost a quote really, sums up my work as a pastor. I am tasked with peering into the darkness in myself and somehow by the grace of God finding a redemptive perspective to it. For years I thought of my work as helping others do this, but I have learned that I must be the one to go first. If I cannot do this with my greatest tragedies, how can I lead others to do the same?

into-the-darkness-1I love that Mary Oliver doesn’t minimize the darkness or throw up her hands and say it is God’s plan too early. People who haven’t dealt with their pain tend to do this. She lets it stay darkness but transforms her relationship to it from victim to victor. It is in this act that we become more than conquerors.

If someone has given you a “box full of darkness” I am truly sorry. It is a painful, terrible thing to deal with. I cannot offer a quick fix, but if you sit with it and learn what it has to teach you, things will get better in time. This process often comes at night when we aren’t looking for it; when we have stopped hoping for it. You realize that the thing you thought would destroy you forever has made you into a better person.  That is good news indeed.

 

“The Journey”

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice-

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

“Mend my life!”

each voice cried.

But you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do–

determined to save

the only life you could save.

I read this poem about once a week. Over the last year it has spoken to me in a way the Scriptures haven’t, which can happen when your business is the Bible. The dry, professional nature the Scriptures can take on when you have studied them for years used to bother me. I would wonder what was wrong with me. I realize now that sometimes God delights in speaking through poets and prophets.

Back to the poem, I find that as a pastor it is easy to get caught up in someone else’s drama. Each person’s need is so great that I forget God has a unique part for me to play too. Mary Oliver reminds me that the voice I am called to listen to isn’t speaking to someone else. It is speaking to me and me alone. It is for me and me alone.

That could sound incredibly selfish, but most good advice does. Yes, I am called to save many lives, but at the end of the day I can really only know if one is actually saved. I am responsible for shepherding and cultivating this one wild life that I have been given.

In Christian circles we talk a lot about selling our souls. We can sell them to success, money, or even the devil. We rarely talk about selling our souls to people. When those voices cry out to you, “mend my life!” what deeper voices are they drowning out?

This poem builds on a theme in Mary Oliver’s poetry that I have seen in my life – that of sudden revelation. One day you just know what you have to do. It is never the right time. It always feels too late. There are always other obligations to tie up or make right. Yet there is still this thing you know you have to do. Maybe it is a relationship that needs mended or broken off, a new career path that is unknown or uncertain, a new vision that you know will meet resistance. All you know is that there is something you must do.

All I can say is begin. Start. Go. That deep down voice is there for a reason. It is the place where we meet God. Don’t be afraid of it.

This is what I love about Mary Oliver’s poetry. It encourages me to follow my inner voice. This has always been the Jesus tradition. Where does God speak to Elijah? A still small voice. Where does the Spirit of God reside? In the hearts of people. Where does Jesus encourage us to pray? Not in front of others but in a lonely, quiet closet. In the quiet moments God speaks suddenly and inconveniently, telling us exactly where we need to go.

There is a line in Hebrews that Eugene Peterson translates so well. It says this about Jesus, “For Jesus doesn’t change—yesterday, today, tomorrow, he’s always totally himself.” That is a kind of confidence that I only have when I am in touch with my deepest self, the one hidden in God. When I can operate from that space I am dynamite, on fire, full of grace and truth. My words change lives.  I lose it when I put on the mask, when I hide from that voice, and mend everyone else’s pain but my own. I become just another codependent minister, of some use but ultimately forgettable.

So where are you? Have you lost your inner voice? Have you managed others’ pain at the expense of your own healing? How can poetry, art, or quiet get you back to the place where you can always be totally yourself?