Contemplative Christian » Church and Life http://contemplativechristian.com Grace and Presence in Prayer Mon, 02 Jan 2012 08:19:32 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 God is Silent http://contemplativechristian.com/god-is-silent/ http://contemplativechristian.com/god-is-silent/#comments Sun, 03 Apr 2011 04:24:06 +0000 admin http://contemplativechristian.com/?p=1341
Since I was a child I’ve wondered why…with the power to create the known and unknown universe…why God has been so inconceivably silent and mysterious to His people, the supposed pinnacles of His creation. In my teens, I struggled with this silent God as my prayers seemed to go unanswered: little Tammy didn’t love me back…my beloved pet didn’t survive her injuries…my parents never resolved their differences. As an adult, I saw death and disease, injustice and heartbreak impact the lives of good people and bad people alike, I saw fools in charge of churches and wise men disparaged and forgotten. I’ve whispered, sang, cried and screamed at Heaven…and still, no burning bushes or disembodied voices appeared to alleviate my concern.

Frances Schaeffer wrote He Is There and He Is Not Silent…and even as I read all his books in my twenties, congratulating myself on my erudition, I discovered no representational argument that made God less silent. No amount of theological understanding brought God closer to me or me to Him.

I fancied myself found nonetheless, but became lost in it. It couldn’t hold me, and I wandered, adrift and seeking meaning in philosophies and substances that left me empty. Over a long period of time, I lost hope, lost meaning and lost myself. It was the best thing that ever happened to me.

Looking back, I see how God stripped away my religion and my self-reliance. In His silence, I lost the self I was, and became a vessel capable of being filled by something else. This “dying to the self”, is talked about reverently in Christian circles…but mouthing the words and taking on a pious attitude doesn’t count. You have to be stripped down to your soul…and the only way to do this is to see your own pain, your own pride and foolishness…to be willing to really see it…to run from it, hide from it, drown it and deny it until there nothing left of your will…then, empty of self and full of shame fall upon your knees before a silent and inconceivable God. The falling on your knees part can take years….and we’re not really on our knees until we release ourselves of the shame. That is the hardest part…for it comes back to visit us again and again. Let go of it…you’re not who you believed yourself to be…you’re as God believes you to be. If this feels like bad news…your shame is speaking again.

God is silent. All those years wondering why…and now I’m only thankful for the silence, for it’s through the silence that I finally began to hear His voice…and I realized He’d been speaking all along…saying simply, I Am Present, I Love You, I Love You.

Related Blogs

]]> http://contemplativechristian.com/god-is-silent/feed/ 0 Contemplative Perspectives on Christian Politics http://contemplativechristian.com/contemplative-perspectives-on-christian-politics/ http://contemplativechristian.com/contemplative-perspectives-on-christian-politics/#comments Sun, 06 Feb 2011 04:10:19 +0000 admin http://contemplativechristian.com/?p=1164
In America, it’s either very easy or very difficult to be a Christian…it all depends on how you vote.   Christian political thought in America has been influenced by Evangelicals for as long as I can remember.  I’m 36 years old, and didn’t really start thinking about politics until I was 25 or so…and didn’t start caring about politics deeply until this last election cycle.  For years, I just thought as I was told.  I inadvertently bought into the idea that as a depraved sinner, I couldn’t very well be trusted to think for myself on political issues.  There’s too much at stake in the culture war, they’d say.  Babies are being murdered and the gays are trying to take over our country and recruit our children.  Sound a little crazy?  Well, it is.  It wasn’t too often that leaders would come out and say it like that, but the hysteria is real…the paranoia more rampant than you might believe. People really believe this stuff.

The religious Right has successfully programmed a whole generation of Christians to believe that we are in an End Times struggle against Evil, represented by a Satanic Democratic Party.  It’s the good conservatives against the evil liberals, and our very salvation is wrapped up in which team we’re on.  When my wife and I decided to vote for Obama this last election, we lost friends and found a family relationship seriously strained.  It was as though we were murdering babies ourselves.  It doesn’t matter that in voting we were following our pro-life convictions, choosing a candidate and party we felt might finally change the conversation about an ethic of life in America.  It doesn’t matter that as followers of Christ, we felt convicted of the need for change, for balance…for a different direction.  I don’t write this to make a political statement, but simply to illustrate the point that as people of God, we are not defined by our relationship with a political party or system of thought within the Church…but by our relationship with Christ Himself.  Who are you to say that I’m not following His voice, even when in doing so I vote differently than you?

It’s a very interesting time to be a young Christian in America, for there are many others who find the old divisions and stale arguments largely irrelevant.  I think there is a movement toward contemplative spirituality within the developing church.  In some ways, this movement is apparent within the Emerging Church, the term given the interesting change within the church in recent years…across denominations.  But really, it’s bigger than that.  There is a fundamental difference between a spirituality based on relationship with God (grace-based) and spirituality based on rightness before God (shame-based).   In grace-based spirituality, we become intimately aware of our own smallness, and the largeness of God’s capacity to love.  In shame-based spirituality, we are caught in the cyclical struggle to maintain control of where we stand with God, to maintain our position as keepers of knowledge about God.  The former can accept unknowns and gray areas.  The latter is often defined by black and white thinking.

In the early years following my lifestyle conversion I became a fan of Francis Schaeffer, whose logical arguments for Christianity and large vocabulary appealed to my pride.  I wanted knowledge.  I wanted to convince and be convinced, to be sure and to be able to communicate that to any who would doubt me.  I adopted the defensiveness that defined the evangelical mindset, and become drawn into a need to defend God.   Schaeffer’s writing and the following it drew played a part in creating the conservative backbone of modern evangelicalism.   What’s so interesting is that his son, Frank Scaeffer, who played an important role in his father’s work, is now a fed up, fired up critic of the modern evangelical church.   Once active in the movement, he’s now a voice warning of the dangers of fundamentalism of the Christian kind.  Check him out at The Official Website of Frank Schaeffer.

In my long-winded way, I guess what I’m saying is that contemplative Christianity…a spirituality of Christ defined by prayer and mystical union…is an answer to fundamentalism and it’s shame-cycle.  I read an article a while ago about conflict in an Islamic country, where the fundamentalist Muslim majority was seeking to silence and control the Sufi minority.  Sufis are the contemplatives, the mystics, of the Islamic worldview, and have historically (in this context at least) been peace-seekers, where the majority has continued to wage war and control.  Its interesting to see the same dynamic play out in so many contexts.  Mysticism challenges black and white thinking, just as Christ challenged the black and white thinking of the religiously certain of his time.  The reaction to Christ was violence.  We see the same today.

When your world is built upon tightly controlled rules and systems, then you fight to protect your control.  The story of the prodigal son illustrates the dynamic beautifully. The oldest son had his world fairly well under control…he had earned his fathers love and respect with hard work and dedication.  When the prodigal son returned home and was received with such joy…the love given away for free…the brother’s response was anger.  We cannot control God.   Yet, when the worldview of conservative Christians is challenged, even if challenged by undeniable logic (such as proof the earth is older than 5000 years) the response is anger and defensiveness…if you’re not with us, God is not with you.

Its a difficult time and an exciting time to follow Christ in America.  There are hints of change, hints of new life beginning to emerge as a new generation comes of age.  The last election sent a message, as did the public disgrace of some powerful Evangelicals, that the vote-getting machine of the Religious Right is losing steam.  There is an opportunity for a new Christian voice to emerge, one that truly seeks to be “peacemakers”, to recognize those that are hungry and hurting among us, to call out for an ethic of life across circumstances…one rooted in devotion, not control…wisdom, not knowledge.

Related Blogs

]]> http://contemplativechristian.com/contemplative-perspectives-on-christian-politics/feed/ 5 Advent http://contemplativechristian.com/advent/ http://contemplativechristian.com/advent/#comments Thu, 16 Dec 2010 03:14:01 +0000 admin http://contemplativechristian.com/?p=1335
Advent means “coming” and was, according to several online sources, derived from the Latin word adventus, describing the arrival of an emperor in a city. This season of Advent is all about arrival for my family, who is eagerly anticipating the arrival of our first child, a son. It’s interesting to think about Advent from the perspective of Jesus’ parents, who looked forward to that first Christmas on a more personal level than anyone in history. I can imagine their excited waiting, their yearning for the day to finally come when they would see their son face to face…this unique creation so much like them, yet so different. Every birth prior and every birth since has echoed this mystery, every child something new, something undeserved, unearned, unbelievable.

I wonder how many people look forward to the Christmas celebration, even the mystical practices of union with Christ, as much as parents look forward to the birth of their first child? In this consumer age, many churches are working to reclaim the heart of the Servant’s gospel, yet most folks I know eventually yearn for an end to it all. My wife’s experience in the late stages of labor will likely be in line with this. But for parents, for Mary and Joseph, for the Father, the end of the season is the beginning of life…the beginning of a great journey, a great adventure, a bittersweet, beautiful experience of gain and loss, growth and grace, pain and suffering…the stuff of love and life.

The annual celebration of the birth of Christ, overtaken as it is by a Western cultural tidal wave of commerce, is at it’s heart about anticipation, restlessness in the face of the unknown, excitement and eventually joy, embrace, hope, boundless devotion, limitless love. May it be so for you this year.

Related Blogs

]]> http://contemplativechristian.com/advent/feed/ 0 Wilderness http://contemplativechristian.com/wilderness/ http://contemplativechristian.com/wilderness/#comments Mon, 09 Aug 2010 04:27:21 +0000 admin http://contemplativechristian.com/?p=1287
Lately, I’ve been battling a pervasive cynicism that once came as a gift, illuminating the absurdity of so much of the American Christian life, but has remained with me too long. In the midst of walking away from church culture, political Christian culture, busy social spirituality culture, I became awake for the first time…awake to see clearly the reality of Christ in my life, in all lives. For two years, I’ve rested in the beauty of that realization, the grace of full acceptance and love in relationship with God…walking through uncertainty, anger and cynicism, into a steady, deep and indescribably wonderful sense of myself as man made and loved in God’s image.

In prayer and in lack of prayer, I found myself continually returning to the reality of a God unconditionally turned toward me, arms open, heart on fire, words speaking to me deeply and quietly and richly like the mournful, sweet tones of a cello cascading off stone walls in the sanctuary of my heart. In this space I am found and lost and found again…His Presence is enough.

Empty, quiet night.
My soul is weary,
orbiting on the periphery.
No change in sight.

Brooding, hollow space.
Prayers heavy, bloated,
drift slowly heavenward.
I can find no grace.

Sweet, fresh morning.
Awake in Presence,
enveloped in hope.
I am home again.

It’s hard to go back to church after experiencing relationship like this outside of church. In fact, it was the act of leaving that made it possible…walking blindly into the wilderness, away from community and predictability and safety in numbers. But now, I recognize a call back into the “Church”…and my cynicism remains.  It feels like a game…and I don’t want to play games.   Morning announcements, worship bands and dimmed lights, prayer supplemented by mood music, potlucks, Sunday smiles, prayer groups, classes, people finding comfort in uncomfortable seats, offering baskets, hugs and handshakes, “peace of the Lord be with you”…the cultural aspects of the American church experience, especially in the evangelical world. Some of this is beautiful…but something was always missing for me. The medium captures the attention so much that the message is lost in translation.  The power of influence given to preachers and pastors is frightening in a culture demanding express service and novel experiences.

But, sitting with Christ, I return to the realization that it is what it is.  God is who God is.  I am who I am.  My past is what it is, and my future is what it is. The church belongs, just as my experience outside of it belongs.  I don’t get to pick what fits and doesn’t fit. Right now, I am with Christ…and there’s nothing special about that.  No soaring oratory or regimented bible study to get me there.  I am here right now, and Christ is with me.  It really is a simple as that.

So is my impulse to reconnect with church a soft nudge from Christ, who is with me…or is it my own false shame, accusing me of not measuring up, not fitting in, not living rightly in light of the WORD OF THE LORD…which commands me to love my neighbor, tithe and regularly attend Sunday services? Grace is this: we have the freedom to figure it out.

The wilderness is a wild and dangerous place…but it’s exactly where God’s people were led in their delivery from slavery. It’s where Jesus was led in his delivery from the slavery of his own humanity.  It’s where I’ve been led as well, outside of the sanctuary of man and into the sanctuary of God…where I’ve found hope and tenderness in the arms of my Lord, the same Lord I was taught to fear, to perform for and eventually to ignore and despise.  But, I didn’t know Him then…in church.  I know Him now.  I am compelled to return to a community, as a man led into the desert and back again.  Let my response be total…

Hosea 14-15: “Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. There she will respond as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt.”

Related Blogs

  • Related Blogs on Church Culture
]]> http://contemplativechristian.com/wilderness/feed/ 1 Favor http://contemplativechristian.com/favor/ http://contemplativechristian.com/favor/#comments Wed, 09 Dec 2009 05:17:43 +0000 admin http://contemplativechristian.com/?p=1203
I’ve heard a lot of talk in Christian circles of earning the “favor” of God…this idea that if we’re good, if we tithe, if we ask for it in prayer (you have to ask confidently, though), we’ll earn cosmic points toward that raise or promotion at work, some random check in the mail, or be raised up relative to others in some way.  If I earn it, God will give me favor over others less deserving, those who don’t quite measure up, who don’t send in as much money as I do, or pray as forcefully as I do, or some other baloney.

In Luke 1, the angel Gabriel said to Mary, mother of Christ, “Mary, do not be afraid, you have won God’s favor,”   Perhaps she sent money to the historical equivalent of a televangelist.  No, I think this idea of favor is another thing altogether.   The rest of Mary’s story was one of great sacrifice and burden, hardly what today’s preachers promise.  What I hear today is if your heart is in the right place, God will make your life easy and give you money.  Contrast that with the life of Mary.  Despite her burdens, however, she is undoubtedly “blessed among women”.  Her favor was the grace of being Christ’s mother, and the Mother of humanity.  Our favor is also grace…and it’s not earned, it can’t be.  It’s not about us.  I like Richard Rohr’s take on this:

“The word favor doesn’t say anything about the recipient.  Favor says something about the one who is doing the favoring.  So it’s really not saying anything about Mary.  It’s saying something about God’s election of Mary.  She is one who is the absolutely perfect receiver, and refuses to play the “Lord, I am not worthy” card that had become normative in most biblical theophanies.  She just says, “Let it be done unto me” (Luke 1:38).  She lets God do all the giving.  Her job is just to receive such perfect giving.

God does not love you because you are good; God loves you because God is good. God does not love you because you are good; you are good because God loves you. ”

-  Adapted from Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality, p 178

As a Protestant (though I’ve begun to question this label, as I have most others), I’ve tended to ignore Mary or trivialize her.  But, I recognize a maternal gap in my Christian experience.  I think as I’ve considered her pure response to God’s love and election, I’ve begun to recognize a call to listen.  I need a mother…I’m an angry Christian in an age of strange, narcissistic, even dangerous American Christianity.  Perhaps this mother, our Mother, is urging me to let go of my anger and really accept grace…to let life and the experience of it “be done unto me”.  I don’t know the implications of this, or what this should look like…thought I know deeply my call is to accept even those who have done hurt or harm in the name of Christ.

I am good because God loves me and calls me His son…I have His favor.  If I’m good, knowing too well the dark recesses of my own heart, then I must confess my own narcissism, for I’m quick to point out the faults of others.  Sometimes what we need to hear is heard best in the soft tones of a mother’s voice.

Related Blogs

]]> http://contemplativechristian.com/favor/feed/ 0 The Good News? http://contemplativechristian.com/the-good-news/ http://contemplativechristian.com/the-good-news/#comments Fri, 16 Oct 2009 04:20:48 +0000 admin http://contemplativechristian.com/?p=1183
I’ve been thinking about grace lately, as I begin a new chapter in my career journey.  For years I’ve worked with families in crisis, primarily with the homeless…and these folks know a thing or two about grace.   If you’re beat down and full of shame, to be looked in the eye and told you matter is liberation.  When I’ve taken families into shelter and begun to work with them, inevitably the single factor affecting change in their lives is unconditional love.  It changes things.

The church is supposed to be about unconditional love, but if I were to ask 10 people on the street what first comes to mind when they think of church, I’ll bet that’s not it.  What’s going on here?  The gospel is supposed to be good news.  If what we’re calling good news is the last thing people want to hear, then it’s not good news.  Well, some would say, it’s only good news to the predestined, or it’s only good news for those who believe correctly.  It turns out if you’re on the other side of the tracks, its very bad news indeed.  Hellfire and brimstone, in fact.  Something doesn’t add up.

The whole concept of grace throws this on its head.  God’s acceptance of us has nothing to do with us…it comes to us with no consideration of our merit.  We cannot earn it or screw it up.  If we could earn it or screw it up, it wouldn’t be grace.  It certainly wouldn’t be good news.  It cannot be something some people have and others don’t.  Grace is unconditional…that means without condition.  This is what sets Christianity apart from the rest…the idea that God is forever turned toward mankind, a lover who walked to the edge and beyond in pursuit of His sons and daughters.

The choice lies in whether we can bring ourselves to turn toward Him…to be seen as we are, laid bare, and embraced.  Many deeply doubt their own worth, and cannot accept this kind of love.  Many deeply doubt love itself, and are wary to open themselves to trust.  I think God reserves His deepest compassion for these…those who don’t choose Him, who cannot choose Him.  These, who are often ostracized, judged or argued with by defensive Christians, are the prodigal sons, for whom God would drop everything and run down the road to embrace, tears of joy streaming down his face.  Perhaps there are some of these reading this now.  Come home…His arms are raised, not in anger, but in compassion.

I am a mess.  Yet, in my Father’s eyes, I am perfect and accepted completely.  So, maybe I’m not a mess after all.  I am willing to take the chance, and live from a place of freedom…from my own disappointment with myself, from the judgments of others, from being alone.  Grace is an invitation to live in the moment, in the embrace of the present.  It’s an invitation to enjoy the shared experience of reciprocal love we enter into when we lay back in the arms of God.  God is a lover.  Do not be afraid.

Related Blogs

]]> http://contemplativechristian.com/the-good-news/feed/ 3 Presence http://contemplativechristian.com/presence/ http://contemplativechristian.com/presence/#comments Mon, 05 Oct 2009 04:21:03 +0000 admin http://contemplativechristian.com/?p=1095
I’ve spent a good deal of time thinking about what it is to be in relationship with Christ. I’ve even spent a lot of time writing about relationship with Christ, giving the unsuspecting reader the impression I’m some sort of expert on the subject.  I’ve gone to church and heard sermons about relationship with Christ, listened to tapes or watched DVDs on the subject and had countless conversations with others.  I’ve read books, blogs and organization websites, pamphlets, booklets, position papers, bulletins, tracts, magazines and treatises.

All this talk about relationship with Christ…as though it were something to be attained or sought after, researched or discovered, understood or somehow earned.  All that energy and talk, much of it self-serving and all of it meeting some unmet need, misses the point entirely.  What am I thinking?  What I seek I already have.

It’s been an interesting process leaving church and spending a prolonged period of time without a local church community. It’s been nearly a year now, and its taken this long to shed the skin of talk-driven spirituality.  I used to go to church looking for some magic words from a pastor, words that might touch something deep in me and help me get closer to God.  I would share this experience with peers, all of us using the comfortable language of earnest, missional Christianity, talking each other into relationship.  Prayer was the same – flowery language, words carefully chosen, a deep desire to meet the needs of the person or group one was praying with. It was for them, or for me, or for God.   None of this is bad, but it was empty in many ways.  For them, for me, or for God…but lacking Presence.

I never experienced God’s presence then like I do now…or rather, His presence hasn’t changed, but now I’m quiet enough to notice, quiet enough to rest, quiet enough to listen.  Words don’t get in the way like they did.  It’s hard to explain, though I find the everyday wonder of my marriage gets closest to touching it.  My relationship with my wife has deepened most profoundly in the quiet realm of our unspoken communication.  In an embrace, we are one.  In the undefined, unspoken bond of trust and commitment between us, we are one.  We are one, and we don’t need to say that to be that.  It doesn’t need to be defined, examined or studied…we just enjoy it, and it gives us life.  It is so interesting that the vision of relationship with Christ most widely used in the bible is the marriage.  Presence…oneness.

The Christian life is life…it doesn’t need to be dressed up or defined.  God is.  He is with us in all we do and all we are.  I think if I’ve learned anything, I’ve learned this is the hardest thing to grasp and live out.  I want to earn it, so I can lay claim to it.  I want to need it, so I can grasp it tightly.  The bare reality is that God simply is, and there’s nothing I can do to earn His love or screw it up.  As Phillip Yancey writes, there’s nothing we can do to make God love us less, and there’s nothing we can do to make Him love us more.   It just is…His love just is.

Those moments when I wrap my head around this make me want to cry.  In some ways, the tears are tears of loss…for life is terrible sometimes, and there is very often no comfort to be had.  Those who suffer more than I know this intimately.  Yet, the tears are also tears of joy…for in the midst of it all, I am known…I am home where I am.  In the midst of the bitter-sweetness of life, I am home in the untouchable embrace of God…who is the essence of relationship, eternally embraced and embracing, Father, Son and Spirit.

Related Blogs

]]> http://contemplativechristian.com/presence/feed/ 0