Compass Readings Blog

Compass Readings

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A friend once asked Mark Nepo to store his fish in Mark’s bathtub while he cleaned out their tank (apartments don’t always come with a tub!). Mark was agreeable, so his friend emptied his fish into the ample, fresh, water of the tub and left to clean the fish tank. When he returned to pick up the fish, he was surprised to find them swimming in the exact dimensions of their little tank. Though the “vast expanse” of the bathtub was theirs for the swimming, instead they clung to their original space! (The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have)
 
How easy it is to cramp our view of the world, ourselves, others, and God – keeping all of them excessively small. Most of the time we don’t even know we’re doing so. That’s the response many people have to the Bridges out of Poverty seminars – middle class values, assumptions, and norms are so much a part of our world – practically in the air we breathe – that we assume that everyone operates the same way. It’s a shock to learn that people in survival live by another set of values, assumptions, and norms that are valid in their “world” – so much so that if we were thrust into their situations, we’d have to learn their ways in order to survive! 
 
And what of God?  We can never wrap our minds completely around God and capture divinity in the net of our concepts. Theologians are constantly reminding us that our god is too small: recall Augustine's insight that if we have understood, then what we have understood is not God; Anselm's argument that God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived; Hildegard's vision of God's glory as Living Light that blinded her sight; Aquinas's working rule that we can know that God is and what God is not, but not what God is; Luther's stress on the hiddenness of God's glory in the suffering of the cross; Simone Weil's conviction that there is nothing that resembles what she can conceive of when she says the word God; Karl Rahner's image that we are a little island surrounded by a deep ocean; and Sallie McFague's insistence that, since all language about God is technically improper, we speak basically in models and parables. But we continue to swim within the old dimensions, barely if even aware that there’s a vast expanse right before us.
 
Further, we tend to think so habitually of God in set phrases that the words we use are leeched of all meaning. We take refuge in the most familiar forms of our religion. We fumble our way along without knowing what we are, or what we are doing, without knowing what is happening within us, because the world has put our eyes out. Money, sensual pleasure, ambition, success, kill in us all feeling of the mystery that surrounds us from birth to death.
 
Julian Green suggests that we should try to think of God as newness, as eternal freshness (Diary, 1928-1957). Which means cultivating openness, wonder, and attentiveness to the spontaneity and surprises all around us. 
 
The Servant Leadership School spiritual formation program provides one way to move into the “vast expanse” beyond our habits of attention that limit our awareness of God, others, and the whole of creation. Through reading, reflecting, praying, communing with others on the same journey, and engagement with people who are poor, SFP participants are invited to recognize and set aside their perceptual limitations that they may see – and, perhaps, swim – further. I’ve been urging you to prayerfully consider if the time is ripe and right for you to do so. Some have responded positively, yet we still need more. I’m scheduling a meeting for all who are or might be interested on Tuesday, August 10, at 7 pm, at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church (corner N. Tryon and 7th – free parking in the underground garage off Seventh St.). We’ll spend time discerning where God is luring us…and how to respond with our hands, heart, and feet! 
 
 

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The man came into the Center on a holiday. From his clothing and the “deer in the headlights” look on his face, I was pretty certain he’d not been in a place like ours before. His RV had blown its motor, and he and his wife were stranded. Could we help? I told him I was sorry, but there wasn’t much we could do for him. Most places were closed because of the holiday. If his wife and he wanted to eat lunch, that would be fine; but she was staying with their large dog, so that wasn’t going to work. He wanted to know how to get to the Salvation Army; I gave him directions. Someone had given him a bus pass, so he was on his way. I wished him well, told him I was sorry there wasn’t more we could do for him. “Oh, don’t worry,” he replied. “God will provide.” And he went on his way.

 
Back in the mailroom a volunteer was sorting mail. She’s one of the deeper, most experienced Christians I know. I was sure she’d overheard the man’s comment, and I was interested in her response. “Of course God provides,” she replied to my query. “But that doesn’t mean it’s what we expect!” 
 
Seems to me there’s a second conversion (at the very least!) called for in discipleship – from magic to faith. Magic is trying to make things work out the way you want them to – manipulating the universe, stacking the deck in your favor, assuming that if you’re right with God, God’ll do right by you…on your terms. Faith, however, is trusting that God is with me and you and all creation, even in the worst of circumstances. Mary Cosby, co-founder of the Church of the Saviour, was once asked whether she believed God was with her in every circumstance. “Yes,” she replied. “I’d stake my life on it.” Well, the questioner pressed, what if you’re driving across a bridge and a tire blows, sending you through the railing and down into a gorge – where’s God then?” Mary responded, “Oh, He’s with me all the way down,”
 
Magic thinks that if you’re a believer, everything will go well for you; faith seeks God’s presence for God’s own sake. Magic keeps me and my desires at the center of my life; faith puts God at the center. In his classic book A Testament of Devotion, Thomas Kelly writes, Life is meant to be lived from a Center, a divine Center. Each one of us can live such a life of amazing power and peace and serenity, of integration and confidence and simplified multiplicity, on one condition - that is, if we really want to. There is a divine Abyss within us all, a holy Infinite Center, a Heart, a Life who speaks in us and through us to the world. We have all heard this holy whisper at times.
 
Somehow we have to learn to get our satisfaction and our joy in faithfulness and in our intimate, ongoing relationship with God – even when God seems distant and/or silent. The issue of outcomes, of effectiveness and success, in the usual societal understanding of those terms, is no longer the issue. We can get energized by faithfulness knowing we are doing what we must do to live. The constant struggle is the deepening of faith that enables us to really trust that somehow the whole show is going to come off right in God's timing. And in the meantime, we can be about God’s loving work, living as Christ’s hands and feet in this time and place.
 
How to do this? How to grow from who you are into the person God created you to become? Ann and Barry Ulanov once observed, “We go at God like a brass ring, wanting to catch deity and win the prize. We want so many prizes: fame, security, power. Often we want very good prizes: love, health, peace in the world, truth.” The Center’s spiritual formation program offers a different and, I believe, more effective approach – what could be called “listen and let be.” Carving out time in my life to listen for what nudges, and nudges again, time to read some stimulating, provocative authors and take a few inner notes, time to listen to others on the way…and be listened to.
 
I’m still looking for a dozen people who want to go deeper – and are willing to spend nine months listening and letting be. Nine months – a good time frame for giving birth. 
 
Interested?  Contact me.
 
   

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      There are all sorts of trainings available in the art of leadership; when I Googled “leadership training Charlotte NC”, it took .26 seconds to come up with about 435,000 results! But you will find few courses in the art of followership! Too bad, since discipleship is all about following. 
      When Jesus walked among humankind there was a certain simplicity to being a disciple. Primarily it meant to follow him to learn how to do what he did. There were no correspondence courses. Family and occupations were deserted for long periods to go with Jesus as he walked from place to place announcing, showing, and explaining the realm of God.
However the mechanics are not the same today. We cannot literally be with him in the same way as his first disciples could. But the priorities and intentions - the heart or inner attitudes - of disciples remain the same. The whole message of the Gospel is this: Become like Jesus. The world desperately needs men and women who are so deeply rooted in the love of God that they are free to imagine and begin to embody a deeper way of following Jesus in this time and place. 
We easily recognize the authentic followers of Jesus - women and men grasped by a devotion that made a particular way of life intensely important. Francis of Assisi and his devoted handful of daring followers finding wealth in community instead of possessions…Mother Teresa’s mission to the dying on the streets of Calcutta…Dorothy Day’s mission to feed and house people who are poor here in the US… But not just famous folks, whom we tend to make larger than life. How about people you know, whose lives – their practices, attitudes, passions – seem to come from a deeper source than what motivates the rest of us? I’ve known quite a few over the years. So have you.
What distinguishes such remarkable people is not some spectacular experience propelling them into a life of discipleship, but that over the years they grew out of who they were into the saints we know them to have become. So how do get growing? How do you become a more devoted follower of Jesus when you already ARE one? 
      Paul shows the way:  Do not be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds…(RO 12.2) The Servant Leadership spiritual formation program is designed for people willing to learn the art of followership. Modeled on the visionary ministry of the Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC, this intensive nine-month training cultivates both a prayerful inward journey with God, self, and others and a committed outward journey of service, especially among those who are poor and/or marginalized in our society.
v      Participants meet for seminars one evening a month to explore the core themes of the curriculum (Scripture, community, spiritual practices, call, being with the poor, the self-emptying nature of divine power). 
v      Participants also meet in weekly small groups to share reflection papers, to pray for one another, and to build compassionate community.
v      Participants are also encouraged to practice daily disciplines of prayer, reflection, and Scripture-reading, using resources provided.
One participant wrote, “In many ways, this has changed my life. I am much more aware of the injustices occurring all around me…(and) a real need to do something about (them). This is one of the best things I have ever done.” Another noted, “My expectations were more than met…I will take away a much deeper understanding of who and whose I am.” 
We need a minimum of 12 participants for the spiritual formation program to work well.  So I’m looking for a dozen or more people who will commit to exploring followership in depth. The Scriptures – those written in Greek – use two different words for “time”: chronos, which refers to clock time; and kairos, which refers to the “fullness of time”, the “right” time. Perhaps this is a chronos time in your life where devoting yourself to spiritual growth makes sense; perhaps this is a kairos moment when you simply MUST do so! 
 
   

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 April 22, 2010

Not long ago, journalist Bill Bishop wrote a book called The Big Sort:  Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart. He researched four decades of election results, studies of group psychology, and successful product marketing (including church growth models). Bishop claims that, even as the U.S. becomes more diverse, Americans are clustering into ever ­more homogeneous groups at the local level, the places where we conduct our daily lives.
 
There's always been a natural human inclination to be with our "tribe," people "just like us." Bishop maintains that the freedom, prosperity and new technologies of late 20th century America made it more possible than ever before to spend most of our days interacting primarily - even solely - with "people like us."  Bishop contends that the consequences of the Big Sort are dire: balkanized communities whose inhabitants find other Americans to be culturally incomprehensible; a growing intolerance for political differences that has made national consensus impossible; and politics so polarized that Congress is stymied and elections are no longer just contests over policies, but bitter choices between ways of life.
 
Research confirms that like-minded groups tend to become more extreme. Biases are confirmed; the desire to prove one "fits in" intensifies. The result is a country that has become so polarized, so ideologically inbred that people don't know and can't understand those who live a few miles away.  Groups convince themselves that life is a zero-sum, either-or game: win or lose; friend or enemy; insider or outsider.  Polarized thinking leads to polarizing language; discourse transmogrifies into derision and name-calling. And anger mounts towards the “other”…as does the potential for violence.
 
The trouble is, of course, that we cannot hope to find (let alone build) the common good if we are unwilling to meet each other on common ground.
 
Two thousand years ago, the apostle Paul saw the church in Corinth going through its own version of the Big Sort. Corinthian Christians were polarized over a variety of issues which Paul tried to settle in his letters to them. Then, at the heart of his message, Paul handed them a key to demolish the barriers dividing them.   He reminded them that in this new kind of community within the Empire, no member is inferior and no one is unnecessary. All are needed if the whole is to thrive (1 Corinthians 12). Instead of clustering into ever-narrower sub-groups, each with its claim on the best way to follow Jesus, Paul said he would show them a "far better way."
 
We've heard Paul's beautiful paean to self-giving love many times, but I believe we must hear it anew, afresh: “…Love does not insist on its own way ... or rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things… " (I Corinthians 13.5-7).
 
To survive and prosper, a society needs places where humans, in all our giftedness, with all our flaws and differences, reject tribalism and come together to seek the common good. Faith communities at their best do this. And it is the way the Urban Ministry Center has chosen to serve people who are chronically homeless: building relationships of mutual respect and trust between people of often vastly different socio-economic classes. When a retired business executive works with a neighbor to obtain photo ID so s/he can get a job or find a place to live, it’s not the task alone that is important; it’s the relationship that begins…or continues. When a volunteer helps out in the shower/laundry area or with Homeless Helping Homeless, or with the soccer or art or garden programs, barriers tumble down as experiences and stories and lives are shared. When people take time to learn the vast differences in life experience between people in poverty and people raised in middle class or wealth, the possibilities of building authentic relationships blossom. When members of a congregation invest themselves in serving families in a high poverty school, or open their doors in hospitality to neighbors through Room In The Inn, or become members of a Hope team building friendships with people now in housing and trying to move toward economic stability, or invest in Moore Place, we come together to seek the common good.
 
Seeking the common good often begins with acts of hospitality. Henri Nouwen defined hospitality as primarily the creation of a free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place. It is not to bring men and women over to our side, but to offer freedom not disturbed by dividing lines. (Reaching Out) 
 
Such grace-filled spaces of common ground are desperately needed in our time. Where do you find it? Where are you helping create it?
   

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March 26, 2010

Albert Camus once observed, “The whole life of a person is the slow trek to recover the two or three simple images in whose presence his heart first moved.” The 'first' or primary movements of the heart take place at a deeper level close to the origins of consciousness - the place of spirit, of creativity. They are one's essential, one's primary movements. They are much more 'you' than the multitude of your casual thoughts and wishes…or your habits and addictive tendencies.  
 
Sebastian Moore writes about one such moment: “In 1959 I was studying in Rome, and one day that summer I went on a picnic in the Campagna. After one of those orgies of pasta and red wine, features of a digestively stronger age, I wandered into a church where Vespers was just starting. It was the First Vespers of the feast of the Sacred Heart. As I entered the church, I heard the familiar words ... 'One of the soldiers opened his side with a spear, and immediately there came forth blood and water.' And I had what I can only describe as a sense of fullness and truth. Somehow, everything that was to be said about life and its renewing was in those words. Somehow my life, my destiny, was in those words.” (from The Inner Loneliness)
 
Such moments are often small, almost inconsequential from an external perspective. In the middle of a week-long silent retreat at a Catholic retreat center, the song at afternoon mass had a refrain including the words,  I have carved you in the palms of my hands… Something opened deep inside me, and I knew – knew, not believed - that I mattered to God. That God loved me, really and forever. Years later, when I read Henri Nouwen’s LIFE OF THE BELOVED, the same truth penetrated even deeper within - “You are the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased”. Truth at this level is so different from truth as we normally consider it.   It does not answer questions: it simply fills the heart. In its presence the heart moves.   I could write the story of my spiritual journey around these images. 
 
No one can manufacture such moments of grace – “almost accidental”, as Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach said. He went on to say that he engaged in spiritual practices. "To be as accident-prone as possible." Among the key practices taught through the Servant Leadership School are the cultivation of Centering/Listening prayer, the building of authentic community – especially across ethnic and socio-economic lines, and being with the poor (instead of simply doing for the poor). These are not ends in themselves but ways to be more “accident-prone”.
 
Frederick Buechner’s exquisite words point to the heart of it: Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace…There are some things I would be willing to bet maybe even my life on. That life is grace, for instance – the givenness of it, the fathomlessness of it, the endless possibilities of its becoming transparent to something extraordinary beyond itself... if we really had our eyes open, we would see that all moments are key moments. (Now and Again)
 
   

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