formation^(18/19)

The creative process

Jerome Berryman illuminates the creative process in his book, “Godly Play: An Imaginative Approach to Religious Education”. There are so many parallels to a good DBS group and the creative process (see discovery stories. The Creative Process (pg. 94) Opening: the disruption of one’s circle of meaning A disruption may be caused by a hard or soft opening. A hard opening might be a tragic event or painfully sudden change which forces the person to re-evaluate.…

Defining emotional health and contemplative spirituality

Emotional Health naming, recognizing, and managing our own feelings identifying with and having active compassion for others initiating and maintaining close and meaningful relationships breaking free from self-destructive patterns being aware of how our past impacts our present developing the capacity to express our thoughts and feelings clearly, both verbally and nonverbally respecting and loving others without having to change them asking for what we need, want, or prefer clearly, directly, and respectfully accurately self-assessing our strengths, limits, and weaknesses and freely sharing them with others learning the capacity to resolve conflict maturely and negotiate solutions that consider the perspectives of others distinguishing and appropriately expressing our sexuality and sensuality grieving well Contemplative Spirituality awakening and surrendering to God’s love in any and every situation positioning ourselves to hear God and remember his presence in all we do communing with God, allowing him to fully indwell the depth of our being practicing silence, solitude, and a life of unceasing prayer resting attentively in the presence of God understanding our earthly life as a journey of transformation toward ever-increasing union with God finding the true essence of who we are in God loving others out of a life of love for God developing a balanced, harmonious rhythm of life that enables us to be aware of the sacred in all of life adapting historic practices of spirituality that are applicable today allowing our Christian lives to be shaped by the rhythms of the Christian calendar rather than the culture living in committed community that passionately loves Jesus above all else

Discipleship models often protect against growing up emotionally

The spirituality of most current discipleship models often only adds an additional protective layer against people growing up emotionally. Because people are having real, and helpful, spiritual experiences in certain areas of their lives–such as worship, prayer, Bible studies, and fellowship–they mistakenly believe they are doing fine, even if their relational life and interior world is not in order. This apparent “progress” then provides a spiritual reason for not doing the hard work of maturing.…

Emotional health and spiritual maturity are inseparable

Emotional health and spiritual maturity are inseparable. It is not possible to be spiritually mature while remaining emotionally immature.

Space to explore my feelings

Beyond my times of reading the Bible, I now needed time to pay attention to what was happening within me each day so that I could bring that to God also. Rather than keeping busy to avoid my inner pain and disappointments, I needed space to explore my feelings and wrestle with anger, shame, bitterness, grief, jealousy, fear, or depression–in an open, contemplative way before God.

Top ten symptoms of emotionally unhealthy spirituality

The top ten symptoms of emotionally unhealthy spirituality: Using God to run from God Ignoring the emotions of anger, sadness, and fear Dying to the wrong things Denying the past’s impact on the present Dividing our lives into “secular” and “sacred” compartments Doing for God instead of being with God Spiritualizing away conflict Covering over brokenness, weakness, and failure Living without limits Judging other people’s spiritual journey

We need to stop so we might create familiarity at all times

The reason we need to stop and be with God is so we might create a continual and easy familiarity with God’s presence at all times–while working, playing, cooking, taking out the garbage, driving, visiting friends, as well as during worship, prayer, and Bible study.

Motivation management

Having a conversation with ChatGPT 4.0 about setting 2024 goals yielded this article about motivation. A couple points stand out. First, that motivation is highest at the beginning and end of a goal. This matches exactly with my 2023 exercise and memorization goals. I sustained motivation for the first three months until I was sidelined with a bout of sickness and the scheduling challenges of regular summer visitors. As the summer has waned and our visitors slow, my desire to return to these habits has increased.…

Monastic rule of life

The Order of the Common Life has four rhythms and twelve commitments that comprise their Rule of Life. I still have my reservations. Yes, I think these are good things, but I’m not sure that this expression of spiritual disciplines is right for me. It feels like something could be missing, and a few of these are values that I’m not likely to follow through with, like lectio divina or shared work.…

Conversation about the Bible

What follows is a thread copied from a lovely Mastodon conversation across the past two days between my account @acbilson, @corbden, and @Shobeck). Visit the start of the thread here to read in full. @acbilson One rejection of the #bible I’ve witnessed is that it contains horrendous evil, even evil in which God’s actions get enmeshed. Case in point: Abraham’s nephew, Lot, offers his virgin daughters to be gang raped by his neighbors to protect his male guests.…

Meditate day and night

Psalm 1 describes the ideal, flourishing human in this way: [H]is delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. I feel inadequate to the task whenever I read this song. The ancients had the entire Torah memorized and their culture infused with Yahweh’s instruction. My culture, even at home, is infused with much besides the words of Yahweh and my brain is not up to that monumental task (and I’m better equipped for mass memorization than most).…

More rituals

I often feel overwhelmed by the scope of work. Sequestering myself, say, in a remote cabin on some months-long writing retreat is a pipe dream — albeit a very, very seductive one. I have commitments that can’t wait: a kid who needs to get to school and a house that needs renovation and clients who need to get their projects printed/published/launched. If I want to tell bigger stories, I have to find a way to finish them, bit by bit, in the daily mix with the rest of my life.…

Becoming a father

The process of becoming a father is more lonely and ambiguous than I anticipated. In the early days of fatherhood I believed, if I could apply some universal parenting principles, adjust for blind spots in our sociey, and add a few father-specific principles, I’d be a great dad. However, the daily practice of being a father is only marginally informed by principles. It’s much, much more informed by the traits of my own parents.…

To be a saint is to be myself

For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self.

Becoming is a secret known only to God

The secret of my full identity is hidden in Him. He alone can make me who I am, or rather who I will be when at last I fully begin to be. But unless I desire this identity and work to find it with Him and in Him, the work will never be done. The way of doing it is a secret I can learn from no one else but Him.…

The perilous season is middle age

The perilous time for the most highly gifted is not youth. The holy sensibilities of genius — for all the sensibilities of genius are holy — keep their possessor essentially unhurt as long as animal spirits and the idea of being young last; but the perilous season is middle age, when a false wisdom tempts them to doubt the divine origin of the dreams of their youth; when the world comes to them, not with the song of the siren, against which all books warn us, but as a wise old man counselling acquiescence in what is below them.…

From solitude through surrender to compassion

The Desert Fathers and Mothers of the fourth and fifth centuries A.D. exited common Roman society to live in the Egyptian desert. According to Henri Nouwen, 💬 They escaped from the sinking ship [of Roman society] and swam for their lives. And the place of salvation is called desert, the place of solitude. Henri Nouwen, The Way of the Heart, pg. 7 Nouwen’s premise is that, without transformation, Christians are conformed to the mores of their society like passengers sailing ignorantly aboard a sinking ship (metaphor from Merton).…

Dependence on worldly perception produces anger and greed

Whether I am a pianist, a businessman or a minister, what matters is how I am perceived by my world. If being busy is a good thing, then I must be busy. If having money is a sign of real freedom, then I must claim my money. If knowing many people proves my importance, I will have to make the necessary contacts. [Social] compulsion manifests itself in the lurking fear of failing and the steady urge to prevent this by gathering more of the same–more work, more money, more friends.…

Only in the context of grace can we face our sin

The wisdom of the desert is that the confrontation with our own frightening nothingness forces us to surrender ourselves totally and unconditionally to the Lord Jesus Christ… We enter into solitude first of all to meet our Lord and to be with him and him alone. Our primary task in solitude, therefore, is not to pay undue attention to the many faces which assail us, but to keep the eyes of our mind and heart on him who is our divine savior.…

Solitude exposes our false selves

In solitude I get rid of my scaffolding: no friends to talk with, no telephone calls to make, no meetings to attend, no music to entertain, no books to distract, just me–naked, vulnerable, weak, sinful, deprived, broken–nothing. It is this nothingness that I have to face in my solitude, a nothingness so dreadful that everything in me wants to run to my friends, my work, and my distractions so that I can forget my nothingness and make myself believe that I am worth something.…

Solitude is the furnace of transformation

Solitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self. .. Solitude is the place of the great struggle and the great encounter–the struggle against the compulsions of the false self, and the encounter with the loving God who offers himself as the substance of the new self.

Solitude is the place of conversion

We think of solitude as a place where we gather new strength to continue the ongoing competition in life. But that is not the solitude of St. John the Baptist, of St. Anthony or St. Benedict, of Charles de Foucauld or the brothers of Taizé. For them solitude is not a private therapeutic place. Rather, it is the place of conversion, the place where the old self dies and the new self is born, the place where the emergence of the new man and the new woman occurs.…

The desert fathers arose when persecution ended

According to Henri Nouwen, the Desert Mothers and Fathers came into being as a response to the end of physical persecution. They sought a new form of witness in a world where it was no longer dangerous to claim the name of Christ. And they sought to separate themselves from a society that they felt was poisonous to Christian faith and practice. 💬 But if the world was no longer the enemy of the Christian, then the Christian had to become the enemy of the dark world.…

Confrontation with suffering does not lead to compassion

Confrontation with human suffering does not lead to compassion. It leads to anger, numbness, irritation, and rejection, because we don’t know how to deal with it all. It is too much. It is a heavy burden–more than we can carry… A burden becomes a heavy burden when it doesn’t feel connected to anything else. It is a burden that we have to carry by ourselves and is not shared. It is not part of anything larger.…

Stages of faith development

How does a person’s faith develop over the course of their lives? In broad categories, what distinct stages might a person move through in their development? These are the kinds of questions that Faith Development Theory tries to answer. Jessie Cruickshank offers a three-part video series (Part 1 here) where she explains the six stages of faith development. She does a ton of work making James W. Fowler’s research coherent and applicable to disciple-making.…

Evangelism is making disciples

In our attempts to define evangelism, sometimes we can make it so narrow that it’s no longer connected with the holistic mission of the Church. Overnarrowing has affected both evangelists and “regulars”. Evangelists have decided that their sole focus is to scatter seeds of the gospel far-and-wide but leave discipleship to whatever church community an interested person happens to walk into. Much of their work is misspent because they don’t get close enough to their hearers to understand their pain or misconceptions.…

The monastery is a school in which we learn from God how to be happy

The monastery is a school—a school in which we learn from God how to be happy. Our happiness consists in sharing the happiness of God, the perfection of His unlimited freedom, the perfection of His love. What has to be healed in us is our true nature, made in the likeness of God. What we have to learn is love. The healing and the learning are the same thing, for at the very core of our essence we are constituted in God’s likeness by our freedom, and the exercise of that freedom is nothing else but the exercise of disinterested love—the love of God for His own sake, because He is God.…

We give more than we have

Strict adherence to the adage that we can give others only what we have - a Biblical concept (see Matthew 12:35) - has overpowered two equal realities. First, our treasure is external to us. His words and presence are not limited by the vessel’s spiritual vitality. We are not batteries that must be charged in order to emit light. Though spiritual practices are essential to all disciples, mission is not contingent or subsequent to our personal growth.…

If I am true to the thought of him I shall find him everywhere in myself

[If] I am true to the concept that God utters in me, if I am true to the thought of Him I was meant to embody, I shall be full of His actuality and find Him everywhere in myself, and find myself nowhere. I shall be lost in Him: that is, I shall find myself. I shall be ‘saved’.

Spiritual formation

If you’ve read my writing about Jesus' prayer, “your kingdom come”, you have a glimpse into what transformation could look like. Jesus' teaching transforms individual lives when put into action. When allegiance to his teaching spreads through a community, it produces transformation on a societal scale. What tenents should a team who yearns for community transformation follow to witness fruit? This is the question I propose, and to which I shall attempt to enumerate an answer.…

Leaders develop towards their ideal

It’s important to know where you’re headed and why. According to Boyatzis, the first step towards a self-directed approach to learning is the discovery of what you desire to be and what you currently are (Boyatzis, pg. 19). Coined the ‘ideal self’, the vision of what you want to become in the future. Daniel Goleman applies this research to the efforts of executives and senior managers who have lost the motivation to develop their leadership skills further in their current position or their ‘current self’.…

Leaders develop over decades

Growth in leadership is a multi-decade investment with a clear direction. A leader is recognized as such only after the labor of leadership development has born fruit. Or to use a boxing analogy, “Champions don’t become champions in the ring–they are merely recognized there” (Maxwell, pg. 30). The period before the championship moment is measured in decades, not days. To arrive at the level of influence of recognized leaders, an individual must take intentional steps on a regular basis towards that goal.…

Corporate growth disperses spiritual foundations

The title of the book this week is Soul at Work, but it’s definition of ‘soul’ is vague beyond application (Benefiel). The stories I can appreciate, but their business selections are too typical. A non-profit organization for the homeless with a heart in spirituality and non-violence? It’s more surprising to find a secular environment with the same purposes. The author’s most recognized selection, Southwest Airlines, is also notable for it’s lack of spiritual motive.…

Heavenly reward makes better workers

There is a surprising absence of writing about the saint’s heavenly activity. At times we catch a glimpse through the eyes of a shocked prophet so riveted on God he sees little else. However, a fascinating description of our heavenly activity is referenced in Jesus' parable about the faithful steward. There he promises an increase in responsibility for anyone who has been faithful on earth. And what constitutes this responsibility? “You shall have authority over ten cities.…

A stunted view of god limits imitation

A stunted view of God’s character limits our imitation of him. “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works Abraham did” - John 8:39 From history class to daily news we are bombarded by messages of corporate abuse. Robber barons warn against the corruption of business ownership. The faceless brokers and investors who fueled the housing craze that deceived hundreds of thousands of lower income families into impossible mortgages give pause that our entire economy is rotten.…

Jesus identity was formed by the hebrew scriptures

Jesus identity was formed by the Hebrew Scriptures Find a quote in Christopher Wright’s book.

I am the true grapevine. My Father is the Vine Keeper. He cuts off the branches in me that have no fruit. He carefully trims back the branches with fruit, so they will grow more fruit. My teachings have purified you, but you must stay joined to me in the same way a branch is joined to the vine. A branch cannot grow fruit unless it is joined to the vine.…