The Journey

“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”

Ursula K. Le Guin

Almost 21 years ago we entered into this crazy adventure of starting a recovery ministry with a team of awesome people. I was ambivalent about upending our routines for this new thing but totally committed to its vision - providing a bridge for folks to travel between recovery and faith. Two decades ago it was harder, I think, to mix one’s recovery with one’s faith experience. Maybe I’m wrong but it feels like to me that this is less an issue today than it was in the 90’s.

As a pilot project it was easy to not get overly focused on goals. This was helpful. Goals can sometimes create needless pressures and even side-track us if our goal setting is unrealistic or off target. We talked about helping “one person” as a worthy goal. That’s about as far as we went. Eventually we had to give up our illusion that the pilot project was short term and would soon allow us to return to our less complicated lives.

Over the years my sense of the journey has changed. I see the bridge less clearly. That early goal was driven by the needs of the day. Today, it feels more like a path we trod through desert and deep forest, up and down hills, “on up the mountain” to quote Jakob Dylan.

There is an intuition I have today that sings a song and gently tugs at my heart. It’s less about the objectives and more about the courage to keep going, even when the way seems dark and uncertain. I look back over 21 years and recognize the naivete in daring to think that we had much understanding of the implications of starting a new thing. My life, our lives as a family and community, is better served by not getting too caught up in focusing on the end of the journey. The naive woman who dared to think she knew what the future would hold has been wrong on so many fronts that my crystal ball has been confiscated.

I like goals. They are helpful, especially for the small stuff. But goals are not as helpful as a full on commitment to the journey. As it relates to the big stuff? I think that’s often the ego chattering away in an effort to distract us from the reality of how difficult the journey was, is and will be as we keep walking, one step at a time.

It’s awesome to have a sense of how we can be a part of something bigger than ourselves. But it is wisdom that guides us to hold lightly to our convictions about the destination and take our responsibility for how we travel very seriously.

How is your journey going? Are your intentions tugging at you? Is the kind of person you want to be applying the brakes gently on your desires to succeed, excel, and influence the world around you? It is always a good use of time to self-reflect and notice where we are giving ourselves permission to behave in ways that do not really fit our desire to be a better human.

A Simpler Approach to Spirituality

I’m going to close with a simpler way to process your spirituality if looking at all the individual puzzle pieces (as we’ve done the past few days) isn’t all that interesting to you.  

What constitutes a good day?  Do you ever ask yourself that question?  What do you need to do today, that you can (in reality) do, that would contribute to experiencing a meaningful day?  

It tends to be that we’re so bogged down trying to get done the things that need to be done that we don’t think about building meaning into our day.  Or, we don’t consider what it would take in order to create space to create meaning in our day.  

Of course, building meaning into our day such that we spiritually flourish requires a little bit of planning.  But it’s not just about planning- it’s about intentionality.  Intentionality is at the heart of a flourishing spiritual life.  

Are you living as you intend to be living?  

Spend some time with that question.  It’s not an easy one to answer.  And, the answer will always be a little bit yes and a little bit no.  

Life will be more spiritually enriching if we’re living as we intend to be living.  This means we regularly evaluate how we’re living and intentionally seek to adjust the areas where things aren’t going well.  This process allows our lives to become more full, more spiritually enriching, in part because we confidently know that we're approaching our lives wholeheartedly.  That requires courage.    

If we’re living intentional lives then we will experience ourselves as being more whole, or unified, persons because there will be, over time, fewer discrepancies between our desires and our actions.  There will be less hypocrisy, less internal tension, and the joy that comes from knowing we’re doing the best we can.  

Character: Part I

22 By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, competing against one another, envying one another.  

Galatians 5:22-26, NRSV

Spirituality is life in God’s spirit.  Whenever Paul writes about life in the spirit he is casting vision for Christian spirituality.  Additionally, whenever Paul writes about life in the spirit,  he discusses character.  Almost without fail.  He writes very little about prayer (although I haven’t done a formal analysis of this- I’m sure someone has).  Interesting stuff.  

So, we can’t talk about spirituality without talking about character.  In the days on humility before God and the communal mindset, we wrote that spirituality asks us to consider who we are to others or, in other words, our character.  Spirituality and character are not separate entities.  I probably haven’t been clear enough on this before, so I’m going to be bolder than I’m normally comfortable being:  One does not shape the other, one does not inform the other.  They are inherently intertwined and cannot be separated out and studied separately.    If we aren’t paying attention to our character then we must question whether or not we are pursuing any meaningful spirituality in our lives.  

Prayer

14 And this is the boldness we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. 1 John 5:14, NRSV

Prayer is one of the “obvious” spiritual disciplines, but can look many different ways.  We talked in earlier days about how prayer can be a more active experience, one in which we are talking to God (whether out loud or not), or a more passive experience (such as centering prayer’s focus on sitting in God’s presence).  

Rather than saying anything about “how to pray,” that’s a separate conversation, I want to offer a few practical thoughts on prayer.  I know most people struggle to pray at all.  I am one of these people.  If this is you- find the style of prayer that you can do.  In an ideal world we would all have wildly exciting and diverse prayer lives.  We don’t live in an ideal world.  Don’t think about time or frequency.  Focusing on those things is just shame attack waiting to happen.  Spend your energy discovering a form of prayer that you enjoy (or can at least tolerate) and do that when you can.  It’s easier to stick to it if you schedule it and make it a habit but, if that’s not happening, do it when you can.  Any amount is valuable, there is no minimum.  

There is no right or perfect way to pray.  Some people use acronyms or other tools as guides.  That’s fine if it helps you.  Centering prayer is no more correct than a more active form of prayer.  They are all strategies and approaches, they all have value, and they will speak to, or connect with, different people differently.  Find something you enjoy- but be willing to try uncomfortable things.  It took me years to be willing to experiment with centering prayer- now it is my go-to.  So, don’t be afraid to revisit something you’ve previously rejected.  We change.  

There are “talking” prayers and “silent” prayers.  There are also other options.  You can get the Book of Common prayer, for instance.  You can read these prayers, and take them as your own.  You can do the same with Psalms, or Lamentations, or even the Prophets.  Or you can simply pray the Lord’s Prayer.  Or the Serenity Prayer.  You can use pre-written prayers as guides so you do not have to form your own words.  This can be one of the simplest ways to get started.  

Prayer is our conscious contact with God but, don’t forget our communal mindset.  Prayer is also one of the ways in which we serve our community and our world.  It’s far bigger than us.  Community is always first!

A Sense of Wonder

The Lord created me at the beginning of his work,
    the first of his acts of long ago.
23 Ages ago I was set up,
    at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
24 When there were no depths I was brought forth,
    when there were no springs abounding with water.
25 Before the mountains had been shaped,
    before the hills, I was brought forth—
26 when he had not yet made earth and fields,
    or the world’s first bits of soil.  

Proverbs 8:22-26, NRSV

I’m not sure I’m totally equipped to write about “wonder.”  I’ll begin with three recommendations.  Two books:  Sacred Sense by William P. Brown and Beauty by John O’Donohue.  One film:  Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life.  

Wonder is the combined sense of the complexity of creation and the knowledge of our inability to comprehend it.  In it’s most potent form, wonder is a kind of gut-level joyful glee in response to something rather shocking and rare (but we can have this experience over simple and common things in life too- this is, perhaps, wonder at its best).  

When we were in Texas back in the fall, a group of us saw a shooting star almost too large to believe.  The only way I can think to describe its size is this:  Imagine holding a ruler up above your head at arm’s length, pretending it was far off in the distant sky, and not in your hand.  That was roughly the size and shape of the shooting star, only it WAS way up in the sky (millions of miles away???) and not just a couple of feet from our eyes.  

In Texas, at night, you can see all kinds of shooting stars.  We stood around for a while and saw several small ones, and we were amazed (To use the same exercise:  imagine holding a small blade of grass above your head at arm’s length.  Nothing in comparison to that ruler.).  And then came this bad boy.  We started shouting and jumping up and down.  For those of us who hadn’t seen shooting stars before, we found a sense of wonder in the small ones, and that sense of wonder grew exponentially when the giant one flew across the sky.  That is a sensation you just don’t want to find yourself too distanced from.  

Wonder is ever-present in scripture.  It can be a positive or negative experience.  The people sometimes maintain a sense of awe over their disappointment in God (Job 38 or so).  There is wonder over creation (Gen. 1-2), wonder over sex (Song of Solomon), wonder over the meaning of life (Ecclesiastes), wonder over the incarnation (John 1), wonder over the scope of God’s plans (Colossians 1).  

Wonder is connected to humility.  It is the reminder that there are forces far greater than ourselves operating in the world, but it also carries with it a sense of appreciation for these forces.  I believe “wonder” is what happens in the moments where we experience joy as a result of how small we are.  This is a very odd and bizarre kind of joy.  It makes us appreciate the little things in life, fleeting moments of awe that pull us out of our worries and grant us the privilege of perspective, however briefly.  

I don’t know why this strikes me as being one of the “top 8” aspects of a well-rounded spiritual life.  It just does.