Author: Soulman77

 

 

 

For the fourth in my series on Advent, I would like to discuss the practice of being a loving person. It would seem pretty straight forward, just love your neighbor as you would love yourself, that’s what Jesus tells us to do. But what if you don’t even love yourself? Or you were raised in a Christian tradition where you were told you were worth something with a condition. This condition could be certain acts, prayers, beliefs or maybe you were one of the hapless ones not elect to be saved.  

As a practitioner of Benedictine spirituality and in general a contemplative, I have studied many spiritual rules of life. The way of love is one of many spiritual rules of life. “A spiritual rule of life is a purposeful tool to help us grow into a more meaningful life with God. As such, following the practices in the Way of Love can change one’s relationship with God, us, and others with whom we share the earth. The Way of Love invites us to a rule of life that leads to incarnating Divine Love in the world, so it is appropriate to initiate a journey on the Way of Love during Advent, the season we slow down to get ready to welcome Jesus, God incarnate, anew” (Gamber and Zartman).  

I have been spending a lot of time recently getting ready for spring classes at the Community College. In my research this week, I was reading through Victor Frankl’s book, “Man’s Search for Meaning” and I found a nice section where he was offering his thoughts on love. On page 134, he offers these thoughts: 

Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true.” 

 

Another spiritual tradition I rely heavily on comes from the Buddhist tradition. Lovingkindness is a practice in which one experiences a feeling of benevolent affection, but in Buddhism, loving-kindness (in Pali, Metta; in Sanskrit, Maitri) is thought of as a mental state or attitude, cultivated and maintained by practice. This cultivation of loving-kindness is an essential part of Buddhism 

We live in a weird world right now. As I have done research for the two papers, I am having my students write in the spring, I have been thinking quite a bit about the notion of loss of meaning. In my practice as a therapist, lust is often conflated with love, and I find young people quickly jumping into bed with each other and then “catching feelings” or sometimes a permanent reminder of temporary feeling. When eventually the feelings subside, couples come to me, and I again often find them not really knowing who each other really are.  

This advent season, one must ask, “who is my brother and who is my sister? Are we really all that different? One of many things I have been criticized and one of the things that prohibited me from ministry was my openness to all traditions. This largely comes from my exposure to inter faith dialogue in college. But there is a lot to learn from other traditions. I spent a year with a Sufi teacher a few years back and it was a marvelous experience to see his face each Monday morning.  

A lot of reflections I have read for this week’s topic on the notion of love for Advent have to do with the love of God or the love that God has for us specifically. Seeped in the Wesleyan tradition and shaped by my experiences with open theism and most recently the work of Thomas J. Ord, I have really found resonance with the interpersonal, loving God, one who is with us in the midst of our suffering. Tripp Fuller’s pointing out Jesus’ specific name of God, Abba, which loosely translated as “daddy” brings it into focus for me. I can get my head around this. I love my kids and as a dad, I would do anything for them. As such, God, our loving parent, who knows us intimately and loves us unconditionally.  

This final week of Advent, let us also take direction from the Stoics when we are disgusted by the driver that cut us off, the rude cashier who is overworked and underpaid, or the political strife and social conflict going right now and just not. Love instead. Look kindly upon the struggles that are in front of you and see them as opportunities to grow. Those family members you are cross with? Offer lovingkindness; may they be happy, may they be safe, may they be at ease. That cashier? May they be happy, may they be happy, may they be at ease. And your own anxieties, fears, depressions and questioning of yourself? May you be happy, may you be healthy and may you be at ease.  

 

Reference:  

Frankl, V. (1959). Man’s Search For Meaning. 

Gamber, J., & Zartman, B. (n.d.). Journeying the Way of Love: Advent Curriculum. The Episcopal Church. Retrieved December 12, 2023, from https://www.episcopalchurch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/09/WOL_2021_Advent_Journeying_Curriculum.pdf 

 

 

 

Mathew 5:9 – “Blessed are the peacemakers because they are the children of God.”  

The first century Palestine during the time Jesus was here was a time of political strife and economic hardship. According to Riches (1990): 

Palestine at the turn of the era was under Roman control. It was not, however, all controlled in the same manner. Herod the Great, a loyal and politically crafty client king, had just died (4 B.C.). His kingdom, after much deliberation by Augustus at Rome, had been divided between his three sons, Archelaus, Philip, and Herod Antipas. Archelaus was appointed ethnarch over Judea, Samaria, and Idumaea; Herod Antipas tetrarch over Galilee and Peraea; Herod Philip tetrarch over Batanaea, Trachonitis, and Auranitis (Ant. xvii.317–20). None received the title “king,” which they wanted, though the title “ethnarch” had more dignity than that of tetrarch. Within a few years Archelaus’ disastrous rule would end in the imposition of direct Roman rule over Judea (A.D. 6). Herod Antipas’ rule in Galilee would last until he incurred the emperor Caligula’s (A.D. 37–41) displeasure in A.D. 39 by asking to be made king (Ant. xviii.240–55) 

The Maccabean revolt had happened in 160-170 BCE and it’s memory would have been like the United States’ memory of the Civil War and specifically, the American Revolution where American Colonists overthrew their British overlords. By the time Jesus came onto the scene, the Romans had resumed control of the territory Jesus lived and the subversive nature they implored on the Jewish people was severe, though the people were allowed to practice their Jewish faith. In writings recorded in the Gospels attributed to Jesus, you will see Jesus speaking out against these atrocities. Perhaps Jesus’ most famous sermon is his Sermon on the Mount from which the opening scripture comes from.  

It Came Upon a Midnight Clear is a common hymn sung this time of year. Written by Reverend Edmund Sears, this hymn came to him while going through a trying period of his ministry, what we call a dark night of the soul. Looking around at the state of the nation he lived in, he found himself longing for peace.  

As we close out 2023, we observe a world that seems to be crashing in on itself. I have found myself buried in Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” and have truly found that what is going on right now is not so bad, we truly are living in a time of unprecedented safety and security. Now, you may be reading this with a skeptical eye, and may accuse me of writing this from my white priviledge, but Zinn points out that all classes and all colors of people had unprecendented lack of opportunites and as laws have strengthened society, we truly are all better off. This does not discount that problems still exist for women, BIPOC and the LGBTQI+ communities.  

This challenges us then, how do we become peacemakers? Something I have been thinking about as I have been preparing for my spring class that I am teaching in April is our societies lack of meaning and connection. In a conference I was at recently, the speaker stated that perception is the driver of conflict. As a therapist, I find that developmentally, we need systems to help create meaning and when this meaning is not created, we as humans create our own. We need our families, our societal systems (church, school, civic organizations) to challenge our perceptions to help us grow out of the narcissism that marks our childish existence.  

Unfortunately, our systems have fallen apart. What we are left with is a once sided system that relies heavily on a system of violence. We have become conflicted around who is saved and unsaved.  Violence now shows up in forms of speech, bad theology and unfortunately action towards woman, children, black and brown bodies, and people we deem different than us. Conflict as violence reflects one’s spiritual maturity. Conflict as violence breeds radicalization.  

What we need are peacemakers. As we come to our last two weeks before Christmas, as we begin to think about this person Jesus and all that he will teach us over the next coming months as we celebrate his life through the litrugical year, let us be reminded that the peacemakers are blessed.  

In Jesus’ day, sinfulness was one’s separation from the community. Here, the Jewish ontological orientation can be seen in full display. The Jewish people then and still today have thousands of years of discrimination and violence poured upon them. They have built up a strong tie to community and to get in the way of this tie, much in the way Zachaeus and the Jewish temple leaders did, puts one at odds with the community. What is wrong with the world today? It is not that we have abandoned God, it is that we have abandoned each other. We have lost our identity as a people and our systems have stopped creating meaning, only polarization.  

Christ’ mission was to be a peace builder. His ministry evolved to be a provocative voice for peace. He called out to the injustice around him. We must do the same. We must change our relationship with conflict and see it as good work. How we approach conflict determines the outcome of trauma. Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are the meek too, but sometimes the meek need to roar like lions. It is not what is done to you, but how you react.  

Peace on earth and good will to men, all men, all women and all who are questioning their humanity.  

 

 

Reference: 

Riches, J. (1990). The Political, Economic, Social, and Cultural Context of First-Century Palestinian Judaism. In The World of Jesus: First-Century Judaism in Crisis (Understanding Jesus Today, pp. 10-29). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511621437.002 

 

Advent Spiritual Practice:  

Preparation – the Practice of Prayer 

 

Taking time to rest and prepare during Advent and Christmas not only prepares our heart for Christ’s coming but also allows for growth and expansion of the human heart.  Preparation is “the action or process of making something ready for use or service, or of getting ready for some occasion, test, or duty.” (Merriam Webster Dictionary). I have never been a huge fan of Christmas, being a kid with ADHD and lots of people and long days of visiting never went over well. What I do find spiritually nourishing and fulfilling about the winter season and the Advent season is the Winter Solstice. Here is the long night, a time of long silence, a time of darkness, a time of rest and a time of preparation.  

Jesus was born sometime two thousand years ago to a tumultuous world of oppression, conflict, and poverty. A couple of hundred years after his death, the theologians would settle on the meaning of Christ and a way was paved for the celebration of Advent that we have today. The Christmas story is based on prophesies from the Old Testament and upon his birth, the fancy theological word is incarnation, Jesus arrives into our barrenness and longing, reverses the high and lowly segments of our world, and brings peace to our brokenness. As we await Jesus’ birth, we are invited to embody these very things—preparing our world for his arrival. 

In Jesus’ arrival, love and mercy will be on full display for the known time Jesus walked among us. Jesus demonstrates for us the practice of preparation many times though his intentional practice of prayer. For Jesus, spending time alone with God was a necessity that fueled his ministry and manage what at times seems to be a demanding schedule if you lean into the immediacy of Mark’s Gospel.  

Prayer has always been a bedrock of my contemplative practice. One of the four rungs of lectio divina, oratio is the product of a long reflection on the direction God is giving one in the reading at hand. It is an intimate exchange with God, like a dialogue between a Father and his child, or as Jesus would put it, with Abba. The basis of this prayer is its first two steps, during which you are the listener, as you invite the Word of God into your heart. Oratio is a symbol of alliance with God: you learn to adapt your demands to God’s Plan, to commit your will to God’s will.  

For over two months from the end of October through January 1st, we are pushed to consume, buy, and engage in a sometimes impossible and often stressful time of business. When we prepare, we prepare with our hearts first. To begin to prepare in this season for Christ’s birth, we must relocate our hearts away from busyness, selfishness, and consumption, and into the presence of God. With open and prepared hearts then, we fully receive the birth of Jesus. And we are brought to humility, reconciliation, and acceptance of God’s outlandish grace lying in the manger. 

Consider this prayer of preparation for your next week on the journey: 

Dear God, silence all voices within our minds but your own. 
Help us to seek and be able to follow your will. 
May our prayers be joined 
with those of our sisters and brothers in the faith, 
that together we may glorify your name 
and enjoy your fellowship forever. 
In Jesus’ name, Amen. 

-from The Worship Sourcebook, ©2004, Faith Alive Christian Resources 

 

Hope 

 

 

The world is an ugly place right now. Wars, politics, climate change, it is all bad, or so the illusion goes. Hope is the basic ingredient of optimism and hope is a spiritual energy.  

In the beatitudes, Jesus casts the hope of God’s love over marginalized people. In a time where we celebrate the 1%’rs, a lot of us are struggling with a lot right now and we can gain comfort in Jesus’ optimism. 

Big H Hope and Little h hope 

What is hope? When I had this conversation last summer, we talked jokingly about big H Hope, and little h hope.  While the specifics of this conversation are just memories now, I think I can still sum it up. Big H hope is your faith, your biblical Hope, and your Hope in God. Little h hope are your desires, such as a hope of good grades or the hope that your sports team wins the big game. The author John Piper suggests three senses: 

1. A desire for something good in the future, 

2. the thing in the future that we desire, and 

3. the basis or reason for thinking that our desire may indeed be fulfilled. 

    Hoping in God is not easy. For modern folks, it is easy to not believe in a God when there is so much technology and knowledge about existence readily at our fingertips. I once heard that at one point in time, it was impossible to be an atheist because of our concepts of the natural world made it natural to believe in a God. In recent language, I have cultivated the notion that for me anyways, God is a transrational reality and my faith is then a subjective experience of this transtrational reality.  

It is my Hope then, that God is the caring, guiding love that I have come to believe in and follow in my spiritual journey. For me, this hope is a feeling, a drawing towards, a pull that settles my soul when I move towards it.  

The relationship between mindfulness and hopelessness 

How do we do hope? As mentioned later, to have hope to have a measure of courage, a dose of patience and the persistence to live courageously and patiently among doubters and calamity. Little h hope can set us up to falsely up to want things to be other than they are. The practice of mindfulness whether from a Buddhist perspective, a Stoic perspective or even a contemplative Christian perspective can help us cultivate an acceptance of the way things are at the moment. In the three traditions mentioned above, all have understandings that things will change and that clinging to the way we always have done it leads to suffering.  

Change and growth come from withing. Undertaking a mindful approach to this spiritual practice helps cultivate this change and growth. I reflect on lectio and reading in such a way that one is permeated by the words and infuses the soul.  

“We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.” 

– Buddha 

When we think hope, we awaken hope within us. Hope is not a destination, it arises from our being, it is part of our true nature. A baby has faith and Hope that mommy or daddy will make them feel comfortable, our circumstances though can extinguish this hope, leading to feelings of hopelessness.  Using mindfulness to combat hopelessness, we patiently return to our last known feelings of hope, sometimes with a therapist, a spiritual guide or a minister and we become deeply the hope that once experience. Here, I am reminded of Victor Frankl who was noted to say that even in our darkest hours, it is possible to find hope and meaning.  

 

Three elements of this spiritual practice: 

In my studies, and in my ongoing search for meaning, I have come across these three elements of hope consistently. Together, they make up the spiritual practice of hope, but on their own, they are their own practice.  

Patience – patience is simply the ability to tolerate others or delays. One of the greatest mindfulness practices centers around our lack of patience. Suffering simply comes from our desires. In the case of the inability to tolerate others, one must ask “why do I see myself differently than this person I am impatient with? Why do I see myself as better?” 

Courage – an attitude of trust and confidence when facing the unknown. Paul Tillich sums it up nicely: 

Courage is the self-affirmation of being in spite of the fact of nonbeing. It is the act of the individual self in taking the anxiety of nonbeing upon itself by affirming itself either as part of an embracing whole or in its individual selfhood. Courage always includes a risk, it is always threatened by nonbeing, whether the risk of losing oneself becoming a thing within the whole of things or of losing one’s world in an empty self- relatedness. 

Persistence – the determination to keep going no matter what happens. We practice hope when we can say all will be well, and we mean it. It is to be noted that this idea of persistence is not stubbornness, it is deeper than this, it is grit, it is the stick-to-it-ness that breeds discipline and success.  

Engaging in a spiritual practice of hope cultivates not only hope, but eventually compassion and joy for the world around us. It helps us acknowledge our feelings, cultivate self-compassion, and move us through the muck of life.  

 

 

 

Reference: 

TILLICH, P., & GOMES, P. J. (2000). Courage and Transcendence: [THE COURAGE TO ACCEPT ACCEPTANCE]. In The Courage to Be: Second Edition (pp. 155–190). Yale University Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1nq03m.9 

“Wonder is God’s way of getting pour attention” – Joan Chittester  

“”When we wonder, we touch God”, Nontando Hadebe 

Of the many modalities I use as a mental health therapist, Eric Erikson’s model of development leads my understanding of the clients I work with on a daily basis. As a pastor, I often and still use John Westerhoff’s developmental theory of faith development.  

A Brief Overview of Development 

Erik Erikson was a German psychoanalyst who would become famous for his theory on the stages of human development. Another theorist I use interchangeably with Erikson’s theory is Jean Piaget, who was also influential in our understanding of human development. For both men, their theories suggest that children get inspired by their surroundings during the learning process. Much of this inspiration is question asking and is a huge part of human development.  

Jim Fowler and John Westerhoff are both theorists associated with faith development. Fowler suggests seven areas of development whereas Westerhoff suggests four. For Westerhoff, there is a lot of space in his theory around questions and the normalcy in questions about our faith. For Fowler, two stages focus a lot on questions, stages, stage 4. individuative-reflective stage and stage five known as the conjunctive stage.  

With the works of these four theorists, they demonstrate that questioning is a natural part of secular and spiritual development.  

The Philosophy of Wonder – Existentialism 

 Why is an essential question of our existence and without it, we would not have evolved into the species we have become. Why am I here? Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? There is a whole discipline of philosophy devoted to these questions, existentialism which goes after these questions and the meaning of life. 

Who am I? It is perhaps the most important developmental question one may encounter in their lifetime. A better question is who are you becoming? Nietzche talked about the fact that we are always in the process of becoming.  

Plato is attributed to have said “wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy beings in wonder.” In this quote, we get a sense of what wonder is, it is not just a static mindless thing that our eight-year-old does to annoy us, it is a feeling, a drive, a sense of curiosity. “Wonder is a complex emotion involving elements of surprise, curiosity, contemplation, and joy, and is perhaps best defined as a heightened state of consciousness and feeling brought about by something very beautiful, rare, or unexpected—that is, brought about by a marvel” (“The Psychology and Philosophy of Wonder – Neel Burton”). 

If we look at the etymology of the word wonder, we gain more insight into the uncontrollable nature of this state of being. Wonder is related to the word marvel or from its specific Proto-Germanic origins, an object of astonishment. In all cases, across the centuries, wonder is seen as an emotional state.  

Cultivating Curiosity 

As a practice, wonder as an emotion is one that many will need to cultivate. As a mental health therapist, I often run into a poverty of emotional intelligence and maturity. As a society, we tell our children that they need to grow up, that they need to sit still, pay attention, or even subject them to unrealistic standards that breed anxiety, self-doubt, and depression.  

Wonder as a practice enhances sensuousness and our ability to enjoy a moment in time. As a practice, it counters or balances feelings of indifference. Life is an adventure, but too often, in the pursuit of growing up and engaging in the next thing, we get myopic, and we lose sight of our curiosity. This gets to the point that when we get to our second half of life, we may have lost our interests and even feel childish if we desire to engage in a practice of wonder. So, we stay in our dead-end job, unhappy, all the while chasing the next best thing.  

We can reclaim our sense of wonder by slowing down, stopping to smell the flowers and reignite our childish need for play. Of course, you may not take up dolls at 42(or you might, who cares), but you will reengage in times of self-care. That is what adults call play, self-care. But focusing on you, another spiritual practice deepens your sense of wonder.  

 A Practice 

Consider this quote from the late Thich Nhat Hahn: 

“Waking up this morning, I smile. Twenty-four brand new hours are before me. I vow to live fully in each moment and to look at all beings with eyes of compassion.” 

How do you see the next moment? Dull, boring, dry? Can you instead notice? Can you notice the play of the child in your space? The desire to play in yourself? Can you be enticed by the wonder of a beautiful sunrise, the smile of a spouse, the way your dog looks at you? 

Can you find wonder? 

Reference: 

The Psychology and Philosophy of Wonder – Neel Burton. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://neelburton.com/2014/12/02/the-psychology-and-philosophy-of-wonder/