Into This Dark Night: Removing Our Dependence on Our Senses

I remember being so surprised to learn that God wants to remove our dependence on our senses. I mean, didn’t God give us our senses in the first place? Aren’t they a good thing? Why would God take the time to dream up, create, and give us senses to experience the world — not to mention experience our connection to himself — only to eventually take those senses away? What gives here?

But the more I understood, the more I understood.

When we judge our life with God based on our sensory experiences, we lose two ways.

First, we run the risk of judging reality based on feelings.

If we feel an infusion of good feelings when worshipping or praying or reading the Scriptures or any other sacred activity, we’re inclined to think we’re “doing good” with God. Accordingly, if we don’t feel those good sensory experiences during those activities, we’re inclined to think something’s wrong. 

Nothing’s wrong.

We don’t change in our standing with God based on the level of our felt connection to God when we engage spiritual practices. Our standing with God is sure. It doesn’t change with the passing wind. It doesn’t go up and down. It simply is. It can’t be changed or taken away.

(And praise God for that, right?)

Second, rooting our life with God in our sensory experiences can set us up to value the feelings over God himself. After all, who doesn’t love the heady high of worship? Who doesn’t love feeling God closer than one’s own breath? Who doesn’t love the feeling of being loved and cherished by God? 

These are all good things. But they are not the thing itself. 

There comes a point where our love for God is meant to deepen — when we are meant to grow in a purer love for God, simply because he is worthy of that love, not because of any good thing we may receive in the process. 

And so the night of the senses is a purifying process.

It purifies our love for God, and it frees us from our dependence on felt experiences to determine reality.

Into This Dark Night: Introducing the Night of the Senses

St. John of the Cross identified two major stages in the dark night of the soul:  

• The night of the senses
• The night of the spirit

The night of the senses is the first to occur, and also the most commonly experienced by those on the spiritual journey. 

So let’s begin with a word picture that might help you identify with it.

Do you remember the beginning of your spiritual journey — the time you were first awakened to God?

You were excited, most likely. There was so much to learn and so many new experiences to be had. You were encountering prayer and Scripture and worship and fellowship for the first time. You were swept into a whole new community, learning a whole new language and inhabiting a whole new world. You were seeing reality through freshened eyes. 

Your senses were overwhelmed with all there was to do and see and learn and experience. You were filled with love and enthusiasm for God and the things of God. You felt fully connected and committed to this new life.

How long did this first fervor last for you? A month? Several months? A year? Several years? 

Do you recall when the fervor dried up? 

It might have felt like dryness. You noticed prayer wasn’t quite that interesting anymore. The Scriptures seemed bland to read. You sat through worship and felt nothing. You said the creeds and sang the songs as though by rote. 

Would it be presumptuous for me to guess that you believed something was wrong with you? Would it be a bit forward for me to imagine that you tried everything you could to make those feelings come back — that you tried a bit harder at every possible thing you knew to try in the book? 

Would I be wrong to suggest you were disappointed when trying harder didn’t work? 

And that, perhaps, you blamed yourself? 

It wasn’t your fault. 

It’s not always true what they say: “If you can’t feel God, guess who moved?”

Sometimes nobody moved. You and God are right there, facing each other, like you always were. It’s just that you’ve entered a new leg of the journey into deeper union with God.

It’s called the dark night of the senses. And tomorrow, you’ll learn what that is.

Can you relate to the word picture described above? 

Into This Dark Night: A Musical Companion, Part 2

On Monday we’ll dive into the particulars of the dark night of the soul and start to chew on the meat of this series.

But until then, I want to share one more song for you to carry with you. 

It’s written and sung by a sweet friend of mine (whose mom also happens to be one of my most very dear friends), and when I heard it for the first time yesterday, I couldn’t help but think of you — you who visit this space and may be walking through your own dark night. 

It’s based on the Good Shepherd psalm — such a familiar psalm to most of us, but until yesterday not one I would ever have thought to connect to the dark night of the soul. But through this song, I’m realizing that psalm is a perfect companion for those walking through just such a season.

And here’s why: 

• It speaks of a mindfulness of the Lord’s presence … perhaps the most essential reminder for someone walking through a season when God feels so utterly absent. 
• It speaks of not being in want … something that feels foreign and completely untrue to someone struggling through a dark night and yet worth clinging to as a truth, even in all its utter paradox.
• It speaks of having no fear because God is there … again, such an essential reminder for someone who has a really hard time believing that is true.
• And the final refrain of the song, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all of my days” … it rings over and over like the continuous refrain of someone clutching a most precious truth that feels so far away from being real.

Wanting More .mp3

I hope this song blesses you as much as it blessed me. 

xo,

Christianne 

Into This Dark Night: A Musical Companion

Hello, friends.

Shortly, we will dive into the realities and particulars of the dark night of the soul. We’ll explore the different stages — because there are several — and the reasons they occur. We’ll talk about what it can look like for us to navigate this difficult journey — what’s helpful and what’s not. And we’ll give you a chance to ask questions about it. 

Before we dive into the deeper waters of this subject, I’d like to share with you a musical companion for the journey. 

My friend Lisa introduced me to Steve Bell yesterday — a singer/songwriter who published a collection of songs called Romantics and Mystics, which includes a song called “The Dark Night of the Soul” based on the poem St. John of the Cross wrote to describe the journey.

Maybe as we go along, it can serve as a gentle, welcoming presence.

At least, that’s what it’s already become for me.

If you can’t see the video in your email or RSS feed, click here.

Lyrics:

Into the darkest night

With a heartache kindled into love

I took a chance

When at last I went out unobserved

My house being wrapped in sleep

The hour made secure

And concealed the flight to my beloved

I took a chance

And left familiar treasures well behind

Too far for comforting

I went out by myself

Seen by no one else

A somewhat reckless journey from the start

Pressing through the night

Without light or guide

Save the fire that consumed my heart

I bless the starless night

A night by far more lovely than the dawn

Oh happy chance

To discover in the barren dark

The one I knew so well

And there with my love I rested

Fanned by a cooling wind

Wounded by love’s caresses

Suspending all my senses

Bless this happy night

That unites the lover and the loved

Oh happy chance

To abandon every wretched care

Among the lilies there 

Into This Dark Night: It's a Communion of Saints

One of the elements of St. John of the Cross’ story that I find immensely helpful has to do with how he came to write about “the dark night of the soul” in the first place. 

As I mentioned in the introductory post to this new series, St. John of the Cross was a Carmelite friar. In fact, he was hand-picked by St. Teresa of Ávila early in his life as a monk to work with her to reform the Carmelite order. Eventually, they founded a separate order called the Discalced (or “shoeless”) Carmelites. 

Upon the founding of their new order, a great deal of St. John’s work became serving as a confessor and spiritual director to the nuns who lived in St. Teresa’s convent. His writings on the dark night of the soul emerged from having, over time, served as confessor and spiritual director to literally hundreds of people and having seen common themes and turns emerge in the spiritual journey. 

What St. John of the Cross wrote about the dark night of the soul, in other words, came from his authoritative witness of hundreds of souls growing in union with God.

I can just imagine it, can’t you?

St. John in his friar’s cell, visited day after day, night after night, by person after person coming to share their soul’s journey with him. Him, over time, noticing patterns, getting a sense of the lay of the land, if you will, of how the soul journeys toward God. Seeing the dips and rises. Seeing the emergence of greater and greater love. Writing a poem about it, then writing extended commentary.

I find all this immensely encouraging. 

It tells me that when we find ourselves in the midst of a darkened journey with God, we are not alone. We are surrounded by a historical communion of saints who have also experienced it too. 

What’s more, there is purpose here. This is part of what happens in the soul’s journey toward God. This darkened process is meant for our formation.

Through this series, we’ll learn together how and why that is.

Into This Dark Night: A New Series

I remember the day so well. 

It was a spring afternoon in my sophomore year of college. I was sitting in a hardback chair in one of the older auditoriums on campus, attending a lecture for my honors coursework. At the front of the auditorium stood a guest lecturer — an eager professor with a combined background in theology, philosophy, and psychology — who wore glasses, shaggy hair, and a sincere smile.

His lecture was my introduction to St. John of the Cross.

St. John of the Cross was a 16th-century mystic and Carmelite friar best known for his writings on a subject he called “the dark night of the soul.” It was a phrase I’d heard before, in offhand moments, to describe times of particular difficulty or pain in a person’s life. 

I learned that day that it’s something quite different than that. I learned that it’s a real thing.

That day, I learned two ideas that profoundly impacted my understanding of Christian spirituality and the path my own life’s journey took from that point forward:  

1. First, I was given a concrete understanding that the soul forms over time — that it is, in fact, the Spirit’s intention to guide the soul through a process of formation over its lifetime.
2. Second, I learned that this formational process includes seasons of darkness — intentional seasons of darkness — in the soul’s awareness of God.

I was, to put it lightly, intrigued by these two ideas, and I became a bit preoccupied with St. John of the Cross as a result of that lecture.

I made a beeline for the campus library and checked out a translated volume of his Dark Night of the Soul. Then I requested special permission to write my final term paper on the subject, even though St. John of the Cross’ writings were not included in the semester’s required canon of texts. 

And I shared what I’d learned with a close friend — someone who was going through an unusual season in life for which the language and explanation of “the dark night of the soul” seemed to offer some much-needed perspective and hope. 

Are you familiar with the dark night of the soul? Have you experienced one, or do you know someone who has?

Over the next little while, we’re going to explore this developmental theology as St. John of the Cross wrote about it. And it is my hope that this series offers you — as it did my friend and me — a greater degree of understanding and hope, especially if you are traveling through a dark night currently or have in the past but didn’t know what to make of it. 

Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned through my study and experience of this subject, it’s that the developmental theology of the dark night of the soul offers just that: a great deal of understanding and hope.

Finding God in the Daily :: Choose One Thing

A gentle beauty.

When it comes to finding God in the daily, it’s so easy to go from zero to 60, in terms of hyper-awareness and intention. We think, God is everywhere! He can be found in everything! All that I do is weighted with significance and meaning. I must attend to this. 

And then we crash and burn. We get defeated and overwhelmed. This can happen so easily.

I’d like to encourage you to choose one thing. One thing. Through the course of this series, we explored many avenues and angles for finding God in the daily. Some of the practical methods have been:

• Noticing ourselves
• The whole-self approach
• Lessons found in the everyday
• Letting God find you
• The daily examen
• Holding questions for home, work, and relationships

Instead of trying all of these possibilities at once, choose one. Try it on as an intention for a week. Or a month. Allow it to become a singular method of transformation right now.

You don’t need to be in hyper-mode about all this. God is about your transformation, and that is a lifelong process. He’s in it for the long haul, and he’s about going deep with you. He’s about changing you to your core. And he can do that much more effectively through your focused partnership.

That is the heart of spiritual discipline and formation, as we’ve explored here before (see here and here): we choose something that’s within our power to do (a singular set intention) so that God can use that energy and focus to transform us from the inside in ways we can’t transform ourselves.

Choose one thing. Let it be enough. Let that one thing be your means of transformation right now.

What one thing will you choose?

Finding God in the Daily :: At Home, at Work, in Relationships

Noticing life.

As we’ve been working through this series, I’ve been wanting to provide you with a sample list of questions you can hold in the different areas of your life to help you notice God’s activity and presence, as well as your own formation process. And so that list — broken up by categories — is below.

This is not an exhaustive list, of course, but it’s a good set to consider when you’re wanting to be intentional about noticing God in the details and how those details can contribute to your ongoing formation. 

At Home

• In what area of your home do you experience the greatest felt presence of God? Why do you think that is? 
• Enter each major area or room of your home and offer a prayer over the people and activities that populate that space.
• In what ways do you experience God in your home? 
• In what ways do you wish you experienced more of God in your home? How can that desire become a point of prayer and a place of intentionality for you?
• Imagine Jesus’ presence with you in every activity you engage (making meals, driving in the car, cleaning the house, watching TV, engaging with those you live with, etc.) through the course of one full day. What do you notice about his presence?

At Work

• What conflicts do you experience at work? How might these become opportunities for prayer? 
• Do you become more or less like your true self at work? Why do you think that is?
• How do you experience the strengths of who God made you to be in your experience of yourself at work?
• What spirit pervades your workplace? Is it a spirit of laughter, joy, freedom, comaraderie? A spirit of fear, divisiveness, apathy? Notice the spiritual undercurrent of your workplace, and join in the spiritual battle through prayer as you work.
• Which fruit of the Spirit — love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, or self-control — is least fruitful in your work life? Allow the cultivation of that particular fruit to become a point of focus between you and God.
• Is there anyone who could use your words of encouragement today? 

In Relationships

• Where do you experience joy and freedom in relationship right now? What dynamic allows that to be your experience in those relationships? 
• How are the people in your life reflections of the different attributes of God?
• Is there a pattern to the struggles you experience in relationships? How can that pattern be an entry point for growth in you? What might be God’s invitation to you in that particular struggle?
• How can you be a reflection of the heart of God toward the people in your life right now?
• What do you most fear in the context of relationship? Share that fear openly with God and listen for God’s words in response to you.

What questions would you add to this list? 

Finding God in the Daily :: The Daily Examen

Noticing the details.

Have you heard of the daily examen before? I’ve written about it once before, and it’s a centuries-old practice that maybe you have read about or practiced previously. 

It’s a perfect addition to this series about finding God in the daily. 

In fact, I’d say it’s the most practical, direct way to find God in the daily, so if you’re looking for one simple handle to get started, I’d recommend starting here.

So, what is the daily examen? 

It’s a simple 15-minute practice you incorporate into the end of each day that involves 1) a mental review of the day in order to 2) discover God’s presence in ways seen and unseen. 

• You look back over what happened that day.
• You ask, “How was God present in ways I noticed or didn’t notice at the time?”

Anything that lent itself to light, to goodness, to joy, to kindness, to generosity, to gratitude — in essence, to life — can become markers for you of God’s presence in your day. Consequently, anything that moved you toward darkness, death, despair, gloom, anger, bitterness, fear, or trembling can become entryways for you to converse with God and invite him closer into those situations, seeking his wisdom or aid.

Practicing the daily examen blew my mind when I first began doing it.

I could hardly believe the number of places I came to see God’s presence each day in retrospect, and this led to a heightened awareness of his presence with me all the time. Even in situations that were hard or stressful, I came to see his saving presence — giving me the self-control to not snap at someone, saving me from a near-accident on the road, and so on.

It also increased my sense of gratitude as an overall posture toward life — being more thankful and wonder-struck at life, rather than pessimistic or closed.

And, in the end, it helped me be responsible for the events of my days, specifically in noticing the way I received the events that happened when they happened and how I responded to them in the moment. The daily examen provides a place to notice the details in the dailiness of our lives and converse openly with God about who we are becoming as we respond to them.

* Special note: Adele Ahlberg Calhoun’s Spiritual Disciplines Handbook has the best list of questions I’ve found on the daily examen. These can be great jumping-off points for this daily practice, too: 

• For what moment today am I most grateful? For what moment today am I least grateful? 
• When did I give and receive the most love today? When did I give and receive the least love today? 
• What was the most life-giving part of my day? What was the most life-thwarting part of my day? 
• When today did I have the deepest sense of connection with God, others, and myself? When today did I have the least sense of connection?
• Where was I aware of living out of the fruit of the Spirit? Where was there an absence of the fruit of the Spirit?

Finding God in the Daily :: When God Finds You

Dangled in light.

In my experience, finding God in the daily has so much to do with mindfulness. Paying attention. Allowing present moments to be markers for us — showing us ourselves and perhaps becoming teachers to us, too, and inviting our whole selves to show up in the ordinary moments.

That’s the part of finding God in the daily that invites our part. Our intention. Our activity and presence.

But sometimes it’s just about God. 

Sometimes we can let go of the searching and just let God find us as we are. 

That’s what happened for me this morning.

I’ve been in a funky place the last several days, perhaps even a week. Carrying around a heavy feeling of sadness that sometimes spirals into a hole of emptiness inside. I look up and realize so many things feel futile and meaningless.

But then I’ll spend time with Jesus and get reconnected to Life. I’ll meet with my spiritual director and feel a vitality of purpose and engagement. I’ll feel hope and strength and courage surge through me.

Only to find myself on the couch later, once again facing down the emptiness. 

When I woke this morning with the sadness and emptiness cloaking me yet again, I asked Kirk for a hug and then he offered to pray with me. Through that time of prayer, the invitation emerged to just be in the love of God right now without having to understand this up-and-down roller coaster ride of feelings or know what to do or where to go with them. 

Just be in the love of God. Accepted and loved.

I needed that reminder today. Do you?

Finding God in the Daily :: The Everydayness of Jesus

Just some ordinary items.

—

Pennies lost then found. Wheat fields and trees. Mustard seeds and sparrows. Parents giving gifts to children. Friends arriving in the night. A woman petitioning her case. A homeless man hoping for bread. 

The list could go on and on.

So many of the stories Jesus told — maybe all of them? — are grounded in the grit and grind of daily life. Even the images he used to describe his very self fall into the everyday ordinary. Bread. Light. Words. 

And then he met people on the ground floor of their lives. A woman fetching water at a well. A bunch of fishermen hauling nets. Two sisters caught in conflict. Parents pleading the health of their children. A rich man hunting for meaning. 

We could keep going on like this for quite a long time. 

Jesus was grounded in the details. And I love this about him. I love that he came and experienced real life for himself, and I love that he chose to use real life for his teaching tools. He could pull a metaphor or meaningful truth out of any old thing you’d encounter in the course of a day.

What in your ordinary life could be used as a teaching tool by Jesus to teach you?

Finding God in the Daily :: The Whole-Self Approach

Stacks.

I’ve been noticing I often find God in the dailiness of life when my whole self — body, heart, mind, and spirit — all show up in the same place. 

Take laundry, for instance. 

I’m standing at the washer/dryer, the dryer door open, and I’m pulling out all the warm, clean, colored garments. My hands go through their familiar routine of shaking out a fluffed, freshly cleaned and dried shirt, folding the arms back, then halving it top to bottom, then halving it once again. 

On the proper stack it goes: his and hers. 

Then jeans. Shake them out with a snap, fold them in half, then fold them in thirds. Place them on the bottom of the stacks.

Gather the socks in a pile, then sort them through for pairs. Align, fold, then on the stacks they go.

On and on it goes, each and every weekend. I know this routine by heart. I pile the stacks, swoop them in arms, then place them on the dressers. Done. 

It’s a zen-like pattern for my hands and arms, but also for the rest of me.

As I complete this task, I’m thinking about a conversation I had last week that just keeps lingering. It’s been there every day, lurking in the shadows, and I pushed it back and back all week. I’ll get to it, I tell myself. 

Standing there next to the utility closet, my body working through the familiar drill of cotton and blue jeans, I have the space, now, to wonder about it. To consider why it has lingered.

And then I notice: there’s shame attached to it — shame I’ve cast on myself, shame I’m sure is cast on me. Now I’m face to face with the truth of it. And so I take it to God: Here’s that familiar shame again. Why do I struggle with this? 

Deep breath. A chance to ask: Can I let go of this shame? Choose to view myself through the full, accepting gaze of God? Yes.

Laundry becomes a whole-self process. 

My body’s doing laundry. And then my heart shows up with what’s true: a conversation that’s lingered. My mind enters in with ruminations and wonderings. The heart and mind fuse at discovery: shame. My spirit talks with God.

This happens at the kitchen sink. It happens in the shower. While driving. While picking up the mail. Standing in the grocery line. Between reps on weight machines at the gym.

Our bodies do things, and we’re attentive to their activity, but we’re also attentive to the heart and mind that accompanies that space. We let all these things create an opportunity for connection with God.

How might you experience your whole self in the dailiness today? How can that be an entry place to God today for you?

Finding God in the Daily :: The Intimacy of Always

The light shines through all of it.

This one is going to take a story to get us there. Come along for the ride?

— 

If you’ve been reading here for some time, you know I spent this last year in a pretty intimate season of prayer with Jesus. My morning prayer times included a strong image of the two of us walking on a beach shoreline — sometimes talking, sometime stopping to face each other, sometimes sitting on the sand watching the waves, sometimes playing in the water.

Every day, as I met Jesus in that image, I held a question before him: “What do you want to say today?” 

It was a question about this online space, Still Forming. What did he want to say through me here that day? And every day, he answered. He directed my attention to his heart for you each day, and I wrote my way through almost a full year of week-daily posts by going through that process of prayer with Jesus.

But if you’ve been reading here more recently, you also know that image has changed. We no longer walk on the beach each day. Instead, he gave me a tree. And then he planted me on a cliff. 

And as a result, I’m learning a new way of being with Jesus. 

Instead of looking up at him through the eyes and posture of a child leaning in to listen, I see him gazing at me directly, eye to eye.

There’s so much trust in this gaze.

And it’s a disconcerting place to be. Less dependent. More mutual.

This morning, I sat on the couch and told him how different this feels. When it was me leaning in and listening, I could take myself completely out of the equation. I didn’t have to worry about diluting the purity of what Jesus wanted to say to you because I wasn’t in the mix of the decision. I just relayed what he told me to say.

But standing here in this new place, him looking me in the eyes, he’s asking me what I think. He’s inviting my voice. He wants to hear my opinion. 

And an awareness of all my “stuff” starts rising to the surface. 

“Are you sure you want my opinion here?” I ask. “Because I’m going to muddy the waters like you never will.”

He’s completely pure and completely perfect. All his ways and thoughts are right. Me? Not so much. I’ve got parts pure and murky.

And that, I’m learning, is part of the point of this new place. Who I am today — the pure and the murky — is who he wants to know, who he wants to have show up, who he wants to keep transforming.

—

There’s something about this last year of walking on the beach with Jesus that is and always will be precious to me. It was a beautiful, intimate time. Through it, I learned dependence in wholly new ways. Through it, I better learned his voice. 

But this new place is even more intimate. 

This is about him being more fully integrated in me. It’s less about “what Jesus says” over here and “everything else” over there, with clear lines of demarcation between the two. Instead, it’s about the whole of me showing up and us talking together about all of it. It’s about him using me in this space, even with my splotchy parts, instead of there being a clear line between him and me. 

—

The same can be true for you. When it comes to finding God in the daily, it’s less about a demarcation between “holy time” and “all the rest of our time.” God can — and wants to — become fused into the whole of it with you. 

Where is one of the places in your “all the rest of it” time that you can let God be with you?

Finding God in the Daily :: Noticing Ourselves

Noticing what’s different.

Sometimes it’s easier to notice ourselves than it is to notice God.

For instance, here are some of the things that churned through my mind this morning:

• I need to talk to my co-worker about a transition plan. I wonder what we’ll decide to do.
• I wish things weren’t so hard with my friend right now. My heart is really sad. 
• It feels like Jesus has turned me out on my own. I miss what we used to share.
• I need to see my doctor this month. I hope it’s not too late to make an appointment. 
• That reminds me: I need to refill my prescriptions. 
• I hope it wasn’t a mistake to schedule my haircut for the morning hours next week.
• What are we having for dinner again tonight? 

Thoughts can churn through our minds like wildfire, leaving a burned trail of debris as they go — all of which affect our disposition and outlook, often without our notice.

Anxiety. Worry. Sadness and grief. Self-criticism. Hyper-drive.

All of these affectations settled on me this morning as my thoughts churned from one thing to the next and I moved through the motions of the day. I was barely aware of the need to stop and notice their effect on me until I walked to the kitchen like a bit of a zombie to refill my coffee and Kirk asked how I was doing.

He could tell something was up, but all I could do was shrug. “A lot on my mind,” I said. “I’ll be okay.” 

I didn’t have to be okay, though. Kirk reminded me of the value of paying attention when he offered to hear what I was holding. And after hearing it, he offered to pray with me.

What we notice in ourselves — our worries, sadnesses, anger, preoccupations, and even delirious joys — can be wide-open gateways to notice and find God. When we notice what’s going on, we can bring it to prayer and ask God to be in it with us. To teach us in it. To hold us in it. To help us know where to go with it.

What do you notice about yourself today? Can you bring that to God in prayer?

Finding God in the Daily :: The All-Pervasive God

Just an ordinary moment.

To begin an exploration of finding God in the daily, I keep bumping up against the truth of an all-pervasive God. 

I keep thinking of the great, grand scope of God: the one creating cosmos and holding them together, but also, at one and the same time, having his eye on the sparrow and an always-current count of the hairs upon our heads.

God is in the grand moments, to be sure. He’s at monasteries with the praying, watchful monks. He’s in the grandeur of mountains and vistas and oceans. He’s in the unmistakable call to remarkable work that defines or uproots history.

But finding God in the daily?

It asks us: Do we believe he is in the lone, pink flower no one ever sees? Do we believe he can be found in a baby’s laugh and cry? Do we think he’s found in the pages of our planners? 

Do we really believe God pervades every minute moment in life? Is he truly an all-pervasive God?

When we set out to find God in the daily, we’re confronted with these questions.

It reminds me of something I learned early in my training as a spiritual director — that nothing brought to spiritual direction is ever too mundane, for God can be found in all of it.

An argument with a friend? A set of lost keys that led to a missed appointment? An advertisement on TV that keeps lingering for reasons we don’t know? The dailiness of life introduces a never-ending string of invitations to notice God noticing us.

Do you believe this?

Finding God in the Daily :: An Introduction

Hi there, friends.

It feels so good to be turning a corner and committing this space to ongoing series on topics we collectively care about.

It feels like a chance to enter places we’ve always seen and meant to visit but just couldn’t find the time. Even better than that, it feels like being given a personal invitation to visit those places, having our schedules cleared so we’re able to finally say yes, and being led by a tour guide to all the best highlights inside those places, with them telling us about each highlight and then giving us a chance to reflect and respond.

That’s my heart for the ongoing series in this space. 

First up, we’re going straight for the practical by exploring “finding God in the daily.”

Some of the questions raised inside this topic are:

• How do we actually do this?
• How do we cultivate a healthy spiritual life when schedules and silence are scarce? 
• Where is God in the laundry and the dishes, in relationships and work, in stress and overwhelm?

Do you struggle to find God in daily life? What questions would you add to this list?

God's Breath

This image reminds me of God’s breath blowing against the soul. 

Enter a Moment of Silence

I am not going to say many words today. 

Instead, I invite you into silence. A moment of silence. Close your eyes and connect your being with the infinite being of God. Allow yourself to be in the presence of God’s infinity. No words are necessary. 

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Can you be in a moment of silence today?

The Honesty of Prayer

As I read my way through the psalms, I sometimes get caught with a wrenching in my heart at the difficult words the psalmists pray.

In this morning’s reading, for instance, I was met with several pleas in the pages of the psalms for God to annihilate enemies, to ridicule them and bring them to shame. The Message version of the Bible describes these pleas in particularly creative ways. 

These pleas make me really uncomfortable. 

Some of you know that I’ve been on a long and winding road for about four years into the heart and ethic of nonviolence. And this isn’t just a philosophic inquiry for me. It’s not something from which I stand apart and observe, criticizing history and culture in some detached and formulating way.

It’s something that wrecks me. 

I read about torture happening in Guantanamo Bay, and I break down in sobs. I read about the Iranian government tear-gassing and killing citizens nonviolently protesting the outcome of an election, and I begin weeping, only to end up on my bed in the middle of an afternoon, curled into a fetal position and drenching my pillow in tears. I watch Dead Man Walking and break down in the final scene.

When I respond this way, I’m crying for the “enemy” — the one who inflicted the torture, the governmental authorities who decreed the use of weapons and tear gas, the man who sat in the execution chair.

I weep for them. 

I long and ache and plead for their redemption.

I grieve the loss in their souls.

And so I have a hard time reading the psalms sometimes. All those prayers for God to destroy enemies in unendingly creative ways … I just can’t stomach it.

But what helps is the perspective of prayer. 

The psalms are exactly that: written prayers demonstrating the breadth of human experience offered honestly to God. When David says of his enemies, “They’ll die violent deaths; jackals will tear them limb from limb,” or when he says, “The God of the Arrow shoots! They double up in pain, fall flat on their faces in full view of the grinning crowd,” it helps to remember that I’m getting more of a picture of David in that moment than anything else. I’m getting to see the depths of his pain. I’m getting to see him at his wit’s end. I’m getting to see his heart for justice and his clamor against injustice. I’m getting to see his belief in a God who loves and saves and preserves him.

Most of all, I’m getting to see his honesty — his bare-faced, unashamed, unfiltered honesty — before God. He lets his deepest cries come up, articulated from the depths. He’s not afraid to go there with God.

Are you willing to “go there” with God in your prayer life?

The Hymn Collective :: "Give Me Jesus"

Earlier this year, when we celebrated a year of faithfulness in this space, one of our readers, Rebecca, requested a series of meditations on special hymns this coming year.

Today we’re launching that occasional series, called “The Hymn Collective,” and we’re starting with one of my favorites: “Give Me Jesus.”

This version sung by Fernando Ortega.

(If you can’t see the video in your email or feed reader, click here.)

This is a very simple hymn. (In fact, can it even be called a hymn? I’m not sure.) It’s got a very simple verse structure and a very simple refrain, and they alternate a few times before the song closes without any fanfare. 

But this song … oh, this song. It gets to the ache in my heart every single time.

I sing it often around my house. Sitting at my desk in the morning, the psalms spread open before me, I sing it over and over while looking out the window at my neighborhood going about its day. Sitting on my couch some mornings, a blanket wrapped over my arms and legs, I sing it in the silence of our home.

And Diva, pretty much without fail, always comes running to hear it, too, sitting real close or even on my lap as I sing the simple lines over and again. (I swear that girl knows Jesus.)

This song gets at my heart’s love for Jesus. 

Some time ago, I remember sitting in a pew at our church for one of the Wednesday noon eucharist services. And in the silence of the sanctuary, before the service began, I could hear a simple prayer repeating again and again in my heart: “Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus.” 

Over the next few weeks and months, I noticed that same simple prayer cropping up in other moments of quiet — after I’d taken communion and kneeled at my pew in prayer, while sharing times of prayer with Kirk on a Sunday night. Thank you, Jesus. It’s become my heart’s simple, most true prayer, bubbling into my consciousness at times as though to show me my heart beats below the surface, in subconscious places, already and always humming this prayer.

Thank you, Jesus.

This hymn reminds me of that.

It’s been a long time coming, this love affair I have with Jesus. There came a point in my life, 14 years ago, when I didn’t feel any significant connection to this man who had been a part of my life before birth. He was just a figure, fundamental to my life and yet not at all. I didn’t know why he really mattered.

And then, over the course of several years, he slowly became essential.

Now I can’t live without him. Now he is air and breath to me. 

In the morning, when I rise … and when I am alone … and when I come to die … give me Jesus.