How Might You Cultivate Joy and Rest This Weekend?

I’ve shared here previously that Kirk and I have begun practicing a day of rest on Sundays, at least as much as we are able. I find myself now looking forward to that day at the end of each week because I know it will invite a time of slowness and — if I’d like — even a bit of creativity into my experience each week. 

As I look ahead to this weekend, I’m anticipating putting the finishing touches on the registration process for the Look at Jesus course. (Registration will open this weekend!) This is exciting, as it means finalizing the video I’ve been planning for you that spills the beans on the course details — just one example of creativity that will inculcate joy for me this weekend. 

What might joy and/or rest look like for you this weekend?

Learning Your Heart: Spiritual Direction Helps, Too

In this short series on “Learning Your Heart,” we’ve been talking about some of the practical ways we can learn to get in touch with the reality of our hearts, since Jesus demonstrated over and over again — as did the prophets and teachers of the Old Testament — that it is the heart God truly cares to know inside of us.

Before stepping into the final suggestion of this series — that of meeting with a spiritual director — let’s take a minute to clarify what is meant by the word “heart.” It’s a word that gets commonly thrown around, isn’t it? It can be easy for us to think the heart refers to something sentimental or overly feely inside ourselves.

But let me be clear: that’s not what Jesus meant by the word at all.

By “heart,” Jesus is referring to the absolute core of who you are.

The heart, as Jesus described it, is the place inside of us that holds what we know, feel, and believe in the deep-down places, even if those things contradict what we might say and even tell ourselves we believe, know, and feel. 

I love that our hearts are not a mystery to God. Although they may be a mystery to us, and although what we discover there may embarrass or repulse us, it never surprises or repulses God.

God is interested in our getting to know the truth inside ourselves so that we can bring that into real relationship with him. 

It’s in the truth that real relationship happens.

So, this short series has been offered as a place to start. We’ve talked about paying attention to those subtle intimations that flicker into our awareness but rarely keep or capture our attention for different reasons. We’ve talked about collecting and reflecting on key moments in our lives that made a deep impression or formed us in some way. We’ve talked about practicing prayer of the heart. We’ve even talked about therapy. 

Today, to close out the series, I want to offer one more suggestion that can help you attend to the landscape of your heart, become aware of what’s really there, and bring that into relationship with God.

This suggestion is spiritual direction. 

You may have heard of spiritual direction before and wondered what it is. Is it mentoring? Counseling? Some strange way of submitting yourself to an authority who tells you what to do in your spiritual life? 

It’s actually none of those things.

Spiritual direction, plain and simple, creates a space for you to attend to your relationship with God.

It offers space to reflect on how God has been present to you in your life, or perhaps to consider ways God has not been present in the ways you had hoped. It creates a place to notice and talk to God about these things. And a spiritual director is someone who provides a listening, discerning, compassionate, caring presence and gives you the room to notice and connect to God in these ways. 

I can’t tell you how helpful I have found spiritual direction to be in my own life. I’ve been meeting with the same director for several years now, and I am so incredibly thankful for the room she creates for me to notice, connect with, and talk to God. Even though I have a faithful prayer life and my faith is an integrated and vibrant part of my daily life, I still meet with her once a month (and sometimes twice a month) and plan to meet with a spiritual director for the rest of my life. I have found it to be just that invaluable a part of my life.

I’d encourage you to consider spiritual direction as a regular part of your life, too. And if you are looking for a space to simply talk openly and honestly about your relationship with God or concept of God and your interior life, you are welcome to contact me here. I’d love to provide such space for you.

Are you familiar with spiritual direction? Have you ever met with a spiritual director? Do you have any questions about spiritual direction that you’d like to ask here? 

Learning Your Heart: Sometimes Therapy Helps

Here is something true.

Once you acknowledge those subtle intimations and allow yourself time to collect and reflect on key moments in your life, a whole new and unexpected world begins to open up. You become more in touch with the breadth and depth of your story, and you begin to disentangle yourself from what is merely expectation versus truth. 

You strike out on the path of greater self-awareness, and here’s the difficult part: sometimes the path gets quite thorny indeed.

Who are we? What roles have we played in the world and the lives of those around us? Are those roles true? Are they healthy? What do we believe about God? How did we come to believe those things? Do those beliefs align with what is really true about God? These are just some of the questions that present themselves as we allow those subtle intimations and key moments a voice in our lives, and let’s be honest: these are great, big questions.

This is where I’ve found that therapy can be quite helpful. It creates a safe place to sift through the pieces of our lives with an eye toward greater self-awareness, conviction, and healing, and it provides for a safe and concrete relationship in which to take small steps deeper into the truth of who we are.

Sometimes the help of a trained professional can be the greatest, most generous gift we give ourselves. 

I have been there. It’s not something I’m ashamed to admit, nor is it something I’m shy to recommend. Making sense of our world and the truth of our inmost beliefs and deepest experiences on our own can be confusing and overwhelming, and sometimes we can do more harm than good to ourselves when navigating these waters on our own or only the help of well-meaning friends.

Therapy is not for everyone, and it’s certainly important to find someone who is competent, caring, safe, and professional for this kind of working relationship. But the bottom line is this: you don’t have to navigate the territory of your story and your heart all on your own.

What are your thoughts on therapy? Is it something you’ve found helpful in your own journey? Do you have misgivings or hesitations about it?

Learning Your Heart: Practicing Prayer of the Heart

One of the richest ways that I’ve learned to connect to the truth of my heart over the last several years is through what Henri Nouwen calls prayer of the heart. 

In his book The Way of the Heart (which I highly recommend — it’s a simple yet tremendous book), Nouwen distinguishes between prayer of the mind and prayer of the heart.

Prayer of the mind, he says, is what happens when we merely talk to God or think about God. Both of these activities are done from a place of detachment. We talk to God about things on our mind or things we’re trying to work out. This becomes a pseudo-form of prayer because we are, in effect, merely talking to ourselves. And thinking about God creates no engagement with God at all. What we think is prayer is more intellectual exercise or the creation of theological propositions. Who we are at our core has not shown up at all.

Prayer of the heart, however, is a different experience of prayer altogether. 

Prayer of the heart happens when the truth of who we are encounters the truth of who God is. 

How does that happen?

Nouwen gives us a helpful mental image of what this looks like. He quotes one of the desert fathers, who said:

“To pray is to descend with the mind into the heart, and there to stand before the face of the Lord, ever-present, all-seing, within you.”

— The Way of the Heart, p. 73

What a great and helpful image this offers us! When I practice prayer of the heart, then, I actually imagine my mind descending through my body and landing every so slowly in the place of my heart.

My mind is often a jumbled, monkey-mind mix of thoughts and anxieties and projections and fears and to-do lists and questions, all colliding together and struggling to find any semblance of resolution or rest. But when my mind and heart begin to dwell together, the reality of who I am, in all my fullness, is present. The truth of myself is laid bare. I become aware of who I am and what is truly there.

And there, I find God standing before me, encountering this fullness of the truth of myself.

He sees me, and I see him. Here, we share a conversation.

We begin to engage in relationship.

Can you take a few moments and practice this prayer of the heart? Imagine your mind — everything within it — descending through your body and coming to rest in the place of your heart. Lay bare the truth of who you are in that moment. Then imagine the Lord God before you in that place. Allow him to see the truth of yourself, and allow yourself to look openly back upon him. What is this experience like for you?

Learning Your Heart: Reflect on Key Moments

Last week I shared that we’re going to do a short series here about how to get in touch with the truth of our hearts, so as to bring our hearts into greater authentic relationship with God. The first post encouraged you to acknowledge those subtle intimations that flit into your awareness on occasion, asking for your attention but which perhaps get pushed away quickly because they disrupt the status quo. 

Today, I’m going to invite you to begin collecting and reflecting on key moments. 

I’ll go ahead and warn you right now: this is a big one. Not only is this likely the most illuminating step you can take along this road to learning the truth of your heart, but it also probably takes the longest to do. In all seriousness, this process can unfold over a period of several years. 

Be patient with yourself. Be patient with the process. This is not a race. It’s a lifelong — and really, an eternity-long — relationship with God we’re about here. 

The purpose of collecting and then reflecting on key life moments is that those moments reveal what we’ve taught ourselves about life, ourselves, other people, and God. In those moments, we ingested experiences that became messages — usually at the level of our subconscious — about who we are and how life works. 

It happens in a split-second, but it leaves a life-long mark. 

In those moments, we got disconnected from our hearts. The messages became the main thing — the means to our survival — and our hearts got left in the dust. 

All of this sounds theoretical. What does it look like in real life? I’ll give you an example. 

Three key moments happened in the context of my childhood elementary school experience. One happened in first grade, one happened in second grade, and one happened in third grade. In all three instances, different classmates caught me off-guard in moments of real vulnerability and proceeded to humiliate, mock, or degrade me. 

Taken on their own, these moments may have taught me nothing more than the cruelty certain people can have in their hearts and wield upon others. But collectively, they taught me something much more substantial that I proceeded to carry with me for many years: I’m not safe. Stay on your guard. Don’t let anything catch you unaware. People are cruel. They will degrade and diminish you if you don’t keep them from it.

As a result, I cut myself off from vulnerability. I turned off the pain and turned on the super-attentive and watchful self. I proceeded cautiously through life. My mind became a whiz at crafting contingency plans and sizing up situations from all angles before letting myself proceed into them. 

I became a machine of sorts. 

We have to go back into the archives of our memories and start collecting those key moments. And once we collect them, we need to reflect upon them. 

What are those moments for you? How did they impact you? What did they teach you? How did they affect the way you lived your life from that point forward? 

Learning Your Heart: Acknowledge Those Subtle Intimations

I mentioned in yesterday’s post that there came a point of reckoning for me at age 19 that I didn’t know the truth of my own heart. Jesus — God — clearly cared about the heart, but then I saw lots of people in the Bible who thought they knew God and were close to God but clearly didn’t know God at all. 

What kept them from God, I learned through getting to know Jesus, was their lack of awareness of the truth of their hearts.

So I had to spend time learning my own heart. And then I had to learn how to bring that truth of my heart into relationship with God. 

How did that happen?

Truthfully, it’s been an ongoing process. The heart is cavernous, and its layers unfurl and unfurl over a lifetime. This is why our relationship with God is able to keep on growing — because we keep on growing and discovering new truths inside our hearts that we can bring into relationship with God. 

But over the next few days, I’m going to write a few posts here that speak to some of the things I learned in those earliest of days about getting to know my heart. I’ll also share some of the ways I continue to get in touch with the truth of my heart before God today. I’m calling this short series “Learning Your Heart.” 

So, where is one place to start learning the truth of your heart? 

I’d say one place to begin is to acknowledge those subtle intimations. You know the ones I’m talking about. It’s those thoughts that flit through your mind on occasion that unsettle you, those things you push away pretty quickly because you think they don’t make sense or would disrupt the status quo of your life, those thoughts and hopes and feelings that seem out of the question to you or those you know. 

I’ve shared before that, for me, one of those subtle intimations was my inability to really get what grace was about. I grew up in the church and sang all the songs, read all the scriptures, and could spit out, verbatim, what it meant to be a Christian. It meant believing we were saved by grace and depended on Jesus to give us access to God.

But there was a nagging thought that visited while singing worship songs and reading verses in the Bible and talking about this faith: What is grace, really? And do I really need it? I want to honor God with my life, and God knows that. Truthfully, I do a pretty good job with my life. Since God knows my intention to honor and please him, why do I really need grace? 

These are unsettling thoughts for a Christian, to say the least. 

But I didn’t understand it. And learning my heart meant acknowledging that truth. 

Here’s the good news. God wants a relationship with the real people we actually are. That’s why learning the truth of our hearts is so critical — knowing the truth of our hearts is what brings us into authentic relationship with God.

So one place we can start is by acknowledging those subtle intimations that we have.

What subtle intimations do you have? What thoughts or hopes or struggles or feelings stumble into your awareness at times, only to get pushed away? What if you stopped and really acknowledged their existence? 

Do You Struggle to Know Your Heart?

Yesterday we talked about the religious leaders of Jesus’ day and how they didn’t get along with Jesus at all. We talked about their motivation to keep the rules and abide by laws in order to impress God and people. For them, life was about managing an image and trying to remain firmly in control of that image.

But then Jesus came around and turned their ideas completely upside-down. 

He said things like, “When you pray, don’t do it for show. Go into a secret place and talk to God, just you and him. That’s when your prayers will ring true.” And, “When you fast, don’t let people know. Do it in secret, between you and God. That’s when your motivation will be pure.”

He talked about the heart being the place where our treasures lie. He talked about knowing our own shortcomings instead of focusing on the shortcomings of others. He told many of the people he met what was true about them, and they were always amazed at just how well he knew who they really were.

There are so many instances that show Jesus cares deeply about what’s true inside of us. 

When I first realized this was a pretty big deal to God, it was such a mystery to me. I wasn’t so sure I really knew what was true inside of me.

And truthfully, when I read the pages of the Gospels that first time, I was surprised to see so much of myself in those religious leaders — I hadn’t realized that was true of me until it stared me right in the face. 

Also, I had lived like those religious leaders for so long, I thought everything I did was pure and impressive to God. 

I didn’t know my heart at all. 

It took me a long time to learn my heart — to get to know what was really there.

In the next few posts I write here, I’m going to share some of the things I learned about that process with you — ways I learned to get in touch with the reality of my heart. Perhaps you will find it helpful to your own process of discovery and self-knowledge before God. But for today, I’m wondering: 

Have you ever struggled to know the truth of your heart? Is it a priority to you to know your heart? What do you think of Jesus’ emphasis on this? 

Are You in Touch With Your Heart?

I remember the first time I really spent time getting to know Jesus (you can learn more about that time in my life in this video post here), I was struck by the disparity between the religious leaders of the day and Jesus.

They didn’t get along with Jesus at all, and he didn’t get along with them. And the reason why, I came to realize, was because they cared more than anything about keeping laws and abiding by rule books. What’s more, they cared about these things in order to impress God and impress people. 

They were caught up in their reputations and their own social image. 

But then Jesus came along and said, “This isn’t the way to God. Abiding by rules and protecting your image isn’t going to captivate God’s heart.”

What is going to captivate God’s heart? 

Being in touch with your own heart and bringing that reality to God.

When Jesus came on the scene, he went straight to this truth. He told those religious leaders — in not so endearing terms! — that they had no idea what was truly going on inside themselves. They were so focused on outward appearances and external activities that they were completely out of touch with their inner truth. They had no idea what truly motivated them to do what they did.

Are you aware of what’s true inside your heart? Is there anything that scares you about inspecting your heart and then letting God see it?

What Are You Disciplined To?

Lately I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the choices we make and the usefulness of commitments and boundaries. Want to think along with me about this for a few minutes?

I’ve shared here before that Kirk and I have begun honoring the seventh day of each week with a day of rest. This has been so helpful to us (when we’re able to keep our commitment to it!), as it helps us slow down and attend to the rejuvenation of our bodies, minds, and spirits. It creates a natural day of connection for us. It keeps us humble and mindful that the world will not stop spinning if we don’t keep pace with it. 

Last week, we began moving toward another new commitment: keeping the hours of 9PM-9AM for quietness and togetherness in our home. 

There was a time in my life where I would have viewed these kind of commitments as rigid.

I would have viewed making and keeping an informal “rule of life” as opposed to the grace of God. I would have felt myself and my needs minimized in favor of rules and rule-keeping. 

But I don’t view it that way anymore. 

Sure, there is a way of making and keeping rules that can be rather rigid. There is a way of conducting our lives according to certain boundaries and expectations that create a sense of confinement instead of grace and freedom. 

But there is also a way of creating a lifestyle of commitment and boundaries that leads to self-care.

The day of sabbath and the 9PM-9AM quiet hours is like that for us.

These commitments also have the effect of clearly establishing our priorities and keeping us mindful of what most matters to us. Also, I’ve noticed these clear boundaries create a measure of freedom for me. They make decision-making easy. When something crops up that would require me to work and toil on a Sunday or in the hours we’ve designated for our home life, I can more easily say no. Those are times I’m no longer available. Decision-making: easy. 

What about you? Do you have certain disciplines you observe in your daily life? Do they create freedom for you? Do they make you feel caged in? Is there a way you might observe certain disciplines in a more helpful, self-caring way in your life?

Negating the Superhuman: Drinking in the Present Moment

Over the last several days, the superhuman tendency has shown up for me again. And as I’ve watched it lurking around, controlling what I do and how I do it, I’ve noticed some more things about it.

I’ve noticed that the superhuman tendency makes me impervious to real feelings and experiences. I’m never fully present to what’s happening around me when I’m in this mode. Instead, my mind is always whirring on the next Big Thing. People and experiences become transactional. Sometimes they feel like distractions from what I need to get done.

When in superhuman mode, I’m also quite resistant to slowing down. I get out of touch with God. I’m unable to sit still. 

The last several days, that has manifested itself in a dearth of quiet stillness before God, which is unusual for me. I’ve noticed a bit of going-through-the-motions while doing things I normally enjoy, or an avoidance of those things altogether.

Finding my true, still center has taken a lot of effort the last few days. I haven’t always been successful at finding it, either.

But a few moments ago, I listened to a contemplative podcast that combined sacred music and reflective questions to invite me deeper into stillness and presence in the right-now moment. The speaker observed that the world around us is full of people, sights, sounds, and experiences.

Could I let myself see and hear and experience them? 

For some reason, upon that invitation, an image of a wine cork presented itself in my mind. I could see its texture and even imagine what its little grooves would feel like in my hand. I could almost hear the popping noise that the cork would make when it uncorked from the bottle. I could hear the glug-glug-glug of the wine as it was poured into a glass. I could imagine the taste, too — the wine was a delicious red cabernet (my favorite). 

When I’m caught up in superhuman mode, I don’t notice those sounds or relish those tastes. Everything becomes a blur and seems to get in the way of what I must do next. Every encounter, every task, and even every conversation becomes a bit more functional than I’d like.

I don’t want to live that way.

I want to drink up the moments right in front of me. I want to live life and experience people. I want to experience my food when I’m eating it. I want to live deeply into each conversation and encounter. I want to enjoy the tiny enjoyments of life, like the way the rain creates a sheen on my brick-lined street and makes the weeds pushing up through the cracks a really sharp and vibrant green. 

These moments of full enjoyment make us vulnerable. They bring down the guard that normally braces us to succeed and not let anything fall.

Today, I choose that vulnerability. I chose to trust in the grace and goodness of God instead of my superhuman-ness.

What about you? Can you take a moment to really drink in the present moment? What does a measure of that full enjoyment of this moment feel like for you?

Are You Friends with Worry?

I am the kind of person who worries about pretty much everything. And if I’m not worrying about what might happen, I’m goading myself to work harder and hurry up so that nothing will go wrong and the earth can go on spinning. I wonder if you can relate to this. 

Here are a few ways that looks in my life. 

When I was completing my first graduate degree, I went to school full time, five days a week, and completed one course per month over the course of a year to get my business credentials. In this fast-paced setting, projects and papers were due with fairly consistent regularity. And often before those projects and papers were due, I would spend days and days worrying about them and hounding myself for not being further along in completing them.

This worry and hounding would last until the day before the assignment was due, when I would finally sit down and churn out a fairly coherent and solid product upon the first try.

All that worry was for nothing.

Thankfully, by the time I started work on my second graduate degree, I had learned to trust my process and worried and hounded myself so much less. 

Here’s a second way worry looks in my life.

I will formulate a plan and use all my strength and energy to make every component of that plan work. When things go wrong (as they invariably do), anxiety rises and so does that goading voice inside my head. Hurry up, it says. Work harder. Work faster. Get it together. Things fall apart and it’s all your fault. 

If I were one step removed from the reality of the situation, I would recognize that voice for what it is and tell it to shut its trap and go take a big, long hike. But in the thick of the situation, I’m not removed from it. I’m trying to figure things out and get the plan accomplished. 

What I’ve found to be the case, again and again, is that things come together just as they’re meant to.

Things fall apart from the original plan because that original plan was flawed, or the timing wasn’t right yet, or new information had yet to come to light. All the time I spent worrying is usually, in the end, wasted time — not to mention how it tears me apart on the inside.

I’ve been working on this area of worry in my life lately.

I’ve been learning to settle into the process of how things need to unfold. I’ve been learning to trust that when things aren’t working out as planned, it’s usually for good reason. And I’ve been learning to embrace the developmental process that has absolutely nothing to do with whether I’m holding things together perfectly enough or not. 

Can you relate to this struggle with worry? Do you have your own goading, hounding voice to contend with? What does it say? What have you learned through experience is the fruit of your worry?

Acknowledging Our Limits

I’ve been thinking a lot about limits lately — specifically, the kind of limits that keep us from accomplishing everything we set out to do. 

For instance, in late May, I made a commitment to God and myself that I would post a contemplative reflection for you in this space every weekday (save holidays), and last Friday was the first weekday I didn’t uphold that commitment. I was on an all-day film shoot that began at 8 a.m., and the previous two days had been filled with similar day-long commitments, and I just couldn’t get it done before leaving for the film shoot that morning. 

As I drove around that day, the post left unwritten all day, I struggled to accept that I simply didn’t have the bandwidth to get it done.

Here’s a second example. My husband, Kirk, and I have recently begun guarding our Sundays for rest. We both work hard in our respective jobs, and our work lives and commitments often bleed into the evenings and weekends.

Recently, we realized the need to make a change.

Now, Sundays are for Sabbath rest for us. We take the day slow. We take a drive, go for a walk, read, or work on creative projects that bring us life. We attend a contemplative eucharist service in the evenings, and usually I’ll play with my iPhone camera and take photographs of things that inspire me. 

But this past weekend, I woke at 5:30 a.m. on Sunday with my to-do list running through my mind. I got out of bed and worked in the quiet of our house for three solid hours, and that evening, I worked another several hours getting some other items checked off my to-do list. 

I’m still learning how to rest on Sundays. 

And here’s a third example. About two weeks ago, I agreed to copyedit a book manuscript for an author whose book I looked forward to reading. I dove into the project and made great headway right from the start. But over the last week, other important commitments have cropped up requiring my immediate attention. That copyedit project languished on the side, and the day I’d hoped to have it finished came and went. 

This morning, I e-mailed the client and apologized. “I’m so sorry for getting behind on this,” I said. Life happened, and I couldn’t do it all. 

I’m still fresh inside this learning curve. I’m learning how to rest and say, “I’ve reached the end of what I can do today, and that has to be okay.” I’m also learning how to say, “I’m sorry. I overcommitted myself. I need to change the plan.”

Can you relate to bumping up against your human limits? How do you normally respond to your limits when faced with them?

Be Honest

One of the things God most values is the truth from your inmost being. Did you know that?

Throughout the Scriptures, we see examples of people who behaved one way — as though they loved and served God — but weren’t connected to God at all inside themselves. They were more concerned with their actions and keeping up appearances than connecting to God in a real and honest way. 

But consider the people Jesus met and how he responded to them.

When coming upon his small band of disciples for the first time, they immediately left what they were doing to follow him. They left jobs, income, families, and any standing in society they had in order to walk and talk with Jesus and learn from him. The truth of their hearts dictated their actions: they simply wanted to be with Jesus.

Then Jesus met another man who knew the limitations of his faith and simply confessed it: “I believe; help me with my unbelief.” With this declaration of truth, the man and Jesus had a real encounter. They were able to communicate. Jesus was able to meet him where he was and respond to his request because it was real.

Consider the rich young ruler who wanted to know how to get into heaven. He had followed all the commands of the Scriptures, but Jesus knew what really held the man’s heart: his wealth. So Jesus asked the man to give his wealth to the poor. He was unable to do it and went away sad. He didn’t know the truth of his heart, but Jesus did. 

Wherever you are — in a place of all-out abandonment to God, in a place of doubt and insecurity in your faith, or in a place of loving other things more than God — God simply wants the truth. That is where real relationship can begin. 

What is the truth of your heart today? How can you express that honestly to God in order to meet God in a real and true way?

What Are Your Sources of Wisdom These Days?

I started reading the book of Proverbs this week and began with the short introduction written by Eugene Peterson. I found a couple things quite interesting and helpful in his description of this little book of sayings. 

First, he said that living well on this earth is about “living in robust sanity.” Robust sanity. What an interesting way to describe the desirable way to live, don’t you think? 

He then says this robust sanity is the same thing as wisdom: 

Wisdom is the art of living skillfully in whatever actual conditions we find ourselves. It has to do with becoming skillful in honoring our parents and raising our children, handling our money and conducting our sexual lives, going to work and exercising leadership, using words well and treating friends kindly, eating and drinking healthily, cultivating emotions within ourselves and attitudes toward others that make for peace.

I really appreciate this description of wisdom. It connects to real life, covering the gamut of situations we actually encounter daily. And he says wisdom is about learning to live skillfully inside this variety of life situations.

It made me wonder: what are the sources in our lives that help us cultivate wisdom such as this? 

Do you think about the sources directing your life and actions? What is teaching you the way to live right now? Are there certain sources you might seek out more intentionally for help in this area, or other sources you might leave better alone?

What Happens When Worry Disappears?

This past weekend, I attended a retreat to complete three years of training in the ministry of spiritual direction. For this week’s entries on Still Forming, I’ll be posting reflections gleaned from the retreat that made me think of you and this space throughout the weekend.

I’ve shared in this space before that I struggle with anxiety. There was a time in my life many years ago where the anxiety I carried with me was so intense and all-consuming that I couldn’t imagine my life without it. But I remember talking with a friend during that season and feeling on the verge of a breakthrough to healing.

The truth is, healing scared me.

I didn’t know who I would be without the pain or the worry that had become like a second self to me. I looked at my friend and asked, “Who will I be if I’m not anxious all the time? Will there be anything left?” 

My friend looked at me and said, “I think you will discover all kinds of new and interesting things to think about instead.”

That has stayed with me for years.

When we aren’t preoccupied with worry or self-condemnation or anxiety or pain, the world has a chance to become more brilliant and amazing, and our hearts have a chance to engage the world in ways they were always meant to thrive. The world — and us in it — simply become more interesting.

In other words, our pain and worry and anxiety are not the most interesting things about us. 

I thought of that gem of wisdom again this weekend when encountering the Franz Kafka poem that I shared in yesterday’s post: 

You Need Not Do Anything

You need not do anything: you need not even leave your room.
Remain sitting at your table and listen.
You need not even listen, just wait.
You don’t even need to wait, just be still, quiet and solitary
and the world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked.
It has no choice.
It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

— Franz Kafka (1883-1924)

This poem highlights two great gifts of truth when I read it.

The first is the gift I wrote about in yesterday’s post about receiving the invitation to simply be where you are. The second is what I’m sharing here today about finding the marvelous, kaleidoscopic gifts the world has to offer once we’ve come out from under the pain and struggle and worry and judgment that so often run through our minds and cripple our days.

The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked.

It has no choice.

It will roll in ecstasy at your feet. 

This happens when we are still. When the voices are silenced. When the judgments disappear. When the worries and anxieties remain at bay.

Have you ever experienced the world this way — unmasked and rolling in ecstasy at your feet? Do you want to experience it? When you allow yourself to be free of the burdens of expectation or judgment, what creative new life rises up to meet you?

You Need Not Do Anything

This past weekend, I attended a retreat to complete three years of training in the ministry of spiritual direction. For this week’s entries on Still Forming, I’ll be posting reflections gleaned from the retreat that made me think of you and this space throughout the weekend.

Today I’d like to reflect on the grace of being invited to simply be where you are. We were invited several times throughout the weekend into this kind of grace-filled space, and I couldn’t help but think of how important this kind of invitation really is.

For instance, half of the weekend retreat (Friday night through Saturday evening) was intended for silence. We met for periodic sessions as a group, during which time there was ready laughter and observations and sharing, but the rest of the time was offered as an invitation to experience silence.

We ate our meals together in silence, and we were given several blocks of time between sessions to simply explore the grounds, sit quietly in the gardens, pray and journal, or take a nap.

How often in our lives are we given such ample space to simply be still? 

But the retreat leader was keen to say that this invitation to silence was not meant to impose rigidity on us at all. “The world is noisy — have you noticed?” he asked. “Silence is not meant to be external to us. Ultimately, we are meant to discover what it means to be in silence in the midst of noise.”

The goal wasn’t silence for silence’s sake, in other words. If we needed to talk or connect during the time allocated to silence, then so be it. We had complete permission to use this weekend time set aside in the best way we saw fit.

I so appreciated that grace.

Then later in the weekend, we were offered these words from a poem by Franz Kafka:

You Need Not Do Anything

You need not do anything: you need not even leave your room.
Remain sitting at your table and listen.
You need not even listen, just wait.
You don’t even need to wait, just be still, quiet and solitary
and the world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked.
It has no choice.
It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

— Franz Kafka (1883-1924)

It struck me as slightly odd to be receiving such a gracious invitation to freedom from a man whose name is synonymous with a cockroach in my mind (Kafka is most famous for having written a book called The Metamorphosis), but I was deeply encouraged by the words of this poem when receiving them. 

You need not do anything. 

You can just sit at your table and listen. 

In fact, you need not even listen, if that’s too much to do. You can simply wait. 

In fact, you need not even wait. Just be still. 

The whole world will open to you in this stillness of the quiet.

Isn’t that encouraging?

To me, this is so much about dethroning expectations. We often think we’re expected to do this or do that, and it creates so much noise inside our heads that keep us from that true, still center, doesn’t it? But if we are invited to simply be where we need to be, all kinds of freedom opens up inside. Then we can get in touch with the truth of ourselves, our connection to God and the world around us, and the creativity our lives invite us to experience. 

Are you familiar with this kind of grace? Is it easy or difficult for you to dethrone expectations and sink into the truth of your heart? Is there any specific measure of freedom you need to receive in this moment? What is it like for you to experience the invitation to just be exactly where you are and need to be?

How Are You Just Yourself?

This morning in Henri Nouwen’s Desert Wisdom: Sayings from the Desert Fathers, I read the following story about Abba Anthony: 

Abba Anthony said: The time is coming when people will be insane, and when they see someone who is not insane, they will attack that person saying: You are insane because you are not like us.

The story was accompanied by this drawing: 

I couldn’t stop looking at this image. In particular, my eyes were continually drawn to the figure at the bottom. Do you feel his stillness, his sense of centeredness? 

He is being just himself. 

I looked at the two groups laughing at him, and it made me sad they could not relate to who he was or what he was doing, that they would stand in clusters around him and cover their mouths in laughter, guffawing and and poking fun at his solitude, finding the strength to do so in their numbers.

Those who are standing in the groups look like each other. They have lost touch with their uniqueness and their identities. I sense their fear of being alone and discovering who they are apart from the crowd. 

But who they are apart from the crowd would be brilliant and beautiful.

Don’t you see that in the lone figure by himself? There is a strength and beauty in his form. There is a gentility and calm. He wears his long hair in a ponytail, and he kneels on the ground, his long robe creating a pool that keeps him centered in the island of himself. 

He knows who he is, and in that, he carries peace. 

Can you identify with this singular figure? Are there ways in which you connect to who you are, apart from the crowd? Does that create a sense of gladness or stillness or peace inside of you?

If you can’t relate to this singular figure, do you wish you could? Does that notion feel at all scary or intimidating? Do you long for it in any way?

Today, I invite you to spend a few moments considering your experience of being just yourself. Who do you know yourself to be, and how do you experience that in the world?