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?

How Do You Experience God's Love?

Today I had planned to share a video clip of one of my favorite songs with you that talks about God’s love. It’s a song that I play on repeat pretty often inside my home, and the words from some of the verses offer deep and helpful meditations on the nature of God’s love for us. Sometimes I like to steep inside that knowledge, so I play the song over and over.

However, the more I looked at each video clip available for that song, the less that offering felt right for today.

Instead, I began to wonder: how do you experience God’s love?

Rather than offer you a song and words that declare God’s love for you (which may be a great offering for another day), let’s first spend time reflecting on the way we experience that reality.

Do you, in fact, experience that reality? What does love look like to you, and how is your current connection to God a reflection — or not a reflection — of that experience?

Who Are You Becoming?

Yesterday we talked about the busyness of life and taking an intentional moment to slow down, be still, and just breathe. Today I want to invite you to notice all the activity in your daily life and how it is forming you. 

One assumption of this space is that formation happens continuously.

What we think about, how we respond, and how we spend our time impacts who we are becoming. Those little moments and decisions change us, moment by moment. We grow in tiny increments each and every day.

Do you pay attention to how you are being formed? 

There are a lot of ways formation can happen. Sometimes it happens intentionally — we sit down each day and pay attention to our interior world and how we’re connecting to God, self, and others. We make decisions about the way we want to spend our time or how we want to respond to a given situation. We choose to take up little habits or disciplines that build our character a bit more in the direction we desire.

But formation also happens when we’re not paying attention. We respond, we form opinions and beliefs, and we spend our time in certain ways that we don’t even think about. We just do it automatically. We take in opinions and responses of others and allow them to shape what we think and believe. We don’t even notice it’s happening. We feel things and allow those feelings to form our core beliefs. We don’t even realize our core beliefs are being shaped.

Formation happens continuously — sometimes intentionally, sometimes not.

Take a few moments and consider what sorts of things are informing your thoughts, beliefs, and behavior right now. How do you spend your time on any given day? What thoughts preoccupy you? What or who do you rely upon for information to impact your opinions and beliefs? 

When you look at your life right now, how are you being formed? And who might you be in the process of becoming, as a result?

Take Time to Breathe

If your life is anything like mine — or most of society, really! — then you know what it’s like to get caught up in the hustle and bustle. Projects, commitments, reminders, to-do lists … all of it can fly through your mind and your day at warp speed, and it’s all you can do to keep up with it sometimes. 

Today I want to invite you to breathe in the midst of all that.

Take a moment and close your eyes. Notice the thoughts and concerns running through your mind. Just pay attention and notice what’s there. Are you worried about the day? A project? What might happen in this or that relationship? 

Now, take a moment to breathe. Take a deep breath in, hold it for a moment, and then slowly exhale. 

Do it again. Breathe in … then slowly breathe out. 

Next, pay attention to the things you hear as you slowly breathe in and out with your eyes closed. A bird singing in a tree down the street … water running in the other room … someone shaving … someone mowing their lawn … a car driving by with a very loud muffler … leaves rustling on the roof … someone working on their front porch construction … a printer pushing pieces through its feeder.

What do you hear? Pay attention. Notice the source of life in each of those things. What human or animal creature is connected to that noise? Take a moment to consider that source of life. Offer your gratitude and good intention toward that person or creature in this moment you share with them, just noticing they are there. 

And then, very gently, open your eyes. 

You Are Loved and Held

Have you ever poured your heart out to someone and then had them simply hold you afterward?

Perhaps they gave you a hug and didn’t pull away — they simply hugged you for as long as you needed them to. Or perhaps they sat with you on the couch, their arm draped around your shoulder, as you rested your head on their chest. You didn’t speak, and they didn’t need you to. You simply sat there — held, loved, and cherished — for as long as you needed.

What is it like for you to receive love in those kind of moments? Do you rest easy inside that love? Do you start to pull away, feeling the need to keep time moving? Do you worry about taking too much or being a burden?

Today, God wants to love you in that way. 

You are invited to pour the contents of your heart out to God for as long as is needed. Say whatever you need to say. Don’t worry how it sounds. It doesn’t matter how long it takes. Just say what is there inside of you to say.

And then rest in the arms of God. Let God hold you in whatever position is most comforting and restful to you. 

Fall into the arms of God’s love in the moment that follows this unburdening of your heart. Receive God’s unending and uninterrupted attention, care, and time. There is no deadline on this moment. There is nowhere else God needs or wants to be. 

Just let yourself be held for as long as it takes to rest inside God’s love. What is that like for you today?

Where Are the Pieces of Light?

This morning, as I spent time with Jesus, talking with him about you and this space and asking him what you most needed to receive today, I held out my hands before him in a cupped posture, waiting to receive whatever he placed in those cupped hands to give you, and saw several pieces of light land in my cupped and open hands. 

They looked like the gold bricks you see in cartoons, thick and solid and bigger than a candy bar, and they were made of pure light, tumbling down into my hands, one resting on top of the other. 

The question presented itself: 

Where are the pieces of light in your life right now? 

For centuries upon centuries, Christian spirituality has used the language of consolation and desolation to describe points of light and darkness in our spiritual journey with God. Consolation is that feeling of being buoyed, filled with life, and surrounded by an abiding presence of love. Desolation, on the other hand, is accompanied by feelings of abandonment, grief, and sometimes despair.

Desolation in the spiritual life is complex, I’ve found, because its source can be quite varied. Sometimes the inexplicable events of life land us inside its terrain. Sometimes the discouraging and oppressive powers at work in this world conspire to push us inside desolation’s borders. And sometimes, perhaps surprisingly, desolation comes when God makes himself absent for reasons only God may know. 

But consolation is a bit simpler.

Consolation is present wherever there’s life — wherever life and joy and peace and their enlivening currents are found.

Many spiritual directors encourage the pursuit of consolation when it’s present, believing that where life and joy are found, there God is also found, for God is the source of life and joy.

So today, as I hold these “bricks of light” in my hands for you, I ask you to consider where light is evident in your world today. 

Where do you see glimmers and pieces of light shining as you look about you and your life right now? How might you move toward that light and joy today? How might you pursue its consolation even more?

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 Is Your Intimate Prayer?

This morning I spent some time listening to one of my favorite songs by David Crowder, called “All I Can Say.” It’s a very intimate song, very sparse and offered like a deep and difficult prayer.

Here is a simple video of the song so you can hear it, plus some of the words listed below: 

Approximate run time: 4 minutes, 30 seconds

Click here if you’re unable to see the video.

Lord, I’m tired,

So tired of walking.

And, Lord, I’m so alone.

Lord, the dark is creeping in,

It’s creeping up to swallow me.

I think I’ll stop and rest here a while.

This is all that I can say right now.

This is all that I can give.

This is all that I can say right now.

This is all that I can give —

That’s my everything.

Oh, did you see me crying?

Oh, and did you hear me call your name?

Wasn’t it you I gave my heart to?

I wish you’d remember where you set it down.

This is all that I can say right now —

I know it’s not much.

But this is all that I can give —

That’s my everything.

Do those words not arrest you? Are they not the desperate, weary plea of someone who has come to the end of himself? 

I love the way these words demonstrate an intimate reality between this person and their God. He is not afraid to tell the truth. In fact, he seems completely unable to avoid the truth that is inside him. He is not afraid to cry out, be real, and ask the hard questions before God. He’s not afraid to tell God he’s tired and alone. 

Do you ever speak such intimate prayers before God? What might be the intimate prayer of your heart before God right now?

Sitting on a Bench With Jesus

Today, I invite you into an imaginative prayer exercise. I encourage you to read each paragraph slowly, taking in each question, one at a time, and considering your response before moving on.

Imagine yourself sitting on a bench with Jesus right now. Where is the bench? What kind of material is it made out of? What is in the environment surrounding you on that bench? 

Now consider yourself on that bench with him. What are you wearing? How are you sitting? What are you doing with your hands? Do you have a sense of any feelings at work in you as you are aware of sitting next to Jesus on the bench? 

Now look at Jesus on that bench. What does his face look like? What is he wearing? How is his posture as he sits there with you?

Look closely at his eyes, then. What are they like? What do they say? 

As you sit on this bench with Jesus, what do you say? How does he respond?

How We Are Like the Trees

Over the weekend, I stumbled on a video that made me think of you. 

It made me think of you for a couple reasons, actually. 

First, it offers a moment of stillness and rest. The pace of this video is slow and contemplative. The narrator’s voice is sweet and gentle. The images are lush and beautiful. The environment is hushed. That’s what this online space seeks to offer you with each daily post: a moment of stillness, gentleness, reflection, and quiet. 

The video’s message itself also speaks so well to the reason we gather in this space. We are always forming. Formation is forever and constant. We can learn much from our friends, these trees. 

Approximate run time: 2 minutes, 56 seconds

“It is not easy to grow so much for so long.”

This is so true, isn’t it? You are growing. You are always growing. There is always an opportunity for more and more reflection on that growth. It is not easy to grow so much for so long. 

Today, I invite you to be gentle with yourself in the midst of all that growth. 

Just notice what the video evoked in you. Could you relate to the trees? Did the music or a particular image speak? How did the video meet you in your present moment? How does it invite gentleness inside your soul?

God Adores You

This morning I caught a glimpse of how much God adores you. 

You may know that Kirk and I have two kitties — their names are Solomon and Diva — who bring a lot of delight and laughter into our household. They also teach me a lot about God on a regular basis. For instance, I wrote once that Diva is my teacher on contemplative prayer. 

Sometimes in the morning, when I sit at my desk, Diva will follow me there and beg for attention. 

I can hardly resist petting her, and sometimes she makes it impossible for me to do anything else. She’ll circle around at my feet, make little squawking noises, look up at me with her plaintive blue eyes without blinking, stand on her hind legs and paw my arm, or jump directly onto my lap without any warning. 

She knows exactly what she wants, and she’s not afraid to ask for it.

Sometimes her persistence and fearlessness teach me how we’re welcome to approach God, but this morning, on the flip side, I caught a glimpse of God’s great love for us.

Like I said, I can hardly resist petting Diva — not only because she makes it nearly impossible to avoid, but also because I delight in her so much. I find her beautiful. I love stroking her soft fur. Her blue eyes always arrest me. Her vulnerability only increases her preciousness to me. 

But there’s something about Diva, being a cat, that will never fully satisfy my own desire for love while loving her. She loves me, but in a trusting, dependent kind of way. She can’t reciprocate — fully — the love I feel for her, and she never will.

I think that’s part of the joy God had in creating you and me. 

Just as parents pour out love for their children in abundance and selflessness over years, I can imagine there comes a point in time when their joy becomes even more full when their children start to love them from a place of maturity, as adults. The parent begins to receive love not simply for having been parents but also for who they are. What grace.

God must have felt pride and incredible affection for all he had created in the world before humans came into the mix. But once humans entered in, the potential for requited love did too. We can talk and reason and relate and grow in maturity and our capacity for love. 

I think the potential for receiving that kind of reciprocal love from us really excites God. 

Given the love and joy that overflow out of my heart toward Diva each day, I know that God dearly adores you. But even more than that, I know he’s eager to enjoy the mutuality of love that is uniquely possible with you as a human being.

In light of that, what kind of response can you offer God today? What does it look like for you to enjoy your uniquely human ability to talk and be in relationship with God right now?

Look at Jesus -- and an Invitation

If there is any one thing at which I can point and say, “This, this is my heart,” this video would be it. 

Below is a short video clip with N. T. Wright answering the question, “What would you say to your children and grandchildren on your deathbed?” In effect, his answer is to encourage them to spend more and more time in the Gospels, just looking at and getting to know Jesus. 

Run time: approx. 3 minutes 45 seconds

If you can't see the video, click here to view it.

Video hat tip: Kurt Willems

My friends, this is my heart toward you. I want so much to say over and over again, “Look at Jesus. Look at Jesus. Look at Jesus.” 

By way of announcement, I am excited to share with you that in the next couple months, I am planning to offer a Gospel immersion experience here on this site.

This will be a chance (for those of us who are interested) to read through the Gospels together — “at a run,” as N. T. Wright puts it — in order to allow the character and person of Jesus to become more and more alive for us. It will also include opportunities for some of the more meditative interactions with the Gospel that are described in the video above, that of sitting with actual scenes for a reflective period of time. 

I’m thinking there will be some video components, a discussion board, and perhaps some one-on-one exchanges with me, too.

Would this interest you? I hope so! I’ve been thinking on this for several months, and I just keep getting more and more excited about it. :-)

For our meditation today, I’ll leave you with the closing words offered in the video above. They really are just so true and beautiful and echo my own heart’s cry: 

“If you want to know who God is, look at Jesus. If you want to know what it means to be human, look at Jesus. If you want to know what love is, look at Jesus. If you want to know what grief is, look at Jesus. And go on looking until you’re not just a spectator, but you’re actually part of the drama which has him as the central character.”

— N. T. Wright

What Is Your Perception of Jesus?

This morning I read a passage in John 15 that invites us into a particular perception of Jesus. He is sitting in the upper room with his disciples, sharing his final meal with them, and before leaving to spend time in the garden in prayer, he says: 

“I’ve loved you the way my Father has loved me. Make yourselves at home in my love. If you keep my commands, you’ll remain intimately at home in my love. That’s what I’ve done — kept my Father’s commands and made myself at home in his love.”

— John 15:9-10

With these words, Jesus invites us into a relationship with him that mirrors the relationship he shares with his Father. We know this to be a relationship of real intimacy, given the regular times Jesus would steal away from the crowds in order to spend time alone in prayer. He often tells his disciples that he doesn’t do or say anything that his Father hasn’t given him to do or say. And when he was baptized in the Jordan River, the clouds part and God’s voice from heaven says, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” 

Clearly, they shared a relationship of great intimacy. Jesus was at home in his Father’s love. 

It made me wonder if you feel at home in the love of Jesus. 

What would that even mean to you? What does being at home in someone’s love look like?

When Jesus invites us to make ourselves at home in his love, he assumes we carry a certain perception of him inside ourselves, doesn’t he? His invitation assumes we consider him someone in whose love we can feel at home. 

Does this match your perception of Jesus? When you consider Jesus, what comes to mind? Is he someone in whose love you feel compelled to rest?

Cultivating a Quiet Heart

A few weeks ago I stumbled on a line of a psalm that I keep returning to ponder every couple of days. It says: 

I’ve cultivated a quiet heart.

— Psalm 131:2, The Message

I find myself reading these words over and over again. These words articulate one of my greatest desires and greatest questions. 

As desire, they speak of my longing for stillness, particularly before my God and as I go about my daily life. I want to carry around inside of me a heart that’s prone to peace and calm. I want to be a person who can sit before God in stillness and peace. I desire to be content inside myself.

But the words articulate a question, too. They cause me to ask, Is this true of me? 

The word “cultivated” implies ongoing intent.

I think of a gardener or farmer who must cultivate his soil for optimum growing conditions. This may mean breaking up hard, clay ground. It may mean turning and turning and turning that ground so that is gets soft and loose and crumbly and so that his hoe or spade can go even deeper into the ground below, pulling the rich, dark treasures of hidden, moist soil into the mix with the crumbly remains above. It may mean watering that ground on a regular basis. It may mean giving certain portions of that land a rest from activity in any given planting season. 

Have I cultivated a quiet heart? Am I continuing to do so? These are questions we’ll always need to ask ourselves because failing to cultivate means leaving our hearts to become barren, wild wastelands, empty and devoid of life or the promise of life.

How do we cultivate a quiet heart? 

I’m curious to learn your experience of a quiet heart. I’ve found that a quiet heart comes about, for me, when a few conditions are present:  

• When I’m given room to speak the truth inside me
• When I feel fully accepted and loved
• When I’m not worried about the future

In my mind, this comes down to being parented well by God. The psalm, in that same verse, speaks of resting like a weaned child on its mother’s breast. This child has no need to fear simply being where she is. She’s not worried about her next meal. She’s nothing other than her complete self in that moment. She knows her mother will respond to her cries and needs and desires. There is complete trust and satisfaction.

What is your experience or non-experience of a quiet heart? What are the conditions that allow you to cultivate a quiet heart? What are the challenges you face in this? 

Taking Time to Be Still

Today as I’m traveling home from several days spent with family in California, I’m reflecting on the value of silence.

One reason I love air travel is that it provides extended pockets of quiet — time to be alone with my thoughts, a good book, my journal, some of my favorite tunes. My soul becomes very still and calm and at peace when I travel, usually.

So in these extended pockets of time gathered around me today, I invite you into at least one moment of it.

Can you take a moment to be still today? When you do, where do your thoughts turn? What desires emerge? What sort of prayer emerges from your heart?

We Are Not Defined by Guilt

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 am writing the post that first inspired me to create this week-long series of retreat reflections for you in the first place.

It has to with guilt.

On the first night of the retreat, I was weighed down with feelings of guilt in a big way. Earlier in the week I had received an invoice that informed me I was not paid up on my Audire account like I thought I was. I had a large balance I was unprepared to pay that weekend.

Although grace was offered in the payment schedule, I arrived at the retreat feeling a bit unworthy to be there. After all, I hadn’t yet covered my expenses.

I walked around with a bit of a hang-dog feel.

I also realized about halfway through the first night’s session that I’d forgotten to bring my assignments for the weekend with me. I’d left them at home. I had to leave the retreat campus that evening in order to go home and retrieve the papers.

On my drive home that night, the hang-dog feel was in full force. Guilt was my very-present companion.

But sitting at a stop light on that drive home, I had a revelation.

I realized how much my feeling of worthiness in that moment was dependent on what other people thought. In effect, they held the validity of my worthiness in their hands.

The funny thing is, they didn’t even know this was the case.

In actuality, they likely hadn’t given me and my supposed shortcomings a second thought. And they most definitely weren’t walking around the retreat center stewing over what I did or didn’t do!

Sitting there at the stop light, I turned my thoughts to God. When God looked down upon me and these supposed shortcomings, what did he see?

I saw nothing but grace and understanding on God’s eyes.

When he looked at the circumstances of my unpaid bill, he knew it would take some time for me to pay it off. That didn’t stop him from welcoming me into the retreat to spend time with him and discover what he had prepared for me to discover. And when he saw my forgotten papers waiting there at home for me, he knew why I had forgotten them. He saw the circumstances surrounding it.

And it was all okay. Really okay.

I was reminded in that moment of that passage in Romans 8 that says there is no condemnation — absolutely none — for those who are in Christ Jesus. There is only full acceptance, love, and grace.

Do you struggle with guilt, too? Are you able to see that guilt as a way of placing your worth in the hands of others? Are you able in this moment to place yourself instead in the hands of God?

We Are the Chambered Nautilus

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 StillForming, I ll be posting reflections gleaned from the retreat that made me think of you and this space throughout the weekend.

During this past retreat weekend, our theme was the chambered nautilus shell. Have you seen one of these? They are sea creatures that are circular in shape, and they keep growing in ever-broader circles around and around their center over the course of their lives.

Image credit: Micro Macro

The nautilus is predicted to have been around for 500 million years — that’s 285 million years longer than the dinosaurs! — and yet this unpretentious but beautiful creature has never changed it’s basic makeup in all that time.

As our retreat leader suggested, there’s a lot to be learned from something that hasn’t changed in 500 million years, isn’t there?

One thing about the chambered nautilus that has stuck with me is the way it keeps growing forward while always remaining attached to its past as a growing little sea creature. As you can see in the photo above, little ridges on each chamber piece, calledsiphuncles, keep the individual chambers attached to one another. As the nautilus grows new chamber pieces, the new pieces attach to the old so that the nautilus always carries its complete story everywhere it goes.

I love that the nautilus keeps growing new chambers, around and around in circles, until the day it dies. In this way, it never knows just how full its nautilus life will ultimately become. It just keeps growing, never finished until its life reaches an end.

Our lives are like that too.

We are always forming. Every moment of our lives is an experience of being formed in some way. And we, too, circle around and around in our growth process, often bumping up against familiar themes, just living through them in new places.

That’s one reason I named this site the way I did: because formation is a foundational part of the human experience, and we will always, so long as we are human, be stillforming.

A poem by Ranier Maria Rilke companioned with us through the retreat weekend, which I found beautiful:

I live my life in growing circles

which move out over the things of the world. 

Perhaps I may not achieve the last

but I will surely try.

I am circling around God, around the ancient tower,

and I have been circling for a thousand years,

and still I do not know

if I am a falcon,

a storm,

or a great song.

— Ranier Maria Rilke

This poem speaks to me about the formational process of our lives. It speaks to how we are ever growing in widening circles, circling ultimately around the truth of God in us and our core identity, and yet we will never fully realize all that we truly are. That knowledge is only in the mind of God. Our job is to simply live.

Do you think of your life this way, as an ever-present process of formation? Does that thought comfort you in any way? Distress you? How might you relate to the speaker in Rilke’s poem above?

Where Is Your Sacred Place?

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.

On my very first morning of training in spiritual direction three years ago, we entered the chapel on the retreat grounds for a short service of welcome and blessing. I stepped inside the chapel you see featured in the photo above and was immediately stopped short in amazement at its arresting beauty and grandeur. 

The far wall of the chapel is nothing but windows that look out upon groves of trees and flowers and sky. The high wooden beams on the ceiling seem to extend upwards for miles and create a sense of safety and solidity to those seated within that place. One far wall is nothing but a stained glass window of dark blues and greens and reds offered in tribute to Mary, the mother of Jesus.

I can’t tell you how many times I have sat inside this chapel and simply stared in silence at this wall of windows or up at the cedar-like beams, drinking in the silence and holiness of that place. 

God has met me here many times these last three years.

When I need a place of respite or silent holiness, this is place I go. When I have met on retreat with my Audire community over the last three years, I looked forward with great anticipation to the Taize services we would share inside this chapel on the first night of each retreat.

God is in this place.

Do you have a holy space like this in your life? What is it like? How did you discover it? What does it offer your spirit in communion with God?

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?