Decisions, Decisions...

I've been thinking about discernment and decision making lately, as an individual and as a group process. Sometimes such reflection is local and sometimes it is global. Right now, I'm still at the global stage. In my reading today, I came across this comment from Luke Timothy Johnson in his book, Scripture & Discernment: Decision Making in the Church,

Groups have a fragile hold on their existence. They depend on the commitment of their members to the way things are done, and the reasons for so doing them (14)

Here, "group" means church.

I am struck by this assessment of group integrity. It suggests that we spin on 2 poles, both necessary for group cohesion. I would have to think that the latter of Johnson's poles is the start of group existence but the former is the more tenacious of the two. I wonder what happens when we forget how things are done? What happens when we change how things are done? Do we know the reasons we do the things we do? What does it mean to keep doing these things if we have forgotten why we do them?

A number of assessments of today's church suggest that we (the church universal, or at least the western version) have forgotten the reasons for doing what we do. But we keep doing them the way they always have been done. If they are right, then we hang on to doing things the way we have always done them because we have lost one of the poles that balances group integrity. That leaves us teetering on a dangerous precipice.

So how do we step away from the precipice? Or better yet, how do we discover again the poles upon which we can balance our life together?

words

The words we use describe and in turn define the reality in which we live.

They can build or destroy. They can take apart and put back together. How we use words matters. Perhaps for me as a part of the Judeo-Christian tradition, such an idea comes with the territory. The book of words we call sacred in this tradition begins with God creating using nothing more than words - a call to come into being. All of the rest of the words may be heard as a continuation of that initial call. God speaks and Abram and Sarai take off for a new land; Moses hears words coming from a burning bush; Isaiah sings a song of the wolf laying down with the lamb; a wild man speaks of a messiah coming; Paul argues there is no longer Jew or Greek.

Words keep circling within me, trying to come together, to make sense, to describe what I see, make sense and define the reality in which I live...

Coming Alive

The shadows are brisk from the giant trees that temper the sunlight. Throughout them the ground is coming alive. Some of the life grows beyond itself it seems, lapping up the dampness of the air and the earth. Other comes more timidly, hiding one under the other. It is easily overlooked. I missed it the first time through. Maybe that is just what happens when we are swirling from all of the clutter that fills us up. Or maybe it wasn't there.

Ah, but the time after... it leapt out at me, begging my focus to turn its way, inviting me to see life springing forth in ever new ways. It is difficult at times to take everything in and to see all that is coming alive around me. It looked fragile peeking out from under the life around it.

That's how it is with life springing forth in us. It grows up out of the cracks in us, behind other parts of life, sometimes going unnoticed. But when we do, oh how it grows and spreads.

The Value of Silence

Fr. Thomas Keating says something to the effect that centering prayer is a means of evacuating the psyche just as the intestines are the means of evacuating the body. In practicing centering prayer, we enter into silence so that we can begin to listen. It is my experience at that point the evacuation of the psyche begins.

My daughter suggests this is no "pretty picture" of silence and that I should find another way to describe this form of prayer to others. She's right about the nature of the picture that can follow upon the silence; it isn't always a pretty picture. There can be much in our psyches that is ugly, painful, or difficult to face. But the alternative is even less of a "pretty picture" because the longer we keep the mess locked up deep inside us the more messy it gets. But when the silence comes, then we can process the mess and see more clearly the path that leads deeper into the Holy.

Sinking Into Life

I walked among ancient rocks and aged trees. The information signs said that this place was as it was when the last ice age ended. The place itself formed by the creeping glacier, reshaping the ground and dumping remains of other places in its wake.

It was cool in this crevice of the earth - like a cool cloth placed on a fevered forehead. The green was alive to me as if I had never seen such life before. I just wanted to stay and sink down into its life. Lichens now reshape this place - perhaps as slowly as the glaciers. Water too, running slowly over the rocks taking imperceptible boulders along with it. Other times, colder moments when the water is present but cannot move, the water will move a mountain or at least it will break off a piece of mountain. Changes come slowly to our perception.

Sinking into such a place is like sinking into God and the changes that come with a life lived in God.

The Heart of the Matter - More from My Retreat

As I walked into the stillness of creation, I came upon the heart of God pouring itself out to quench the thirst of a dry and parched creature.

It was such a striking image in the midst of this retreat. I wish I had actually had something besides 800 speed film for my SLR camera. Only by accident did I even have it with me.

Searching for Stillness

Last week there was nothing posted here because I took a 48-hour silent retreat. What follows is a reflection penned on Friday morning.

The noise interrupts the silence like fingernails on a blackboard. You jump as when hearing the screeching tires and squealing brakes of someone desperately trying to stop before colliding with another car. It is not so much absolute silence that it interrupts as it is stillness disturbed.

The birds call to another lusting for a mate or announcing some unknown but important news. The air gently caresses the leaves and then your face and finally breezes past your ears making an ever so faint sound. Leaves rustle as chipmunks and squirrels scurry along looking for food or whatever it is they do in the spring of the year. These all are noise - but noise that constitutes stillness --just now the gentle sound of water sprinkling on leaves. In this stillness I begin again to hear what is deep within creation. It begins with the sound of the rising and falling of my own chest as new air finds my lungs as if I hadn't known how to breathe until that moment. I slow down, I hear the torrent sound of thoughts flooding my mind. I try to just let them pass. Sometimes they do...

The cacophonous sound comes from others entering this space for what they and I say we long for - quiet, peace, rest, and renewal. Perhaps that is not what they want or we just define those words differently. The four of them play first one game and then another. The two men offering all they are in order to conquer the other. I wonder if they have a volume control? Are they longing to impress their wives or just prove their prowess to one another? What would it take to receive what you say you want, the quiet? There are groans intermingled with shouts of joy. After they have conquered the stillness, and one another, they turn to conversation saying not so much anything but saying really nothing about one topic and then the next - there's so much blood in Iraq... I wonder why they speak Iraqi and others speak Afghani? ...they've been fighting there for centuries, they'll just keep fighting... you know when we liberated the concentration camps, the Jews needed a homeland... they were right. the sun never did really set on the British empire... MacArthur didn't listen to Truman... Patton was seriously anti-Semitic... WHY DO THEY SPEAK IRAQI ANYWAY?

When one pair finally departs, the other tires to analyze the first. It turns out the conversation was about winning as well. I wondered if I had made a mistake or if I should have just removed myself from the racket? I tried that and it seemed to work. I walked into a stretch of stillness, which added a rhythmic melody of trickling water. I found a spot absent of any blackboard. Then I heard the faint sounds returning, moving ever closer. Should I move on again? No, these simply were passing through and stillness remained.

The sounds of the earlier encounter though returned to my mind. It turns out they had left a mark - a wound really. The four are not wholly accountable in the sense they didn't know they were cutting so deep. Perhaps they didn't know as well how to find what it was they said they were looking for? But, they represent the wound our culture leaves upon each of us. We are driven to win, to come out on top, to shout our acclamations over the top of others' groans.

I need stillness to heal such a wound. For stillness is a balm that brings life when all else seeks to take it. In the stillness, I can hear again what is deep within creation - the breath of God.