Second-half-of-life people soulfully create room to honor the needs of the first. Father Richard writes:

If we are on course at all, our world grows much larger in the second half of life. But I must say that, in yet another paradox, our circle of real confidants and truly close friends will normally grow smaller, but also more intimate. We are no longer surprised or angered when most people—and even most institutions—are doing first-half-of-life tasks. In fact, that is what most groups and institutions, and young people, are programmed to do! We shouldn’t hate them for it.

Institutions must by necessity be concerned with membership requirements, policies, procedures, protocols, and precedents. If they are working organizations, they need to have very clear criteria for hiring and firing, for supervision and management, and have rules for promotion and salaries. It’s necessary that they do these things well, but they are nevertheless ego needs and not soul needs.

The bottom line of the gospel is that most of us have to hit some kind of bottom before we even start the real spiritual journey. Up to that point, it is mostly religion. At the bottom, there is little time or interest in being totally practical, efficient, or revenue generating. We just want to breathe fresh air. The true gospel is always fresh air and spacious breathing room.

The ego and most institutions demand a tit-for-tat universe, while the soul swims in a sea of abundance, grace, and freedom, which cannot always be organized. Remember the gospel: at the end of the day, the employer pays those who worked part of a day just as much as those who worked the whole day (Matthew 20:1–16). This does not compute except at the level of soul. Soulful people temper our tantrums by their calm, lessen our urgency by their peace, exhibit a world of options and alternatives when conversation turns into dualistic bickering.

Soulful people are the necessary salt, yeast, and light needed to grow groups up (see Matthew 5:13–16, 13:33). Jesus does not demand that we be the whole meal, the full loaf, or the illuminated city itself, but we are to be the quiet undertow and overglow that makes all of these happen. This is why all institutions need second-half-of-life people in their ranks; just “two or three” in each organization are enough to keep them from total self-interest.

Our question now becomes, “How can I honor the legitimate needs of the first half of life, while creating space, vision, time, and grace for the second?” The holding of this tension is the very shape of wisdom. Only hermits and some retired people can almost totally forget the first and devote themselves totally to the second, but even they must eat, drink, and find housing and clothing! The art of being human is in uniting fruitful activity with a contemplative stance—not one or the other, but always both at the same time.

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Proverbs 2:1-11

The Benefits of Wisdom

2 My child,^[a] listen to what I say,
    and treasure my commands.
² Tune your ears to wisdom,
    and concentrate on understanding.
³ Cry out for insight,
    and ask for understanding.
⁴ Search for them as you would for silver;
    seek them like hidden treasures.
⁵ Then you will understand what it means to fear the Lord,
    and you will gain knowledge of God.
⁶ For the Lord grants wisdom!
    From his mouth come knowledge and understanding.
⁷ He grants a treasure of common sense to the honest.
    He is a shield to those who walk with integrity.
⁸ He guards the paths of the just
    and protects those who are faithful to him.

⁹ Then you will understand what is right, just, and fair,
    and you will find the right way to go.
¹⁰ For wisdom will enter your heart,
    and knowledge will fill you with joy.
¹¹ Wise choices will watch over you.
    Understanding will keep you safe.

Discernment is the ability to make sound judgments by perceiving what is not readily obvious, and it is critical to our life in God. For example, what should you do when you want to follow the Lord but have multiple choices that appear promising and good? How can you know if you’re hearing from God or simply listening to your own desires?

All we have to do is ask. Proverbs 2 says, “If you cry out for insight, and raise your voice for understanding … then you will understand the fear of the Lord, and discover the knowledge of God. For the Lord gives wisdom; from His mouth come knowledge and understanding” (vv. 3-6). Those verses are a clear promise from God that when we ask for insight, He will answer.

Though discernment doesn’t appear overnight, it does develop when we “search for her as for hidden treasures” (v. 4). So don’t wait until you’re facing a critical decision—start asking the Lord for His wisdom today. We need time to practice this kind of humility so we’ll learn to hear His voice among the noises of life. And in the meantime, rest assured that no matter what decision you make, God will be with you.

Michelle Scheidt observes that for some queer and other LGBTQIA+ people [1] the process of discovering their sexuality and identity invites them to “fall upward”:

The shift to the second [half of life] is usually catalyzed by a life event or series of experiences that touch us at the core, unsettling us and forcing us to reorder and make meaning in a new way. These destabilizing events might bring deep pain or intense joy…. Negotiating this and reordering can shift us into the second half of life, a shift which is about our inner work, not our chronological age. 

For queer people, this process [of “falling upward”] can be catalyzed by the discovery of our sexuality or gender identity and subsequent learning to navigate the world with that identity. This discovery, at whatever age, is often destabilizing, even traumatizing, as we learn to embody an identity that transgresses the boundaries of socially accepted norms. We discover that the dominant social rules do not work for us because we have a radically different experience of family or gender or love. [2]

Pastor and NYFD chaplain Ann Kansfield describes trying to “fit in” when she was young, until she chose to live more authentically:

As a kid, I didn’t fit in well at school. I was awkward. I was gender messy, even as early as the third grade. So, as you might expect, I was bullied mercilessly. I tried to be authentic, but … being authentic was always the wrong answer. My classmates wanted conformity, … yet, even at the age when peer pressure reigned supreme, I couldn’t do it. I was different in so many wild and wonderful ways. For one, I liked church….

I tried so hard to fit in with the others, but I was decidedly not cool. No amount of trendy makeup or fashionable dresses could hide the fact that femininity eluded me. Hiding myself meant playing a small game, and it wasn’t a fun game. As a result, I wasn’t a party to be around. My lack of authenticity kept people at arm’s length. It’s only when I began to embrace who I really was—the honest, fraught, vulnerable, and deeply human person—that I began truly experiencing life. As I practiced sharing my authentic self with others, I noticed people sharing more of themselves with me. If I shared my real self, others would share their real selves with me. And in this process, life around me became … well … more alive…. [3]

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Sarah Young

Jesus Calling: November 16th

Learn to appreciate difficult days. Be stimulated by the challenges you encounter along your way. As you journey through rough terrain with Me, gain confidence from your knowledge that together we can handle anything. This knowledge is comprised of three parts: your relationship with Me, promises in the Bible and past experiences of coping successfully during hard times.
     Look back on your life, and see how I have helped you through difficult days. If you are tempted to think, “Yes, but that was then, and this is now,” remember who I AM! Although you and your circumstances may change dramatically, I remain the same throughout time and eternity. This is the basis of your confidence. In My Presence you live and move and have your being.

RELATED SCRIPTURE:

Isaiah 41:10 NLT
10 Don’t be afraid, for I am with you. Don’t be discouraged, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will hold you up with my victorious right hand.

Additional insight regarding Isaiah 41:10: All believers are God’s chosen people, and all share the responsibility of representing Him to the world. One day God will bring all his faithful people together. We need not fear because (1) God is with us (“I am with you”); (2) God has established a relationship with us (“I am your God”); and (3) God gives us assurance of his strength, help, and victory over sin and death. Are you aware of all the ways God has helped you?

Psalm 102:27 (NLT)
27 But you are always the same;
    you will live forever.

A Deeper Lightness

Richard Rohr describes how people in the second half of life have an inner freedom that simultaneously holds joy and suffering.

There is a gravitas in the second half of life, but it is held up by a much deeper lightness or ‘‘okayness.’’ Our mature years are characterized by a kind of bright sadness and a sober happiness, if that makes any sense. I am just grabbing for words to describe many wonderful older people I have met. There is still suffering in the second half of life—in fact maybe even more. But there is now a changed capacity to hold it creatively and with less anxiety.

It is what John of the Cross called ‘‘luminous darkness,’’ and it explains the simultaneous existence of deep suffering and intense joy in the saints and mystics—something that is almost impossible for most of us to imagine. Eastern Orthodoxy believed that if something was authentic religious art, it would always have a bright sadness to it. I think I am saying the same of an authentic life.

(He mentioned authentic religious art and this was on my clip board … so here it is. See what you see in this contemporary Ukrainian icon, and we’ll talk about it)

In the second half of life, one has less and less need or interest in eliminating the negative or fearful, making again those old rash judgments, holding on to old hurts, or feeling any need to punish other people. Our superiority complexes have gradually departed in all directions. We learn to positively ignore and withdraw our energy from evil or stupid things rather than fight them directly. We fight things only when we are directly called and equipped to do so. We all become a well-disguised mirror image of anything that we fight too long or too directly. That which we oppose determines the energy and frames the questions after a while, and we lose our inner freedom.

Daily life now requires prayer and discernment more than knee-jerk responses toward either end of the political and cultural spectrum. We have a spectrum of responses now, and they are not all predictable. Law is still necessary, of course, but it is not our guiding star, or even close. It has been wrong and cruel too many times. The Eight Beatitudes speak to us much more than the Ten Commandments.

When we are young, we define ourselves by differentiating ourselves from others; now we look for the things we all share in common. We find happiness in alikeness, which has become much more obvious to us now; and we do not need to dwell on the differences between people or exaggerate the problems. Creating dramas has become boring.

In the second half of life, it is good just to be a part of the general dance. We do not have to stand out, make defining moves, or be better than anyone else on the dance floor. Life is more participatory than assertive, and there is no need for strong or further self-definition.

Richard Rohr’s book Falling Upward offers a spiritual path for what he calls “the two halves of life.” We dedicated a week to the first half of life earlier in the year. Here Richard reflects on the freedom, generosity, and presence that characterize those living in the second half of life.

People in the second half of life are not preoccupied with collecting more goods and services; quite simply, their desire and effort—every day—is to give back to the world a bit of what they have received. They now realize that they have been gratuitously given to—from the universe, from society, and from God. They try now to ‘‘live simply so that others can simply live.’’

Erik Erikson calls someone at this stage a ‘‘generative’’ person [1], one who is eager and able to generate life from his or her own abundance and for the benefit of following generations. Because such people have built a good container, they are able to ‘‘contain’’ more and more truth, more and more neighbors, more and broader vision, more and more of a mysterious and outpouring God.

In the second half of life, we do not have strong and final opinions about everything, every event, or most people, as much as we allow things and people to delight us, sadden us, and truly influence us. We no longer need to change or adjust other people to be happy ourselves. We have moved from doing to being to an utterly new kind of doing that flows almost organically, quietly, and by osmosis. Our actions are less compulsive. We do what we are called to do and then let go of the consequences.

It’s true that the second half of life is a certain kind of weight to carry, but no other way of being makes sense or gives us the deep satisfaction our soul now demands and even enjoys. This new and deeper passion is what people mean when they say, “I must do this particular thing or my life will not make sense” or “It is no longer a choice.” Our life and our delivery system are now one, whereas before, our life and our occupation seemed like two different things. Our concern is not so much to have what we love anymore, but to love what we have—right now. This is a monumental change from the first half of life, so much so that it is almost the litmus test of whether we are in the second half of life at all. [2]

God’s goal is always union, which is very different from any private perfection (which is merely a goal of the small ego). Our carefully constructed ego container must gradually crack open (see John 12:24) as we realize that we are not separate from God, from others, or from our True Selves. We see that we have an eternal soul. Our ego slowly learns to become the servant of the soul instead of its master. [3]

A Breakthrough in Consciousness

Franciscan Sister Ilia Delio describes spiritual maturation as a growth in consciousness and a radical surrender into divine love.

The first half of our lives is spent building an identity, establishing our security, defining our boundaries, creating a zone of safety, and having controllable order. We can liken this first stage of life to operating on lower levels of consciousness. Many religious people get stuck on the level of mythic consciousness, with a narrow, ethnocentric, law-and-order mentality. God is a superior being outside oneself, and fidelity to God means abiding by the laws of religion and church. Wholeness means nothing more than obeying the rules. Looking for one’s center always outside oneself inculcates a basic sense of unworthiness, distrust of self, and subservience to those “better,” “more qualified,” or “superior” to counsel and guide.

What creates a breakthrough in consciousness, whereby authentic growth shifts from attention to authority outside ourselves to the inner law of the heart, is not simply growing old but, rather, it is growing inward in freedom: “If you make my Word your home,” Jesus said, “you will learn the truth and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31–32). Freedom requires a breakthrough into unitive consciousness, a radical surrender and complete letting go, trusting the spiritual impulses of life….

Life still breaks down as matter weakens and expectations fail, but the one who lives on the level of integrated consciousness lives in moments of failure or disruption with a lightness of spirit, a sense of openness to divine love, which appears like light shining through the cracks of darkness. Suffering is where divine love radiates in hidden darkness, where God is fully human; the power of life itself in the midst of disruption. We [live into our divine nature] when we cling to this power of life, finding that this power within liberates us beyond the threat of death because “fear is driven out by perfect love” (1 John 4:18). Living into our divine nature is the source of our freedom and happiness.

We cannot know this deeper divine reality if we live only on levels of mediocrity and self-preservation. We are created out of love and are made to energize the world in love…. Aging can be either a life of nostalgia or a wholehearted engagement with the future. It is a disruptive process as things break down, friends and pets die, houses are sold, and memories of the past haunt the present. Months melt into years, and we find ourselves in the flow of life.

Growing inward by falling upward means learning from our mistakes…. Even if the felt experience of life dims, we are invited to let go and surrender to the wild love of God, living into the endless vitality of life itself. Letting go into God is coming home to our true selves, where we discover that our root reality is infinite divine love, and in love, we are eternally free.

Richard Rohr finds clear and unambiguous respect for creation in both Jesus and his own Franciscan tradition:

Creation itself—not ritual or spaces constructed by human hands—was the primary cathedral for Francis of Assisi (1182–1226). It is no accident that the majority of Jesus’ stories and metaphors are based on human and natural observations, not classroom theology. It is not unimportant that both Jesus and Francis were peripatetic teachers—talking while walking—on the road of the world. In our own time, major teachers like Thomas Berry and Ilia Delio have rediscovered this natural and universal theology.

The gospel transforms us by putting us in touch with that which is much more constant and satisfying, literally the “ground of our being,” and has much more “reality” to it than theological concepts or the mere ritualization of reality. Daily cosmic events in the sky and on the earth are the Reality above our heads and beneath our feet every minute of our lives: a continuous sacrament. I find that a preoccupation with religious rituals tends to increase the more we remain untouched by Reality Itself—to which the best rituals can only point.

Jesus himself commonly points to things like the red sky, a hen, lilies, the fig tree, a donkey caught in a pit, the birds of the air, the grass in the field, the temple animals that he released from their cages, and on and on. He was clearly looking at the seemingly “nonreligious” world, ordinary things all around him, and appeared to do most of his teaching outside. Francis said, “Wherever we are or wherever we travel, we have a cell with us. Brother Body is our cell, and the soul is the hermit who remains inside the cell to pray to God…. If the soul does not remain in quiet and solitude in its cell, a cell made by hands does little good to a religious.” [1]

Both Jesus and Francis knew that everything created was a message about the nature of God. Nature was not empty of divinity. Seeing nature as secular or merely functional created much of the loneliness and seeming meaninglessness in our contemporary worldview.

In the five-day Men’s Rites of Passage (MROP) [2]—which was a focus of my work for fifteen years—so many men felt that prayers and rituals inside of human-scale buildings were rather domesticated and controlled. They often perceived that the salvation offered inside these artificial constructs was also “small” and churchy. Almost without exception, the greatest breakthroughs for our men occurred during extended times of silence in nature, where the human and the merely verbal were not in control, or during rituals that were raw and earthy.

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Joy Fueled

Unforced Rhythms of Grace

Jesus says it this way in Matthew 11:28-29 MSG: Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly. In the LK10 Community, we are committed to helping people learn the unforced rhythms of grace by walking and working with Jesus.

The word unforced is particularly important. We think this is what it means to be joy fueled. Instead of forcing ourselves to do and be, we show our weakness, our exhaustion, our true feelings and we let Jesus meet us there, hold us, invite us into his joy and pull us through. We think this is a radical departure from the ways that Christians have often been motivated in the past, just as it was a radical departure for the Jewish leaders when Jesus said it 2,000 years ago.

If you are anything like us, you may be wondering: With such a beautiful invitation from Jesus himself to work from a rested, joy-filled space, why do we not enter into it more often and let it motivate us? Good question. It reminds us of when God said to the Hebrews: “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it!” (Isaiah 30:15 NIV). Apparently, it is very difficult for us to rest and receive strength. We seem to gravitate towards trying to prove ourselves worthy.

White, John C.; Daniels, Toni M.; Smith, Dr Kent. Joy Fueled: Catalyzing a Revolution of Joyful Communities (LK10 Core Values) (pp. 16-18). LK10. Kindle Edition.

CAC teacher Brian McLaren has a deep love for the natural world and all that it reveals about God and our place on the Earth:

If we’d like to bring our God-concepts into better sync with a Creator who makes sense in this particular universe, we’d better face up to this sobering fact: God loves tortoises. (Jolt)

And really, God loves reptiles in general. (Not to mention insects, if we judge based on how many species exist: three hundred thousand beetles, seventeen thousand butterflies, and five thousand dragonflies, for example, out of over two million insects in total.)

Fathom it: For 245 million years, there were zero people around, but lots and lots of reptiles….

Apparently, God did not say, “Wow. These things are boring.… Praise be to me, for my sake let’s get these reptiles out of here so we can get some religious primates evolving, fast!”

No. For 245 million years, and for 99.999 percent of the 66 million years since, God was happy to have a good universe that included neither a single human nor a single religion, but lots and lots and lots of reptiles….

For humans to make sense to ourselves, I think we’re going to have to rediscover our kinship with the reptiles—and the fish, insects, birds, mammals, and palo santo trees—with which we share the world.…

In his beautiful Canticle, [Saint Francis] describes how we humans are related to all our kin in the family tree of creation. I’ve adapted his prayer as a song:

Be praised, my Lord, through Brother Sun,
who brings the light of day;
He’s beautiful and radiant, like you!
Be praised, my Lord, through Sister Moon,
Through all her sister stars.
They’re luminous and wonderful, like you!

Be praised, my Lord, through Brother Wind
And Sister Cloud and Storm.
They bring flowers from Mother Earth for you.
Be praised, my Lord, through Brother Bird;
You gave him wings to fly.
He sings with joy and soars up high for you.

Through Sister Water, Lord, be praised;
She’s humble, useful, too.
She’s precious, clear and pure, O Lord, like you.
Be praised, my Lord, through Brother Fire,
Whose beauty glows at night.
He’s cheerful, powerful, and strong, like you.

Be praised through all those who forgive,
The patient, kind, and brave,
Enduring suffering, trial, and pain, like you.
Be praised, my Lord, through Sister Death,
Who will embrace all life,
And carry us up to the arms of you….

McLaren comments:

In this grand vision, we aren’t ruling from the heights of a great top-down pyramid or chain of being, generals under King God in the divine chain of command. In this grand vision, we aren’t given by our rank a carte blanche to dominate, oppress, exploit, and exterminate everything below us. No, we aren’t at the top of anything; we’re simply at the tip, the tip of one small branch of a very huge, verdant tree, and all created things are our grandparents, cousins, and siblings.

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Joy Fueled

Wilder and Warner go on to explain that Western Christianity has overemphasized propositional truth (left-brain) and underemphasized relational truth (right-brain). Relational truth is reflected in the Hebrew word yada which is translated “to know.” It is not enough to know about God. He wants us to know him in a deep, communal, experiential way. And… he wants us to let him know us in the same way. Jesus addressed this problem with the Jews. You have your heads in your Bibles constantly because you think you’ll find eternal life there. But you miss the forest for the trees. These Scriptures are all about me! And here I am, standing right before you, and you aren’t willing to receive from me the life you say you want. John 5:39-40 MSG

These Jews were the smartest and best scripturally-educated people around. No one knew the Scriptures better than they did. But what they totally missed was exactly what those very Scriptures pointed toward—a relationship with Jesus. We affirm that both ways of knowing are important. It’s not head or heart, but head and heart. We in LK10 are seeking to restore a balance by equipping and training people in how to connect with each other and with God on a heart level as well as a head level. For example, in our Church 101 course, people learn to practice two simple rhythms of attention as a pathway to relational connection. Pastors, missionaries, elders, seasoned and new Christians alike finally discover a relationship with God that they only dreamed was possible. Given that knowledge as propositional, left-brain truth alone does not result in godly character or sustainable transformation, it is inadequate to motivate us in ministry and mission. Did Knowledge Move the Disciples to Mission? Consider the disciples. Here’s the commission that Jesus gave them… All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. Matthew 28:18-20

The part of this instruction that the disciples couldn’t process was “all nations.” They had walked with Jesus for three years in Israel. They were all Jews and understood making disciples of other Jews. But that was the limit of their thinking. The Greek word for nations is ethne, which can also be translated as “gentiles.” A gentile is simply someone who isn’t a Jew and is therefore a heathen and a pagan. During Jesus’ time, many Jews took such pride in their cultural and religious heritage that they considered Gentiles “unclean,” calling them “dogs” and “the uncircumcised.” To make matters worse, it was the Roman Gentiles who were the hated occupiers of Israel at that time.

It’s hard for us today to imagine the negative feelings that Jews in Israel, including, no doubt, the disciples, had towards gentiles. We see this inward focus in Acts 1:6. Jesus had given specific instructions to make disciples of all the nations/gentiles. The disciples don’t even ask about that. Rather, the only question they can think about has to do with Israel. “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” They simply couldn’t imagine anything outside of Israel and the Jewish people. So, Jesus, after refusing to answer their question, once again shows the scope of what he is thinking. He told them that when the Spirit comes on you, you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem (“Ok, we can do that.”), and in all Judea and Samaria (“Ok, maybe we can do that.”), and to the ends of the earth. (“I’m sorry. What did you say?”) So, what eventually motivated the disciples to go to the ends of the earth and share the good news of Christ with the gentile nations? It wasn’t the knowledge of the great need of the world to know him. And, it wasn’t even the specific instructions of their master, Jesus. It was only the active presence of the Holy Spirit with them that could bridge the cultural gap and guide them into attempting the seemingly impossible.

White, John C.; Daniels, Toni M.; Smith, Dr Kent. Joy Fueled: Catalyzing a Revolution of Joyful Communities (LK10 Core Values) (pp. 23-26). LK10. Kindle Edition.

We now turn our thoughts to the Creator, or Great Spirit, and send greetings and thanks for all the gifts of Creation. Everything we need to live a good life is here on Mother Earth. For all the love that is still around us, we gather our minds together as one and send our choicest words of greetings and thanks to the Creator. Now our minds are one.  
—Thanksgiving Address, Haudenosaunee Confederacy

Potawatomi author Kaitlin Curtice invites us to consider how we pray in, for, and with nature: 

The gifts of prayer—of sweetgrass, sage, tobacco, and cedar—are said to have been given to us to keep us connected to Segmekwe, Mother Earth, to share her good gifts and to ask Creator to hear us, to be present with us. As a Potawatomi person, I pray to remember, and I pray to keep the shkodé, the fire, lit inside of me….

Growing up in the Baptist tradition, I heard little mention of communicating with God through the earth. On Sundays, we would often hear sermons about how prayer is something we should just try harder at, instead of something we enter into. When I began to pray in Potawatomi, I understood something different about prayer—that it is a holistic act that involves all of me, and all of the creatures around me, communing with God.

If we truly believe that God surrounds us, we believe that prayer is an everyday experience of being alive…. When you step outside and engage with the world in quiet listening, prayer will happen, and it will take on its own way of being for you. Perhaps prayer is just poetry, and we are living the expressions of what it means to be human. This is why Creator gave us gifts to remember.… When I burn sage or lay tobacco down, I know that I am tethered to a love that has remained steady throughout the centuries and that always calls me back to its own sacredness. And that sacredness will always lead me back out to the world to do the work of love.

Curtice frequents a state park on land where the Muscogee Creek and Cherokee peoples lived: 

I hear the trees speaking, and they remember everything. As the rocks invite me to sit, they’re asking me to take a moment to remember. And when the water stills to reflect the blue Georgia sky, I am being asked to remember, to reclaim something. So I lay my tobacco on the water’s surface and whisper, “You’re not forgotten.” I listen to the ancestors and to the created world that longs to tell its own stories. I whisper a prayer to Kche Mnedo, to Mamogosnan, Creator, who never forgets, who knows the language of every tribe…. If we listen, the land is speaking. If we listen, we are doing the active work of paying attention, not only to our own lives but also to history telling its own story again and again.

PROBLEMS ARE PART OF LIFE. They are inescapable, woven into the very fabric of this fallen world. You tend to go into problem-solving mode all too readily, acting as if you have the capacity to fix everything. This is a habitual response, so automatic that it bypasses your conscious thinking. Not only does this habit frustrate you, it also distances you from Me. Do not let fixing things be your top priority. You are ever so limited in your capacity to correct all that is wrong in the world around you. Don’t weigh yourself down with responsibilities that are not your own. Instead, make your relationship with Me your primary concern. Talk with Me about whatever is on your mind, seeking My perspective on the situation. Rather than trying to fix everything that comes to your attention, ask Me to show you what is truly important. Remember that you are en route to heaven, and let your problems fade in the Light of eternity.

PSALM 32:8; I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my loving eye on you

LUKE 10:41–42; “Martha, Martha,” the LORD answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, ⁴²but few things are needed-or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

PHILIPPIANS 3:20–21; But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the LORD Jesus Christ, ^21who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.

Young, Sarah. Jesus Calling Morning and Evening Devotional (Jesus Calling®) (p. 690). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

Theologian and Cherokee descendant Randy Woodley considers how the Bible offers insight into relationship with creation: 

In the Genesis accounts of creation, I find a world where each part of creation is related to the other. When God makes the first human and I anticipate what will happen next, I see the requirement for Adam to name all the animals. But to name things in an Indigenous way, you have to get to know them, and to know their special characteristics. In the narrative, God is telling Adam to go out and get to know his relatives. The creation narratives in Genesis, like many Indigenous creation narratives, encourage humans to see the wider created order as part of the same “family tree of the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 2:4). [1]

The importance of the narrative is that it is not just about humans. It is also about the animal kingdom and the plants and the water and the sky and everything else.… My theology begins with the land.…

My understanding is that our responsibility as Indigenous people is to be keepers of the land. That means the whole of all the ecosystems and all the human systems…. That is my job on earth. That is the job I take seriously while I’m here. When the land is used badly, and the community of creation is mistreated, everything becomes out of balance and in disharmony. Anywhere on earth can be a place of harmony when you understand your role.…

When land is lost, a history is ended. It takes land to make history. Humanity is in direct relationship with the land and all creation, a principle found throughout the scriptures and in some of the most poetic places, like Job 12:7–10, where Job says,

Just ask the animals, and they will teach you.
Ask the birds of the sky, and they will tell you.
Speak to the earth, and it will instruct you.
Let the fish in the sea speak to you.
For they all know
that my disaster has come from the hand of the Lord.
For the life of every living thing is in his hand,
and the breath of every human being.

Woodley shares other scriptural examples of God’s love for creation:

God loves everything in creation (John 3:16). In the stories we find God counting the clouds (Job 38:37), releasing the rain (Job 5:10), directing the snow (Job 37:6; 38:22), knowing when a sparrow falls (Matthew 10:29), knowing where a donkey is tied (Matthew 21:2), knowing where the fish will swim (John 21:6), adorning the lilies of the field (Matthew 6:29–30), and comparing the ostrich and the stork (Job 39:13). At the time of Jesus, there were lots of modern mechanisms, lots of inventions [including] chariots and wheels and waterwheels and little torches and all kinds of mechanistic things. But we find Jesus mostly talking about the things that grow out of the earth and the things that fly above the earth….

Praise the Lord from the earth,
You sea monsters and all deeps;
Fire and hail, snow and clouds,
Stormy wind, fulfilling God’s word;
Mountains and all hills,
Fruit trees and all cedars;
Beasts and all cattle;
Creeping things and winged fowl…
Let them praise the name of the Lord,
For God’s name alone is exalted;
God’s glory is above earth and heaven.
       —Psalm 148: 7–10, 13

God was known and praised in the natural world long before the advent of the written Scriptures. Father Richard writes:

Jewish and Christian traditions of creation spirituality have their origins in Hebrew Scriptures such as Psalms 104 and 148. It is a spirituality that is rooted, first of all, in nature, in experience, and in the world as it is. This rich Hebrew spirituality formed the mind, heart, and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth.

Maybe we don’t feel the impact of that until we realize how many people think religion has to do with ideas and concepts and formulas from books. That’s how clergy and theologians were trained for years. We went away, not into a world of nature and silence and primal relationships, but into a world of books. Well, that’s not biblical spirituality, and that’s not where religion begins. It begins in observing “what is.” Paul says, “Ever since the creation of the world, the invisible essence of God and God’s everlasting power have been clearly seen by the mind’s understanding of created things” (Romans 1:20). We know God through the things that God has made. The first foundation of any true religious seeing is, quite simply, learning how to see and love what is. Contemplation is meeting reality in its most simple and direct form unjudged, unexplained, and uncontrolled!

If we don’t know how to love what’s right in front of us, then we don’t know how to see what is. So, we must start with a stone! We move from the stone to the plant world and learn how to appreciate growing things and see God in them. In all of the natural world, we see the vestigia Dei, which means the fingerprints or footprints of God.

Perhaps once we can see God in plants and animals, we might learn to see God in our neighbors. And then we might learn to love the world. And then, when all of that loving has taken place, when all of that seeing has happened, when such people come to me and tell me they love Jesus, I’ll believe it! They’re capable of loving Jesus. The soul is prepared. The soul is freed, and it’s learned how to see and how to receive and how to move in and how to move out from itself. Such individuals might well understand how to love God.

Praying with Nature

Richard Rohr recalls his first experiences with the prayer of the Pueblo people in New Mexico: 

In 1969 when I was a young deacon in Acoma Pueblo, one of my jobs was to take the census. Because it was summer and hot, I would start early in the morning, driving my little orange truck to each residence. Invariably at sunrise, I would see a mother outside the door of her home, with her children standing beside her. She and the children would be reaching out with both hands uplifted to “scoop” up the new day and then “pour” it over their heads and bodies in blessing. I would sit in my truck until they were finished, thinking how silly it was of us Franciscans to think we brought religion to New Mexico four hundred years ago! [1]

Though I have no family links to Indigenous religions, I have great respect for their wisdom. My early experience at Acoma Pueblo has inspired me to continue to learn about the Pueblo, Diné (Navajo), and Apache peoples here in New Mexico. But I only know enough to know that I don’t know much at all. Indigenous spirituality is not intended for non-Native use. When we try to interpret or apply these teachings in our own context, we run the risk of “severe reinterpretation” [2] according to our own cultural lens and preferences, and without enough regard for their traditional origins.

I also don’t want to romanticize Native spirituality. As in every religion, there are times, places, and people who “get it”—the mystery of divine/human union—more than others. There are different stages and states of consciousness, and all are part of the journey. Western models of development usually focus on the rational mind, which offers one way of knowing reality, but in fact, there are many other ways of perceiving and expressing human experience. [3]

Choctaw elder and retired Episcopal bishop Steven Charleston offers a meditation honoring different ways of knowing that have fed his soul:  

For all the great thoughts I have read
For all the deep books I have studied
None has brought me nearer to Spirit
Than a walk beneath shimmering leaves

Golden red with the fire of autumn
When the air is crisp
And the sun a pale eye, watching.

I am a scholar of the senses
A theologian of the tangible.

Spirit touches me and I touch Spirit
Each time I lift a leaf from my path
A thin flake of fire golden red
Still warm from the breath that made it. [4]

Mechthild of Magdeburg lived independently as a beguine until she could no longer care for herself. James Finley highlights what we can learn from Mechthild as she approached her death:

She continued on in this way, writing and living with the beguines, into old age. She reached a point of fragility when she became blind and wasn’t able to dress or feed herself. She moved to a monastery of Cistercian nuns who took care of her. Not only did she go blind, and not only could she not do anything for herself, but God took away all traces of the felt sense of God’s love. She comes to the end of her life in a state of powerlessness. She says that if God wishes her to live this way, then she wishes it too. She begins to express deep gratitude for the nuns and the way they care for her as a way she experiences God’s love for her in her powerlessness.

Here is Mechthild’s prayer expressing her gratitude to God for her powerlessness:

Thus speaks a beggar woman in her prayer to God:

Lord, I thank You that since in Your love You have taken from me all earthly riches, You now clothe and feed me through the goodness of others, so that I no longer know those things that might clothe my heart in pride of possession.

Lord, I thank You that since You have taken my sight from me, You serve me through the eyes of others.

Lord, I thank You that since You have taken from me the strength of my hands and the strength of my heart, You now serve me with the hands and hearts of others. [1]

Finley continues:  

Her life comes full circle, where the places of the ecstasy in her heart, and the places of utter poverty and brokenness form a circle, and the brokenness and the ecstasy touch each other and she becomes utterly ordinary. She becomes utterly ordinary, falling away from the ability to gain footing by her own power to do anything at all. The last two books of The Flowing Light of the Godhead are dictated because she couldn’t write anymore; she dictated it and she died writing it. She ends her book with a dialogue between her soul and her body in death:

Then we shall no longer complain.
Then everything that God has done with us
Will suit us just fine,
If you will now only stand fast
And keep hold of sweet hope. [2]

How can we learn then to be unraveled by love, as Mechthild was? I’ll put it another way: the very fact that we are being touched by the beauty of these mystics means that we are being unraveled by this love. It’s already unfolding. It’s already being laid bare in the unresolved matters of our heart. Mechthild then mentors us in this love and is unexplainably trustworthy throughout our days.

________________________________________________________

Joy Fueled

The Gospel of Knowledge and Duty

Some years ago, at a large conference, a speaker shared lots of information about unreached people groups around the world—the billions who do not yet know Christ. He reminded everyone of the Great Commission in Matthew 28. (Most of us have been reminded of the Great Commission dozens of times before.) Then the speaker began snapping his fingers as if counting time. Tears filled his eyes as he implored the audience: “Every second, thousands of people are dying without knowing Christ.” Snap. Snap. Snap. “What are you going to do about it?” Snap. Snap. Snap. The large room fell silent as he continued to snap. Many in the audience were crying. They appeared deeply moved and ready to sign up for the tremendous task of reaching their generation for Christ, no matter the cost. Perhaps you have heard sermons like that or attended conferences with this kind of presentation: 6,500 unreached people groups… 2.5 billion people never heard the name of Jesus… our evangelism and church planting aren’t working…. we are debtors to Christ… no amount of sacrifice will compare to what he has done.

Who could fail to be moved by this presentation? This kind of motivation? We call this the “gospel of knowledge and duty.” The more knowledge we have, the more we will feel obliged to serving, and therefore, the more we will serve. Yet we have several questions. Is this approach effective in the long run? Thousands or even millions of people have been motivated to ministry by this type of presentation. But, is it really good “fuel”? Is this approach healthy?

Does it result in emotionally healthy Christians? Is it biblical? Is this the kind of motivation that we see in the Bible? Effective Fuel? Healthy Fuel? Biblical Fuel? As we have said, the gospel of knowledge and duty can sound very spiritual, but we contend that these are actually inadequate types of fuel. When knowledge and duty are all we have, they are not really good news (the meaning of gospel) because, as Galatians 3:21-22 tells us, in the long run, this knowledge and duty cannot produce righteousness. Only a relationship with Jesus can do that.

Knowledge and duty produce guilt and obligation, which can be effective at starting an engine but, unfortunately, this fuel, so to speak, corrodes over time. These motivations do produce activity. However, there is a terrible price to pay when a person does not mature beyond these motivations into others more sustainable. The results are Christians who are not only exhausted, burned out and disillusioned but also thwarted in their emotional maturity and relational knowledge of God. Leaders are drawn into ministry for many reasons. Often a dramatic presentation of the great spiritual need in the world and our obligation or duty based on the Great Commission plays a significant part. Again, this conviction is not a bad thing. However, if guilt and obligation continue to be the main motivations, the results are not good. These things do not teach us what to do with our heavy emotions that come with life and ministry—emotions like grief, anger, discouragement, hopelessness and despair.

Guilt and duty are not capable of helping us through these difficult times. The shocking statistics below from one survey illustrate the long term results in the lives of pastors facing high levels of stress without an adequate joy base.

●     75% of pastors report being “extremely stressed” or “highly stressed”

● 90% feel fatigued and worn out every week

● 80% will not be in ministry 10 years later

● 91% have experienced some form of burnout in ministry

● Seminary-trained pastors average only five years in church ministry

Even more grievous than these results are the destructive behaviors that come as a result of ministering with these ineffectual motivations. In our combined years of ministry alone, we have seen numerous pastors and/or their spouses end up in inappropriate sexual relationships or substance abuse in an attempt to numb the destructive feelings they do not know how to handle. Many lives, marriages and whole communities are destroyed when this happens. We are convinced that these statistics and experiences would be different if the people of God understood the danger of living guilt-based or duty-driven compared to the amazing power of living joy-fueled.

White, John C.; Daniels, Toni M.; Smith, Dr Kent. Joy Fueled: Catalyzing a Revolution of Joyful Communities (LK10 Core Values) (pp. 11-14). LK10. Kindle Edition.