Prayer of Oscar Romero

At the end of every year, the Prayer of Oscar Romero comes to mind for those of us who minister and work as teachers, pastors, mentors, and spiritual friends of all kinds. 

It helps, now and then, to step back
and take the long view.
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of
the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.
Nothing we do is complete,
which is another way of saying
that the kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the church’s mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about:
We plant seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything
and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for God’s grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results,
but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders,
ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.

An Alternative Community (queries of)

The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us. (p. 3)

So my programmatic urging is part of a way of evoking, forming, and reforming an alternative community. And this applies to every facet and practice of ministry.  It is a measure of our enculturation that the various acts of ministry (for example, counseling, administration, even liturgy) have taken on lives and functions of their own rather than being seen as elements of the one prophetic ministry of formation and reformation of alternative community. (p. 4)

from The Prophetic Imagination by Walter Bruggemann

Bruggemann is speaking here about the alternative community of Moses and what through him (and of course, through the power of God) a whole new way of living for the Hebrews.  They were called out of empire, into a new covenant with God, a new community, and alternative way of being that brought them out of the enculturation of Pharoah.  Bruggemann's words speak to an Integrated way of being in the world in which everything that we do is all about living out this alternative community.  That from the smallest action to the largest, we proclaim a new way.
This is tossing around in my head:
How is my family an alternative community in the world?  How do we live prophetically so that if someone spent a day or a week with us, they would realize that we are living alternatively with a prophetic imagination?
How if my work and ministry integrated so that everything I am about speaks to this new way of being?
How am I still living enslaved in the "empire" and enculturated in a way that keeps me away from living in the alternative community?  (hmmm...how do I count the ways).

Ode to Henri Nouwen

Henri Nouwen has one of my spiritual directors for the last 15 years. I discovered him through my dear spiritual friends--Koby Miller, Anthony Shelton, and John Morley--while I was a Resident Director at Asbury College (those were super formative years for me, Koby, Anthony, John and more on that later). Nouwen has directed me through my semi-compulsive need for approval (The Inner Voice of Love), he has taken me to a place of grace and recognition of my different spiritual selves (The Prodigal Son), he is teaching me how to pastor (The Living Reminder and so many more), and he has given me my theology of ministry (From Community to Ministry-an idea, not a book). Nouwen also has shaped through The Life of the Beloved the so-far most significant season of my spiritual journey--the decade of what I call "Law to Love" of my 20s. I look forward to meeting this man and looking into his eyes and thanking him for his courage to share the intimacies of his spiritual journey with so many.
I am reading Nouwen's primer on spirituality Making All Things New: An Invitation to the Spiritual Life. This is a beautiful little book that speaks with all the simplicity and depth of true Nouwen. This morning I am struck by a few quotes that resonate deeply.

"Truth does not mean an idea, concept or doctrine, but the true relationship".
"What is new is that we are set free from the compulsions of our world and have set our heart on the only necessary thing."
"Setting our hearts on [the kingdom] involves not only serious aspiration but also strong determination. A spiritual life requires human effort. The forces that keep pulling us back into a worry-filled life are from easy to overcome."
"A spiritual discipline, therefore, is the concentrated effort to create some inner and outer space in our lives, where this obedience is practiced."
"But we do not take the spiritual life seriously if we do not set aside some time to be with God and listen to him."

Ah, Henri, you have done it again. This morning you have spoken into the message that I am preparing for Selah, the chapel series I am thinking about for the fall, the idea of paradox that I have been living into, and the reality of discipline and effort in the spiritual life.

Nouwen gets the paradox of the cross: the yoke is easy the burden is light/deny yourself and pick up your cross. He speaks to it in every book and almost every paragraph.

Grateful today for the voice of Henri Nouwen in my life, used by the Spirit, in making all things new.

The Old Ways of Knowing: The Meeting for Clarity

Last night I had the opportunity to gather with a group and discern together how God is moving. Quakers call this the a meeting for clarity or a "clarity committee". The purpose is to open ourselves together to listen to God. The person who has the query--the deep question of their soul--invites the group into the question. The group asks questions of clarity and understanding. With silence and prayer, we hold these questions in our soul open to the Holy Spirit. The premise of the meeting is that God Is Present. Certainly, this belief that God is with us is core to the Church. However, I often find that we act as if God is not or that we have to beg God to show up or plead with God to reveal Himself. God IS Present...Immanuel...God with us. So as sit together in the presence of God we listen to the Holy Spirit. We offer up what we hear with humility, recognizing that we are only vessels and are not infallible people that get to hold the corner on the truth. Instead, we offer what we sense, we release it to the discernment of the group. Then, as we listen together we see what words, scriptures, images or questions that grow among us--the organic movement of the Spirit flowing in us and around us. This is Holy space. I left the meeting last night without a sense that God had moved with lightning and flashes. Instead, God spoke through the Old Ways of Knowing God. The ways that are as much a part of the church as oxygen is of air. The way of recognizing that God's spirit does move in us and we can sense a call to be obedient and we know the peace that passes understanding. The Old Way of waiting unless we have peace on a way forward. The Old Way of remembering that God does not hide His will from us and when we seek it with our whole hearts, God will show it to us. The Old Way of believing that God does not have narrow slots for us to fit into, but wide open spaces for us to experience fullness. The Old Way of realizing again that God is not living in scarcity theory--if we don't get a particular thing right then we have lost our way. The Old Way in an ancient path of dependency of God and of recognition that this is God's work and not our own. And we can rest in that and trust the Holy Spirit to guide and to lead.
I am clearer after this meeting. (Hopefully my friend is as well--I believe so). But I am clearer about listening to God and being able to believe that God is moving and speaking to me.
In that, I find clarity.