Meaning and Authenticity

I've just returned from a two-day retreat for 'Courage to Lead' for Congregations. We are taking the 15-month series of Courage retreats (for clergy) that I participated in 2006-2007 into our congregations. Pretty amazing stuff. We each invited 3 or 4 lay members of our churches, ending up with 26 people in the Circle of Trust. (See Parker Palmer's Hidden Wholeness. ) I've written before about how I realized that the series of Courage retreats were about practicing what church should be like . I'm very excited about the prospect of actually seeing church cultures slowly change. The change can come about, I think, as people learn to EMBODY the Courage To Lead touchstones . Here are a few of my favorites: Speak your truth in ways that respect other people's truth. Our views of reality may differ, but speaking one's truth in a circle of trust does not mean interpreting, correcting or debating what others say. Speak from your center to the center of the circ...

Denise Levertov is a wonderful poet, isn't she? The Avowal As swimmers dare to lie face to the sky and water bears them, as hawks rest upon air and air sustains them, so would I learn to attain freefall, and float into Creator Spirit's deep embrace, knowing no effort earns that all-surrounding grace. ~ Denise Levertov ~ Ohhhh, what lovely memories this poem evokes in me. Freefalling into the arms of God. Leaving the false security of ARCO. Strangely easy .... Preaching to the seminary community, professors and all. Valerie telling me to LIVE, LIVE in THIS moment .... Group therapy where I was Levertov's soaring hawk, the bravest I've ever been when it comes to a potential relationship .... And marriage. Risking it all, although somehow it didn't feel like the cost could be death, sustained no doubt by God and by a confidence in D's 'earnestness.' So it seems that Life ~real Life~ is a series of freefalls. Learning to trust. ....................Failing t...

I glimpsed what the Church should be during the five Courage to Lead retreats 2006-2007. (Thanks to Jan , once again, for the amazing image of Courage, below.) At these retreats we were invited to practice being the people God is calling us to become , and as I think about it, what better purpose for the Church than that? The Courage to Lead series of five retreats for clergy and lay leaders provided: * a time and a place designed to enhance our opening to the movement/voice of the Spirit * an emotionally safe environment * silence * opportunities that challenged us to move out of our false-ego's comfort zone * beauty * a context of both solitude and community, both of which are often required for courage to emerge * the patience to give over a year for all five retreats, an acknowledgement of the difficulty of this process * a pattern of "real world"/retreat/"real world" that also took the difficulty of this process into account * competent, inspiring, and co...

I'm off this morning to the last of our Courage to Lead retreats/workshops. It's been a series of five, although I missed our summer gathering. Courage and Renewal comes from the work of Parker Palmer. If you haven't read "The Courage to Teach" or "Let Your Life Speak," please do; they are wonderful. He's all about authenticity. In fact, the tagline for Courage to Lead is "Reconnecting What You Do with Who You Are." I'm looking forward to this time away. I'm coming down now from a very hectic couple of weeks in which time has seemed so very compressed. I preached yesterday, and it was good, but after the handshaking at the door at the conclusion of the service, I went to my office and found myself suddenly crying. No reason. Just tension-relief, I guess. Anyway, this time away will be good. Not only are the retreats well done and the participants congenial and interesting, but the retreat center itself is first-class. I...

I saw four clients today for pastoral counseling or spiritual direction. One after another this afternoon, and then an amazing conversation with a parishioner at dinner. What a day. What incredible gifts I received from each of them. The parishioner at dinner tonight spoke of what being a Christian means to her--an aspect of it, that is. She was raised in the church, can quote Scripture with the best of 'em, was baptized and followed all the rules (well, most of them, anyway, she says). But one day she opened herself to a relationship with God, and suddenly everything was fresh . New and fresh . She said she comes out of a worship service and is so alive, so grateful for the amazing message and the deep meaning of the Lord's Supper, still singing the last hymn in her heart. (This made me laugh--She remarked that she comes out of this worship service and into the narthex and is always SO surprised when she hears someone else make some inane, negative, stupid remark, as she puts ...

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. -- Helen Keller

A quote I've found meaningful: "Our commitments to healing and liberation require risk because the love and trust required to love fearlessly open us to injury. To remain open and to receive the world's gifts requires us to maintain a capacity for vulnerability, and the tragedies and limits of human life can weaken our trust so that we move from love toward fear and withdrawal. Our vulnerability means we are not completely immune to forces of evil...To commit ourselves to the work of God's love and justice means taking enormous risks in order to keep healing and liberation alive in the world. We must be aware that the forces of oppression, hate, and violence are strong and canny...organized to resist relinquishing their power...We require COURAGE--strength of heart--to challenge evil, even as we remain suspicious of our most self-righteous polemics and defensive postures. Courage enables us to cherish our anger at injustice at the same time we are attuned to the opp...

I enjoy Susan Howatch's novels about the Church of England. Her characters are terribly flawed, easily recognizable. Here's a quote from The High Flyer: (p 301) A long while later I said to Lewis: "I can't stand there being no order. I'm so frightened of the chaos." "It's like being thrown into the deep end of the pool, isn't it?" said Lewis casually. "The rules that apply to life on dry land no longer apply. You're immersed in water, a substance which as the potential to drown you. If you're not accustomed to swimming every instinct tells you to yell in terror and grab the rail at the side of the pool, but in fact this isn't the way to deal with the problem. You have to make the problem no longer a problem by embracing it -- you have to let go of the rail and launch yourself out on the water because once you're swimming, playing by the water-rules instead of the land rules, you find the water's stimulating, bracing, ...

I've been writing about fear and trust for our church newsletter recently--I edited some, but this is basically what I said: Abundancy Mentality Once a month I lead an additional worship service, in the emerging-church style . Last time we created a diner atmosphere, complete with red checkered tablecloths, gum-smacking waitresses, and short-order cooks. The theme was the Community in Christ that we can create anywhere we are. The idea came from Carrie Newcomer's song, "Betty's Diner" (see www.carrienewcomer.com ), one line in which is "eggs and toast like bread and wine." So, of course we served eggs and toast. I was in the kitchen when I heard that we had run out of scrambled eggs. Oh, no, I thought. Moments later one of our ‘waitresses’ came up to the ‘short-order window’ to return a plate of food because it wasn’t needed—everyone had been served. I felt relieved, obviously, but as the evening continued I realized I also felt joy. In a tiny way I had...