Meaning and Authenticity

What an awesome experience tonight at my lectio divina group. I've been meeting with this group for over 10 years now, and it's nearly always amazing. It's as if God's Spirit just manifests and we are all suddenly AWAKE and AWARE, in our "God spot," as someone described it this evening. We take turns leading the group, and tonight was my turn. I chose the passage in John 11 about Jesus raising Lazarus, but we only read verses 17 through 26 which ends with Jesus asking Martha, "Do you believe this?" I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies;26.and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?" I spoke about my struggle with death...the idea of my own, and seeing my mother die in 1994. One moment "she" (my mom) was there, occupying the body lying there in the hospital bed, and the next moment, "she" was no longer there. Whatever it is that animates us as hum...

Many people don’t consider themselves to be “spiritual.” We hear it all the time, don't we?— Oh, I’m not a spiritual person. Well, news flash! No one is not spiritual, or to put it in the positive: We all have a spiritual dimension to our existence . The difference is in the use of the word, I think. “Spiritual” conjures up a limited set of images—images of people who dedicate some time each day to prayer, people who can talk about their relationship with God, people who seem to be more aware of God than others, etc. I take a much broader view, especially after reading Ron Rolheiser's book The Holy Longing several years ago. Spirit is the life-force within us—it is that which animates and energizes us. And “spiritual” is simply what we do with that life-force, all that energy and passion within us. We can focus it in healthy (and difficult) ways, ways that help us as Christians move ever more toward the imago Christi , the image of Christ within us. Or we can focus it in unhe...

It’s wonderful how centered one feels after a retreat like The Five Day Academy for Spiritual Formation. God feels so close. Nothing seems to bother. I’m aware of my desire for the Divine.

I'm back from a wonderful Five-Day Academy for Spiritual Formation (an Upper Room ministry). Although they have all been good, including the Two-Year, I think this might have been the best one I've ever attended. The topic was Spiritual Friendship , and the faculty was Dr. Loyd Allen and Sister Kathleen Floyd. Wow. Both were excellent. The local team that put the week together was excellent. We worship three times a day at Academies, and each time we entered the worship space, the team had created something of exquisite beauty. I just love that. So enriching. Plus I just felt good being there. I was so ready for a break. What made the week so outstanding, though, was how events served as a living testimony to the topic of spiritual friendship! I've been to so many Academies that I know a lot of attendees, and this week I had some special friends there, including The Author. Tuesday morning started out with a bang. I woke up from a terrible dream--the kind that it took a mom...

Many times I've heard people say something like this regardig discerning their calling to ministry: Oh, I didn't want to do it, but God kept at me. God was pulling me along, but I didn’t want to go, I really didn’t, but God just kept bugging me and wouldn't let me alone. I think we need to be very careful about this kind of thinking. God is found in our resistence, too. Yes, we must learn to trust God, but we must learn to trust ourselves, too. Discernment is not really about making a decision or solving a problem. Discernment is living a life that moves toward authenticity. It's all about learning to love ourselves~the true self, that is. It's a process of developing self awareness such that we can finally see how our deepest desire is also God's desire for us. God's will for us does not differ from our own deepest desire. And I believe that our deepest desires always come down to Love. Most every advance in discernment carries with it a cost, the cross of...

I loved this paragraph from James Finley's Christian Meditation: When Jesus sat around the fire at night with the disciples, talking about this and that, he no doubt at times simply listened to them talking among themselves. As he stirred the fire with a stick, he perhaps saw a single spark fleetingly fly upward into the night. Later, lying there, listening to their breathing as they slept, he heard in their breathing the love he knew himself to be. It is like that sometimes with us. In meditation, in daily life, we realize that we and everyone else in the world, and everything in it, are manifesting the love our very life embodies. In this realization, we enter the mind of Christ without going anywhere. We simply awaken to who we have always been from before the origins of the universe.

I'm reading James Finley's Christian Meditation. Do you know it? Wow. It's been a long time since I've underlined something on every page of a book. I even copied one paragraph and laminated it, and it's now nearby when I meditate in the morning: **We sit in meditation so that the last traces of our tendency to identify with egocentric consciousness might finally dissolve as our habitual base of operations. **We meditate that we might continue thinking, but no longer live by thought and all that thought can comprehend. **We meditate that we might continue remembering, but no longer be limited to memory or all that can be remembered. **We sit that we might continue willing, but no longer be limited to our own will or what our will is capable of attaining. **We sit that we might continue feeling, but no longer be limited to our feelings or all that can be felt. **We sit that we might continue being our bodily self as long as our life on this earth shall last, but no l...

Good day spent in God's presence. I got into my "let's get it done" mode in the afternoon, but this morning I spent a lovely 90 minutes with my friend The Author. I always feel God's presence when I'm with her. Our conversations are deep and important and oh so nurturing. This afternoon I decided to move our Evening Prayer service from the chapel to the main sanctuary, so that took the better part of two hours. But now that everything's moved, it'll be easier for me to set up and maintain. That was my "just get it done" mode, and I wasn't aware of God's presence, although when I started the service, it felt very centering to me. My prayer tonight is simply one of gratitude. Thank you, God, for everything. I'll be away from my computer for the next few days, leading a church retreat.

Lately my understanding of the importance of the present moment has grown. I've seen my spiritual director and my therapist several times in the last couple of m onths, trying to understand why I've gained so much weight. Well, of course I know why--It was given a major boost by being on steroids for two months last year--I was ravenous! It's hormonal changes. I'm 52--it's time for my metabolism to slow down. It's the little fractured vertebrae in my back that kept me from any exercise. But I've been vaguely aware of a deeper reason. All those little physiological jumpstarts were easily overcome, had I just worked at it. I'm aware that thoughts of food have filled my mind. My therapist asked me, "So what are you trying to avoid?" "I really can't think of a thing," I replied. "My marriage is good. My family life is good. My work is good." "Doesn't have to be anything big," she responded. That's when I r...

I've been reading John O'Donohue this morning. Anam Cara , which is his book about soul friends. I read his profound words, words drenched in beauty, and I can feel my soul open. What wonder that evokes in me. We live our lives so busy, so goal-oriented that we--No. Let me put this in the first person--I am so busy, so oriented toward getting things done, that I have spent my long-anticipated vacation actually working on a paper due soon for an interview about dual standing in the UCC. Finally, last night, I realized what I was doing, and today has been a completely different experience. Reading O'Donohue, I am transported to a different, and I think more real, reality. Zen taught me that "This is it." This moment. This place. This body. When I am awake, aware, conscious of my being in time and space, then I am alive. This aliveness this morning, reading O'Donohue and stopping frequently to reflect, brought an opening of my soul. Through this opening came ... ...

Here are some photos of my new office. It's tiny, but it has a window to the street (one of only two in this house), and I've been able to make it really mine in terms of color and functionality. When I was five and six years old we lived in Nederland Texas, east of Houston. I have this memory of a neighbor's house--the children there were older so we didn't play over there much. But on this one rare occasion all the younger kids, like me, were in that house. And forever in my memory are the sheer purple drapes the mom had hung in one of the bedrooms. Oh! I thought they were beautiful! The windows were open, too, so there was movement and they sort of floated in the room. Because of that image in my mind's eye, I decided to decorate my office in purple. Purple drapes (not sheer, though), purple lamps, and I arranged some flowers with purple and pink in a purple vase. I love it! I love sitting in this room. The feel of it is cozy and beautiful, and I feel a sacrednes...

I listened to a podcast of "Speaking of Faith" this afternoon. Krista Tippett was interviewing John O'Donoghue and his beginning words were these: Your identity is not equivalent to your biography. There's a place in you wher e you've never been wounded; where there's a seemlessness in you, and where there is a confidence and tranquility in you. And I think the intention of prayer and spirituality and love is now and again to visit that inner kind of sanctuary. There's a place in you where you've never been wounded. Wow. Just recently I said those exact words to a couple of different people. I was stunned to hear the words echoed in this way. I know that place within me. One night as I drove home from particularly powerful group therapy session, I was intensely focusing on and processing the experience. Before I knew it, I was about a block from home. It was then that I remembered that my housemate's parents were visiting and staying with us. I w...

I get daily devotionals from the United Church of Christ. Today's was especially beautiful, helping me imagine how it would be--how I would be--if I truly believed that God was head-over-heels GONE for me. Wow. Actually, imagining this isn't difficult for me, but I do need reminders. It's not difficult because of a dream I had, oh, about 20 years ago now. I was simply walking in the mall (of all places). I was walking in the mall, but I carried myself as if I were beautiful . My head was held high. My shoulders were back and I was standing up tall. I was swinging my arms and smiling. I was confident about taking up space on the earth, for I knew that I was loved completely and that my life was a gift from God--a gift not to be wasted but lived to the fullest. That dream itself was a gift from God, sent straight to me just like so many biblical characters! The gift said, "Katherine, this is who I have created you to be, now you GO FOR IT, girl!" I'm ...

A friend and I are planning to facilitate a six-week group for women this Fall. We're calling it: Centered Living: Creating Your Authentic Life I hope we can get the word out to some people who might be interested. (If you're out there, let me know!) My friend is an LPC and a certified Gottman therapist. We're going to concentrate on giving women some tools so that they can practice living from that centered place within them. We'll deal with the obstacles to that as well. Speaking of obstacles....We have planned this for six Wednesday evenings at my church, but now my church is considering moving all committee meetings to one night each month, and, of course, that night just happens to be Wednesday, so we'll have to see how that plays out. I'm hoping my friend can do Thursday evenings if it turns out to be necessary. Anyway, I'm sure we'll find a day of the week that suits us both. I'm looking forward to it. Recently, I was reminded how important th...

This came from a friend of mine in California, Michael. It's a column by Jim Burklo who at one point was Michael's pastor. The column is about "The Bible and Eckart Tolle." Pretty interesting. Sadly, another friend of mine, Kathy at My Heart Leaps , tells me that Oprah has been the recipient of some nastiness by the Christian Right for helping spread the wisdom of Tolle's new book. Breaks my heart to hear of that. Anyway, here is the article by Jim Burklo: The Bible and Eckhart Tolle A few weeks ago a young friend of mine asked if we could talk, so we had lunch together. She knew that there had been a period in my life when I coped with the serious mental illness of one of my family members. She wanted to hear more about how I handled it. That set me off on a long story about that difficult period in my family's life. I got pretty animated about it - telling about it brought up a lot of feelings for me. Finally, I asked her how my story related to her own, and...

D and I had a new experience last week. We went to a Drumming Circle. Total fun. There were about 12 of us, sitting on chairs in a circle. Lots of different types of drums were available for us to choose, and even other kinds of percussion instruments, and a native American flute. At the back of the room were some large pretty scarves and ribbons and a huge gong. (Oh, that gong was absolutely Amazing. The vibration went from the tip of my toes to the top of my head!) The guy who welcomed us was the leader (even though he said there was no leader), and he started us off by playing a huge drum--deep, low tones. Just random beats and we all followed suit with our own random beats that all seemed to echo the main beat, it seemed to me.... ...Several crescendos that arose on their own... ...then it would die down again... ...get chaotic... ....come into a new kind of syncopated rhythm... ....over and over again.... ....and finally everything just got quiet and that was the end of that ...

I started an Evening Prayer service at my church last week. It's in the tradition of Taize. Just a 25 minute service. I set it up in the chapel, which has some beautiful stained glass windows, and put about 100 candles of all shapes and sizes. We sing three Taize songs, do intercessory prayer, silence, two Scripture readings using three different translations, and I decided to serve each person communion. As the service ended tonight, I just sat there for about 10 minutes all alone. I kept thinking, God is real. God is real. God is real. It's something about the beauty. God inhabits it and I can experience the divine so easily through it. Beauty.

I am introducing Companions in Christ: The Way of Grace to my new congregation. Nine folks signed up for this small group, and the introductory meeting last Sunday gave me confidence that it will be an enriching group for all. If you've done this study, you may remember the first chapter. It contains Walter Brueggemann's intriguing description of grace as: God's transforming disposition towards the whole world. Then the text says: Divine grace is expressed as a creative will for dynamic life and goodness, full of ongoing possibilities for transformation and renewal. God bestows on human beings the risky gift of freedom of divine love, a risk extended for the sake of transformation, for greater wholeness, for fullness of life. ... Jesus calls his disciples who will shortly misunderstand as much as they understand. Why? For the hope of transformation. Advocacy is risked by Jesus for a woman who has been caught dead-to-right in sin. Why? For the potential of transforma...

Here is the sermon I preached at both services last Sunday: Conviction Arising from Mystery John 20: 19-31 “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe!” So said Thomas, one of the Twelve disciples, upon hearing from his friends that Jesus--crucified and buried—was alive. “Jesus appeared to us, Thomas,” they told him. “In this room..." “No. Unless I put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will never believe that,” responds Thomas. One week later, same thing happens. This time Thomas is there and Jesus invites him to “reach out your hand and put it in my side.” He does. He then responds with perhaps the most powerful confession in the Gospel: My Lord and my God! Jesus gave Thomas what he needed to believe. Actually, if we read this passage carefully in vs. 20 we see that it’s the same thing he gave the other disciples. And in vs. 29 Jesus gives us all, these many ce...

Both of the speakers at the Five Day Academy emphasized, in different ways, the patterns/cycles of our lives. Here's something I wrote in response during one of the silent times: Time has stopped this week... Strange intersection of exhaustion on multiple levels and the mysterious energy arising from openness to God's nudgings...Somehow together the dynamic between them has bestowed upon me a taste of the eternal... Liz and Robert and their talk of patterns, cycles ~ always intriguing for an existentialist like me... The pattern of time and eternity... The pattern of our lives taken, blessed, broken, and shared... The Psalms invite us to see our cycle of orientation, disorientation, and new orientation, where, yes, we do return to the beginning and know it for the first time... Creation itself here at this beautiful place, with winter on the march to spring and summer and back again to the cocoon of winter that will follow next year... Sunrise out of darkness... Resurrection f...