As rays of sun do not set fire to anything by themselves, so God does not touch our souls with the fire without Christ. + Thomas Merton
"May Christ be the magnifying glass through which I see the ordinary today, so that I may have strength to rise above winter moods." This quote helped lead into a step of faith and obedience I got to take this year in helping to orchestrate and facilitate a retreat in central Massachusetts for servant leaders across various Christian faith traditions. Sisters and brothers from Pentecostal, Baptist, Charismatic, Congregational, Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Reformed backgrounds joined together at St. Mary's Monastery and St. Scholastica's Priory in Petersham, Massachusetts to soak in some silence and solitude, readings, Psalms, Benedictine hours, prayers, and whatever God had in store for each of us, as well as all of us together. As I have experienced some "Abbey Awe" with God in previous retreats, I was praying that each of the participants would experience some of the same in their own way during this special time.
In preparation for our time together in this space, I recommended three books for each person to choose one from to read before the retreat:
+ David Taylor's Open & Unafraid: The Psalms as a Guide to Life
+ Leighton Ford's The Attentive Life: Discerning God's Presence, and
+ Tracy Balzer's Thin Places: A Journey into Celtic Christianity.
Other excerpts we read together during the retreat from The Attentive Life can be found in the post, Lanterns, Fireworks & Stars: "Only One Thing Is Needed", as well as at the end of the post, In the Holy Wild with the Lion Who Offers Us the Stream (see the story about the Masai Chief).
The invitation below complements a previous post, Still: Becoming More Attentive (Less Distracted) People, and includes an invitation from the final reading during our reflections in the time of silence during the retreat. Here, Ford is taking a cue from Alice Fryling's The Art of Spiritual Listening: Responding to God's Voice Amid the Noise of Life in which she suggests setting aside time with the verse "Be still and know that I am God (Ps 46:10), repeating it over and over, leaving off a word or phrase each time. This practice, along with some of Ford's own reflections (also an invite to write your own reflections when you practice such stillness), is provided below in case it might help you in the days ahead.
Pausing Prayer Practice | Be Still and Know That I Am God
+ Be still and know that I am God.
You are God, I am not. You are Center. Not my moods, my complaints, my busyness. Not my desires—physical, emotional, sexual, or spiritual. Transform them into longings for You.
+ Be still and know that I am.
Make me aware of Your being ... Your light in my physical reality. Your time runs through the ticking of the clocks. The world is running on, as I sit, without me. You are as present as—through—beyond—the sun that gives light today to all I see.
+ Be still and know.
I do not have to read to know. To run to the computer to know. To talk on the phone to know. ... Even to scrutinize my Bible to know ... When I am still, knowing comes ... (when) the light of Christ makes me see. For that I need to ...
+ Be still.
"Peace, be still." Still, still with Thee." Why is a "still" so named—a distillery of essences? Must we be still to be distilled, i.e., purified? Be still my soul.
+ Be.
When I find myself
as a being before God
as a physical being in a world irradiated by light
as a moving creature, urged on, but able to say "Whoa"
I am not ruled by urges
as a temporal being, living in the I Am Eternal One
reminded by the clock to live here, now
I can be content
with whatever I have
The paradox of our modern world is that we know so much about so many things, about how things work, but so little about who we are as persons, why we are. We believers are not immune to this dis-ease. We have more and more sources of information about the Bible, theology, ethics, history, psychology and organization—but relatively little time to absorb even a little bit of the information so that it can form and transform us. Still, sometimes in quiet moments, sometimes at a dramatic crossroads, something may happen that makes us stop, look and listen ...
Most of us need some kind of spiritual jolt ... to make us stop and listen long enough to pay attention to what God is saying to us ...
When I am still, compulsion (the busyness that Hilary of Tours called "a blasphemous anxiety to do God's work for Him") gives way to compunction (being pricked or punctured). That is, God can break through the many layers with which I protect myself, so that I can hear His Word and be poised to listen.
+ Excerpt above from Holy Stillness: An Interlude in Leighton Ford's The Attentive Life: Discerning God's Presence, pgs. 136-139
+ Bonus reflection on Psalm 46:10 from Tracy Balzer's Thin Places
Psalm 46:10, "Be still and know that I am God" is indeed a compelling thought, but it is incomplete without the context of the entire psalm. Here we see that God is not merely inviting us into a blissful reverie, but is rather giving us a stern reminder. "Cease striving," the New American Standard translation says. Or, in my own words, "Stop—I am God, and you are not. Put this in perspective. You, _____ (fill in your name), are not in charge of this world—let go and know that I am managing things. Just stop for awhile."
I heard a story recently about an English-speaking pastor who was preaching on this passage in Japan, and when the Japanese translator communicated it to Japanese listeners, he translated it, "Lay down your weapons." Doesn't this speak of the ways we defend ourselves, hiding behind the illusion of control?
Our instinct is to cover ourselves, Adam-like, with the externalities of title, possessions, and achievement, making it much easier to ignore the true state of our souls. In solitude (silence and stillness) we are forced to set aside these external trappings and allow God to put to death what is false and superficial about us in order to raise the "new self" created in the image and likeness of Christ.
+ pg. 116
Bonus Story from Sue Monk Kidd's When the Heart Waits:
"I saw you today sitting beneath the tree — just sitting there so still. How is it that you can wait so patiently in the moment. I can't seem to get used to the idea of doing nothing."
The monk broke into a wonderful grin. "Well, there's the problem right there, young lady. You've bought into the cultural myth that when you're waiting you're doing nothing."
Then he took his hands and placed them on my shoulders, peered straight into my eyes and said, "I hope you'll hear what I'm about to tell you. I hope you'll hear it all the way down to your toes ...
When you're waiting, you're not doing nothing. You're doing the most important something there is. You're allowing your soul to grow up. If you can't be still and wait, you can't become what God created you to be.
Here are links to other recent City Notes (CN) books:
Seeds of Hope in the Rain & the Dark; Wrestling with God in Doubt; Baptism as the Way of Life; Being with God; Listening Closely & Paying Attention; Living and Loving Curiously with Wonder; Waiting is the Womb; In the Holy Wild with the Lion Who Offers Us the Stream; Yeshua; An Unexpected Story of Discovering Jesus; Only One Thing Is Needed; No Secrets Are Hidden
Christ is all,
Rev. Mike “Sully” Sullivan
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