Connecting the Dots - True-self

My blog has moved to http://www.lrtministry.org/scotts-ponderings/.  This blog will become inactive at the end of October.

One of Henri Nouwen’s spir­i­tual polar­i­ties and a com­po­nent of authen­tic pres­ences is the inward reflec­tion and our strug­gle with self — true-self vs. false-self. That is is the per­son who we are one the inside accu­rately reflected by who we project our­self to be to oth­ers? As I speak of self I am look­ing at it at a very basic level. The ques­tions I ask when I speak of self are: 1) Are the things we say we believe and value reflected in the way we live our life?, 2) Do you lever­age the way you are wired, your nat­ural skills and your spir­i­tual gift­ing so as to ben­e­fit oth­ers around you?, or as described in James 2 3) Does your faith lead to action?

The prob­lem that many of us face when look­ing at these ques­tions is that we don’t always know what we fully believe and value, we don’t know the extent of our wiring and gift­ed­ness, we don’t know how to put our faith into action. It’s not that we don’t have any beliefs, val­ues, gifts or faith, it’s that we have never taken the time to eval­u­ate, orga­nize and act on them.

Foun­da­tional Beliefs
We all have a set of foun­da­tional belief, we may not be able to artic­u­late them but they are part of our life. The ques­tion to ask here is “What or who is it that is inform­ing my foun­da­tional beliefs?” Is it cul­ture and soci­ety? Is it God? Is it the peo­ple we asso­ciate with? Is it the things we watch and read? To be hon­est it is prob­a­bly a com­bi­na­tion of some or all of these. The trou­ble with hav­ing mul­ti­ple sources is that there will be times when two or more will con­tra­dict each other. The ques­tion then “Which one trumps?”

For me it is God who I have cho­sen as the “trump card.” My foun­da­tional beliefs are drawn from the sto­ries God has given us in the Bible. I actu­ally talk of my foun­da­tional beliefs in the from of three meta-narratives that I find as I read the Bible — the cre­ation nar­ra­tive, the restora­tion nar­ra­tive, and the eter­nal nar­ra­tive. I don’t have the space to dive deeply into each of these right now but my beliefs on cre­ation, rela­tion­ship, mean­ing, restora­tion, and pur­pose all fol­low out of these narratives.

Oper­a­tional Beliefs and Val­ues
Flow­ing out of my foun­da­tional beliefs are my oper­a­tional beliefs and val­ues. I am cur­rently work­ing on liv­ing out eight oper­a­tional beliefs. Each belief is grounded in scrip­ture, has an asso­ci­ated value, and an action plan for putting the belief into action.

The ques­tion I have been pon­der­ing for the last year or so is “Who am I and how best can I lever­age my answer?” The short answer that I have come up with is I am called to come along side other and help them to… How I fin­ish this ques­tion depends upon the con­text in which it is asked — at work, at home, at church, and doing min­istry will all have their own par­tic­u­lar responses.

I did not arrive at this point in my pon­der­ings overnight. I have been actively reflect­ing on dif­fer­ent aspects of these ques­tion for the last 10–12 years. I have put a lot of effort in to fig­ur­ing out who my true-self is and make sure that I am not pre­sent­ing a false self to oth­ers. I know that I suc­ceed more than I fail, but there is still work to be done. The dis­cov­ery of true-self is not a one and done things. Doc­u­ments that I cre­ate are organic in nature — I have three doc­u­ments that I pull out 3–4 times a year that allow me to assess where I am in the true-self vs false-self bat­tle. These doc­u­ments con­tinue to evolve as God con­tin­ues to trans­form me into the man he knows I am.

It is through this process of get­ting to know myself bet­ter that I am bet­ter able to be authen­ti­cally present with oth­ers as I inter­act with them in life.

Connecting the Dots - Distractions

I was recently in a discussion about the topic of listening. Questions were asked and responses were given. I was a great conversation. As I listened my mind was wondering what I was hearing - I was trying to discern what was being said. My mind wandered to my current thoughts about what Henri Nouwen called "authentic presence" and how the art of listening plays into this. Now, when I fall asleep to certain thoughts or ideas and then come back to them in the morning - I begin to wonder what it is God is trying to teach me or show me.

As I reflected on the conversation the word "distraction" jumped out at me. The context being that at times we are distracted listeners or as Nouwen might say we are not being authentically present with the person we are in conversation with. It was pointed out that the main source of our distraction was the ever-present cell phone. As I thought about that, i don’t think the phone is the problem, rather it is a symptom or the diagnostic tool that God may be using to say it's time to take a step back and take a deep breath. Am I really to busy to take an hour break from technology to spend time with someone else? Then I have to ask myself “am I to busy to spend an hour with God?”

Distractions! They come in all shapes and sizes. They come in a variety of colors and flavors. Some are welcome, others are unexpected. The question I ask myself is, how am I going to manage my distractions when I want to be authentically present for someone else? The key here is to have a management plan. Believe it or not, but the odds of disaster striking if you were to turn your cell phone off for an hour or two is nil. You might not think so but I think you will survive. Want to test this theory, go away on a silent retreat for a couple of days and see what happens. Not only will your family survive but you will grow in a deeper, richer relationship with God. Take an hour and grow in a deeper, richer relationship with another. This single act can boost ones spirits because you are saying to them that for this next hour is yours.

Turning off the phone can eliminate a lot of the external distractions, but how do we turn off the internal distractions that are bouncing around in your mind. Unlike our cell phones our mind doesn’t have an off button. This is where a little soul care can go a long way. If we practice the spiritual discipline of solitude we can begin to unload some of our distractions in a healthy way. Solitude is not about going out into the middle of nowhere to be alone, rather solitude is finding the moment of time (from a few minutes to a few hours) regularly where we can be alone with our thoughts, process what is going on in life and hopefully settle things down. We need to take the time to process life and learn deal with our own “stuff” so we can be present for others. This time of solitude is when we invite the Holy Spirit in to help us, transform us, and renew us. If we can lower the “static” of our own distractions we are better able to present for others.

Prayer is a natural fit with solitude. Solitude forces us to look inward while pray forces us to look upward. Prayer is actually great practice for listening to others. Prayer isn’t so much about us talking at God, rather prayer is about talking with and listening to God. I say this often when talking about prayer, but it is the toughest spiritual discipline for me.

I hope this wasn’t to random and rambling, it sounded a lot better as these ideas bounced around in my brain. I want to be a better listener, I want to be authentically present with other when I am in conversation with the, so this is my distraction management plan: 1) Be intentional about putting the other first - turn of the external distractors, 2) Spend time in solitude so that I can better react to my internal distractions, and 3) Spend time in prayer, conversing with God. If you want to be a better listener which piece do you need to work on? Or if you have additional tips or suggestions please leave a comment.

Connection the Dots - Authentic Presence

The idea of authentic presence is that when you are engaging with someone you are truly present with them. If we look in the Book of Acts we see the early church living in community. They were taking care of one and other. They were providing for each others needs. They were present for each other. For many today I think the idea of authentic presence is a lost art.

Wil Hernandez in his book, Henri Nouwen and Spiritual Polarities, describes three things that we need to practice in order to be authentically present with others. These three practices are solitude, hospitality, and prayer. Nouwen would talk about this in terms of our inward, outward and upward focuses.

In solitude we are able to best understand who we are. To be present for others you need to be present with yourself. As you become better at understanding yourself you are better able to relate with others in a deeper, more intimate way. To be authentically present. If you remember how I am using the word authentic, authentic presence is where the other can truly sense that your are there with them and for them.

Carla Dahl in her book Becoming Whole and Holy, defines hospitality as “the ability to create a space in which others can recognize and experience the presence of God.” When we are authentically present with others we should be creating a space where they can feel you have a genuine concern and/or connection to what they are saying. You in a way have become “God’s ears” in the conversation.

In prayer we deepen our presence with God and in so doing we create an environment for ourself which can then be used to create a sense of hospitality for others. If I am being true to myself then my relationship with God needs to be reflected in and through my authentic presence with others. 

I have just given a brief introduction to each of these practices: solitude, hospitality, and prayer. In the future I will come back and flesh them out in greater detail. In the mean time here are three things to think about as you practice the art of authentic presence:

1. Spend some time alone getting to know yourself
2. Create an environment of hospitality where God is center stage
3. Take time to cultivate your presence with God

Connecting the Dots - Key Words

[My blog has moved to a new home http://www.lrtministry.org/scotts-ponderings/]

This is the first in a series of posts I am calling Connecting the Dots. A tool I use as part of my spiritual reflection is called The Grand Examen. In this exercise the first thing you do is take time to reflect on things you have been learning from a variety of sources. The next step is what I call "connecting the dots." You look for the themes, ideas, words, scriptures, etc. that seem to be running through your reflections. Today I want to look at some key words that have come up in my reflections from the past several months. These words are authentic, genuine and true. These words all have a similar meaning yet each lends it own nuances to my larger reflection. This is how I have defined each one of these words:

genuine - being or reflecting the essential or genuine character of something authentic - conforming to fact and therefore worthy of belief true - not pretended; sincerely felt or expressed

I want to pause here for a moment to say that words are nothing more that a series of letters arranged in a specific way that have then had some meaning given to them - that is I am not as much intrigued by the words authentic, genuine and true as I am to the the idea or meaning that comes from them. A couple of weeks ago I was listening to a speaker and he was using a word to present an idea that for me based on how I defined the word was flawed. Half way through the presentation the speaker took the time to define what he meant by using the word and I then understood his context and the idea that he was getting across. This wasn't some unique or seldom used word, the word was "happiness." I share this story simply to show that when we use words we should also define what we mean by them. The context for these three words come from a number of books that I have been reading. The ideas presented were authentic presences, genuine presence, genuine ministry and true-self. The first, third and the last come from writings from or about Henri Nouwen and the second comes from a book by David Brenner. Over the next few weeks I will be exploring each of these ideas authentic/genuine presence, genuine ministry and true-self. Each of these ideas or topics feeds into our transformational process of becoming more like Jesus.

But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:16-18 ESV)

In your own life have you taken the time to slow down and see what God is teaching you? What have you been reading about? What have you been hearing people say? What obstacles or opportunities have presented themselves to you? Write these things down and start connecting the dots.

It's Been A While

Gar­ri­son Keil­lor begins his A Prairie Home Com­pan­ion monologs with the phrase “It’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobe­gon” and then launches in to a dis­cus­sion as to why it really hasn’t been all that quiet of a week.

Well, for me I could start out by say­ing ‘It’s been a quiet 8 months in my life’ but now let me share with you the rest of the story — a famous line from another great radio voice Paul Harvey.

As I reflect back over the last 8 or 9 months I believe I have had only 1 blog post­ing, writ­ten while on a retreat last spring. My tweets have really been lim­ited to post­ing scrip­tures have in some way caught my atten­tion. So why the silence? Well I guess I just haven’t had much to say. I have described these last few months as an infor­ma­tion or knowl­edge gath­er­ing time. I have spent time read­ing a vari­ety things — scrip­ture, a num­ber of books — Henry Nouwen and Spir­i­tual Polar­i­tiesby Wil Her­nan­dez, Becom­ing Whole and Holy by Jean­nine Brown, Carla Dahl and Wyndi Corbin Reuschling. I have spent a lot of time think­ing about what I want to do when I grow up. I have just been busy gath­er­ing lots and lots of stuff. What I have failed to do is slow down and start putting all the pieces together. So I have slowly been push­ing the pause but­ton on the whole sale gath­er­ing of more…

I don’t know about you but my mind goes a lot of dif­fer­ent direc­tions when I pon­der things — I make great use of mind map­ping soft­ware and big white boards when I am down­load­ing my pon­der­ing mate­r­ial. I put up all the ran­dom thoughts that I have and then I play con­nect the dots. I am always excited to see con­nec­tions that come out of a bunch of seem­ingly unre­lated blurbs.

If you are still read­ing this, thanks and you now have a glimpse at how my through process works and why I am the way that I am. So what have I learned and where am I headed. The biggest thing with regards to my blog is that it live in a new place. This past spring I put together and did a very soft launch of a new web site call LRT Min­istry. You can read more about the min­istry by hit­ting the home but­ton above. In a nut shell LRT is an acronym for Loved, Redeemed and Trans­formed — Loved by God, Redeemed by Christ and Trans­formed by Spirit. What LRT Min­istry allows me to do is gather in one place the var­i­ous things that I do or hope to do in the not to dis­tant future. This could also be the plat­form for part of my doc­toral the­sis which I will be begin­ning in January.

My goal for the near future is to have a weekly blog post­ing (hope­fully on Mon­days) as I begin to con­nect the dots and share with you my process and what God is teach­ing me. It is my hope that together we can be part of each oth­ers trans­for­ma­tion process and grow in our under­stand­ing of God and who God wants each one of us to be.

The lead-off topic of dis­cus­sion be a word that seemed to come up a lot in my pon­der­ings — Authentic.

Listening

It's Sunday morning the 1st of April 2012 and I haven't spoken with another person since early Friday evening. I am finishing up a three day retreat at Pacem in Terris just north of Minneapolis. Pacem is a wonderful retreat center with 15 or so hermitages (small cabins) scatter about on 120 acres of wooded land. I wish I could say that I come here regularly but it seems that it only works out to be once a year or so.

Every time I come to Pacem it seems that I have a different purpose - at least that is what I think, God sometimes has a quite different agenda. My purpose this time was simply to listen - listen through scripture - the Gospel of John, listen through reading - Becoming Whole and Holy by Jeannine Brown, Carla Dahl and Wyndy Corbin Reuschling, and listening through prayer.

Listening - what does this mean? I haven't blogged for the past 3 months or so because I have been listening. Listening to scripture as I am attempting to read through the Bible in a systematic way (Prof Horner's Bible Reading System). I have been jotting down scriptures that jump out at me each month to see what God is speaking to me. I have been listening but I haven't taken the time to hear. I have the texts but I haven't taken the time to hear what they are telling me.

You see we have gotten quite good at listening without hearing what the other is saying - it doesn't take effort to listen but it does take effort to hear. I come to Pacem because getting away from the everyday things helps me to not only listen but also to hear. But even here it takes effort to hear. As I read my mind drifts to other places, I highlight or underline key thoughts but then I need to return to them to hear what they are saying, as I pray my mind drifts and I need to refocus to hear that still small voice of God.

So what am I hearing? From Carla I am hearing about the social science side of formation - the role of love as a formation strategy - by loving God and loving others we are becoming. As Carla points out its not the idea of loving God and loving others that is difficult its the praxis of loving. Also, we need to create an authentic, hospital space where we and others can be formed. This is what Jesus did so well.

From John it was tied to the the end of the Gospel where Jesus is entering Jerusalem for the final time - the shouts of joy that so quickly turned to shouts or crucify him. But then you have His resurrection and charge to us to love and serve others.

For God - this one I am still trying to discern. I have been thinking about a new ministry that I will be launching - LRT Ministry (more on this coming soon), working with Prison Fellowship about a new reentry program at Stillwater prison, writing projects, doctoral studies, sermon prep - just a variety of things that I have been sitting on for awhile. For now I encourage you not only to listen but to hear what God is saying to you through whatever mode He chooses to communicate with you.

God Provides

Our God gives you everything you need, makes you everything you're to be. (2 Thessalonians 1:2 MSG)

I came across this verse the other day and I though "That's a relief." You see it is God who provides what we need, note it doesn't say what we want, but what we need. Just as He provided manna for the Israelites in the desert, He will provide for us. Does this mean we can just sit back and wait for the blessing? No!

What does the second part of the verse say? In short is says that He makes you what and who you are suppose to be. You see God has given you a mind to think, passions to pursue, skills to leverage and if you are a believer He has given you a spiritual gift. Your God given abilities, life experiences and learned skills all make you who you are and provide a way for you to get what you need. Not only that, but it gives you the ability to provide for the needs of others. Your spiritual gift is not for you to use for yourself, rather it is given to you for the benefit of others.

God can and does bring unexpected blessing: an unexpected check, a stranger offering to help, a job offer or simply a new relationship. These are all ways God provides for our needs.

What or how has God gifted you to earn a living or benefit others? Have you ever been the recipient of an unexpected blessing? Have you ever responded to a prompting from the Spirit to be the giver of a blessing to someone? If not, you might have to listen a litter closer to that still small voice prompting you to be generous.

Interesting Challenge

While flipping through my Twitter feed I came across this challenge at the web site One Word 365. The challenge is to pick a single word that you will use to "sums up who you want to be or how you want to live or what you want to achieve by the end of 2012."

This past year that word for me would have been "transformation." if you read or want to read my 2011 reflection you will see how this word was applied in my life.

This year the word I am choosing is "integrity." I want to live a life where what I say and believe is mirrored by my actions and deeds. This should include all aspects of my life- time, talents and money.

If you were to let a single word transform you this year what would it be and what would that look like in your life?

Make An Impact in 2012

Don't you see: It's not the cut of a knife that makes a Jew. You become a Jew by who you are. It's the mark of God on your heart, not of a knife on your skin, that makes a Jew. And recognition comes from God, not legalistic critics. (Romans 2:28, 29 MSG)

The passage above points to the idea that is not external actions that God is concerned about. Rather, God is looking for an internal, heart transformation to show that we have have turned to Him. We are all able to put on masks, say the right things and even do what looks right. God sees right through this. When He chose David as king He was not looking at external features as Samuel was, rather God was looking at David's heart.

A transformed heart reflects the internalization, personalization of the head knowledge we have of God. As this new year begins to unfold before you make the effort to grow in your heart knowledge of God. Draw close to Him. Spend time reading the Word, spend time in prayer listening to God's still small voice.

Spend time looking back at what God is teaching you, look though this to see the big picture of what God wants you to do, take a look around where you can join God and finally see what kind of help you might need to accomplish it.

In 2012, step outside your box and make the decision to make a difference for the Kingdom this year. If we all do a little we together (as a community of God's people) can make an impact on our little corner of the world.