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Sunday, November 27, 2011
Friday, November 18, 2011
What Is Spiritual? (Part 6): Listen and Obey
The implication for spiritual practice of the God-in-here instead of God-out-there view turns a lot of familiar spiritual practice on its head. Instead of religious performance designed to get to, or to please God, we simply quiet ourselves and listen for the indwelling Presence of the Divine within us.
In my own spiritual community, once we went through this shift, we developed a simple strategy for the soul-journey. We call it the "listen-obey" strategy. It's simple. We embrace the ancient practices of soul-quieting so we are more able to discern the Inner Divine Voice, and then we simply respond to the promptings and nudges that we discern.
There is tremendous body of thought and writing about how one sensitizes one's self to the Inner Voice. We have a rich tradition of reading and reflecting on sacred texts, soul-quieting meditation (called in the Christian tradition, lectio divina), bringing a listening posture to our daily experience of nature, people, circumstances. These are all ways that help us listening for and discern the internal promptings of the Divine Spirit. Also, we engage in spiritual friendships, talking with trusted and trusting spiritual friends about our experience of the Inner Voice. These practices inform the rich tradition of reflective prayer, and a receptive, listening posture to our days.
When we embrace the idea that God indwells our deepest, truest center, our spiritual practices focus on listening intently for our Inner Voice, for the Divine from within. The purpose of our spiritual practices, our spiritual disciplines, becomes to awaken us to our truest selves - our God-and-us-in-union selves.
In my own Christian tradition, a couple of historical factors work against us embracing the contemplative spiritual practices. First, there was a Schism between the Eastern Church and the Western, sometime between AD 300 and AD 1054. The Western Church became associated with the government and the worldview of Rome, a decidedly cognitive and cerebral environment, so our spirituality tilted in a decidedly cognitive direction. Second, the Western Church is the offspring of the Enlightenment, another force for rationalism and cognitive spirituality. Consequently, we in the Western Church have done a lot of "studying," a lot of "learning," a lot of "doing stuff" in our spiritual pursuits. These two associations have made the soul-quieting spiritual practices that the Eastern Church maintained seem irrelevant.
The spirituality of the Inner Voice, the spirituality of the Indwelling Presence of God, restores to us spiritual practices that we abandoned in the pursuit of the cognitive way. Christian people have long taught that the Spirit of God indwells us, but we haven't given full weight to the practices and spiritual disciplines, that would help us engage that Spirit by seeking within.
In the awakening before us, I suggest that we Christians will find life and freedom for our souls, as we restore the practices and disciplines of our contemplative roots.
[NOTE: Google the term "Contemplative Outreach" for resources in pursuing a contemplative Christian spirituality.]
Friday, November 11, 2011
Champions of Change: Make It in America
Champion of Change event honors ordinary Americans who are doing extraordinary things in their communities to out innovate, out educate, and out build the rest of the world. November 3, 2011.
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