What Will You Do?

from Waking The Dead

So, let me ask again: How would you live differently, if you believed your heart was the treasure of the kingdom?

What does your heart need? In some sense it’s a personal question, unique to our make-up, and what brings us life. For some its music, for others its reading, for others they must garden. Our friend Lori loves the city; I can’t wait to get out of one. Bart reads articles on flying; Cherie loves a good novel. Bethann loves horses and Gary needs time working in the woodshop. You know what makes your heart refreshed, the things that make you come alive. I don’t get the thing with women and baths, but I know that Stasi loves them and finds a little retreat in a fifteen minute tub. “He leads me to soak in still, bubbly waters.” For me and the boys its the dirtier, the happier.

Yet there are some things all hearts need in common. We need beauty; that’s clear enough from the fact that God has filled the world with it, as he has given us sun and rain,

Wine that gladdens the heart of man,
Oil to make his face shine,
And bread that sustains his heart. (Psalm 104:15)

We need to drink in beauty wherever we can get it – in music, in nature, in art, in a great meal shared. These are all gifts to us from God’s generous heart. Friends, those things are not decorations to a life; they are what brings us life.

The skies of blue
The fields of green
Are all for you

The silver moon
The shining sea
All for you

For you, the wind blows
For you, the river flows

And everything you dream about
Even the love you dream of, too,
Is all for you. (John Smith & Lisa Aschman, “All for You”)

I don’t think I could have finished this book if it weren’t for the walks I take each day in the woods. My soul is tired, bone tired. The battle has been long and hard. Last night it began to snow. It is still snowing now. It, too, is a gift to my heart.

(from Waking The Dead, 214, 215 )

 

Nouns and Verbs

Of the Christian life, Brennan Manning once said that we are not travel agents handing out brochures to places we’ve never been. We should not be about pushing people toward a kind of life that we are not yet living.  We are living a life that should be — or at least should become — compelling in and of itself, enough that someone taking notice might ask what it is we are holding to (see 1 Peter 3:15).  Not that it should be in itself the reason we are living it, that others would take notice.  Nope, the Christian life is meant to become the most un-self-conscious kind of life available, natural, easy, organic and fluid.  Life as it was meant to be (as much as possible in the part of the story we are in, this side of the return of Christ) and our character being formed as it was meant to be.

Early on in my life with God I would become really distressed, even frantic, over the bits and pieces of myself I didn’t like and all that I wanted to become. I was intrigued and taken by the possibilities that lay before me, and was scared that I would be left behind.  I wanted to become passionate.  I wanted to become a healer and one who lived the truth out before others.  I wanted to be done with some stupid habits and immaturity.  I wanted to offer life.

Pretty soon, my wife started telling me, “Stop trying so hard to become, and just be.”  Somehow, that spoke pretty deeply to me, giving me permission to rest a bit and not try so hard.  To start enjoying living the kind of life I bumped into rather than trying so hard to offer it.  I could enjoy being enjoyed, right where I was, by a God so passionate for me.  I could enjoy having the resources of the Kingdom at hand — community and friendship, truth about life that finally made sense that brought fragmented pieces of my own story together, taking in sights that I never could see before but always felt like must be there somehow.  A heart that was beginning to beat again.

Over the years, I’ve come to understand life with God to be about both being and becoming. We really do get the best of both worlds: intimacy with a God who is fascinated and fascinating and the chance to grow into a kind of man or woman that we only dare imagine possible.  For me, that is a man of deep heart and faith, bold, full of a consistent joy toward life and love toward Jesus, competent and strong and life-giving.  The first counts us as worthy because of Jesus’ worth; the second grows us up into that worth, like a kid fitting into his daddy’s cowboy boots.  The first is the adventure of knowing and walking with God, of being His companion — a state, an identity, a noun; the second, the risky business of letting the Spirit temper and heal and develop us into the thing that is most alive, to form the image of God in us — an active, moving, following thing — a verb.  The first is the chance of an intimate adventure beyond our imaging and one we’ve been looking for all our days; the second is chance to grow into a character that can handle that kind of life and that depth of living.  The first is to experience the Kingdom; the second, to extend it through an allied partnership with the God we’ve come to befriend and trust intuitively.

It’s not always pretty, this kind of life.  Good grief, I think much of what I see in friends around me and in myself is a kind of cleaning out and exposing of the wounds and brokenness that prevent us from taking on that life.  But the result, and the journey along the way, is worthy it.  It’s worth it.  I am more today like the heart of God, with a greater capacity to both experience and express it.  My joy is in being that man, and my hope is in becoming even more so.

 

Apprentice Training

When we moved into our home a few years ago, we turned one of the spare bedrooms into an office.  Bookshelves line the far wall of the room, and sandwiched between two of them, right in the middle of the wall, sits a large desk.  It’s a simple one, with only a flat writing surface and some shelves beneath, nothing to block the view from the window right above it that looks out onto the street.  So not the best view in the world, but it does, at least allow for natural light and the view of an occasional bird or two and a small bit of the weeping willow in the front yard.

It used to, anyway.  The desk is now overflowing with scribbled notes, used manila folders, piles of books and notepads and journals.  Even the office chair will, on occasion, serve as an overflow, and more often than not now we’ll have to move stacks off of it to the floor in order to sit down to the computer, which also has as its residence the overpopulated desk.

When I started grad school two and a half years ago, I did pretty well keeping organized.  Everything had its place.  After each semester, I would place papers, folders, books, notes, and the like in a particular location, usually in a reserved spot on a bookshelf.  And my brain, too, would feel nicely organized.  Categorized, even.  Statistics and Research here.  Family Therapy there.  Human Growth and Development in another spot.  Marital Therapy in yet another.  None of that lasted long, though, and several spaces in my life are now simply flooding over.

Let me say something at this point about my field.  Marriage and Family Therapy is a really unique profession for several reasons.  For one, there are an endless number of problems folks can be having internally or in relationship to someone else for which they are seeking help.  Second, there are an endless number of  approaches to helping folks with these problems.  Third, how the problem manifests itself or seems to exist for one person may be totally different than for someone else, based on their unique personhood and experiences.  Many therapists will work in one of (you guessed it) an endless number of specializations.  Fourth, there are a seemingly endless supply of helpful resources, some of them written by wise and experienced healers and helpers, from which a therapist fresh in the field like myself can glean.  Fifth…. well, you get the picture.  Lots of possibilities.

One of the most exciting things about my present situations is that as an intern I am exploring these possibilities by working with a large number of different issues, and exploring a few different tried-and-true approaches to treating some of these unique problems.  (Even focusing on “problems” reveals a kind of approach, and not every approach focuses on problems.)  It’s been nearly a year now that I’ve been seeing patients, and I can still say that at least once a week I encounter something I have never seen before.  That’s another unique aspect of the profession.  I am constantly kept on my toes and forced to be not only humble in learning and creative in trying, but also deeply dependent upon walking with God.

Now maybe my stacks of books and mile-long Amazon wish list make a bit more sense.  I find myself often living out of the urgent: I must learn about this; I must be ready for that; I must be able to work well with this… It can be quite exhausting.  By the end of a work week my brain often feels like Malt-O-Meal: mushy and expanding, running out of my ears.

I’ve been searching for awhile for another perspective on all of this, a way to understand both what I am doing and what I need to do as I prepare, as my hands are “trained for battle,” as David put it in the Psalms (18:34).  This morning, I finally got a glimpse of a picture simple enough to work for me (and so simple that it was easily missed).

It’s from Jesus.  I mean, of course it is — God gave this picture to me this morning — but I mean that the words come right from His mouth, in Matthew 13:52.  He says this: “Then you see how every student well-trained in God’s kingdom is like the owner of a general store who can put his hands on anything you need, old or new, exactly when you need it” (The Message).

There it is.  It’s a simple thought, really, but there’s a lot there.  We get to be students of Jesus, trained in living life that is truly life, and who has these treasures stored up within our deep hearts, able to pull out what’s needed when it’s needed.  These treasures may be encouragement, exortation, caution, teaching, compassion, empathy, direction, clarity, meaning, joining with someone in the mess of their life — all these things.  More importantly, though, and more to the point of life in the Kingdom, I think these treasures have to do with presence, with the weight of our lives impacting someone else.  I think the treasures are, simply put, our hearts, and the grace to join in relationship with someone else from the heart.

One of the pitfalls of my graduate training is that, in focusing on theories of counseling and techniques of therapy developed over the decades by hundreds (literally) of practicioners, we begin to think, even subtly, that for every person, every issue, every broken place, every event, we have to have an answer, a fix, a solution.  Especially in the culture we’re in, where microwavable meals are ready in minutes, technology changes quickly, and medical advances allow for restoration of physical injuries and illnesses that would have spelled disaster even just a few years ago.

But that’s not the invitation of Jesus.  That’s not His way.  Think of it.  He could have handed us a playbook on day one, a set of principles and techniques to live out in every circumstance of life (though, admittedly, it would be quite a thick volume).  He chose instead of give us one, and leave out libraries worth (John the Beloved may have been expressing some of the frustration at leaving out so much — see John 21:25).  And the book He left us with is chock full of one repeating, alluring, frightening intrigue:  relationship.  Covenant.  Friendship.  Intimacy.  Connection.  Like it or not, that’s His desire with us.

And it makes sense.  I can’t imagine how disappoined we’d be if when we were young our father handed us some notes and said, “Son (or daughter), here is everything I know concerning anything you’ll run into over the next 10 years.  Inside are all the instructions that I want you to carry out and everything I want you to do, including where you are to be 10 years from now when I’ll come back and see how you’ve done.”  Forget that.  No way.  That’s slavery, not intimacy.  Rather, for those of us who had good fathers (and for those of us who didn’t, think of what you would’ve wanted with your father), we were invited into relationship… he taught us how to bait a hook, how to ride a bike, how to count money, what to do when you like a girl (or, for daughters, how boys only “want one thing” at that age), and how much he delights in us, how proud he is of how we’re doing.  We need counsel — we go to him.  We get hurt, we need his affection.  We get an applause at our school play, and we look for his face in the crowd.  With him we learn to walk, we wrestle, we feel his strong protection, we grow up to be like him.  Eventually, we share a beer and a steak with him and talk about politics and local happenings.  We share life together.  That’s the ideal, anyway.

That’s a picture of what we’re invited into with God.  He wants that with us, and more.

Jesus’ mission is one of healing and restoration, right?  It’s a ministry He laid out in Isaiah 61, that He announced in Luke 4:18-19, and that He comissioned for us to carry on — see Luke 10:19, Mark 16:15-18, John 16:8-15, Matthew 28:18-20.  He isn’t interested only in this work getting done; He’s interested also in joining us while we do it — or us joining Him while He does, as it’s probably better said.  This is the kind of work happening in the Christian counseling office.  He in no way intends to give us every technique we need.  That would rip us off from the relationship.  Instead, we get to walk with Him, hear Him, let Him lead and teach us — like a good father would!

In the context of that relationship, and the relationship-of-the-heart we offer one another, there will necessarily be healing and restoration taking place.  But it’s always, always, in that context.  That’s the way the Kingdom works.  It is a partnership — us with God and (because of His generosity), us with one another.  Understanding human nature, its corruption and disconnection, processes of restoring it back to health and wholeness, and techniques that lead to that — these are important, and crucial, in my opinion, for the Christian therapist to understand and implement in constantly growing clarity and skill.  But they are not a replacement for that really scary invitation to walk with the Lord Jesus, move with the Spirit of God, and know the heart of the Father.

I’ve got a few more months of grad school to complete.  There’s more to learn — more books to read, people to glean wisdom from, notes to take, documents and articles and ideas to work through.  I suspect there always will be — and I certainly hope that to be the case.  I’m sure I’ll be moving more piles around and trying to organize all the information.  But the important thing is not on the theory.  It’s not on the principles.  It’s not the formulaic approach to life.  The treasure is God, relationship with Him, and our hearts restored to the capacity to enjoy Him.  Forever.  To the extent that we can live in and offer that, whatever our profession, then we are learning to live well and easy in the Kingdom come.  Most of my core training in the Kindom comes from learning to hear the voice of the Lord God, to submit to Him, to allow Him to work in me, to join Him from the heart, and to be transformed.  Only from that Center will any of the rest find its rightful place.

 

Return of the King’s

Another disciple said to him, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” But Jesus told him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.”
-Matthew 8:21-22 

Being in grad school can be pretty demanding, as can any number of things we engage in with our lives — marriage and kids, ministry, jobs, a crisis here or there, sickness, and a million other things.  The demands of life simply take their toll.

I’ve had some unexpected openings with my time recently.  I’m still in school, but my schedule has shifted a bit and freed me up a little bit through the day, creating some breathing room I haven’t had in quite awhile.  Not much, but enough that I’ve had time to slow down a bit.  There’s that, and there’s the space I’m beginning to make for my heart again, time to reconnect with the deeper places in me, and time to reconnect with God.

The trouble is, I’m so used to the whirlwind of busyness that when I try to slow down or when I have some down time, I can’t seem to sit still.  When I try to quiet my mind and heart, to try to listen to the voice of the Lord speaking to me, all I too often seem to get is the rising anxiety about what I should be doing, or the worry about tomorrow’s activities, or the unsettled restlessness of things in my life.  Me, me, me.  Though I’m involved in a lot of beautiful things that are bigger than me, when I slow down the vertigo-of-soul seems to indicate that in too many ways I’ve become the center of my own story.  I’ve become stuck in an orbit around myself.

I decided today that the only recourse I have is… well, is to realize I have no recourse.  I have no internal resources that can save me from this vortex of ontological lightness, as theologians call it.  If I am to follow Jesus again deeply, it must begin with Him coming into and speaking into this tornadic mess inside my heart.  Otherwise, I’m unsure where to go with my attention and energy.  My  mind only comes up with a few different places I could go — mostly either dead-end roads of boredom, distraction, or worry, as I’ve mentioned, or worse — dark corners and alleys that have crept into my heart as I’ve shied away from the Light of Life.

So, with no internal resources to rely on, I’m dropping it all and running to Jesus.  And this is what I pray:

Please meet me here, Lord God.  Spirit of the Living, God, I remember that You want to commune with me even more — far more — than I want to with You.  I don’t want distraction.  I don’t want the distance of worry and inattention.  I don’t want comfort.  And I must not wait to bury my father, to wait until all is fixed and well before taking off again with You into the deep.  I don’t want th eless wild offers of this world or of the Father of Lies.  I want You.  Jesus, I want you.  Everything else is dung compared with that — for you are the Pearl of Great Price.  I hunger for You.  My soul thirsts for the Living God.

Where may He be found?  Who can ascend His hill?  Praise be to my God, who has given us clean hands and pure hearts, that we might walk with the Living God, learn of His ways, be trained as master horseman with his steeds, be loved as a bride on the bed.  We are Yours, O Lover, we are Yours, for you have first loved us.  Jesus, you are our King and Suitor.  And I am your man.

 

Restless for Rest

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything, though I had intention to continue some thoughts on the Christmas theme I began some time ago.  I actually had a lot of ideas of what this Christmas season would bring, what I wanted to do.  (Hiking and writing were among the top, as was spending lots and lots of time with people I love.)  Some ideas came to fruition; others did not.  What I did not anticipate was the amount of rest I needed and the amount of rest that, by the grace of God, I found.

My life over the past six months or so has been a confusing mix of both exciting new vistas into a ministry I’ve desired to enter into for many years and the weathering effects of hour upon weary hour spent in preparation for it.

So I slept.  A lot.  For the last two weeks, that’s mostly what I’ve done.  I slept in.  I took naps.  And when I was up, I tried not to plan anything or even wander too far from the house, in case I wanted to lay down again.  I wasn’t depressed — nothing like that at all.  Just… worn out.  Exhausted.

It’s easy to forget the effects that tiredness has upon a life.  It’s not just a weariness of body, but one of soul, and it shows itself in my interactions with others that turn more superficial as I don’t have energy for the deeper reality, in my distance from God and even my own inner life (that part that is “hidden with Christ” — desires, hopes, fears, dreams, etc.), and in the sloppy way I end up completing things before me.  My intention is good, but eventually, something has to give, as I simply lack the energy to follow through.

We’re horrible at this in our culture.  Whatever the reasons — a sense of identity, distraction from existential meaninglessness, a misunderstood idea of purpose — the people I know tend to pile things on and stuff their calendars full of all kinds of things.  Busyness is the name of the game.  How often do you hear “Oh, I am so busy” in response to the question “How have you been?”  It’s usually said with a sense of pride and accomplishment, a mark of achievement, a sign that they’ve really gotten somewhere.  Jesus always seemed to move in the opposite direction than that in the gospels, always toward freedom and spontaneity and intimate time alone with his Father both for its own sake and so that he could enter deeply into the heart of the people he came across.  His time was always spent meaningfully, not busily.

And I’m always amazed at the difference rest makes, and how vital it is to my life.  I can see that again, this side of the last couple of weeks.  I awoke this morning early, severely early if you compare it to the mornings I’ve been able to sleep in, and felt re-energized and ready for the day ahead, even for the week ahead.  I was drawn to open the Scriptures to Hebrews, where I read about this needed rest we are to take (Hebrews 4).  Now I know when you read that chapter and the one before it, you get the sense that the author there is referring to “rest” as a kind of state of being that is opposite to the unbelief that the Israelities demonstrated in the wilderness with Moses.  It’s a kind of resting in Christ.  But isn’t that what I’m referring to anyway?  A state in which I am at rest and able to continually be at rest even as I’m fully awake and moving about in the world?

Besides that, entering into relational intimacy with God through Christ (what the author of Hebrews is in part referring to when using the word “rest”) does go hand in hand with resting from work, since this is what God did after his work of creation.  “There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his” (Hebrews 4:9-10).  This is hinted to in the idea of restoration, a renewal of all things back into what they were intended to be.  Rest is a very holy thing.

For now, rested, and resting, I’m ready to get back into the swing of things, to enter again into the arena, knowing that soon I’ll need to take time away and regain my strength and sense of identity in God once more.  Resting is part of the cadence and rhythm of the life we’re meant to live.  The spiritual life is a lot like our physical health.  You can never get so healthy that you never need to eat again.

I just hope I can remember that before I get to the point of exhaustion this time.

 

In-Tension

The disciples did not understand any of this.
-Luke 18:34

The journey we’re on with Christ is one of great tension, of what can at times feel like a balancing act,  tug-of-war between two opposing forces and we are tight-roping the taut rope between, trying at times with all our might not to lose our balance.

But knocking us off balance seems like a favorite thing for Jesus to do.  And He seems very intentional about it.

What confounded the disciples was not that Jesus was laying out a black-and-white picture of something, a heaven-vs.-hell, and asking them to choose between the two.  He did that at times, for sure, but typically not to those already with Him.  No.  If you notice, the disciples were always confounded whenever they encountered something about Jesus and something about the Kingdom they did not understand, and perhaps did not want to understand, because it would require so much more from them (see, for example, John 12:15-17, Luke 18:31-34, Mark 9:14-29, John 9:1-3, John 4:27-33).

It was as if Jesus was wanting to open their eyes to see more of reality, to be able to take it all in.  It was as if He was expanding their hearts even as He was blowing their minds.  He was taking them by the hand and walking them into the “life that is truly life” (1 Timothy 6:19).

If we are not expecting to be confounded by Jesus when we encounter Him, if we are not anticipating our small-minded and lop-sided pursuits to be blown to bits, if we are not ready to hear what may frighten us or confuse us, we will never be able to hear the Lord God speak to us.  It was the Pharisees, not the disciples of the Living God, who needed everything to be perfectly clear and straightforward and predictable.

Let me offer an example from my life.  I have a sincere desire to love a brother of mine who is addicted to all sorts of things, making a mess of his life, and hurting a lot of other people along the way — wife, kids, family, friends.  But my desire to love this man is clouded by my anger about his actions, about where he’s taking his life.  To love him feels like being inauthentic with my own ambivalence toward him; but to embrace my hatred of his sin only is to become unavailable to love at all.

So Jesus speaks to me.  I know what I am to do.  I am to act toward him (to show in my actions) authentic love — love that calls him out to become the man he was born to be, all the while embracing in felt affection the screwed-up man he sees each day in the mirror.  In other words, I am to love him where he’s at, but not let my love for him stop there.  But these two actions feel almost contradictory to each other. Paradoxes of love. I’ve heard that God “loves us where we are but loves us too much to keep us there.” How? I know that to be true, and yet to live in the tension of that love is to expose your heart to forces fierce enough to break it.

But once again, humility begs me to confess that I’m the student in this.  If the Teacher goes there and beckons me on with Him, even if I don’t get this… well, then, I want to go there as well, whatever the consequences, for this is true life. There is life to be found in following Him — even in this — and nowhere else.  It’s like Thomas.  When Jesus announced He was going back to Judea (straight into the den of lions, so-to-speak) out of love for His friend Lazarus, Thomas chose to go with Jesus even if it meant his own death (John 11:7-16).  We must choose to go with Him as well, whatever the cost.

(Jesus’ love of Lazarus was a similar kind of tension, actually. Lazarus was dead, and Jesus came to him and wept for the loss. Yet He didn’t leave Lazarus there. His love for him brought him out of the tomb.)

So this is living in-tension-ally, to be comfortable with the discomfort and content with the discontent.  We somehow have to be okay with things not being okay, all the while trusting in the One who is out to set everything right again.  In this tension, we have to at some point come to see that Jesus is out for our good, to expand our hearts so that we may have the capacity for Him to dwell there in all His glory.

All good love — love between lovers or for a friend, love of freedom or a cause, love for life and love for God — all of these will require that we live somewhere between the Fall and the Redemption.  Our God is fully alive in this tension.  We are told to “consider Him who endured such opposition” so that we do not grow weary along the way and totally lose heart (Hebrews 12:3).  There is a way of living that allows us to make it through this world without getting torn to shreds.  Let’s find it.

 

Returning to Silence

I’m coming again to revisit this earlier post, included below, from From the Silence, Speak, and more, the wisdom of the silence recommended by it, the contemplative prayer urged by encountering silence.

I am wearied by a lot of talk — my own, especially. There is a lot of it these days all around.  I’m finding that when I go to God, I fill our time with a lot of speaking — moreso than listening.  Syrian monk Isaac of Nineveh once observed that “those who delight in a multitude of words, even though they say admirable things, are empty within.”

A post on silence is ironic, since a blog is, by its very nature, a medium of communicating by words. Richard Foster says that we now have the “dubious distinction of being able [by way of our technology] to communicate more and say less than any civilization in history.”

Still, we must be drawn into the stillness and shown the power of it.  Saint Anthony wrote that, “I have shown you the power of silence, how thoroughly it heals and how fully pleasing it is to God… Know that it is by the silence that the saints grew, that it was because of silence that the power of God dwelt in them, because of silence that the mysteries of God were known to them.”

Be still, we are told, and experience God.

In repentance and rest is your salvation.  In quietness and trust is your strength. — Isaiah 30:15.

I forgot the wisdom
of the poem is silent wisdom,
the space between letter
and letter.

-from I Forgot by Arnon Levy

Max Picard in The World of Silence says of the Hebrew language that its architecture is vertical. “Each word sinks down vertically column-wise into the sentence. In languages today we have lost the static quality of the ancient tongues. The sentences become dynamic.” His next statement is a piercing metaphor for most of our lives today, “Every word and every sentence speeds on quickly to the next. Each word comes more from the preceding word than from the silence, and moves on more to the next word in front of it than to the silence…”

The same could be said of our lives. The same could also be said too often of those who speak for or to us, our pastors, our talk-show hosts, our news anchors, our politicians.

In the recent elections, how do we know who is who? Who stands where? How do we know when all we hear in the media is what this one says about that and what this one thinks about that one. Everyone speaks, and everyone speaks loudly, clamoring for attention and votes, and so no one is heard. It is like the clanking and clattering of dishes shattering on the floor of a restaurant by an overwhelmed waiter spilling his server tray that deafens friends, even if temporarily, to the conversation they went there to seek. Why is it that a quiet beachfront picnic or an evening over candlelight is more romantic for two in love than a night out at a carnival or a club? It is because there is silence, and in that silence each can hear the heartbeat of the other.

No wonder God often speaks in a whisper, and that in the deafening crowd of the streets no one will hear Him (Matthew 12:19).

Henry David Thoreau said it well. The more we are deafened by the drone and buzz of the noise around us, “we go more constantly and desperately to the post office [or to check our email],” but “the poor fellow who walks away with the greatest number of letters, proud of his extensive correspondence, has not heard from himself this long while…. Read not The Times,” he finishes, “read The Eternities!” Dallas Willard summarizes Thoreau’s thoughts by stating that “conversation degenerates into mere gossip and those we meet can only talk of what they heard from someone else.” While I’m not sure I wholeheartedly agree with Eleanor Roosevelt’s thought that “great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people,” it is true that the mind and the heart itself withers by the constant sounds around and eventually almost entirely disappears, swallowed up by the life, or what we perceive as life, happening in a maddening speed around us.

James warned us to be slow to speak (James 1:19), and I think this is why. It must be from the silence and what we encounter there that words are formed in us – the tragedy of that silence and the weight of it, and the comedy that ensues when we actually hear from God, and the jaw-dropping, heart-stopping reality of what it is He actually tells us.

The Israeli poet Yona Wallach wrote to “Let the words work on you… they’ll enter you, they’ll come inside… let the words act on you, do with you as they wish.” We would do well to remember that is was out of the Word that Jesus came to dwell among us (John 1:1), a Word that the world didn’t recognize (John 1:10).

And how could it? The days of Jesus were tumultuous ones, no less so than in our present Western, modernistic society. It was only those willing to be done with the grasping to be heard and actually walk with Jesus who would later have the authority to speak, whose words would echo and reverberate from the empty hearts of millions that would follow in the centuries to come. No wonder the Psalmist tells us to “be still and know that I am God” (46:10), using for the word “still” one that means to sink down, to leave alone, to withdraw.

Last week God brought me to Mort Walker trail, a path that meanders through some woodlands in a conservation area not far from where I work. While there, I wrote this in my journal:

I am seeking the presence of the Father more immediate and intimate than I normally experience day-to-day within the noise and busyness of life. It’s in the silence that I am given “ears to hear,” as I have asked Jesus to give me, and the solitude beckons me into the secret place with Him. It always has.

I feel like He had this prepared for me like a secret picnic, a “table prepared for me in the presence of my enemies.” And here, in the deepest gratitude, surrounded by groaning creation as a reminder of what is to come – the feast of the wedding day – I eat. I dine. I linger here with the Wild Lover who wants me not to have him but to be haved by Him, who desires not that I possess but that I be possessed – with Him, with His life – and insobeing remain in Him and He in me.

If I am to speak, then it will be from that place and from that place alone. For it is the place of love, and the Source and Fount of my life.

Maybe I should try the discipline my friend Kendall used.

Read more in Creating Space and The Silence and the Fury.