Do You Feel the Spirit?

The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. Ezekeil 37.1

I used to teach Art History.  I actually had to explain to my students, my background was in History.  So I would teach my class as a history class with lots of pictures.  Frequently I would teach about the historic events and the prevailing philosophy of the different periods in history. 

When I was teaching about the rise of the empirical method and the loss of mystery in the Age of Enlightenment, I looked for art to display the dialogue that took place.  While the world became more and more tame, Caspar David Friedrich saw the sky, sea, ice, fog, the earth as a place of metaphysically ineffable mystery.  Watching the fog roll as the monk stands on the shore always leaves me with the opportunity to perceive the fog as rolling away to reveal the emerging sky above. Or, sometimes the sky is being swallowed up by the oncoming mist.

Today I was thinking about the Holy Spirit.  We often have internal associations with the way God's spirit works with us. We seek a feeling inside. We yearn for motivation and empowerment from within.  Inspiration, a very personal encounter with the Spirit seems to rise within us.  The prevailing hymns, songs, and talk about the Spirit of God touching us seems to imply the Spirit rises within us.  But I wonder rather than being a Being contained within, the Spirit moves from the outside, moving us along to wider and wider circles of the reign and realm of God?

Certainly experience speaks of the internal work of the Spirit. Even the Apostle Paul defended the view by asserting the Spirit resides within our bodies as in a temple (1 Cor. 6:19). And the way the Spirit intimately understands us seems to imply a deep connection as it even understands our sighs and groans (Rom. 8:26-27). But what about the outer, in the world experiences of God's Spirit?

I was once told (and I like to think it is correct) that Ezekiel 37:1 can be interpreted as "the hand of God was upon me and he cast me into a valley of dry bones."  God does not merely lift, but tosses, Ezekiel.  Might seem a bit violent. But it doesn't sound like God was awaiting motivation, a warm heart, or inspiration, to rise from within Ezekiel. No. God grabbed him.

Interestingly, when the prophet John saw his vision of heaven in the Apocalypse of John, he does not tell us that the Spirit was in him.  Instead, he was in the Spirit.  Which I don't really understand other than to say, the Spirit was somehow outside of John.  Similarly, when the Apostle Philip has had his encounter with the Ethiopian, the Spirit comes from outside him and whisks Philip away to Azotus (Acts 8:39).

The Holy Spirit seems a bit grabby.

Are you looking for the Spirit's work in your life? Looking for the Spirit to give you some direction? I wonder if we have been looking in the rightplaces? Could the movement of the Spirit be outside us?

Heads up! Look around, the Holy Spirit is out there.

Livable Liturgies: Routines are Easy, Routines are Hard

“he got down on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he had done previously”

If it wasn’t for my spiritual director’s collar, she would have face planted in the gutter. Fortunately, the collar was attached to the leash – oh yeah, remember, my spiritual director is my dog.  This morning while on our routine walk the sidewalks were icy.

This morning would have been a reasonable morning to skip our walk. The morning light was dispersed by freezing fog looking as if dawn was stalled and needed a push. But the routine had to go on. That is one of the reasons I wanted a dog, to remind me of the routines that I need to be committed to whether I wanted to or not.

In some ways, routines are easy. The habitual rehearsal of that which took place the day before, the season before, the year before. I know what to do and where to go – and usually I know why.

Routines are Easy

Routines have a goal. They are headed somewhere. Routines are about routes, pathways, the beaten path. The beaten path where the grass lays down, the rocks smoothed by friction, where the way is clear. These routines, these pathways are easy. The resistance is not from the route, but whether or not to get started and to keep walking.

My morning routine: first, get some coffee, quietly. Second, sit in my comfy chair and read my morning devotions. Third get more coffee, maybe some oatmeal. Read and think. More coffee. Sit. Pray. More coffee. Get lunches packed and send my wife and son off to school. Every morning, more or less, this routine centers my day. I find often that when the routine is broken, I feel off center.

Routines are Hard

In the morning as I practice my routine walk, geese fly overhead. Nearly every morning. Don’t know where they’re headed, or where they came from. What did they do all through the night? And where?

But when the sun’s light is at the goose-alarm-clock angle, they stir and they fly over. Some land in alfalfa fields nearby, some in the river, or suburban ponds. Every day, like clockwork, set by the daily rhythms of the sun. It doesn’t seem to matter what the weather is like, but the geese are dedicated. Watching a goose flopping its big flipper-feet one step at a time to break the ice, swimming and nibbling on the grass below. That poor bird must have been at least a little bit chilly.

Sometimes routines are hard to stay with. Bright, shiny, new things can catch our attention and distract us. I am easily side-tracked. Daily tasks, picking up things, cleaning the kitchen, playing with the dog; reading emails and magazines and books and blogs; sometimes just wanting to nap or hit snooze on the alarm. Other times the challenge comes from opposition: budget woes and unemployment, depression and lethargy, doubt and unanswered questions.

Routines are hard. The word route comes from the Latin “rupta”, or to rupture. Sometimes sticking to routine is hard and requires breaking through something: ice, drowsiness, distractions, disappointments.

Routines are Easy and Routines are Hard

Livable Liturgies: Winter

I’ve had friends and acquaintances who reside in the great Down Under: New Zealand and Australia. Thinking about Christmas with Santa wearing shorts and coming in on a surfboard has never been an easy to imagine. Advent is about awaiting the Savior’s birth in the “bleak mid-winter” not the bright sunshine.

But as I take in the beauty of the late fall and the early winter in the northern hemisphere I feel a longing to see the land of my southern friends, especially on the days my fingers go numb from the cold snow I’ve been shoveling from the front walk. While I am aware of the trappings of the season all around from tales of magical sugar plums and sacred angels, the season of waiting, Advent, places a certain holy dissonance in my outlook. Waiting implies patience, the result of hope-filled endurance, arising from the awareness that the present is still lacking something essential. So we wait.

As the Apostle Paul puts it, "we groan inwardly" in the time of waiting, a waiting that Paul says includes all of nature waiting with eager longing the birth of a new era (Rom 8).  We, and creation, groaning and waiting go together. But so does hoping and waiting. As we wait for God to bring a new dawn each morning, we trust in God to bring the new era of "peace on earth".

Though we hope, we can still groan. Almost like passenger weary of travel asking, "Are we there yet?"

We hope by looking forward. We remember the previous graces and become open to receiving them again, fresh and new, but familiar. I await the green-leafed shade trees turning shades of red and gold and look forward to the crunching of leaves. I love late fall trees stripped and waiting, snow sleet, cold rain forcing us inside with coffee and tea and sweaters seeking warmth. Each season, I wait, and hope for the next.

In the heat of summer and the exorbitant air conditioning bills,

I long for the coolness of the fall.

In the barren-branched, steel grey skies of fall with dampness and mud,

I long the clean white blanket of winter’s snow.

In the frigid, shortened days of winter’s darkness

I look for the new sprouts and blossoms of spring.

In the abundance of pollen and blooms my allergies and sneezing longs for the hot, bright days of summer’s searing sun.

I begin to look forward to fall’s steel-grey skies.

Always seeking that which is to come, in faith and hope, we:

Worship God in the sacrament of the present abundance of available grace. Worship God in the restless impatience, trusting that God who has yet more in store. Worship God with grateful hands open and head held back receiving sun, wind, rain, and snow. Worship God with wrinkled forehead and closed eyes seeing by faith and not by sight what wonders are yet to come. Worship God in the grace-filled now and in the impatient hope of what is yet to come.

Liveable Liturgies

“‘’Last night, I went shopping for food for my spiritual director, who is my dog.’’ The Rev Matthew Fox (Orlando Sentinel, 11/5/88)”

Over the course of the last several months, I have noticed the routine behaviors I carry out. Many of them are daily, and most all of them are mundane and filled with potential for vacuous meaninglessness. So I need to wake up and seek the patterns God is tracing in the daily routines.

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For several reasons, I have wanted a dog. Our blessed Neenah, pictured above, was in our family for fourteen years. She peacefully journeyed with us from our home in Pennsylvania, to Kansas, then to Idaho. She loved snuggling, chasing my fishing lures into the water, becoming a dripping mess at her water bowl, and loving people. She was an extrovert. And a protector, barking a fearlessly at shadowy silhouettes in the distance and scary looking doll hair underneath our daughter's blankets. She barked once at our mailman, Leroy, but then they became best friends. 

Clerical collar of Spiritual Director Neenah

Once when I heard Rev.Matthew Fox speak, I heard him refer to his spiritual director. All of us engaged in spiritual direction ministry should have a spiritual director with whom we meet regularly. But Rev Fox went on to explain that he takes his spiritual director for walks and is a dog. That made all the sense in the world to me. When Neenah and I walked, I was either lost in the thoughts of my own head, in quiet prayer, or talking to her. And when my mind drifted too far away, she would do something to bring me back to earth and attend to this world and to her. The twice daily walks were a dynamic dialectic between spiritual reflection on divine things and concerns and making sure she pooped in the right place (as well as other earthly concerns like fetch and scratching her belly.)

Clerical collar of Spiritual Director Mika

Now I have a new spiritual director, Mika. I am not sure what to expect. I assume she will have the same tendency to tie me to earthly matters. The dialectical pull between holy meditation and teaching her to poop outside; the pull between, "I need to type one more page", "No lick, no chew, no jump"; between those times when God feels distant and God sends a bundle of fur with a wagging tail and ball. 

Mika, at 12 weeks

The need for daily attentiveness, being awake and awakened, these are the things which make for life. And while most people are fine doing these things on their own, I guess I need a dog to help me with that.