Jim Wallis, an evangelical Christian, is a powerful voice in the larger religious community today. He is the author of the best-selling book: God’s Politics. His message is that poverty in this country and in the world is the driving moral issue of our day. He says that “there are two great hungers in the world: spiritual integrity and social justice. What the world is waiting for is the connection between the two. And he concludes with a message to us: “People of faith have to find that connection.”

Spirituality comes out of our lives. For each of us, our sense of the spiritual has emerged from some significant event in our lives. For some, and maybe most of us, the nurture of one’s spiritual side energizes their compassionate response to human needs and their passion for social justice. For others, personal experience and involvement in the injustices of the world is what creates and nurtures a spiritual awareness. Social justice and spirituality are intertwined. They are really two sides of the same coin, and have to be seen as part of a whole.

A personal spirituality without a concern for the needs of others can be self-centered, narcissistic , and only inward-looking: “being”, but not always “doing”. Social justice, on the other hand, without a spiritual foundation can result in frustrated activism, loss of focus and direction, and will last only as long as your energy holds out.

This morning I want to tell the story of how my outward journey into social action led to an inward spirituality. For me the awareness of the “spiritual” in my life came from my connection with other people in the midst of confronting injustice, both personally and in society. These experiences of the injustices of the world is what nurtured a spiritual awakening within me.

| Read the rest of this page …

More Will Be Revealed

A few months ago I agreed to lead a service on this date tentatively titled, “Dark Night of the Soul” and I had collected some poems and passages along the way that I thought might help me form this theme. But when we actually got to the planning stages of developing this service, I felt like I had nothing to say about “Dark Night of the Soul.” In fact, I didn’t have much to say about anything. I was feeling depressed, but it wasn’t a “Dark Night of the Soul” kind of depression. Rather, I felt like a lot was happening inside me but it was best if I didn’t talk about it, resist it, or try to change my mood. It was best if I didn’t try to describe what I was feeling or why I was feeling it. I recognized intuitively that I should refrain from trying to name it and define it and then give a reflection on what it is I had experienced or was presently experiencing. Intuitively, my sense was that I needed to be quiet. I need to let the process unveil itself.

I think all of us go through times when we need to shut down and quiet ourselves because something is happening, growing, changing within us. So instead of giving a reflection on what it is that is spiritually unfolding, I decided all I could really talk about was the process of unfolding, the process of being as still as I can be until more is revealed. And while this thing- this new change or insight (or whatever it is) is in the process of becoming, I have three choices: I can fight it; I can try to force it to unfold faster; or I can trust the process and let more be revealed in the space and time it needs to emerge.

That’s what I’ve been trying to do this time with mixed success: trust the process without analyzing, defining, forcing, fixing, trying to control, manage or steer my internal life and the world around me. That’s what I usually do. I always feel like I have to be in charge of my internal life somehow, that my vigilance will help things along, that I can control the outcome, the pain or lack thereof. This process of change is often uncomfortable and my first reaction is to cut down on the discomfort in whichever way I can. I read books looking for answers, I make lists, I talk about it, I try to manage how I’m feeling, I try to steer my moods, I try to force myself to do things I’m just now ready or able to do. But that’s usually counter productive and doesn’t help the unfolding process.

| Read the rest of this page …

SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED

There’s nothing worse than being both lost and disoriented. I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced that frightening duo but high on the list of things that simply do not go well together have to be the experience of both being lost and disoriented. And if you think about adding another dimension that just makes being lost and disoriented even worse it would be not knowing where the destination is. Not knowing where you are and not knowing where you are going and which direction takes you there, that’s big time lost.

In my view spirituality is all about dealing with this dimension of orientation. Where are we? Where are we going? And what’s the direction to get there?
I recently visited with a dear friend who like all those diagnosed with a terminal illness is living out notice of his last days, months, years. While he has always been a wise man, I find his wisdom bears an added measure of worth as he tacks into the wind of this ultimate challenge. More often now I find pearls in what he says.

We were talking about the mystery of life, this reality, this consciousness that we are caught up in. And he said, “Life, our circumstance, being caught up in life is so mysterious, so vast. Nobody can possibly say they have it figured out, that they have the answer. Nobody knows. So you shouldn’t adopt anyone’s views or what anyone says about the mystery of life. And that includes me and what I have just said.”
I found what my friend said a beautiful word picture, an almost poetic expression of the vastness of this mystery.
We are all caught up in this great mystery, coping with it as best we can. I suppose that one thing all of us have in common is that in our coping we tend to rely on what works for us. All of us have ways of coping with the mystery of life, those that tend to not only help us cope with this predicament of being caught up in this mystery, but those that also consistently help us find joy in being with life. And these are the ways of coping that we strive to rely on more of the time.

| Read the rest of this page …

God in the Ordinary

A couple of weeks ago, I was driving to Harry’s house for a brainstorming session. We hold these sessions about once every 6 weeks to generate new ideas for services, and this particular day, I had nothing. I was completely empty of ideas.

SO on the way to Harry’s, I turned off the radio and I began thinking about the types of topics we typically explore and it occurred to me that what we’re doing many times is examining some aspect of the human condition; those ordinary experiences that touch all of our lives. This thought led to the idea that if I were to go through my day, I would inevitably come across something that resonated with me spiritually, and if I was lucky would inspire a theme for a service.

Now before I share what I discovered in examining my day, I want to clarify what I consider to be a spiritual experience, or the experience of “God”.
Up until now, my idea of what “God” is has been only a feeling that I’ve struggled to verbalize, it’s been more of a picture in my mind.

| Read the rest of this page …

Longing For Home

In the film clip this morning, there were two views of home. The brother and sister experience “home” in very different ways. I will speak of both of these view of home. Every year people ask each other: “Are you going home for Christmas?” And for many of us, that question has a special meaning. Home and Christmas go together. Images of Christmases past evoke memories of a wonderful place and time in our lives. And, in reality, home is a special place - where you feel you belong - you feel safe.

| Read the rest of this page …