A Spiritual Rant or How I Talk With God

If you will allow me to rant a little, here goes:

 I get so sick and tired of all the endless posturing and religious arrogance Christians perpetrate against each other in the name of God.

As for me, I have no one left to impress and nothing left to prove. I'm in God's hands.

So when you've got a sword at the base of your neck, what does it matter? Do all the differences of our faith matter? Did Jesus die only for the Catholics, or the Orthodox, or the Pentecostals? Does Jesus only respond to a proper Eucharist, or does he  respond to our faith, our lives flung on his grace and mercy?.

Over the years, I've been excluded by the all-inclusive and the fundamentally exclusive, but never by Jesus.  So I'm with Jesus. I include anybody or group He includes.

What blows me away is that "If we are faithless, he remains faithful for he can't deny himself." This whole Christian life,  It doesn't depend on you, or on me. We GET to enter into the divine dance.  I think of the song: In Christ Alone.

For me, my time is short, and all the spiritual rabbit trails, theologies, and  just plain nonsense I've fought and quibbled over the years are lost in the face of Jesus. He takes up my whole attention. He is becoming more and more the object of my love, my affections and my actions in this world. For me, I'm learning to walk on holy ground.

Thank you for letting me rant.

The Critical Importance of a Daily Devotional Practice with A Spotlight on Advent.

It has been my experience that most questions are resolved during our daily devotional practice.

Like the colorful, fall leaves that drift off the trees while the sap runs to the roots, to deepen and strengthen, to harness the life hidden in the roots, so our lives are hidden in Christ.

Good devotional practices help discipline and shape our lives so that we might better express and integrate our spiritual life within.

Buds grow and burst into flowers and leaves, as we begin to grow the fruit of the Spirit, * the character of God in our lives.

As the love, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control are eternally born and grown within our lives, this eternal fruit/character radiates and remains.

In essence, we become as Jesus Is, and apart of who he was, the Theophany in the Garden of Eden, the Tree of Life. Mankind chose the first tree, and our character sprung from the knowledge of good and evil. Now in Jesus, we can choose Him, the Jesse Tree, which our Christmas tree symbolizes. We can choose Jesus, and partake of the Tree of Life, eternal life.

Jesus says it like this: "I Am The Way, The Truth, and The Life,"  These breakthroughs of eternity are incarnate in Jesus and come from Him who we receive as our Lord and Savior, Jesus our Messiah.




* Note on Holy ie. Holy Spirit: for Holy think Wholeness not performance. The shining, burning wholeness of God. A burning perfection greater than the bigest, brightest star He's made. We receive this wholeness in Jesus and this wholeness is grown with, and worked out into our lives. What does Holiness look like? The face of Jesus. 

The Crowded Room

Are you having trouble quieting your mind and shifting into your spirit? Do your running thoughts steal you away and suddenly you find yourself swept downstream? Hey, it's normal.

Our mind is constantly working things out, trying to solve, trying to reconcile on a conscious and subconscious level.

It never stops. Our old self is trying to save us. On the other hand, our new self, our spiritual self-speaks with the mind of Christ we've put on...the wisdom of the endless ages.

What I want to give you is an image of the process of shifting from the labyrinth of our soul into our spirit.

The Crowded Room

Picture yourself in a large crowded room, like a lunchroom with big picture windows looking out on a wide-open peaceful landscape. Conversations are swirling all around and everybody's trying to get your attention, but there's a door on the other side of the room to the outside.

You've got to break from the noise to head outside. The draw you're feeling is God calling you out. But you don't know what you'll find out there. It's always an act of faith going out, but you do feel the breath of fresh air calling you out.

So you cut off the endless conversations and turn to the door. No matter how desperate and urgent the voices are you ignore them and head to the door. We focus on that feeling, that one voice calling us out into the vast stillness of our spirit and oneness with God.

The voices crescendo and cry out to us as we reach the door and turn the handle. We open the door the fresh winds of the spirit rush in silencing every voice and so begins a reordering of our soul. Our soul begins to magnify what it sees of God's light streaming through the door.

Our yearning of love causes the seismic shift from our soul to our spirit. Our heart and not our head is the key to opening the door and leaving the room of noise...to go outside, to enter the vastness of silence, of spirit, of Being...'to walk in fields of grace.'

The fact that after fifty years of meditation,  I still have a head full of noise is proof that I am still a beginner every single morning. That I have to die daily to my old self to awaken to my new self is proof that I still need a daily practice, morning, noon and night.

But such is love that draws us out of ourselves and into the presence of God from where we practice our transformation in Jesus.

I hope this reflection helps you in your spiritual journey!

Embracing Mystery

My heart longs for mystery that is beyond me in every way.

I thirst for mystery that draws me and calls to me...

surrounding, above and beyond me.

A mystery larger and deeper than my wildest dreams...

Beyond all that I could ever have imagined...

in a hundred million lifetimes

Mystery that will unmake me 

And from beyond time and space,

Remake, expand and transform me.

Mystery endlessly completes me 

making me grow

into a wholeness I could have never known.

Timeless 

I am whole and known and beloved.

So I pass by the answers and the formulas and creeds

to embrace the mystery of God alone

I embrace Jesus and I am undone

a good my heart knows

Getting The Horse Before The Cart or How Not To Totally Throw Out The Creeds, Liturgy, and Orders

Let me cut to the chase and fill in the blanks a little later.

When we approach God through our creeds, formula's, and as answers to our questions, it's only by God's sovereign pattern disrupt that we come into God's presence. We call it a spiritual breakthrough and have made it the preferred form for spiritual superstars. But it's rare, and there's a better way. This better way was abandoned to reason during the Reformation by Protestants and Catholic alike.

Our reason and our logic were elevated over our spirit to the point of shutting our spirit down. We were relegated to wandering in the labyrinth of our souls searching for a spiritual breakthrough.

People generally have a breakdown before they have a breakthrough because we cannot expect our soul to do what only our spirit can do.

Here the skinny: As God is Spirit, we must embrace the mystery of God to know him.

There's a letting go of all we know, understand and imagine, so that we can come into a deeper knowing...into the vastness of God...into the intimate presence of beginning to know God as our Father. This letting go is dying to our self, our old man, our soul man, so that we can live to our new self, our spiritual self in God.

It's All About Jesus

Two Huge Stumbling Blocks to Entering The Presence of God

* Creeds, confessions, and liturgical formula's have their place as an outer ordering of an inner grace, but they are the cart that follows the horse. In and of themselves they will never get you into the presence of God. We must release our traditions shadows, however holy in appearance, they are still shadows and not the substance of God. Some would argue with the Eucharist, but even with the bread and the wine, as with the waters of Baptism, we enter by faith and not by sight. We enter into the divine mystery through our spirit and not through our reason.

Now, on the other side of the coin, if you are in the spirit, these creeds, confessions, and liturgical forms can be a means of meditatively working out what God has worked within us. But they aren't exclusive, hence why we have so many wonderfully unique spiritual forms in every single culture where folks have been transformed by Jesus.

*Scripture As God: As to proof texts, Jesus said, "You search the Scriptures because you think they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to me!"

As the old carol says: "Cast out our sin and enter in, Be born in us today."

It's Christ in you transforming you. It's Christ's life in you and me that grows the fruit of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Our one and only job is to abide.

It's Incarnational Life, abundant life, eternal life and it's God's gift to us in Jesus Christ.

Meditations: Apart From Me You Can Do Nothing

4"Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. 5"I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. ~ John 15

This is huge. In all Scripture, Jesus gives us a watershed moment here.

Abiding is dwelling, being at our very core. 'Abiding in Jesus and Jesus in you' is a co-dwelling, a mutual dwelling, a communion whereby we are transformed.

The staggering wonder of abiding in vine is that we enter into a divine mystery, the unfolding of eternal life within us.

Without me you can do nothing ~ Selah

Let the thunder struck of these words sink into your heart and spirit.

Jesus didn't give us a belief system, a creed to supersede the law.

Let me say it again. Jesus didn't give us a set of beliefs, a creedal performance system.

Jesus gave himself, that we might receive himself and live a new life in him and him in us.

Hear it again, Apart from me, you can do NOTHING.

You can't do it on your own. Jesus knows you can't. He wants you to rest in him so that the flow of eternal life will move you, grow you, as a vine grows fruit.

He wants you to enter your rest in him, so that you can work out of that rest, to work out eternal life in our common everyday life.

Some Cool Thoughts on Contemplation

Contemplation is a Being practice.
It is the practice of our spirit.
It's our spiritual practice of dwelling in the spirit.

Our self-help is soul work.
All self-help work is an 'outside in' practice.
It's formation work, temporal work, and it's never ending.
And as we let up, it begins the long slow degrade.

Spiritual work however, is transformative, it's eternal, it never degrades.
All spiritual work is 'inside out' work.
We work it out into our lives, we integrate the transformation God is doing within us.
We liken it to a garden in our heart, growing the Tree of Life (Jesus), or a stream of living water flowing through us, or abiding in the vine. But it always begins in our spirit and it always begins with God.

What Is Chi?

The basic definition of Chi is spirit. As we are a triune: Spirit, Soul and Body, spirit is the essence of who we are.

As I was doing Tai Chi this morning, I felt the practice lifting me out of depression into my spirit. Centering myself in my spirit is another way to say it.

Any practice that puts you in the flow is spirit practice. When you feel in the flow, you're experiencing your spirit.

Now here's the scoop: When you're centered in your spirit, it's one small step to center yourself into God. We bring our heart into the equation and enter in.

We do spirit practices so that we can live out of our spirit and transform our soul.

Our western faith is centered in 'outside in' practices that conform us, rather than 'inside out' practices that transform us through the power of God.

As to Eastern Practices

Now, as to Eastern practices like Meditation, Tai Chi or Yoga, when we strip them of their religious connotations, they are mere body practices that help us to practice our spirit.

Now Get This: In and of themselves, they are morally neutral practices. It's the spirit we bring to the practice (our spirit) that determines the direction we go in.

They are vehicles like driving a car. We determine our destination.

As to Spirituality

As to the spirituality of Believers, we'll all get there eventually. Through grace, we'll all abandon our clever head games when we've had enough of the endless labyrinth of our own soul. But don't let it be on your death bed. It's better to start the spiritual journey now.

The cool thing about this is: Suffering.

Through forgiveness, as we surrender and let go into God, our suffering is transformed into a deep compassion and mercy...bathing ourselves and others. Nothing is wasted.   

    

Awake My Heart and Sing

Religion clothes the reality of God's presence with beautiful veils of adornment. We worship them in adoration. We hold the collective memories of God's presence in shadows rather than substance. They are wonderful and can lead us into God, but memories and echoes are no substitute for being with God. Our danger lies when they become the substitute for God's presence, or the only approved way to God.

Come out into the clear light of day and worship the Living God. Discover again Jesus who will never leave you, never forsake you. When we are faithless, He is faithful. We are the ones who wander. Lay your burdens down again. Turn and behold Him who is grace, and truth and the love of God. Leave your past for the present. For Presence is always found in the eternal present.

Oh Awake my heart and sing...

The Three Stages of Christian Life for Teachers and Mentors

The Three R's/ Three modalities of Christian life 

There are three stages of teaching or mentoring our life in Jesus that cross all theological and church lines.

I use the three R's, like reading, writing and arithmetic to make it easily accessible. Our living spiritual framework usually centers in these three area's: Revival, Renewal, and Restoration.

These are not closed systems or steps we attain, they are spiritual lifestyles of our life in God.

Revival

Revival is our coming alive to God in all its aspects...coming to Jesus, awakening to the Body of Christ, the Presence of God, and the Scriptures jump off the page.

This is the stage of our foundational teaching and mentoring.

As we move 'higher up and further in' as C.S Lewis puts it, we will cycle through this stage throughout our Christian life. The problem arises when we remain here. We become stagnant and life becomes a stage where we perform.

Mentoring To The Trade: The Tradesman

Institutionally, this is usually the realm of the evangelist, the teacher, and the preacher.

Again, Revival is where we come alive to God, 'just as I am'. This is where we awaken and accept Jesus as our Lord, and this is a process as well as an event. This is where we seriously enter our journey of faith.

Now here's the downside: 

We can be taught to the test, mentored the rules instead of awakening us to more.

We can be led to become good Church people, good labors for the church system.

With every good intention, we can be 'guilted' into staying in revival mode. That happens when it's all our mentors know. We are encouraged to live lives of perpetual revival, running from fire to fire.

As it's usually taught and mentored, revival becomes an outside-in approach and it's usually steeped in the Responsibility of Man ie holiness.

Spiritually, To stay here is to live on the margins of the spiritual life God has provided for us to live out of in Jesus. Let's jump into more of God into more of you and me.

How Contemplation Fights Legalism

Contemplation is one of the best way's I've found that fights legalism. It does this by bringing the focus of our experience into knowing and abiding in Jesus in the present moment.  Here, instead of a goal to be obtained, our abundant life becomes a joy to be relished.

By removing attainment out of the equation, spiritual pride is nullified, and surrender becomes our modus operandi.

Through Jesus death and resurrection, God has in essence removed the human element out of the process and what's left for us is to work out what God has worked within us. 

On Prayer, Presence and Abiding

We tend to confuse the issue of prayer when we narrow it down to merely speaking words. The concept behind phrases like, "I'll consider it prayerfully," denotes the deeper meaning of prayer.

This is why many of us who are moving into a whole life, a Jesus life rather than a 'church life,' use terms like meditation and contemplation, to denote the deeper aspects of prayer.

God wants to love us more than anything else. The deepest and most intimate form of love is our co-dwelling presence with him.

Christ is in us and we are in him, but are we aware of it? Where is the awareness of our presence focused? Is our presence asleep as our old self, as our old broken fallen man 'runs the show'?

These are things we learn through meditation and contemplation.

My goal, and I'm intentional about it, is to come into the living abiding presence of God.

Now if I have to start all over a thousand times a day, that's O.K. It's a journey, this spiritual life, not getting it down perfect. It's not a performance. I leave the perfection up to God. I have little experience in just how perfect, perfect can be.

My goal is to bring this broken mess of a man into the presence of God. And that takes the grace, mercy and forgiveness of God through Jesus.

Now Jesus tells us to 'abide in the vine', and that takes presence.

Where is your presence dwelling right now? It can be sorting through your past, or caught up in your future. Some of it may be dealing with your past, worrying about your future, and be here at the same time. But until you bring 'the light', or focus of your awareness right here into this moment, until your awareness is fully here, you aren't ready to pray, much less to 'enter in'. You're working out of a fractured self until you gather yourself up and just be present. This is the beginning of wholeness.

This is what our daily spiritual practice is all about. To wake us up and plug us in. Make it simple or make it complex. This is my goal, my awaken awareness of presence. How else could we enter into God's presence? while part of us is somewhere else? How else could we walk or live in the Holy Spirit? It's spiritual life, abundant life, eternal life we're dealing with here. Let's avail ourselves of God's gift.

Why Create A Spiritual Rule of Life?

A Spiritual Rule of Life is not how we find our spiritual life, it's how we nurture and amplify it.

Spiritual life is always, always, always an inside out process.

We can't make it happen. We can't force it or will it. It's not from our analytical mind, rather our spiritual life flows through our intuitive heart. It is our spirit that is the gateway into the spiritual life.

So with that viewpoint, let's begin:

Crafting a Rule focuses our lives and attention on what matters most to us. It cuts off options and distractions that waste our time and sucks the life right out of us. We focus on abundant life.

We are spiritual beings first and foremost. It's the essence of who we really are. But we are human in this life with limited resources of time, talent and energy.

Our disciplines focus and enhance our lives. They expand our inner life by focusing our outer one. It's an expansive life on a narrow way.

Our hearts rule deepens and enhances our emotions rather than suppressing them. We cultivate, love, joy, peace... Yes, these are deeper than emotions, but emotion gives them motion. Emotion moves us into action. Emotion brings the spark into our lives. Flatlining our emotions is not the spiritual path, it's the souls path of control. In the garden of our heart, we cultivate the spirit's work and flow within us as it deepens and grows fruitful emotions.

I'll develop this if  you find it helpful.

Another point is: Our rules grow and adapt as we do. What works in one season of life will stifle our spirit's flow in another.

Here's where the good counsel of a Spiritual Director, an accountability group, a sage, or someone God has put in your life really helps. We don't do life alone.

Notes: Aristotle, The Tao, and Our Wisdom Voice

In the same way, Aristotle and Plato addressed the perspective of philosophy, so the Tao Te Ching addresses spirituality. Is it divinely written? I don't see that, but it's written out of the person's spirit and holds timeless insights into the nature of things.

An Example would be: "What goes around comes around." ~ Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching  Ch. 30

The Tao is written out of the spirit of the writer and thus teaches the oneness of things which is the nature of our spirit. It is the nature of our spirit to see things as wholes rather than dualistically or  opposites, life's unity rather than it's divisions.

To live out of our spirit is to live out of wholeness. This is the realm of the wise, the sage, and even our elders. Our brains actually begin to change as we get older, thus making this state of oneness or seeing things in wholes more accessible to us. 

A Sketch of Forgiveness and Healing

Forgiveness isn't a head game, it's not mental assent. And forgiveness isn't a contractual agreement: If you ask me, I will forgive you.

Forgiveness is a matter of the heart.

Let's say I was sexually abused by someone. It may take me a while, but forgiveness is usually progressive. And I don't forgive for the other person. I forgive for me. I want to be free. I want to cut any bond that might connect me to that person or event, spiritually, emotionally/mentally, and physically.

With my forgiveness, they and the trama become God's problem, not mine. But if I don't forgive, the trama remains, however fading in the distance. Unforgiveness is where we become very clever with our brokenness. Everything from split personalities, to total emotional shut-down, to acholism, drugs, personality disorders and the list goes on, and that's just the emotional/mental end. The ways we deal with brokenness is endless. Walking away may be the best thing we ever do, but it doesn't heal the underlying suffering.

But we can learn to let go. When or as we forgive, the healing can begin. My healing is why I choose to forgive, even if it takes a thousand times a day. So don't get locked into a contractual agreement, or  an all or nothing mindset. The healing process can lead us to forgiveness too, as we cut the spiritual trama in our bodies. So don't wait around for the stars to aline. Break that spiritual cord as it surfaces. The longer it festers the deeper it goes into us.

This is where some of the latest data, and things like Yoga, and Tai Chi teach us, that trama can lodge in our bodies, and muscles and make us sick. I think it can lodge in our cells and even turn on cancer, but the studies haven't gotten that far yet.

Healing and release go hand in hand in the process of forgiveness.

If it isn't dealt with, our brokenness and trama can be passed on to our children, as well as to other's around us. We might even be dealing with what has been passed on to us. In cultures that don't practice forgiveness like Muslim cultures, you are honor bound to carry on the pain of preceding generations. They're still fighting the Crusades, among other things.

This is a little sketch of things I've learned. As I've alluded to before, things like Cognitive Therapy can really lay out the problem and help us, but if we don't focus on what makes us better, we can spend a lifetime rummaging through the labyrinth of our soul.

I adhere to a wholistic approach to forgiveness and healing, to use as many helpful tools as we can find, spiritually, emotionally/mentally, and physically. It's one reason among many why I do Tai Chi, meditate etc. Good counselors, pastors, spiritual directors, group support, etc.

I'll be adding to this:

Positive Psychology:  http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/

Stanford Forgiveness Project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSGfMVRVWZw

The Grace of Goodness

 Lauri Rantala via Compfight

In the West, with our fight against evil, we've maligned the concept of good, not realizing goodness is the social glue that causes every relationship, marriage, family, and society to flourish.

If indeed, as the Scriptures tell us God is good, it behooves us to check it out and see just how this character trait of God expresses itself.

Goodness always works behind the scenes, so we rarely see it. But the grace of goodness is behind every good thing that ever happens to us.

Goodness, like a cold, is caught more than taught. And as goodness is not a gift, it needs to be sought out, cultivated, and grown.

There's a great research site: The Science of a Meaningful Life

For a great place to start, I highly recommend One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp. Ann is one of the most important contemplative writers of our time. She also has a wonderful website: A Holy Experience

Live big-hearted and generous.

Shifting Into Our Spirit?

Shift into your spirit.

I realize when I used this phrase, it might not make sense. So let me lay it out and I hope give you a handle on the concept.

Being filled with the Spirit, walking in the spirit, It is the spirit that gives life... it's spiritual life not soul life. Most of our spiritual work is going through the motions in the labyrinth of our soul. To have a spiritual life we must first shift into our spirit. We can do it in our body and bypass our soul altogether. ie breath prayer, meditation, etc. But it can also move from our soul into our spirit. It's a shift of consciousness.

Shifting into our spirit is when our awareness moves from our soul into our spirit. Not that we loose the awareness of our soul, but the center of our awareness shifts into the perspective of our spirit.

Sometimes it's called awakening, awakening awareness, mindfulness, even Being In The Zone.

It's an expansive awareness that allows us to see and experience life from a spiritual perspective.

My Brother Rick

I just found out my brother Eric Mills Holmes died, so I want to tell you a little bit about my brother Rick. 

Here's my family at Thanksgiving in 1952. I'm the little guy on the left with my mother. My brother Rick is the guy on the right in the flannel shirt.


Rick always had a larger than life presence. You can see it in his eyes even here. It didn't matter how he was dressed or who he was around, he took center stage.

Rick had a run in with his guidance counselor at Concord High School. She told him he wasn't smart enough to go to college, so he needed to get a good mill job.
When Rick entered Duke University, he had two letters of recommendation one signed by John F. Kennedy and the other by Richard M. Nixon. Rick played on the Duke Freshman Basketball team. He made the Dean's List. So that when Spring came around, he was asked to give his old high school guidance counselor a tour of the school. Oh yea, Rick was a Page for Congress during High School in 1958.

Our dad, the Rev John Julian Homes, died when Rick was in college, so he snuck me on campus for about a month. I lived, ate and argued philosophy at Duke when I was 13. (I had started studying Confucius when I was 12, so I had ideas.) Thank You Rick for such an opportunity!

Rick graduated from Duke and worked a year in Manhattan for Cannon Mills, handling the J.C. Penny accounts. Of course, Rick brought me up there. My first view of New York City was Harlem during the race riots. It was mind boggling. Loved the city. Did the Zoo, the Statue, the UN, the Empire, and even took in some Broadway plays. Rick lived on Central Park facing a famous old church. It was beautiful!

Rick had a keen mind for law, so he went to UNC and got his first law degree, then got his second one from Columbia. He taught contract law in schools all over the country, then moving overseas to  the University of Galway and the University of Dublin. Rick would be writing sometimes 5 books a year, culminating with the encyclopedia Holmes Appleman on Insurance Law and Practice.

So when China was just beginning to open up, the John D. Rockefeller Foundation sent Rick to China to represent the US in the field of law. He visited political prisoners in jail. While he was there, the face off at Tiananmen Square happened and they jetted him out of the country. He was just that kind of guy, my brother Rick.

When I graduated high school, Rick set me up to go to Outward Bound School in Maine. That was a heaven on earth survival school. The guy who taught mountain climbing was the 2nd man on Everest. Euel Gibbons did the plant study for the islands. The wooden sailing boats were a Dutch design. We actually got drawn out to sea in 30 foot waves and had the Coast Guard pull us into a safe harbor. It was Awesome! Thank You Rick!

There's a million stories. I remember the time of the last big Race March in Atlanta. Rick was out leading the front carrying a sign that read: We're All God's Children.

But Rick did everything big. He was a big drinker and it got the best of him. But through that, my cousin, Mick Yount and I had the privilege of introducing my brother to Jesus. And eventually, he made his way into AA, which worked.

From here, Rick rebuilt a new life, with his faith and a wonderful family, but that's a story for another time.

So my brother died yesterday, resting in the arms of Jesus. Finally at peace, finally whole, finally at home.

Oh, one thing I think is a bit humorous and it set him on the path of law: Rick failed the physical exam for becoming a CIA operative after Duke.

I'm gonna miss that big lug of a guy! My brother Rick.

Rick and Grayson Holmes

Be A Doubter!

In mystical matters, I'm a skeptic! I test everything. I especially doubt and test my own spiritual experiences. It's too easy to deceive ourselves into thinking more highly of our spiritual states and experiences than they really are. I also have seasoned spiritual advisors who help to keep me accountable. If something can't be examined, if it's a deep secret entrusted to few, or too holy, your discerner should be standing straight up and the warning bells going off.

Jesus always led from the bottom up. He never lorded it over anybody, even when he was revealing peoples hearts and motives. Jesus did all his miracles right where he found himself. Wide open accountability. So should all pastors, priests, spiritual masters, prophets, and leaders.

We serve from humility, the lowest up, bathing them with honor, not from the platform down. It took the foolish humility of St. Francis to restore humility back to the Catholic Church at a time they were dying from the inside out. It' not too light a statement to say that if is wasn't for St Francis, there would be no Roman Catholic Church today. We have such a Pope in Francis who's bringing back that same spirit of humility in such a time as this.

For me, it happens every time. I'll be walking in a mystical experience with God, sometimes it feels like I'm walking in an expansive state, timeless. That's when it hits me. Is this psychosomatic? Am I creating this? And God will say, or show me something profoundly simple that floors me.

You see, only God can answer our deepest doubts. Remember Job. Let me repeat it: Only God's presence will ever answer our deepest doubts.

It's not wrong to have doubts. In fact, it's part of the discerning process. It's how we learn to discern. We question. Our learning curve is to ask good questions.

Here's my story. I was burned slap out of 40 years of failure after failure in the church. I learned, but I couldn't go on, something had to change. I was leaving for good. That's when I felt God tell me to get back in touch with my mystic roots and go back into Buddhism as a Believer. That went over like a led balloon. So I fought with God over that one for 5 long years.

So I was back, and one day I was doing a meditation practice called Great Doubt. It's when you doubt everything. You doubt God. That there ever was a God. You doubt your beliefs. You doubt yourself. Your heart. Your motives. You doubt your doubts. And then, when there's nothing left. When you're about to disappear as a being. You step out in faith. It's likened to stepping off a hundred foot cliff or a fifty foot pole. An act of total surrender.

So I stepped out into this transcendental fog, like a mist swirling around me, deafening in expansive stillness. I was wide open not knowing what to expect. But I was there, wherever there is. I hadn't fallen into endless nothingness. Then I saw it. It was like smiling eyes breaking through the swirling clouds. There came Jesus, striding up to me with open arms and a hug of welcoming acceptance and love like I've never felt before. I had found my way back. Swallowed up in the mystery of God. I'm still there.

So I encourage you to doubt, and test and taste and see. God waits to be examined and found true. Such is true humility.

Our Daily Prayer

 Saint-Petersburg orthodox theological academy 

Our daily devotion is a time to tune our hearts to God's heart, so that we might resonate with the vibration of heaven.

Create your own devotional prayers and allow them to grow and morph as you do. As a Franciscan, I use the Daily Office as my springboard. Sometimes I begin with sitting prayer (mindfulness, contemplation) and sometimes with the prayers and readings then moving into contemplation.

The key is to shift into your spirit before you begin. 

The time spent and complexity isn't the important thing here. Coming into God's presence is. (As God is spirit, getting out of our soul-centered head into our spirit is huge. We are designed for our spirit to be front and center, while our fallen nature puts our soul front and center. Our heart or our breathing are the two best ways to center ourselves into our spirit.)

In our repetition or learning by heart, we tune our subconscious as well as our consciousness. We're hardwiring it in.  So, repeat the verses and prayers that awaken your heart. Rewrite them til they are yours. This is the form part that grows and changes with us. Substance is our communion with God, and that's eternal.

The spirituality of transformation is restoration

This brings restoration back into our lives. Restoration is the gaining back God's original intent. It's getting back what we lost at the Fall, wholeness, belonging and fellowship. But more than that, it's coming into the abiding, creative, abundant life of Jesus, as we co dwell and learn to live out of our spirit in Him.

Our restoration is the process of tuning our hearts with God's heart so that like a tuning fork, our lives resonate with the vibration and presence of God. We bear Christ.

Here's a form: Invitational - Prayer
                        Instructional - Confession
                        Meditation - Focus on what God's Quickening, Awakening within you. What is the                                                    touchstone of change and transformation in your life?
                        Contemplation - Stillness, Worship, Sitting as with an old friend, bathing in His                                                                Presence, resting in the arms of your Father - whole and complete.

Restoration is the process of removing each and every disconnect, one by one, by healing the flow of God in our hearts, our lives and our relationships. And all eternal change begins in the Presence of God.

Journeying In

Photo Credit: Bob Holmes

We all get a taste for spiritual life somewhere along the way that eventually ruins us for anything else. It could be the moment we're born again, filled with the Holy Spirit, or even that deep longing for something we can't quite put our finger on. Something like the burst of enlightenment.

Whatever it is, it takes us unawares and out of our comfort zone. Like a slow journey home to a place we've never been before. But we yearn for it and we know it's home.

So, instead of laying out a program to follow, here are some ideas and observations I hope you can use in your own personal journey and practice.

In and Out

Before we work out our spiritual life, we must enter the long sometimes strange, sometimes dangerous adventure within.

It's said of the disciples that they were recognized as being with Jesus.
Just as Moses gazed on God's back and emitted God's presence glowing, so too the disciples carried the fragrance of Jesus presence with and within them.

Our whole spiritual life is about Presence though we rarely see it, we may see it's effects.

Extroverts might see this journey as self-centered while introverts might see it as an escape, but the wholeness of being includes both extremes and transcends them.

Our wholeness of being includes our polar extremes and transcends them.

Here's Our Problem as The Church

"Before Abraham was even born, I am."

Jesus is always in the present, the eternal living present, no veils, no layers of tradition to wade through, no rites to invoke. Jesus is present, right here and now.

Within our church structures, traditions, and practices, we have generation after generation, layer upon layer of meaningful and God fought out tradition. All resting upon the living presence of Christ. They're like beautiful veils we go through in our religious practices to enter the presence of Christ.

The Journey In  

Our traditions focus us. But on what? To what end?

Spiritual traditions though designed to bring us into our spiritual life, tend to structure our outworking of wholeness more than its in working. 

All spiritual life is lived inside out not outside in.

But our traditions, forms, and practices are not what's at issue here, abundant life is.

Our preparation for life can be our greatest obstacle to actually living.

Center your heart into God and live what you experience in him. It's a growing living process, not a finished work. 

Always appreciate life's complexity but live in life's simplicity.

Brokenness complicates everything while wholeness always simplifies to what's life-giving.

New Every Morning

Photo Credit: Bob Holmes

Be willing to be a beginner, every single morning. ~ Meister Eckhart

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,

His tender mercies never come to an end

They are new every morning, new every morning

and great is your faithfulness O Lord

Great is your faithfulness 

Every time we step into the depths of the eternal, it's like the first time, every time. It doesn't age, get old or wear out. It's always fresh, new and restores us to wholeness.

It's like drinking life and light.

Such is the river that flows where the spirit is life.

The Right Church

I woke up this morning with a dream. A young girl was talking with me passionately seeking the right church. I told her it was a mistake looking for the perfect church because Jesus changes everybody uniquely, and every church is unique. She looked into my eyes with a slight smile and I woke-up.

The simplicity of the Gospel, receiving the seed life of Jesus Christ into our hearts, has the ability to change every person, every culture, in every age, uniquely revealing the Glory of God through every language, people and culture on earth.

As our gathering together as disciples of Jesus is called the Church, some have likened our gatherings to an organism rather than an organization. That's because it's alive with people, families, and cultures transformed by the grace and mercy of God, and structured by the truth, wisdom and the revelation of Jesus in our lives.

Selah: We are held together by the love of God that flows through our lives to each other and into the world. We are constrained by love, empowered and embolden by love. Jesus says, by this all man will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. In fact, Jesus says, "I'm giving you a new commandment, love one another. Just like I've loved you, love one another." This commandment is not an option. It's The non-negotiable. It's the proof. It's the outward expression of the inner reality of our belonging to Jesus. To love like Jesus loves us. He is our master and we are his disciples being trained to love just like he loved.

When we gather, the Church is like a living diamond, cut with endless facets of glory, glowing and pulsating from within.

Jesus used the illustration of wineskins. Animal skins that have the ability to expand with the fermentation of the grape juice transforming into wine. Jesus says new wineskins are for new wine because the old skins will burst with bubbling up of new life. Hinting at tradition, Jesus says people always say the old wine is best. So learn from tradition but don't be bound to it. Follow Jesus.

Restoration is what's in store for the Church. That's what you bring. You bear the life of Jesus Christ in your mortal body. It's why your body is called a temple of the Holy Spirit. If you dare grasp it, you bear the transformation of God to everything around you. You are the light of the world, the salt of the earth. Wake up to who you really are in Jesus our Lord.

God Is With You

For with you is the fountain of life, and in your light we see light. 

God is everywhere, omnipresent. And God is everywhere always. As God is eternal, all time and all eternity take their forms, physically and spiritually from God. God dwells in the eternal present. God is always present to you and to me, always.

Quietness and stillness bring us with awakened awareness to a still point, where we see with the eyes of our spirit, the entry into the eternal presence of God all around us...everywhere.

It's as splintered light, the glory of God breaking through.

Only as we take the time to be, can we truly become.

Take time captive to eternity, and be with God today.

And as you are being, learn to practice the presence of God in your common everyday world.


Foot Notes: Analytically speaking, this preludes our experiential understanding that our entry is in Jesus, as we are born of God, in him and he in us. There is an awaken awareness of our spirit, a cosmic conscienceness which is open to all of us as human Beings. Glory is there. This would be the second heaven, spiritually speaking. But here we're speaking of coming into the living presence of the One who created the cosmos: physically, mentally and spiritually, Our Father.

Humble Your Selves

Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and he will lift you up.

The operative word here is 'sight', or 'presence'. We need to be in God's presence first, otherwise it's an exercise of self...a religious exercise for those around us we can be proud of. Like Charles Dickens character Uriah Heep, we can be "so humble," in our spiritual pride. It makes us look good.

God's presence reveals everything as it truly is. Pretense and posturing are highly overrated. They're empty of substance and life.

Humbling our Selves in the presence of God is an outer action of an inner reality, a humble heart.

The humble hearted serve without a thought of them Selves.

Hear it again: The humble hearted never take a thought of themselves. Their focus is on the One they serve.

This is a What If  quote.

Blessed are the humble for they will inherit the earth.

God knows he can trust the humble. 

But What If

We live in a success-driven culture and we the church mirror the corporate model with our prosperity gospel, with our emphasis on money, success and power, being a celebrity Christian for God. But what if...What if this is not God's doing but ours.

We all have huge hurts, pain and devastation in our lives. What If we don't try to get rid of it all, but see our point of need as a lightening rod to ignite our lives.

Our mess becomes our message and a revelation of God's grace.

God is prepared to use the place of our deepest need as the point of our restoration to the whole world. Click to Tweet

It's time to turn it upside down.

But God has chosen the foolish things in this world to shame the wise; God has chosen the weak things in this world to shame the strong. God has chosen the lowly things in this world and the despised things--and the things that are not--to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. But by his doing, you are in Christ Jesus who has become for us the wisdom of God in us, our righteousness, holiness, and redemption, so that as Scripture says, "If you want to boast, boast in God alone."

God's Glory

And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

The glory of God is an ever-expanding revelation that shocks and stuns us with awe and worship. We experience God more than we apprehend Him. We never expect it, and like the sunlight that glints on the leaves of a tree, we can't look directly at it. God's glory reveals everything.

Think of Jesus on the mount of Transfiguration. Think of Moses who saw the back of God and had to wear a veil the rest of his life because the glory from his face terrified everybody around him. It revealed them. Nothing is hidden from the glory of God. Everything is laid bare...all our secrets, every private thought.

Abiding, Cultivating and Living A Whole-Hearted Life

       Our spirit is the gateway to God and to the eternal.

As Jesus is The Way, The Truth, and The Life, our spirit is the door we open to Jesus.

We nourish our soul from our spirit. 

Our soul is broken so it doesn't retain life well.

That's the reason we are admonished to 'abide in the vine.'

Abiding is not a religious exercise mind you,

it's the exercise of life within us.

Spiritual life flows, it bubbles up like a spring in our heart

and nourishes our soul.

Everything integrates in our heart

both good and evil integrates into our lives through our heart.

Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.

Our heart is where we cultivate what we experience with God in our spirit.

It is where we work out what we focus on.

Our heart is like a garden where we cultivate the seeds God has planted within us.

These seeds are not mere thought or mental acquisitions we can control or manipulate with our mind.

They are life itself, tasted and experienced.

Before these seeds become thoughts or feelings they are spirit.

Until we see behind the words we speak,

Until we see the breath, the spirit that Jesus spoke with,

We will be locked withing a world or our own and other people's design.

The Spirit alone gives eternal life. Human effort accomplishes nothing. And the very words I have spoken to you are spirit and life.

We live, as C.S. Lewis said, in the Shadowlands.

The spirit is behind the shadows we see,

The eternal as through a veil.

So what's behind the words we speak? 

What spirit, what motivates us? 

Is it love? Is it our spirit? or is it our soul that moves us to speak, control and shape? 

And what fills the content of our words? 

For our words are vessels of substance or shadows, spirit or soul.

And where do we dwell? Where do we live?

We are urged by Scripture to dwell in Christ.

Since you have been raised with Christ seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 

As we speak, live and give the atmosphere of our presence from where we dwell, 

We have a mandate to seek and dwell with Jesus.

A whole-hearted life