L.D. Turner
A vital aspect of connecting with the Divine Source is to recognize that God reveals himself through the created world and does so with great power and clarity. I tend to view the natural order as Sacred Scripture, for that is exactly what it is. In our technologically advanced society we have become quite removed from the intricate choreography that is evident in the dance of creation. Whenever we allow ourselves to get away from our usual fast-paced, stress-driven lifestyles and force ourselves to slow the pace down to a reasonable level, the Spirit can and does speak to us through things like trees, rivers, flowers, boulders, and even bugs. We, however, have to have eyes to see and ears to hear if we want to establish, maintain, and especially deepen our contact with God through nature. Mark Scandrette, in his great book entitled, Soul Graffiti, tells us:
In the hurried and technological society in which we live, we may have to be more intentional about practices that help us recognize the goodness of God revealed in creation. Many of us live and work in contexts that are divorced from the rhythms of the natural world. We have lost our connection to the soil, our food sources, and the skill of making things with our hands. We rarely notice the rising or the setting of the sun. We gulp food without tasting. We rarely pause to look at the flowers or into the eyes of a child. Our pace of life affects our capacity to appreciate the goodness of the bounty that surrounds us. The demands of a hurried life and the dominance of technology cloud our awareness. Slowing down and learning to pay attention to the moment may be a path to affirming God’s essential goodness and presence.
I believe attentiveness is truly a spiritual discipline, just like meditation, solitude, prayer, fasting, celebration, and all the others. Mindfulness, so much a central part of Buddhism, is basically unheard of in Christian circles. St. Francis and Brother Lawrence seem to come closer than most, but both of these saints have long since passed on. As followers of Christ, we should be ever grateful to God for revealing himself to us through the scriptures of nature and further, we should express thankfulness for those contemporary voices that are now speaking of the significance of these matters. Keep this pair of words before you my friends:
Mindfulness and the Discipline of Noticing
The more mindful we are of what is happening around us, the more sensitive we will become to what Erwin Raphael McManus calls “divine moments.” The more we practice “noticing,” the more we will know about the God we worship and follow.
As mentioned earlier, our contemporary environment, especially in the cities and suburbs, removes us from the natural rhythms of life and the natural world. As a result, we often miss divine messages that come our way. Rarely do we take the time to “consider the birds of the air or the lilies of the field.” It is our loss but it is something that can be regained. Further, God is able to speak to us through the created world in spite of our hectic schedules and artificial lifestyles. Wayne Teasdale, a contemporary Catholic mystic, speaks of these divine moments and their importance to our spiritual formation:
Most of us can probably point to such moments in the inner geography of our development, moments in which the universe, the earth, or the natural world have communicated to us something of their numinous quality. Such experiences are common; everyone has them sooner or later whether we realize it or not.
Although we are conceptually unaware of it at the time, natural mysticism is often our first true and valid experience of the divine side of things. I personally believe we have this capacity as a necessary part of our natural endowment at birth. As children, we are able to “see” things more directly and more clearly, rather than filtering our raw experience through a maze of conceptual explanations. In a very real sense, we can see the world through “eyes of radical wonder.” Unfortunately, our culture soon educates this blessed talent out of us before we are ten years of age. As a result, our world becomes less magical and equally less real. We end up inhabiting a world consisting of the interpretations of experience rather than the experience itself. All of this happens in the name of something called “our own good.”
Fortunately, this trend has been changing over the past two decades as people become more aware of the sacred nature of creation and the fact that humankind is an integral part of created order. This new, healthier view of things is increasingly based on the realization that all of the natural world is like on giant hologram in which all the parts are interconnected and contain a perfect image of the whole. Along with advances in ecological studies, biology, and quantum physics, this paradigm shift is seen as part of the emerging Interspiritual Age. Teasdale continues:
The Interspiritual Age is witnessing a new flowering of natural mysticism and natural contemplation. It welcomes natural mysticism’s role in a universal understanding of mysticism itself. It realizes that natural mysticism is an important part of spirituality, and that spirituality – indeed, interspirituality – would be incomplete without the inclusion of mystical wisdom that comes to us through the natural world and the cosmos.
There have always been those who sensed a special kinship with the natural world and those of us who have been fortunate enough to have encountered one of these blessed saints should be forever grateful. I have had the privilege of knowing several such individuals and benefited greatly from their presence in my life in general and from their teaching in particular. I wrote of two of these special people on the LifeBrook International blog. One was my grandfather and another was “Old Ben,” a Native American man who lived near my childhood home. Both taught me a great reverence for the created order and each, in his own way, imparted a special sense that allowed me to hear the heartbeat of God in the Pine and Palmetto woods of Southwest Florida and in the forests, streams, and mountains of Northeast Alabama.
Always an avid reader, another influence on my nature mysticism was Jewish scholar and author Abraham Heschel. Heschel’s writings showed me the importance of experiencing a sense of “awe” and “radical amazement” when encountering God’s handiwork in the natural world. I recommend Heschel’s work highly.
My favorite writer in this genre, however, is without question Annie Dillard. Reading A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek was an epiphany for me. I have read it five times now, and still find nuances I had not seen before. Dillard has that rare ability to describe nature with a prose style all her own and, at the same time, share her faith in an unobtrusive and inoffensive way.
And of course, any mention of influential writers in this area has to include Thomas Berry, a farmer, a mystic, and an environmentalist of the first degree. Another is John Muir, whose descriptions and work in the Redwood forests of Northern California are classic.
As the near future unfolds, I will gradually be writing more about the importance of the mysticism of nature and the concepts of mindfulness and the “Discipline of Noticing.” During my quiet time over the past month or so, I have felt a gentle nudging of the Holy Spirit to take up this project. I have found that if I ignore these leadings of the Spirit, after awhile they are not so gentle. Further, if I even then refuse to follow, sadly, they disappear.
I have no intention of letting that happen.
© L.D. Turner 2009/All Rights Reserved.
Showing posts with label Christian Mysticism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christian Mysticism. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Saturday, March 14, 2009
The Essence of Spirituality: Radical Compassion
L. Dwight Turner
Jesus Christ was not a man of compassion; he was a man of radical compassion. From his voluntary mission to this broken world, to his mysterious ascension back into the heavenly realm, there was no theme he stressed more in both word and deed. From his opening salvo quoting Isaiah about bringing release to the captives and good news to the poor, to his dying plea of, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do,” Jesus exemplified a compassion far beyond what the world had seen before. Indeed, it was and is a radical compassion.
Jesus’ stories about the Prodigal, the Good Samaritan, and his treatment of the woman caught in adultery all point to the need for a compassion that transcends the normal boundaries defined by contemporary culture, then and now. Indeed, it was and is a radical compassion.
Five-hundred years before Jesus, another prophet of radical compassion graced our world. Gautama Buddha was an example of grace and perfect love incarnate. After finding his awakening under the Bodhi tree, the Buddha went about spreading the truth that he had discovered, a truth that when astutely applied to life, could liberate beings from endless rounds of suffering. Just as with Jesus who would come later, Buddha taught through sermons, informal talks, parables, and above all, his actions.
Just as Christ would later set an example for his disciples to follow, the Buddha also would serve as the divine prototype for the essence of “metta,” or “loving-kindness.” In Metta, there is an internal manifestation and an external manifestation. Internally, increasing feelings of loving kindness give rise to a vital sense of compassion that is also based on the realization of the oneness of all things. These internal states of loving kindness and compassion result in the external manifestation, which is proactive service to the world.
This eventually gave rise to the Mahayana Buddhist ideal of the Bodhisattva. On a theoretical level, one can accurately say that the ultimate goal of the Bodhisattva is enlightenment and to some extent this is true. However, on a highly practical level, the Bodhisattva’s highest goal is selfless service. Personal enlightenment takes a back seat to serving others, spiritually and materially. Perhaps no where in the sacred writings of the world is this reality presented so directly as in the 13th Chapter of the Gospel of John.
Radical compassion is compassion with legs; radical compassion is a verb. Just as the Bible tells us in the Letter of James that faith without works is dead, also, compassion without concomitant action is a lifeless phenomenon. Many sincere aspirants have the mistaken notion that the ultimate goal of the spiritual path is enlightenment. Although a sincere desire for motivation is one of our most treasured possessions, it is actually penultimate. The real aim of the spiritual journey is simply this – Sacred Service. All that we do is dedicated to the greatest good of all beings in all the worlds. Our gain is their gain, our loss is their loss, our advancement is their advancement, and it is to this sacred reality that we offer our benedictions at the end of our times of meditation and prayer.
In the Christian faith especially, personal enlightenment takes a back seat to serving others, spiritually and materially. Perhaps no where in the sacred writings of the world is this reality presented so directly as in the 13th Chapter of the Gospel of John.
Imagine for a moment that you are one of Jesus’ twelve disciples and you, your band of rag tag friends, and the Master arrive at the Upper Room after a long, tedious, dusty day going about your business. You sit for a moment to catch your breath and unwind a few moments before you go wash up for the evening meal. You close your eyes for a few minutes, only to feel something or someone taking off your sandals. And to your utter disbelief, kneeling in front of you is the Master Jesus with a basin and a towel. Incredible….
The Master taught his disciples, and all of us who have read of this amazing episode, a clear and concise example of the essence of spirituality: selfless service with a heart of humility. If only more of us, especially those who claim to be followers of Jesus, would take this lesson to heart, our world would have much less pain.
The Kingdom of God is a divine realm of proactive compassion. This is the message that Jesus came to deliver and through his actions as well as his words, he delivered it consistently. In all that he did and he said, Jesus revealed to us the nature of God. This incarnational revelation was hinted at in the Master’s magnificent prayer in John 17. In the 21st verse the Master says:
I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one – as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me.
In the Bible’s most well known verse, John 3:16, it is stated that for God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life. (NLT)
Now, to make this even clearer, let’s look at one more verse in John 17. In verse three John records:
And this is the way to have eternal life, to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, the one you sent to earth. (NLT)
Putting all this together, Jesus gave us a powerful but very real theology in this prayer and his disciple, John, fully caught its significance by saying in 3:16 that God loved the world so much that he sent his Son to save it. On God’s part, this was a perfect example of “proactive compassion” or what we often call “grace.” Motivated by the purest form of love, God was moved to have compassion on we fallen creatures, even in our blind ignorance, and he literally gave that compassion flesh by sending us the Master Jesus.
In order for compassion to become more than just a nice idea or a sentimental feeling, it must flow out of the internalized wisdom of the ages, particularly as related to the reality of “interconnectivity.” The idea of interconnectivity, now confirmed by the field of quantum physics, has been around for many centuries and is at the core of interspiritual mysticism, that one aspect of world religion that seems to transcend culture, time, and especially theology. It is a mystical connectedness that promotes compassion and engaged action to make the world a better place for all who dwell here. In essence, it is a deep wisdom that gives flesh to grace. The great spiritual writer Kahil Gibran spoke of this interconnected reality when he said:
Your neighbor is your other self dwelling behind a wall. In understanding, all walls shall fall down. Who knows but that your neighbor is your better self wearing another body? See that you love him as you would yourself. He too is a manifestation of the Most High.
In India, for example, we have the story of Indra’s Net, which is strung throughout the universe with a precious jewel at the places where the cords of the net intersect. These jewels, in turn, reflect all of the other jewels. Similar to the modern discovery of the hologram, the image of Indra’s Net is filled with symbolic wisdom depicting the interconnectivity of all that is. Gary Zukav, in his groundbreaking book entitled, The Dancing Wu Li Masters tell us:
…the philosophical implications of quantum mechanics is that all things in our universe (including us) that appears to exist independently are actually parts of one all-encompassing organic pattern, and that no parts of that pattern are ever really separate from it or from each other.
In the Christian tradition, the writings of the great mystic teachers echo these same truths, often in symbolic and metaphorical ways. Julian of Norwich especially comes to mind as well as Hildegard of Bingen and Madame Guyon. The writings of Saint Theresa of Avila and the life and work of St. Francis also point to the interconnectivity of all life and the necessity of having a heart of radical compassion.
The great Romantic poets like William Wordsworth and Percy B. Shelley have voices that ring loudly with the sense of the interrelated aspects of the natural world and their American counterparts, the Transcendentalists, in the writings of Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman, also echo this theme of divine connectivity. And then there is the work of that master of the arcane, William Blake who spoke of the mystic’s ability:
To see a World in a grain of sand,
And Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour.
The world that we interact with each day only appears to be solid. In point of fact, it is an intricate dance of sub-atomic waves and particles that obey none of the traditional or expected moves of predictable choreography. At its core level, our apparently solid, material world is less like classical music and more like jazz. Just when we think we have a handle on how things are, these very things change, morphing into something totally unexpected and often totally mysterious. Someone wise, I forget who, once said the life is not a riddle to be solved but a mystery to be lived. How true, and the sooner a person grasps this fundamental truth, the less frustration will appear in his or her life.
It is not my intention to travel too far down this road of quantum physics at this juncture. Suffice to say that contemporary science is increasingly coming to grasp the same fundamental truths that mystics and shamans have voiced for many centuries. Simply put: Everything is interrelated and interdependent and when one part is affected by something, at a very core level, every other part is also impacted.
In teaching about the interrelated aspect of the universe, I often use a simple analogy that explains these principles in a basic way. I use the example of raisin Jell-o. Imagine you have concocted a delicious tub or raisin Jell-o. Choose your favorite flavor if you like. The raisins are the important thing, here. Now, what happens when you take your index finger and thump one of the raisins? All the raisins move. Crude as this metaphor is, it makes the point that all the raisins in the bowl are connected and if one raisin moves, they all move. This is what the mystics, and the quantum physicists, are talking about when they speak of interconnectivity.
As the church moves into the second decade of the 21st Century it has already become apparent that great changes are in the wind. I feel some of these changes are connected with an increased understanding of how God’s magnificent creation is put together in this incredible holographic manner in which each part contains the totality of the whole and every aspect of his world exists in an interdependent relationship with every other part. This is no romantic sentimentalism I am speaking of. Instead, it is a living, vibrant reality that, when one takes it to heart, changes everything. For the church, the message of the gospel become less of “let me show you the way,” and more of “What do you need?”
This move toward proactive compassion is a move of grace. Perhaps you are not accustomed to looking at grace that way, but grace is what we are dealing with. As stated earlier, a major part of Christ’s incarnation and our ongoing mission is to give flesh to grace. Caroline Myss makes this cogent observation in her book, Invisible Acts of Power:
What really happens inside you when you respond to someone in need? Why do some people jump out of their seats to help another person, while others look the other way? No doubt, some people have been taught to be kind and others may be naturally thoughtful. But I think something greater than compassion or good manners is at work, something beyond the motivation of the strong to help the weak or the wealthy to help the poor. I think it is the invisible power of grace, moving between the open hearts of give and receiver. The action itself, the lifting of a heavy piece of luggage or the drink of water offered to the thirsty man, may be small. But the energy that is channeled through that action is the high-voltage current of grace. It contains the power to renew someone’s faith in himself. It even has the power to save a life.
It should not be too difficult of an intellectual jump to see why this concept of interrelated reality should lead to a true and radical sense of compassion. What happens to me in the ultimate sense, happens to you and vice versa. When a child dies of hunger or disease in a poverty stricken nation, some part of each of us dies. We may not feel it, understand it, or even recognize it. Still, it is a fundamental spiritual and quantum truth. It is wise to remember the words of the 17th Century poet John Donne as he spoke of the custom of the time which involved ringing the town’s bell whenever someone died:
Any man’s death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind;
Therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
© L.D. Turner 2009/All Rights Reserved
Jesus Christ was not a man of compassion; he was a man of radical compassion. From his voluntary mission to this broken world, to his mysterious ascension back into the heavenly realm, there was no theme he stressed more in both word and deed. From his opening salvo quoting Isaiah about bringing release to the captives and good news to the poor, to his dying plea of, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do,” Jesus exemplified a compassion far beyond what the world had seen before. Indeed, it was and is a radical compassion.
Jesus’ stories about the Prodigal, the Good Samaritan, and his treatment of the woman caught in adultery all point to the need for a compassion that transcends the normal boundaries defined by contemporary culture, then and now. Indeed, it was and is a radical compassion.
Five-hundred years before Jesus, another prophet of radical compassion graced our world. Gautama Buddha was an example of grace and perfect love incarnate. After finding his awakening under the Bodhi tree, the Buddha went about spreading the truth that he had discovered, a truth that when astutely applied to life, could liberate beings from endless rounds of suffering. Just as with Jesus who would come later, Buddha taught through sermons, informal talks, parables, and above all, his actions.
Just as Christ would later set an example for his disciples to follow, the Buddha also would serve as the divine prototype for the essence of “metta,” or “loving-kindness.” In Metta, there is an internal manifestation and an external manifestation. Internally, increasing feelings of loving kindness give rise to a vital sense of compassion that is also based on the realization of the oneness of all things. These internal states of loving kindness and compassion result in the external manifestation, which is proactive service to the world.
This eventually gave rise to the Mahayana Buddhist ideal of the Bodhisattva. On a theoretical level, one can accurately say that the ultimate goal of the Bodhisattva is enlightenment and to some extent this is true. However, on a highly practical level, the Bodhisattva’s highest goal is selfless service. Personal enlightenment takes a back seat to serving others, spiritually and materially. Perhaps no where in the sacred writings of the world is this reality presented so directly as in the 13th Chapter of the Gospel of John.
Radical compassion is compassion with legs; radical compassion is a verb. Just as the Bible tells us in the Letter of James that faith without works is dead, also, compassion without concomitant action is a lifeless phenomenon. Many sincere aspirants have the mistaken notion that the ultimate goal of the spiritual path is enlightenment. Although a sincere desire for motivation is one of our most treasured possessions, it is actually penultimate. The real aim of the spiritual journey is simply this – Sacred Service. All that we do is dedicated to the greatest good of all beings in all the worlds. Our gain is their gain, our loss is their loss, our advancement is their advancement, and it is to this sacred reality that we offer our benedictions at the end of our times of meditation and prayer.
In the Christian faith especially, personal enlightenment takes a back seat to serving others, spiritually and materially. Perhaps no where in the sacred writings of the world is this reality presented so directly as in the 13th Chapter of the Gospel of John.
Imagine for a moment that you are one of Jesus’ twelve disciples and you, your band of rag tag friends, and the Master arrive at the Upper Room after a long, tedious, dusty day going about your business. You sit for a moment to catch your breath and unwind a few moments before you go wash up for the evening meal. You close your eyes for a few minutes, only to feel something or someone taking off your sandals. And to your utter disbelief, kneeling in front of you is the Master Jesus with a basin and a towel. Incredible….
The Master taught his disciples, and all of us who have read of this amazing episode, a clear and concise example of the essence of spirituality: selfless service with a heart of humility. If only more of us, especially those who claim to be followers of Jesus, would take this lesson to heart, our world would have much less pain.
The Kingdom of God is a divine realm of proactive compassion. This is the message that Jesus came to deliver and through his actions as well as his words, he delivered it consistently. In all that he did and he said, Jesus revealed to us the nature of God. This incarnational revelation was hinted at in the Master’s magnificent prayer in John 17. In the 21st verse the Master says:
I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one – as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me.
In the Bible’s most well known verse, John 3:16, it is stated that for God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life. (NLT)
Now, to make this even clearer, let’s look at one more verse in John 17. In verse three John records:
And this is the way to have eternal life, to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, the one you sent to earth. (NLT)
Putting all this together, Jesus gave us a powerful but very real theology in this prayer and his disciple, John, fully caught its significance by saying in 3:16 that God loved the world so much that he sent his Son to save it. On God’s part, this was a perfect example of “proactive compassion” or what we often call “grace.” Motivated by the purest form of love, God was moved to have compassion on we fallen creatures, even in our blind ignorance, and he literally gave that compassion flesh by sending us the Master Jesus.
In order for compassion to become more than just a nice idea or a sentimental feeling, it must flow out of the internalized wisdom of the ages, particularly as related to the reality of “interconnectivity.” The idea of interconnectivity, now confirmed by the field of quantum physics, has been around for many centuries and is at the core of interspiritual mysticism, that one aspect of world religion that seems to transcend culture, time, and especially theology. It is a mystical connectedness that promotes compassion and engaged action to make the world a better place for all who dwell here. In essence, it is a deep wisdom that gives flesh to grace. The great spiritual writer Kahil Gibran spoke of this interconnected reality when he said:
Your neighbor is your other self dwelling behind a wall. In understanding, all walls shall fall down. Who knows but that your neighbor is your better self wearing another body? See that you love him as you would yourself. He too is a manifestation of the Most High.
In India, for example, we have the story of Indra’s Net, which is strung throughout the universe with a precious jewel at the places where the cords of the net intersect. These jewels, in turn, reflect all of the other jewels. Similar to the modern discovery of the hologram, the image of Indra’s Net is filled with symbolic wisdom depicting the interconnectivity of all that is. Gary Zukav, in his groundbreaking book entitled, The Dancing Wu Li Masters tell us:
…the philosophical implications of quantum mechanics is that all things in our universe (including us) that appears to exist independently are actually parts of one all-encompassing organic pattern, and that no parts of that pattern are ever really separate from it or from each other.
In the Christian tradition, the writings of the great mystic teachers echo these same truths, often in symbolic and metaphorical ways. Julian of Norwich especially comes to mind as well as Hildegard of Bingen and Madame Guyon. The writings of Saint Theresa of Avila and the life and work of St. Francis also point to the interconnectivity of all life and the necessity of having a heart of radical compassion.
The great Romantic poets like William Wordsworth and Percy B. Shelley have voices that ring loudly with the sense of the interrelated aspects of the natural world and their American counterparts, the Transcendentalists, in the writings of Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman, also echo this theme of divine connectivity. And then there is the work of that master of the arcane, William Blake who spoke of the mystic’s ability:
To see a World in a grain of sand,
And Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour.
The world that we interact with each day only appears to be solid. In point of fact, it is an intricate dance of sub-atomic waves and particles that obey none of the traditional or expected moves of predictable choreography. At its core level, our apparently solid, material world is less like classical music and more like jazz. Just when we think we have a handle on how things are, these very things change, morphing into something totally unexpected and often totally mysterious. Someone wise, I forget who, once said the life is not a riddle to be solved but a mystery to be lived. How true, and the sooner a person grasps this fundamental truth, the less frustration will appear in his or her life.
It is not my intention to travel too far down this road of quantum physics at this juncture. Suffice to say that contemporary science is increasingly coming to grasp the same fundamental truths that mystics and shamans have voiced for many centuries. Simply put: Everything is interrelated and interdependent and when one part is affected by something, at a very core level, every other part is also impacted.
In teaching about the interrelated aspect of the universe, I often use a simple analogy that explains these principles in a basic way. I use the example of raisin Jell-o. Imagine you have concocted a delicious tub or raisin Jell-o. Choose your favorite flavor if you like. The raisins are the important thing, here. Now, what happens when you take your index finger and thump one of the raisins? All the raisins move. Crude as this metaphor is, it makes the point that all the raisins in the bowl are connected and if one raisin moves, they all move. This is what the mystics, and the quantum physicists, are talking about when they speak of interconnectivity.
As the church moves into the second decade of the 21st Century it has already become apparent that great changes are in the wind. I feel some of these changes are connected with an increased understanding of how God’s magnificent creation is put together in this incredible holographic manner in which each part contains the totality of the whole and every aspect of his world exists in an interdependent relationship with every other part. This is no romantic sentimentalism I am speaking of. Instead, it is a living, vibrant reality that, when one takes it to heart, changes everything. For the church, the message of the gospel become less of “let me show you the way,” and more of “What do you need?”
This move toward proactive compassion is a move of grace. Perhaps you are not accustomed to looking at grace that way, but grace is what we are dealing with. As stated earlier, a major part of Christ’s incarnation and our ongoing mission is to give flesh to grace. Caroline Myss makes this cogent observation in her book, Invisible Acts of Power:
What really happens inside you when you respond to someone in need? Why do some people jump out of their seats to help another person, while others look the other way? No doubt, some people have been taught to be kind and others may be naturally thoughtful. But I think something greater than compassion or good manners is at work, something beyond the motivation of the strong to help the weak or the wealthy to help the poor. I think it is the invisible power of grace, moving between the open hearts of give and receiver. The action itself, the lifting of a heavy piece of luggage or the drink of water offered to the thirsty man, may be small. But the energy that is channeled through that action is the high-voltage current of grace. It contains the power to renew someone’s faith in himself. It even has the power to save a life.
It should not be too difficult of an intellectual jump to see why this concept of interrelated reality should lead to a true and radical sense of compassion. What happens to me in the ultimate sense, happens to you and vice versa. When a child dies of hunger or disease in a poverty stricken nation, some part of each of us dies. We may not feel it, understand it, or even recognize it. Still, it is a fundamental spiritual and quantum truth. It is wise to remember the words of the 17th Century poet John Donne as he spoke of the custom of the time which involved ringing the town’s bell whenever someone died:
Any man’s death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind;
Therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
© L.D. Turner 2009/All Rights Reserved
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Sacred Silence and the Inner Light
L. Dwight Turner
As we traverse the spiritual landscape that leads us toward increased unity with the Creator, there comes a point where we come to appreciate the value of what can best be called our “inner sanctuary.” It is that special place inside our being that serves as our own personal “Holy of Holies,” a divine chamber where our human spirit comes into more intimate contact with the One True Spirit. This inner temple is where we are first emptied of the limitations of the “little mind,” our lower self, and we are filled with both Light and Life.
This blessed sanctuary is also were we have our first encounter with the “Sacred Silence.” More than just an empty mind, our sacred inner sanctuary is a place of preparation. It is a holy temple where the Spirit of God dwells and it is a place where, if we possess ears to hear, we can be taught those “great and mighty things we have never heard.” This sacred place is not only a place of teaching, but also a great temple of comfort and nurturance.
Paul describes our God as the God of all comfort and no doubt this is a profound truth. It is in the spiritual light of this inner sanctuary where God’s unlimited grace, mercy, and comfort are imparted into the depths of our spirit. In this aspect, our inner sanctuary is a chamber of divine healing and spiritual balancing.
Moreover, it is our holy place where real miracles are conceived.
Noted Quaker writer Thomas Kelly speaks of this inner sanctuary and the benefits accrued from learning to abide there:
Deep within us all there is an amazing inner sanctuary of the soul, a holy place, a Divine Center, a speaking Voice, to which we may continuously return. Eternity is at our hearts, pressing upon our time-torn lives, warming us with intimations of an astounding destiny, calling us home unto Itself. Yielding to these persuasions, gladly committing ourselves in body and soul, utterly and completely, to the Light Within, is the beginning of true life. It is a dynamic center, a creative Life that presses to birth within us. It is a Light Within which illumines the face of God and casts new shadows and new glories upon the face of men. It is the Shekinah of the soul, the Presence in the midst. Here is the slumbering Christ, stirring to be awakened, to become the soul we clothe in earthly form and action. And He is within us all.
A fundamental spiritual discipline that aids us in our ability to live from our sacred center is the practice of contemplation in general and resting in the “sacred silence” in particular. This is an important goal for each of us, but we will inevitably encounter resistance, coming either from ourselves, the world, or the enemy. Frederick Buechner calls this inner sanctuary our “shimmering self” and he speaks of our general inability to live from the sacred center:
Our original shimmering self gets buried so deep we hardly live out of it at all…rather, we learn to live out of all the other selves which we are constantly putting on and taking off like coats and hats against the world’s weather.
The coats and hats Buechner is speaking of are the various roles that we play in our day to day lives – roles like husband, wife, father, mother, employer, employee, friend, and yes, Christian. For all too many of us, even our identity as members of Christ’s family is little more than a role we play. Little wonder we lose contact with our Inner Light.
The practice of contemplation and developing the ability to rest in the Sacred Silence is somewhat of a lost art in the Protestant Church. This is highly unfortunate because it is in this inner sanctuary where we indeed meet our “shimmering self” – our true being manifested as the Inner Light. It is precisely the fear on the part of many believers that somehow Christian meditation is somehow an Eastern practice or even more sinister, a New Age technique spawned in the bowels of Hell.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Many among us desire a deeper spirituality, a deeper awareness of the presence of the Light that dwells in their hearts, a deeper sense of security, assurance, and vitality. A.W. Tozer tells us:
There are those who…are yet unable to reconcile themselves to the continued absence of fire. They desire God above all. They are athirst to taste for themselves the ‘piercing sweetness’ of the love of Christ about Whom all the holy prophets did write and the psalmists did sing…..
For it is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God Himself, and unless and until the hearers find God in personal experience, they are not better for having heard the truth. The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into Him, that they may delight in His Presence, may taste and know the inner sweetness of the very God Himself in the core and center of their hearts.
Christians have become both complacent and ignorant. Ignorant of the riches that lie at the core of the faith they profess and the treasures promised by the Lord to those who seek and knock. Tozer continues:
Everything is made to center upon the initial act of ‘accepting Christ’ (a term incidentally, which is not found in the Bible) and we are not expected thereafter to crave any further revelation of God to our souls. We have been snared in the coils of a spurious logic which insists that if we have found Him we need no more to seek Him. This is set before us as the last word in orthodoxy, and it is taken for granted that no Bible-taught Christian ever believed otherwise……The experiential heart-theology of a grand army of fragrant saints is rejected in favor of a smug interpretation of Scripture.
Unfortunately, for all too many Christians this leads to a sense of self-righteousness at best and an empty, hollow spirituality at worst.
The stiff and wooden quality about our religious lives is a result of our lack of holy desire. Complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth. Acute desire must be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ to His people. He waits to be wanted. Too bad that with many of us He waits so long, so very long, in vain.
Basically, what Tozer is getting at here is that we have to reconnect with the wisdom, love, power, and light that reside at our inner core. We have to realign ourselves so that we are operating as much as possible out of the Spirit and not out of our ego or, as some call it, our lower self. Paul used a term that was popular in his day, the flesh. I prefer to not use “flesh” because over the years it has accumulated much cultural baggage and misinterpretation. Here at LifeBrook we often use the term “little mind” to describe our ego-driven lower self. It is contrasted with another term, Sacred Spirit, which is that part of ourselves we have been talking about – the Inner Light. In fact, we often use the term Sacred Self and Inner Light interchangeably. No matter what you choose to call it, the tried and true methodology of carrying out this realignment and living from our Sacred Self is continual practice of the classical spiritual disciplines, particularly resting in the Sacred Silence or Christian meditation.
If we want to see who God is, we look to Christ. If we want to live as God wants us to live, then it is only obvious that we are to live as Christ lived. How are we to do that? We are to emulate the way he lived his life. It is not enough to imitate his behavior in specific situations, although this is admirable. We are to engage in the overall approach of life that he engaged in. If we emulate these activities, then our being, not just our behavior, will be more like his being. This involves practicing the same spiritual disciplines that Christ practiced. Added to this are the classic traditions proven effective over the centuries by the church as a whole, particularly the early church.
There are numerous disciplines that can help us bring about the needed realignment we have been talking about. However, in the confines of this brief essay I want to discuss the importance of Christian meditation.
Meditation is a word that some Christians have a tendency to shy away from, mostly from misunderstanding or from a misguided perception that by engaging in the practice he or she may fall under the sway of either eastern religion or demonic possession. As stated earlier, nothing could be further from the truth.
Meditative practices have a long history in Christian tradition and have proven their value across the ages. These practices may vary in terms of technique or goal but each and every one of them have an overriding purpose: to deepen our contact with the divine and assist in fostering a proper alignment with the Spirit in order to discern God’s will and be empowered to carry it out.
Contemplation, a form of Christian meditation, has become increasingly popular as a method of realigning with the Inner Light. Sometimes referred to as “Contemplative Prayer, this ancient spiritual practice has many practical benefits as well, such as reduction of stress and fostering a sense of peace in daily life. Yet Christian meditation has at its foundation a spiritual purpose. It is part and parcel, for example, of the renewing of the mind. Henry Drummond exclaims:
There is nothing that will bring us such abundant returns as to take a little time in the quiet each day of our lives. We need this to get the kinks out of our minds, and hence out of our lives. We need this to form better the higher ideals of life. We need this in order to see clearly in mind the things upon which we would concentrate and focus the thought-forces. We need this in order to make continually anew and to keep our conscious connection with the Infinite. We need this in order that the rush and hurry of our everyday life does not keep us away from the conscious realization of the fact that the spirit of Infinite life and power that is back of all, working in and through all, the life of all, is the life of our life, and the source of our power; and that outside of this we have no life and we have no power. To realize this fact fully, and to live in it consciously at all times, is to find the kingdom of God, which is essentially an inner kingdom, and can never be anything else. The kingdom of heaven is to be found only within, and this is done once and for all, and in a manner in which it cannot otherwise be done, when we come into the conscious, living realization of the fact that in our real selves we are essentially one with the Divine life, and open ourselves continually so that this Divine life can speak to and manifest through us.
If you are looking for positive results in your spiritual life it is essential that you stake out time in your day to spend quiet time with God. This will help us get the kinks out of our minds and out of our lives. However, this special time with our Creator must involve more than sitting quietly, reading, and praying. Important as these disciplines are, if we want to taste the true blessings of Sacred Spirit, we must make personal effort to place ourselves in a receptive mode. This involves becoming mentally quiet, increasingly centered, and spiritually alert. Contrary to what you may hear from fear-mongering fundamentalists who have never really taken the time to research the subject fully, Christian meditation does not involve emptying the mind. On the contrary, it involves silencing our internal chatter so that we become a vessel God can then fill with himself.
Time does not allow me to continue this discussion at present, but I will present more over the next couple of days.
To be continued…..
© L.D. Turner 2008 / All Rights Reserved
As we traverse the spiritual landscape that leads us toward increased unity with the Creator, there comes a point where we come to appreciate the value of what can best be called our “inner sanctuary.” It is that special place inside our being that serves as our own personal “Holy of Holies,” a divine chamber where our human spirit comes into more intimate contact with the One True Spirit. This inner temple is where we are first emptied of the limitations of the “little mind,” our lower self, and we are filled with both Light and Life.
This blessed sanctuary is also were we have our first encounter with the “Sacred Silence.” More than just an empty mind, our sacred inner sanctuary is a place of preparation. It is a holy temple where the Spirit of God dwells and it is a place where, if we possess ears to hear, we can be taught those “great and mighty things we have never heard.” This sacred place is not only a place of teaching, but also a great temple of comfort and nurturance.
Paul describes our God as the God of all comfort and no doubt this is a profound truth. It is in the spiritual light of this inner sanctuary where God’s unlimited grace, mercy, and comfort are imparted into the depths of our spirit. In this aspect, our inner sanctuary is a chamber of divine healing and spiritual balancing.
Moreover, it is our holy place where real miracles are conceived.
Noted Quaker writer Thomas Kelly speaks of this inner sanctuary and the benefits accrued from learning to abide there:
Deep within us all there is an amazing inner sanctuary of the soul, a holy place, a Divine Center, a speaking Voice, to which we may continuously return. Eternity is at our hearts, pressing upon our time-torn lives, warming us with intimations of an astounding destiny, calling us home unto Itself. Yielding to these persuasions, gladly committing ourselves in body and soul, utterly and completely, to the Light Within, is the beginning of true life. It is a dynamic center, a creative Life that presses to birth within us. It is a Light Within which illumines the face of God and casts new shadows and new glories upon the face of men. It is the Shekinah of the soul, the Presence in the midst. Here is the slumbering Christ, stirring to be awakened, to become the soul we clothe in earthly form and action. And He is within us all.
A fundamental spiritual discipline that aids us in our ability to live from our sacred center is the practice of contemplation in general and resting in the “sacred silence” in particular. This is an important goal for each of us, but we will inevitably encounter resistance, coming either from ourselves, the world, or the enemy. Frederick Buechner calls this inner sanctuary our “shimmering self” and he speaks of our general inability to live from the sacred center:
Our original shimmering self gets buried so deep we hardly live out of it at all…rather, we learn to live out of all the other selves which we are constantly putting on and taking off like coats and hats against the world’s weather.
The coats and hats Buechner is speaking of are the various roles that we play in our day to day lives – roles like husband, wife, father, mother, employer, employee, friend, and yes, Christian. For all too many of us, even our identity as members of Christ’s family is little more than a role we play. Little wonder we lose contact with our Inner Light.
The practice of contemplation and developing the ability to rest in the Sacred Silence is somewhat of a lost art in the Protestant Church. This is highly unfortunate because it is in this inner sanctuary where we indeed meet our “shimmering self” – our true being manifested as the Inner Light. It is precisely the fear on the part of many believers that somehow Christian meditation is somehow an Eastern practice or even more sinister, a New Age technique spawned in the bowels of Hell.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Many among us desire a deeper spirituality, a deeper awareness of the presence of the Light that dwells in their hearts, a deeper sense of security, assurance, and vitality. A.W. Tozer tells us:
There are those who…are yet unable to reconcile themselves to the continued absence of fire. They desire God above all. They are athirst to taste for themselves the ‘piercing sweetness’ of the love of Christ about Whom all the holy prophets did write and the psalmists did sing…..
For it is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God Himself, and unless and until the hearers find God in personal experience, they are not better for having heard the truth. The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into Him, that they may delight in His Presence, may taste and know the inner sweetness of the very God Himself in the core and center of their hearts.
Christians have become both complacent and ignorant. Ignorant of the riches that lie at the core of the faith they profess and the treasures promised by the Lord to those who seek and knock. Tozer continues:
Everything is made to center upon the initial act of ‘accepting Christ’ (a term incidentally, which is not found in the Bible) and we are not expected thereafter to crave any further revelation of God to our souls. We have been snared in the coils of a spurious logic which insists that if we have found Him we need no more to seek Him. This is set before us as the last word in orthodoxy, and it is taken for granted that no Bible-taught Christian ever believed otherwise……The experiential heart-theology of a grand army of fragrant saints is rejected in favor of a smug interpretation of Scripture.
Unfortunately, for all too many Christians this leads to a sense of self-righteousness at best and an empty, hollow spirituality at worst.
The stiff and wooden quality about our religious lives is a result of our lack of holy desire. Complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth. Acute desire must be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ to His people. He waits to be wanted. Too bad that with many of us He waits so long, so very long, in vain.
Basically, what Tozer is getting at here is that we have to reconnect with the wisdom, love, power, and light that reside at our inner core. We have to realign ourselves so that we are operating as much as possible out of the Spirit and not out of our ego or, as some call it, our lower self. Paul used a term that was popular in his day, the flesh. I prefer to not use “flesh” because over the years it has accumulated much cultural baggage and misinterpretation. Here at LifeBrook we often use the term “little mind” to describe our ego-driven lower self. It is contrasted with another term, Sacred Spirit, which is that part of ourselves we have been talking about – the Inner Light. In fact, we often use the term Sacred Self and Inner Light interchangeably. No matter what you choose to call it, the tried and true methodology of carrying out this realignment and living from our Sacred Self is continual practice of the classical spiritual disciplines, particularly resting in the Sacred Silence or Christian meditation.
If we want to see who God is, we look to Christ. If we want to live as God wants us to live, then it is only obvious that we are to live as Christ lived. How are we to do that? We are to emulate the way he lived his life. It is not enough to imitate his behavior in specific situations, although this is admirable. We are to engage in the overall approach of life that he engaged in. If we emulate these activities, then our being, not just our behavior, will be more like his being. This involves practicing the same spiritual disciplines that Christ practiced. Added to this are the classic traditions proven effective over the centuries by the church as a whole, particularly the early church.
There are numerous disciplines that can help us bring about the needed realignment we have been talking about. However, in the confines of this brief essay I want to discuss the importance of Christian meditation.
Meditation is a word that some Christians have a tendency to shy away from, mostly from misunderstanding or from a misguided perception that by engaging in the practice he or she may fall under the sway of either eastern religion or demonic possession. As stated earlier, nothing could be further from the truth.
Meditative practices have a long history in Christian tradition and have proven their value across the ages. These practices may vary in terms of technique or goal but each and every one of them have an overriding purpose: to deepen our contact with the divine and assist in fostering a proper alignment with the Spirit in order to discern God’s will and be empowered to carry it out.
Contemplation, a form of Christian meditation, has become increasingly popular as a method of realigning with the Inner Light. Sometimes referred to as “Contemplative Prayer, this ancient spiritual practice has many practical benefits as well, such as reduction of stress and fostering a sense of peace in daily life. Yet Christian meditation has at its foundation a spiritual purpose. It is part and parcel, for example, of the renewing of the mind. Henry Drummond exclaims:
There is nothing that will bring us such abundant returns as to take a little time in the quiet each day of our lives. We need this to get the kinks out of our minds, and hence out of our lives. We need this to form better the higher ideals of life. We need this in order to see clearly in mind the things upon which we would concentrate and focus the thought-forces. We need this in order to make continually anew and to keep our conscious connection with the Infinite. We need this in order that the rush and hurry of our everyday life does not keep us away from the conscious realization of the fact that the spirit of Infinite life and power that is back of all, working in and through all, the life of all, is the life of our life, and the source of our power; and that outside of this we have no life and we have no power. To realize this fact fully, and to live in it consciously at all times, is to find the kingdom of God, which is essentially an inner kingdom, and can never be anything else. The kingdom of heaven is to be found only within, and this is done once and for all, and in a manner in which it cannot otherwise be done, when we come into the conscious, living realization of the fact that in our real selves we are essentially one with the Divine life, and open ourselves continually so that this Divine life can speak to and manifest through us.
If you are looking for positive results in your spiritual life it is essential that you stake out time in your day to spend quiet time with God. This will help us get the kinks out of our minds and out of our lives. However, this special time with our Creator must involve more than sitting quietly, reading, and praying. Important as these disciplines are, if we want to taste the true blessings of Sacred Spirit, we must make personal effort to place ourselves in a receptive mode. This involves becoming mentally quiet, increasingly centered, and spiritually alert. Contrary to what you may hear from fear-mongering fundamentalists who have never really taken the time to research the subject fully, Christian meditation does not involve emptying the mind. On the contrary, it involves silencing our internal chatter so that we become a vessel God can then fill with himself.
Time does not allow me to continue this discussion at present, but I will present more over the next couple of days.
To be continued…..
© L.D. Turner 2008 / All Rights Reserved
Monday, October 13, 2008
Themes In Faith Formation: Vines and Branches
L. Dwight Turner
Life in our hustle-bustle western culture is mostly outwardly directed. To some extent, this is a necessity given the realities of the myriad responsibilities placed upon us by making ends meet. Yet all this focus on the outer world does not come without a price. By paying so much attention to our outer world we run the risk of dying spiritually. Do you think this too strong a statement? I think not. Scripture repeatedly tells us that, as Children of the Light, we are called to be separate from the world. Our values are not to be the values of the crowd. Instead, we are given a higher and more difficult calling. We are called to be holy. This means we are to be set apart. We are called to be in the world but not of the world.
We are further called to pay more heed to our inner world and find the Kingdom of Heaven which, as Christ so directly stated, is within. Proverbs 4:23 tells us:
Keep watch over your heart, for therein lie the wellsprings of life.
For the Christian, this means that life is to be lived from the inside out. This is something that cannot be reiterated too often. The wellsprings of life flow from within. Christ calls his followers to tap into the divine source of power residing within. We do this by aligning and abiding. Without this vital connection we can do nothing. It is only by realizing that there exists within us a Divine Light that gives us both life and power that we can begin to accomplish any task that Christ has set before us. It should by now be obvious that the core of the Christian life involves connecting with that Divine Source, which is the Mind of Christ, and abiding in its light.
When this awareness finally dawns in our hearts and minds, we can exclaim along with the apostle John:
See how great a love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God; and such we are. (1 John 3:1 NAS)
What happens when a person begins to abide more consistently in the Light of the Holy Spirit? What sort of changes is wrought in his or her character and what impact does this have on daily life? Thomas Kelly tells us:
They become a holy sanctuary of adoration and of self-oblation, where we are kept in perfect peace, if our minds be stayed on Him who has found us in the inward springs of our life. And in brief intervals of overpowering visitation we are able to carry the sanctuary frame of mind into the world, into its turmoil and its fitfulness, and in a hyperesthesia of the soul, we see all mankind tinged with deeper shadows, and touched with Galilean glories. Powerfully are the springs of our will moved to an abandon of singing love toward God; powerfully are we moved to a new and overcoming love toward time-blinded men and all creation. In this Center of Creation all things are ours, and we are Christ’s and Christ is God’s. We are owned men, ready to run and not be weary and to walk and not faint.
Kelly’s vision of the person abiding in Christ is astounding but not different from what Jesus prayed to the Father in the seventeenth chapter of the Gospel of John. Imagine what it would be like to be touched with Galilean Glories, to be owned men…ready to run and not be weary and to walk and not faint. These truly are the blessings of abiding.
When we abide, truly abide, the living and Word of God becomes a concrete reality in our lives, giving us guidance, comfort and peace. The Living Word becomes a tangible reality, not a distance, broken echo.
When we abide, truly abide, our spiritual life becomes a living organism, not a withering garden. We are grafted to the life-giving vine. Kelly says:
To that divine Life we must cling. In that Current we must bathe. In that abiding yet energizing Center we are all made one, behind and despite the surface differences of our forms and cultures. For the heart of the religious life is in commitment and worship, not in reflection and theory.
And when we become deeply engrafted into the Vine, God speaks to us on all levels, giving direction, comfort, strength and assurance. A.W. Tozer says it well:
He communicates with us through the avenues of our minds, our wills, and our emotions. The continuous and unembarrassed interchange of love and thought between God and the soul of the redeemed man is the throbbing heart of New Testament religion….
So when we sing, 'Draw me nearer, nearer, blessed Lord,' we are not thinking of the nearness of place, but of the nearness of relationship. It is for increasing degrees of awareness that we pray, for a more perfect consciousness of the divine Presence. We need never shout across the spaces to an absent God. He is nearer than our own soul, closer than our most secret thoughts.
Isn’t that a wonderful thought? Our intimacy with God deepens and our sense of his presence becomes more consistent and less sporadic. In fostering our ongoing connection with the vine, we come closer and closer to realizing that divine light that shines somewhere in the breast of every believer. Tozer speaks clearly to this theme when he states:
As we begin to focus upon God the things of the spirit will take shape before our inner eyes. Obedience to the word of Christ will bring an inward revelation of the Godhead (John 14:21-23). It will give acute perception enabling us to see God even as is promised to the pure in heart. A new God-consciousness will seize upon us and we shall begin to taste and hear and inwardly feel the God who is our life and our all. There will be seen the constant shining of the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. (John 1:9)
In his own marvelous and direct way, Steve Brown shares with us the fact that he, like so many Christians, was well educated about the realm of the spirit, even that quiet center that so many have described over the centuries, but had little personal experience of that quiet abiding.
I was only a tourist describing a country I had never visited. I was convinced that the country was there, I had read the travel brochures, I had worked hard at learning the language of that country. I had even met people who lived there and had listened to everything they said about the country. The problem was that I had become an expert on a country that I had never visited.
Richard Foster opens his classic book Celebration of Discipline by stating that what is needed today is not more gifted people or intelligent people. What is needed today is more deep people. And how to we become deep? We become grafted into the Living Vine. We abide.
On a practical level, put aside time in the next few days to get quiet before God and directly ask him what changes you need to make in your life in order to deeply abide in Christ and in the Word. Inquire, with a humble heart, what might be keeping you from abiding and/or what you can do to bring the benefits from abiding out from the sanctuary of your quiet time and into the streets of your daily life.
© L.D. Turner 2008/ All Rights Reserved
Life in our hustle-bustle western culture is mostly outwardly directed. To some extent, this is a necessity given the realities of the myriad responsibilities placed upon us by making ends meet. Yet all this focus on the outer world does not come without a price. By paying so much attention to our outer world we run the risk of dying spiritually. Do you think this too strong a statement? I think not. Scripture repeatedly tells us that, as Children of the Light, we are called to be separate from the world. Our values are not to be the values of the crowd. Instead, we are given a higher and more difficult calling. We are called to be holy. This means we are to be set apart. We are called to be in the world but not of the world.
We are further called to pay more heed to our inner world and find the Kingdom of Heaven which, as Christ so directly stated, is within. Proverbs 4:23 tells us:
Keep watch over your heart, for therein lie the wellsprings of life.
For the Christian, this means that life is to be lived from the inside out. This is something that cannot be reiterated too often. The wellsprings of life flow from within. Christ calls his followers to tap into the divine source of power residing within. We do this by aligning and abiding. Without this vital connection we can do nothing. It is only by realizing that there exists within us a Divine Light that gives us both life and power that we can begin to accomplish any task that Christ has set before us. It should by now be obvious that the core of the Christian life involves connecting with that Divine Source, which is the Mind of Christ, and abiding in its light.
When this awareness finally dawns in our hearts and minds, we can exclaim along with the apostle John:
See how great a love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God; and such we are. (1 John 3:1 NAS)
What happens when a person begins to abide more consistently in the Light of the Holy Spirit? What sort of changes is wrought in his or her character and what impact does this have on daily life? Thomas Kelly tells us:
They become a holy sanctuary of adoration and of self-oblation, where we are kept in perfect peace, if our minds be stayed on Him who has found us in the inward springs of our life. And in brief intervals of overpowering visitation we are able to carry the sanctuary frame of mind into the world, into its turmoil and its fitfulness, and in a hyperesthesia of the soul, we see all mankind tinged with deeper shadows, and touched with Galilean glories. Powerfully are the springs of our will moved to an abandon of singing love toward God; powerfully are we moved to a new and overcoming love toward time-blinded men and all creation. In this Center of Creation all things are ours, and we are Christ’s and Christ is God’s. We are owned men, ready to run and not be weary and to walk and not faint.
Kelly’s vision of the person abiding in Christ is astounding but not different from what Jesus prayed to the Father in the seventeenth chapter of the Gospel of John. Imagine what it would be like to be touched with Galilean Glories, to be owned men…ready to run and not be weary and to walk and not faint. These truly are the blessings of abiding.
When we abide, truly abide, the living and Word of God becomes a concrete reality in our lives, giving us guidance, comfort and peace. The Living Word becomes a tangible reality, not a distance, broken echo.
When we abide, truly abide, our spiritual life becomes a living organism, not a withering garden. We are grafted to the life-giving vine. Kelly says:
To that divine Life we must cling. In that Current we must bathe. In that abiding yet energizing Center we are all made one, behind and despite the surface differences of our forms and cultures. For the heart of the religious life is in commitment and worship, not in reflection and theory.
And when we become deeply engrafted into the Vine, God speaks to us on all levels, giving direction, comfort, strength and assurance. A.W. Tozer says it well:
He communicates with us through the avenues of our minds, our wills, and our emotions. The continuous and unembarrassed interchange of love and thought between God and the soul of the redeemed man is the throbbing heart of New Testament religion….
So when we sing, 'Draw me nearer, nearer, blessed Lord,' we are not thinking of the nearness of place, but of the nearness of relationship. It is for increasing degrees of awareness that we pray, for a more perfect consciousness of the divine Presence. We need never shout across the spaces to an absent God. He is nearer than our own soul, closer than our most secret thoughts.
Isn’t that a wonderful thought? Our intimacy with God deepens and our sense of his presence becomes more consistent and less sporadic. In fostering our ongoing connection with the vine, we come closer and closer to realizing that divine light that shines somewhere in the breast of every believer. Tozer speaks clearly to this theme when he states:
As we begin to focus upon God the things of the spirit will take shape before our inner eyes. Obedience to the word of Christ will bring an inward revelation of the Godhead (John 14:21-23). It will give acute perception enabling us to see God even as is promised to the pure in heart. A new God-consciousness will seize upon us and we shall begin to taste and hear and inwardly feel the God who is our life and our all. There will be seen the constant shining of the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. (John 1:9)
In his own marvelous and direct way, Steve Brown shares with us the fact that he, like so many Christians, was well educated about the realm of the spirit, even that quiet center that so many have described over the centuries, but had little personal experience of that quiet abiding.
I was only a tourist describing a country I had never visited. I was convinced that the country was there, I had read the travel brochures, I had worked hard at learning the language of that country. I had even met people who lived there and had listened to everything they said about the country. The problem was that I had become an expert on a country that I had never visited.
Richard Foster opens his classic book Celebration of Discipline by stating that what is needed today is not more gifted people or intelligent people. What is needed today is more deep people. And how to we become deep? We become grafted into the Living Vine. We abide.
On a practical level, put aside time in the next few days to get quiet before God and directly ask him what changes you need to make in your life in order to deeply abide in Christ and in the Word. Inquire, with a humble heart, what might be keeping you from abiding and/or what you can do to bring the benefits from abiding out from the sanctuary of your quiet time and into the streets of your daily life.
© L.D. Turner 2008/ All Rights Reserved
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)