Spiritual Direction, Being Church, Being Mission-Shaped

Paul writes – I continue to wonder about what ecclesiological and missional uniqueness in shape and content might emerges from Godwardness, the contemplative, from quiet attentiveness, our listening to God in the spaces between words and activity, and our exploration of the inner and outer mysteries of life. Would the “Godwardness” re-colonise our imaginations” in relation to church, mission, and and the slow work of formation?

It seems to me that this inwardness, the contemplative is so often the missing strand DNA ecclesial / missional DNA. I wonder therefore how this ‘genetic’ absence misshapes our understanding and practice of what it means to be church, to be a mission shaped church that slows down, notices, and joins in on what God is already doing amongst us and beyond us.

Ann Kline from the Shalem Institute makes some useful comments about spiritual direction.

“Spiritual direction is not about knowing ourselves better, living our lives more creatively, or engaging in life more fully, although all of these may be the fruits of the relationship. Ultimately, spiritual direction is not about us at all. It is about God. It is about turning to God and claiming our relatedness. It is about orienting ourselves to a desire in us beyond needs-to live the whole of our lives as a radically-involved dialog with the Holy.

This may not sound like much. It is, in fact, very simple. Its value cannot be quantified (although we may offer something to our spiritual directors for the gift of their time), its success cannot be measured (although we may undertake periodic discernment of the continued rightness of the relationship). Every breakthrough of understanding, awareness or openness can be accompanied by another experience of confusion, obscurity, and darkness. We never seem to "get" anywhere. That is because in spiritual direction there is, ultimately, nowhere to go. Rather, like the lines in a T.S. Eliot poem, we seek to come back (again and again) to where we are and know it again for the first time. Spiritual direction is a process of discovery and rediscovery of the basic mystery of our being: the wonder, the promise, the limitations and the losses and the miracle that is life itself. God as God would live in us. Love as Love would love through us. Letting go time and again of the old agendas that no longer give us a satisfying structure, the old stories that would trap us in who we were and blind us to who we are becoming. Spiritual direction helps loosen our grip on the side of the pool where we cling to avoid the deeper water of what our life is truly about.

The focus of the spiritual direction relationship is not what the director says. It is not even so much what the directee says, although hearing our words out loud can have its own power of prayer and provide some helpful clarity. It is what each hears God saying in the spaces between the words, in the quiet attentiveness to what lies beneath the words: a deep desire to sense God's presence, here and now, and find that to be a steadfast and trustworthy reality.”

See also my former post here. I quote Len Hjalmarson who writes:

“The only way forward to a new kind of church is to become people of restfulness and contemplation. So long as we are driven to bring change, driven to be effective, we will only recreate the driven, oppressive, addictive and compulsive systems we have always known.”

A question I have:

“Is this kind of church the outcome of people being at a certain faith-stage, or is the contemplative and the restful a significant need of all Jesus-followers, irrespective of where they are on their faith-stage journey?” How might the contemplative re-mix an emerging ecclesiology?" ...

Comments

[len]

In your question I hear, chicken or egg? or.. .it is root or fruit? It is both and neither. It is both in that from a human perspective the kingdom is now but not yet. It is neither in that from a heavenly perspective it is all hidden.. and whole.. in the life of God. But from where we sit, we have to seek a unity between ends and means.. we seek today to dwell into God with all our wisdom, strength and love and then leave the ends to God.