Prodigal Kiwi(s) Blog

Discernment

Paul writes – Maggi Dawn recently offered some good thoughts on personal discernment that draw on the very helpful Ignatian tradition. She writes:

“…Ignatius defines consolation as "Every increase in faith, hope and love, and all interior joy that invites and attracts to what is heavenly, and to the salvation of our soul, by filling it with peace and quiet in its Creator and Lord."   

Desolation, he says, is "What is entirely the opposite of consolation … darkness of soul, turmoil of spirit, inclination to what is low and earthly, restlessness arising from many disturbances which lead to lack of faith, lack of hope, and lack of love. The soul is wholly slothful, tepid, sad, and separated, as it were, from its Creator and Lord."

Maggi tells of a friend who called on her recently when he was making some decisions in relation to his own life. Her advice included the following, which draws on Ignatian principles:

"Regardless of what is sensible, and regardless of what you think you "ought" to do, which of the courses ahead of you makes you feel alive, makes your heart open wider, makes you feel hopeful and as if the future is opening up not closing down? That is the route you should go."

Three’s – A Way of Reading, Listening, Experiencing God and Discerning Together

“…Services for … [Alt-Worship / Emergent] gatherings can be quite bizarre for a traditionalist—filled with such things such as walking through labyrinths, sitting in couches in the round, having informal and participatory conversations with the preacher, or with having many things go on at the same time during the service…”

Scot McKnight

 

Paul writes – This an old post re~posted. I do so because of my continued belief that we need different practices of engaging together with Scripture. We’ve relied overly on preaching (where the congregation becomes an “audience”) and individualized “bible reading”. I also want to continue encouraging good practice of gospel / culture engagement and communal discernment (learning to recognise God and God’s activity.

“A significant experience for me over the last 12-months has been my regular participation is a small group – my “three”. It’s actually four persons (we remained as a “three” for the whole course), and flows out of an hour long contemplative experience (imaginative prayer with Scripture, lectio divina etc – That sort of prayerful practice), followed by 30 minutes of journaling – of sitting with the content, feelings, images, sounds, colours, and experiences of our prayer. We then gathered together as a “three” and prayerfully listened to each other & God present with us, as we:

1.        Share what happened for me during the contemplative prayer? Where was God in that experience? Who was God for me? And, how was I for God? The Bible is engaged with formationally and not primarily informationally. 

2.        We then journal again. The person sharing reflects on their experience of “telling” – how was the experience for them? What new insights did they gain as they told of their experience? The other members of the “three” journal and notice the effect on them of listening – they are paying particular attention to their feelings and what they experienced as they listened - “how was it for them as they listened?”

3.        We then talk to the group about this additional experience. The person who shared talks about their experience of sharing, the others talk about what they experienced (including the insights they gained, what they felt (e.g. excitement, sadness, confusion etc) as they listened. We listen for the “more” – the places where we discern the presence of God, life, and passion/energy.

4.        This is repeated three more times – each person sharing, the other’s listening, and then dialoging. Time wise it’s limited to an hour.

It is an excellent practice for growing, deepening ones engagement with God, and learning (about ones self, others, Scripture, God etc) in a “corporate” setting. Parker Palmer talks of his taking, “an inner journey in community”, and that’s exactly what happens – “three’s” is about taking “an inner journey in community.”

Where’s God…Monday to Saturday?

Paul writes – One of the fun books I like to flick through from time to time are the “Where’s Wally?” series. The aim of reading them is to try and locate Wally among a myriad of people and objects. Now Steve Taylor and a few others are embarking on what I imagine will be a fascinating experiment to “find God”.

First published in 1987, Where's Wally? is one of the most recognisable children's characters in the world, with over 45 million books and 36 million individual issues of a collectable part works sold worldwide.

One of the passages a number of us (from Canada, Australia etc) have been sitting with for over 12-months is Luke 10: 1-12. Some of us have used “Appreciative Inquiry” as a way of listening, inquiring after God, and thus discerning God’s Kingdom work. Another practice has been to take Luke 10: 1-12 as we’ve gone about the activities of our day, and as we’ve intentionally though of ourselves as “sent” by Jesus, in the same way that he “sent” the 70/72 ahead of him as he journeyed toward Jerusalem.

The particular verse that I went to as I read Steve’s post was Luke 10: 11b which Eugene Peterson translates as a question: “Did you have any idea that God's kingdom was right on your doorstep?”

I’ve mentioned many many times on this blog the importance of the practice of corporate discernment. We can’t join in on what God is doing (i.e. mission) if we can’t locate God.

Here’s a section of Steve’s post:

“…I am starting a 4 week series on the Kingdom of God... My aim for the 4 weeks is to help us become better at finding the Kingdom in our ordinary and everyday lives as Christians. I am writing to ask if you would be willing to be part of a public experiment. And for the next 4 weeks, make a commitment to keep an on-line journal in which you write a paragraph each day on Kingdom signs that you are noticing in your everyday life and work. Your journal, and those of 4 others in the church, would be advertised and placed on our church website. (I will also invite anyone who wants to in the church to join us, but I want a few examples to get us all going).

And people would be able, during the week to read and follow. Once a week, I would ask you to pause, to read back over the week and to write a summary paragraph, an overall discernment, a wondering about overall themes that might be emerging…”

You can read the whole post here, and from it, link to three people participating in the experiment. The discernment questions are adapted by Steve from a paper I wrote last year, and I in turn adapted and expanded on some questions that Rowan Williams included in his wonderful Silence and Honey Cakes: The Wisdom of the Desert / Where God Happens: Discovering Christ in One Another (US edition).

Coughs, tickles and Appreciative Enquiry

Paul writes – I appreciated this from Simon Carey Holt’s blog (good to have him blogging again after a little break to focus on other things). Nice to have another Baptist working with Anglican's

The question of discernment – learning to recognise God at work (in order to join in) – is a regular theme on this blog (for example, see here for a few, more recent posts). I’ve previously mentioned the wonderful book – Spirituality in the City – here, though I haven’t yet reviewed it – in summary I’d give it an “8 out of 10!”

I wonder what kind of essays, actions and initiatives would be generated from within the town I live in – “Spirituality in Cambridge” – if a group of us creatively and imaginatively listened for the “coughs and tickles”…?

"Meister Eckhart believed that 'God is like a person who clears his throat while hiding and so gives himself away.' The challenge to the churches at the moment is to unveil whether there might be a divine presence in so much contemporary darkness, and to encourage the energy that is still there in people's lives to listen out for the divine coughs and tickles."

Mark Oakley, "Reclaiming Faith," in Spirituality in the City, edited by Andrew Walker, 1-14. London: SPCK, 2005.

On a related theme check out the ever thoughtful Len Hjalmarson’s useful reflection (and summary) of Appreciative Enquiry, here. His earlier ‘introduction’ to the theme can be found here.

Listening – A Practice of Hospitality

Paul writes – a wonderful description of listening as a practice of hospitality.

“To listen is very hard, because it asks of us so much interior stability that we no longer need to prove ourselves by speeches, arguments, statements, or declarations.  True listeners no longer have an inner need to make their presence known. They are free to receive, to welcome, to accept. Listening is much more than allowing another to talk while waiting for a chance to respond.  Listening is paying full attention to others and welcoming them into our very beings. The beauty of listening is that, those who are listened to start feeling accepted, start taking their words more seriously and discovering their own true selves.  Listening is a form of spiritual hospitality by which you invite strangers to become friends, to get to know their inner selves more fully, and even to dare to be silent with you.”

Henri Nouwen (via Bigbulkyanglican – Tom Allen’s blog)

As we listen we’re listening for the inner landscape, the inner features, patterns, contours and characteristics of a person’s life or a particular context. We’re listening for God, and the ways God might be both at work, or wanting to work in the interests of life, wholeness and shalom.

Discernment and the Examen – Final Part

Paul writes – And now, as promised, an example of an Examen of Consciousness (see Andrew Walker’s essay from yesterday / part 1 of this series of three posts, here) for why we should understand this as an examination of “consciousness” rather than “conscience”). The primary source of what follows is the little booklet Reflective Practice for Spiritual Directors by Anne Long.

1.           Firstly, we open ourselves to God who is with me here and now in this present moment. I then ask for God’s light, insight, and sensitivity to the leading of the Spirit in the midst of my recollection and reflection.

2.           I look back over the period of time (typically 24 hours) I’m reflecting on. I cast my mind out into the events, occurrences, encounters, and experiences of the last 24-hours.

3.           I ask myself questions like, “What was I most grateful for?” “What warmed my heart” “What drew me toward others and toward God?” “What has encouraged me over the last 24-hours?”  And, “when did I feel most alive and energised over the last 24-hours?” I’m noticing the effects of this recollection on me; I’m noticing and recollecting the feelings that accompanied these events, experiences etc. I’m quietly savoring and thanking God for those times of aliveness and freedom.

4.           I then ask myself questions like, “What was I least grateful for?” “What caused me to create distance between my self and others; myself and God?” “When did I feel most distant from my own self?” And, “when did I feel least alive or most drained over the last 24-hours?” Again, I’m recollecting the feelings that accompanied these experiences.

5.           I ask for God’s help as I resolve to more intentionally serve him and others.

The thing about the Examen is that it’s a journey over the course of which we accumulate multi-sensory ‘data’ that enables us to more clearly recognise God, God’s activity, and God’s love in our lives. Over time our lives are deepened; our reluctance to allowing God to love us is broken down; courage is nourished and we find ourselves more intentionally able embody and bear “good news” in all the contexts we find ourselves. Over time we find ourselves growing in our love for God, for self, and for others.

“Over time we become more and more able to discriminate, to discern, and our potential as human beings in relation to God becomes even more liberated…We …become ever more sensitive to both the positive and negative forces that lie beneath the surface of things, and to how the Holy Spirit works with us through both of them” (Andrew Walker, Daydreaming Revisited, p. 102). 

Discernment and the Examen – Part 2 of 3

Paul writes – the Examen, above all other practices of discernment, enables us to acquire the important habit of reflecting on our lives; reflecting on our contexts in the company of God and learning how to read the maps of self and place. This is to grow in discernment – to grow in our ability to see and experience God in our consciousness and unconsciousness. It is to grow in our ability to recognise and hear the “still small voice” (1 Kings 19:12). Finally we could say, with Ignatius, that doing the Examen is a response of love and a willingness “to strive to move my heart toward what [is] pleasing to God.” 

So, ultimately, the Examen is about nourishing the courage to love and enabling me to surrender ever more fully and transformatively to love (1 John 4:16). The Examen helps liberate us from what Ignatius calls “false attachments.” It helps us, over a lifetime, to increasingly “let go” of all that inhibits or limits a developing and deepening relationship with Jesus.

Joseph Cardinal Bernadin writing not long before his death reminds us that this:

“…Letting go” is “never easy. I have prayed and struggled constantly to be able to let go of things more willingly, to be free of everything that keeps the Lord from finding greater hospitality in my soul or interferes with my surrender to what God asks of me… My daily prayer is that I can open wide the doors of my heart to Jesus and his expectations of me…” 

Here’s Fr. Herbert McCabe on liberation and love:

“Jesus came to redeem us, to give us faith in his Father’s love so that we do not need to assert ourselves and our innocence and our rightness, so that we can relax and confess the truth about ourselves, so that we can stop judging ourselves and others, because we know that it doesn’t matter: God loves us anyway, so that we are liberated enough to risk being vulnerable to others – liberated enough to risk loving and being loved by others...”

Andrew Walker (author or editor of a number of very good books, including Remembering our Future: Explorations in Deep Church, and the earlier Spirituality in the City writes an excellent article on the subject of the Examen. I’m pretty sure too that Walker is one of Jason Clark’s PhD supervisors).

The article is titled Daydreaming Revisited: A Psychology for the Examen Explored and is well worth reading. It was published in the very useful journal of the British Jesuits, The Way and is available online as a PDF, here.

Tomorrow, I’ll post some questions I find useful in an Examen of Consciousness. Essentially the Examen I try and use. They are excerpted and in same cases adapted from a helpful Grove booklet (#98) by Anne Long. It’s a “follow up” to her earlier one on Spiritual Direction (“Approaches to Spiritual Direction”), and is titled: Reflective Practice for Spiritual Directors. For a more comprehensive understanding of St. Ignatius’s Examen of Consciousness I’d recommend the excellent book by Timothy Gallagher, The Examen Prayer: Ignatian Wisdom for Our Lives Today…

Experiencing the Presence of the Kingdom

Paul writes – As I was reading from Maggi’s book earlier in the week (p.77. She was talking about Jesus not being recognised. She did this by way of drawing on an Elijah story) my mind drifted away to think about the (all-to-easy) human tendency to not seeing the quiet activity of God around us – the nearness of the Kingdom (cf. Lk 10:1-12). It’s too easy to miss it, to not notice it in either our/my haste (in part our/my need to be “productive”); or as the result of my/our own large dreams and plans for church, God, and mission.

Maggi talks about the “messianic expectation” (woven, for example, into John 1:6-8: 19-28). She writes: “what are you hoping for, waiting for, expecting, anticipating – it’s already here. But you can’t see it.” She says that the “already-but-not-yet of the kingdom is perfectly summed up” in the Johanine passage above. “The person they were hoping for was on their doorstep [think here of Luke 10: 8-9 and the way Eugene Peterson says something very similar]. Christ himself was living right there among them, yet they didn’t recognise him.”

Maggi helpfully wonders if, “Perhaps… the hope we invest in Jesus [or, for example, in “mission” revitalizing our church(s) and re-engaging us in the gospel and culture conversation] can take a shape in our minds that stops us from noticing” what’s right in front of our eyes; what’s already present.

The challenges are thus around seeing, listening, being touched by, tasting and smelling the activity of God-in-Christ Jesus in the present moment. It seems to me, as with (genuine)listening (not just hearing), that we’re asked “let go” of our own agenda’s and plans. To let go of the need to insert our /my own voice and story; to have on the ‘tip of our tongues’ the next thing we want to say – all of which hinders our ability to really listen and to really see.   

And so we are invited to “listen with [our] heart[s]” "God speaks, and God is to be heard, not only on Sinai, not only in my own heart but in the voice of the stranger ... God must be allowed the right to speak unpredictably." (Thomas Merton). Listening for the kingdom with the “ear of our hearts”, it seems to me, requires us to travel the hard way, the costly way of dropping our plans and obediently accepting the Father’s way – a struggle for me, I must say. It doesn’t come naturally.

So why is it a costly way? I think, in part, it is so because it is a path that requires us to confront (with the help of grace) and face our fears. I often meditate on what it must have been like for Jesus as he began his journey toward Jerusalem (and his death). Had he discerned the Spirit correctly? What lay ahead on the path…etc? I wonder if we can see the presence of the Kingdom apart from actually immersing ourselves in particular contexts (cf. Luke 10:1-12 / the road to Emmaus, hospitality and the breaking of bread etc); from actually practicing the kind of obedience that St. Benedict (in his rule) articulates for those (monks) who will journey toward God via his rule.

And this, I think, is the biggest fear, as I reflect on my own life. It is the fear of obedience.

(in addition to Maggi's fine book, my other Advent reading (of late) has been to dip into M. Basil Pennington's posthumously published Listen with your heart: Spiritual Living with the rule of Saint Benedict ). It’s a fear (of simple obedience) that we/I mask and evade in so many ways. I think obedience and the ability to see, name and experience God's kingdom are closely related - "Let it be done to me according to your will" - what a profound statement of obedience from Mary to the angelic news of her pending pregnancy.

May the divine assistance remain with me, and us, always as we seek for the Kingdom.

Indifference (one might say, “différance”) and the Anglican Debate

Paul writes – I recently had the pleasure of reading a wonderfully wise and balanced paper by philosopher / ethicist Canon Dr. Joseph Cassidy (St. Chad’s College, Durham University). It’s an excellent essay, very helpfully addressing some of the important questions that that (many-but-not-all) Anglican’s are currently thinking through and debating. Particularly good, I think, at a macro-level (i.e. it frames things well), however, the micro implications (working it out on the ground) might be a bit challenging.

As someone occupying middle ground I found it helpful in a way I don’t find a lot of what is coming from the “left” and the “right”. Some might say, from the fraying edges. I found this excerpt useful in narrating my own sense of “posture” and freedom relative to these debates. I Joe drawing this understanding of “spiritual freedom” from one of my inspirations, Ignatius of Loyola (not surprising given that Cassidy was formerly a Jesuit). Cassidy articulates a point that many on either side of this debate find uncomfortable – dare I say this would be particularly the case with conservative evangelicals, as “the Bible” isn’t mentioned, nor are particular biblical texts, though Cassidy does engage (in the essay) theologically with John 7:14-36.

“…Spiritual freedom is rather a measure of whether I'd be willing to change my mind if God required it of me. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, urged his companions to aim for 'indifference': though it is a bit of a misnomer, in his terms indifference is a quest for equilibrium, a desire to be inclined to one option or another solely because it is closer to God's will for us. In other words it is a desire to be swayed by nothing other than God's will. It's difficult to explain, but Ignatius realised we have all kinds of preferences, complex sets of priorities; but if we could get our motivation clear, if we really wanted to be motivated solely by whatever is more conducive to God's praise and glory, then that would have a ripple effect on all our other desires. The experience of indifference is accompanied by an exquisite sense of freedom; the sign of indifference is related to that sense of freedom via the absence of compulsion; and the fruit of indifference is the readiness or availability to do God's will for God's sake. If such indifference becomes a habit, a virtue, then one gets a feel for God's ways, one has an openness to being persuaded by God without requiring God to prove God's self because the Spirit animating a particular desire is recognised as coming from God - though discernment is always needed because we are perpetually capable of deceiving ourselves and because it is one thing to desire something authentically and another thing to figure out how best to fulfil the desire.

And spiritual freedom is a real grace. Spiritual freedom is a willingness to allow the Holy Spirit within us to recognise God's often subtle hand in our world, in our choices…”

On related Ignatian themes, see Simon Carey Holt here, and John Santic on “Discernment as a Missional Imperative.” I’ve fairly recently written (as a draft document, i.e. some preliminary thinking – modified a little since then – but still a work in progress) on discernment here…I previously posted, here, a sermon by Cassidy.

Luke 10:8-9. Discerning the Proximity of God’s Kingdom, and thus God’s Invitation(s) to the Church

Paul writes – Over the last week, in particular, I have been sitting with Luke 10:1-12 in the company of some wonderful others. I’ve been listening to Luke 10:1-12, wondering about the ways in which our rhythms and ways of being church; our values and practices of church reflect a commitment to locating the places in which God is at work in the local and everyday narratives, the everyday practices and “tactics” of life and living. Engaging these narratives, practices and tactics (in conversation with Scripture) enables us to understand and communicate “gospel” in ways that do indeed represent “good news” and God’s shalom for post-Christendom Western culture(s) and society. 

Below is a tentative draft of a corporate discernment process; a process which hopefully enables us to see that “God’s kingdom is right on our doorsteps” (The Message); and to discern in that “seeing” the ways in which we are being invited to creatively and imaginatively join in on what God is doing in a range of everyday contexts.

Feel free to offer constructive critique around how this process might be ‘sharpened’ and thus made more useful.

Download paul_fromont_the_beginnings_of_discerning_god_together.pdf