Destination Dissertation

2011-12-12T20:54:00.000-08:00

Good news! My dissertation has been "approved without change" by my committee at San Francisco Theological Seminary. All that's left to do is print two copies on archival paper. It feels a little unreal since the process has taken so long on the institutional end. (I first sent my complete manuscript back in late March, and they requested one revision.) But I'm grateful to see the light at the end of the tunnel so that I can begin transitioning my manuscript into a more popularized form for publication. Many thanks to everyone who has helped and encouraged me in this process. I'm set to graduate on May 2013, or maybe in February via a Trustee's meeting.

2011-03-21T22:55:00.000-07:00

I'm grateful to my printer for printing 472 pages -- albeit with a newly installed ink cartridge -- without jamming: that is, two full copies of my dissertation. I'll mail them to San Francisco Theological Seminary in the morning. Then two anonymous, independent readers have one month to get back to me with their (hopefully-not-too-harsh) comments. For those into statistics, I'm at 58,134 words, 236 pages, 3,607 lines, 1,221 paragraphs, and 354,021.

2011-03-18T20:23:00.000-07:00

I'm currently cleaning up the citations/bibliography. My advisor has approved the content. I need to read through one more time for typos (currently 230 pages). I hope to mail it out next week to the independent readers, who have one month to get back to me. I'm ready to be done, but I'm way ahead of the Dec 1 deadline to graduate in May 2012. Thankfully I can work on my porch; it's 63 degrees at 11:30p.m.!

2011-02-17T21:13:00.000-08:00

Update: just finished upgrading chapter four. Next up the final chapter, #5 -- although that may take a bit more time since I've spent the least time on that chapter. But my notes are in order (I think!), so hopefully it will go quickly. Currently, I am on page 162 of 181 -- or 90% complete (because chapter 5 is shorter than the other chapters), and as before these numbers don't include the currently 36 page bibliography.

2011-02-17T14:40:00.000-08:00

I just finished "rounding-up" chapter three from a zero draft to a first draft -- now on to chapter four, which should not take long in that it is mostly transcripts of my Communion Meditations. A first draft is a form that can finally be given to someone else to read and offer comments for improvements -- whereas a zero draft is mostly in a form only I can comprehend. So, my hope is to quickly get comments on my first draft chapters to continue on toward submitting my work to the committee.

I'm on page 137 of 191 -- or 71% through the zero-draft-to-first-draft process, not including the currently 35-page bibliography.

2011-02-15T20:43:00.000-08:00

My first chapter is finally off to my advisor, and chapter two has now been officially upgraded from a zero draft to a first draft -- and, thus, is ready for proofreading. Tomorrow: chapter three. I wasn't kidding when i said that I had most of this material almost ready months ago. Essentially I am now on page 103 of 200 -- or 52% finished, not including the Bibliography which currently weighs in at 30 pages, double-spaced, of course.

2011-02-10T08:39:00.000-08:00

Starting a new job and moving cross country has meant that I haven't worked on my dissertation in approximately seven months. If I had stayed at my former job, I think I would have had a good chance of getting an advisor-approved draft to the committee by the December 1 deadline of 2010. Now my goal is to carve out some time each week in order to meet the December 1, 2011 deadline. Ultimately, I have until December 1, 2013, but I would love to be finish with this project this year -- which would put me on track to graduate in May 2012. We'll see. Currently I am 40% through rounding-up a "zero draft" into a solid "first draft."

2010-05-05T13:26:00.001-07:00

I now have a solid first draft of chapter one as well as of the preface and introduction. Currently, that means I have edited 51 of the 219 total pages (which includes the bibliography), or 23% of the total. Tomorrow: on to refining chapter two.

2010-04-02T10:24:00.000-07:00

The rough draft of my final chapter is complete!

Currently my dissertation/project has 48,044 words and spans 196 pages.

Instead of writing the conclusion, I plan to start again at the beginning and, in the spirit of Isaiah 40, make "the rough places a plain." I hope to have a solid first draft ready for the first line of editing by the end of May.

2010-03-29T09:59:00.000-07:00

After an approximately month-long hiatus in which I've been, among other tasks, writing my part of this summer's youth camp curriculum, I'm moving on to chapter five today. I hope to have a draft done by around tax day, "the Ides of April." Then it will be time to roll back to the beginning and start editing to create version 2.0. After that revision, I'll be ready to start getting comments from readers, whose comments will help me revise further.

2010-01-25T10:02:00.001-08:00

I've been a bit off my game the past week or so for various reasons (Magin having bronchitis as well as coming to fully appreciate the unlimited Netflix "Watch Instantly" option along with discovering an unexpected appreciation for "Friday Night Lights"). However, with the weather warming up (at least temporarily), I'm feeling more focused.

The short update is that I'm up to 79 pages. The more important question is whether I'll finish the rest of chapter two this week, so that I can move onto chapter three in February. I'm hopeful. Stay tuned.

I should qualify that my first draft of chapter two is an even rougher first draft than my 'first draft' of chapter one. There is, nonetheless, a marked improvement from a zero draft (a stack of photocopied pages and notes in manila folders) to a first draft. There remains editing to do and connections to be drawn, but the first draft is a major step.

2010-01-02T19:54:00.000-08:00

I have completed a first draft of my first chapter -- emphasis on first (of many) drafts. The chapter is exactly 30 pages. So with 6 pages of frontmatter and a 6-page draft of an introduction, that makes 42 pages (of 150-200 total).

I'm tempted to spend another week or so on revising the first chapter, but I am finding two major dynamics at play that lead me to move on to chapter two next week: (1) In each section I'm writing no more than 20% of what I could potentially say and (2) I'm seeing how each decision I make has ripple effects across every other section and chapter as well as over the whole book.

For #1, the whole process so far has been one of winnowing. I'm coming to see this book as a performance. There are so many possible directions, spins, and moves that could be made. The challenge is choreographic: selecting, blocking, and directing the players that will work best together for the larger whole of what is possible in 150-200 pages.

I always thought as an undergraduate and graduate that my dissertation would finally be the time when I could read all there is to read and say all there is to say about a given topic. I now that preconception as naive. Even with one's magnum opus (which this dissertation certainly isn't), there is still 80% or more left unsaid; however, I hope that with this dissertation as well as in the future that I am becoming increasingly wise about what to include in the 20% I put on stage in the final draft.

For #2, I feel like I need to go ahead and write my first drafts of my other chapters, so that I can get a sense of the larger whole. In other words, even if I spend another month on chapter 1, I would have to make changes whenever I did eventually write the rest of the my chapters.

Although I have a good idea of the overall shape of my project, there is still discovering in the writing process itself of exactly what I think and in explicitly trying to say what I think as effectively as possible. There is also a challenge in the discipline of focusing what I have to say into pages that are no more than 30 pages or so each.

So, Monday I'll move on to chapter two. I'll likely spend a good part of the week organizing my notes, and the next three weeks writing -- so that I'll hopefully have a 30-page draft of chapter two completed by the end of January.

Stay tuned.

So, to keep to my original deadline of one chapter per month, I'm going to move on to chapter two next week. However, I suspect the final revision and editing process will likely take longer than I expected -- just as the transition from reading to writing process took longer than I originally guessed.

2009-12-20T14:40:00.000-08:00

I have 27 pages written, with a goal of 150 pages by the end of May 2010.

The maximum my program allows is 300 pages, but I hope to write no more than 200 pages. I figure if I set my sights on 150 (the minimum), I have room to expand if needed. I'm hoping this limit also will help discipline me. After all, most books I read could stand to be shorter (that is, better edited), not longer.

My current total of 27 pages includes a 5-page introduction, which I project will eventually become 10 pages, but it's almost impossible to fully write an introduction of a book I'm still in the process of writing. It is like trying to introduce someone you haven't met yet :) So, I'll settle for a inchoate half-intro for now.

The number 27 additionally includes 22 pages of my first chapter, which has four major sections, three of which are essentially complete. I hope to finish the final section (which will run 10-15 pages) in the next two days. But I'm not includes estimates from the final section at the moment because the draft is so rough (more of a "zero draft" than a first draft).

Then, I'll spend the rest of December (with breaks for Christmas and New Year's) tightening, making connections, weaving in thematic material, etc.

Hopefully in early January, I can transition into drafting, writing, and editing chapter two -- with the goal of starting chapter three by early February.

We'll see.

2009-12-08T09:15:00.001-08:00

I haven't posted in almost two month principally because I've been transitioning from reading to outlining. Now I'm writing. The first section of my first chapter is drafted. My goal is a chapter/month. We'll see if I'm being realistic. Accordingly, I've change the title of my blog to "Will I finish writing my dissertation by the end of May 2010?" I hope to have a 150 page draft by then. Again, we'll see. Stay tuned.

2009-10-14T14:48:00.000-07:00

So far it feels fairly reasonable to work through about one shelf (of a five-shelf bookcase) per day -- reviewing the pages I previously marked over the past year of reading, photocopying the salient passages, tagging the photocopies, and sorting them into a file folder for each respective chapter (or section of a chapter). The process is quite similar to the many long, research papers I have written in the past, except I'm working on a much larger canvas.

I am hopeful that I may even finish this major part of the sorting process by the end of next week, although that does not include sorting each of the individual folders into even more specific divisions within each chapter or section.

2009-10-13T09:57:00.000-07:00

The sorting has begun.

I'm following a plan adapted from the book Destination Dissertation. So, I'm developing an outline, then I'll photocopy quotes I want to use and tag them based on my outline.

For now, I'm plowing through a bunch of notes I made for myself low these past few months. Now I have to organize them. I hope to emerge a week or two from now with a better map for moving forward.

2009-10-07T13:54:00.000-07:00

I am essentially done reading, although I will, in reality, continue reading for my dissertation throughout the next year -- principally new books that will be released over the next year or so.

I'm, thus, in the process of shifting my focus from reading to outlining -- that is, directing my first and best energy toward outlining. I'm preaching this Sunday, but hopefully next week I'll be able to start outlining in earnest.

2009-10-02T13:45:00.000-07:00

I finished Charles Taylor's breaktaking A Secular Age on Thursday, October 1, one day after my somewhat-arbitary, self-imposed deadline to finish reading by the end of September -- which is not too shabby since my original goal was to finish reading by the end of 2009.

Now I only have three books left, in addition to a few articles that I'm waiting to arrive from Interlibrary Loan. So, I hope to have most, if not all, of my outline done in October, so that I can start writing in November.

2009-09-24T14:55:00.000-07:00

The end is drawing nigh. I've got approximately 6 books left to read as well as about 11 essays; however, I've got an inch of essays on my desk with notes on them that I need to follow-up on, so I may be adding a few more items to the list. Nevertheless, I can see the light at the end of the reading tunnel.

I doubt I'll finish by the end of September exactly. Maybe by the end of the week that starts on Monday, September 28 -- that is, by the week ending Sunday, October 3...we'll see. Stay tuned.

2009-09-17T09:58:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted this week because I've been waiting to process a bunch of notes from the stack of books and articles on my desk, but I doubt I will get to the stack today...maybe tomorrow (too many unexpected duties have cropped up this week to get to paperwork). Will I finish reading by the end of September, or even by the end of the week that begins Monday, September 28? It's possible, but I'm not certain. Stay tuned.

I hope to, at minimum, finish in early October, and then perhaps be done by the end of October with an detailed outline, so that I can perhaps start writing in November.

2009-09-09T10:43:00.000-07:00

14 books in 5 weeks = 3.5 books/week.

However, one of those 14 books is Charles Taylor's A Secular Age, which is massive, but also directly addresses many topics I'm interested in. His book may mean I do not finish my reading until the end of October, but that will allow time for all my interlibrary loan requests to arrive. I'm currently waiting on 8 books to arrive in addition to 26 chapters/articles.

2009-08-31T10:52:00.000-07:00

17 books in 5 weeks = 3.4 books/week.

Now that the finish line of my year-long, mostly non-fiction reading marathon is almost in sight, it might be fun to actually read some fiction for fun on the weekends for a change, once I start writing on weekends.

2009-08-24T15:04:00.001-07:00

16 books in 6 weeks = 2.67 books/week. The end (of reading) is in sight!

2009-08-17T15:09:00.000-07:00

25 books in 7 weeks = 3.57 books/week. I need some used books to ship faster!

2009-08-10T13:48:00.001-07:00

26 books in 8 weeks = 3.25 books/week. I'm feeling increasingly good about finishing the reading for my dissertation by the end of September. It's time to stop reading and start writing a book!

2009-08-02T07:23:00.000-07:00

In light of my urge to start writing sooner rather than later, I've done some re-evaluating of my "to read" list, and I've thinned the books down to 32. Thus, if I try to finish reading by the end of October, I need to read 2.67 books/week. Or, if I try to finish by the end of September, I'll need to read 4 books/week.

2009-07-30T17:36:00.000-07:00

I'm starting to feel like it is time to make the transition from reading to writing.

In the past, I've always felt like I had to stop researching prematurely due to an external deadline imposed by a professor. With my dissertation, I'm experiencing the opposite: an internal prompt to stop reading and start writing -- with the accompanying sense that continuing to read will result in decreasing marginal returns at this point.

To that end, my current count (although I need to process some recent notes that may result in some added books) is the following:

46 books in 18 weeks = 2.56 books/week.

2009-07-21T06:16:00.000-07:00

Biking home yesterday I decided that I should commit to upping the ante and recalibrate to finish my dissertation reading by the end of November 2009, then use December to outline, so that I can start writing in January.

Here's the new data:

58 books in 19 weeks = 3.05 books/week.

Not too shabby.

2009-07-20T12:18:00.000-07:00

59 books in 24 weeks = 2.46 books/week.

I'm pleased that the total numbers of books remaining has decreased steadily the past three weeks from 66 to 63 to 59.

I'm also hopeful that I'm going to get quite a bit read in the next two weeks.

2009-07-13T14:24:00.000-07:00

63 books to go in 25 weeks = 2.52 bks/wk. I feel like I'm getting back on track again, and I'm excited to see where I'll be by the end of August (after which the fall schedule picks up again).

In the short run, I'm glad to be down three books from last week, which is my approximate goal these days: three books or so per week -- with, of course, the complicating factor of occasionally finding new books to add.

2009-07-06T12:17:00.000-07:00

66 books to read in 26 weeks = 2.54 bks/wk.

I've just finished one of my busiest weeks this year (I think), so I expect to pick up the pace again soon.

2009-06-23T12:01:00.000-07:00

66 books and 28 weeks = 2.36 books/week. I'm creeping upward, but I'm not too worried since I'd have to be up at 84 books/read to be back at 3 books/week.

2009-06-15T14:18:00.000-07:00

67 books to go and 29 weeks to go = 2.31 books/week.

2009-06-02T13:14:00.001-07:00

72 books to go and 31 weeks = 2.32 books/week. I stayed up later than planned last night to finish a few books since I got off track last week writing my sermon for last Sunday.

2009-05-26T12:36:00.000-07:00

75 books in 32 weeks = 2.34 books/week. The total number of books is up somewhat markedly from the last few weeks. In fact, I'm back where I was in late April as far as the total number of "books to read" is concerned -- which means I have the same number to read as I did then with a one month less time in which to do the reading). However, I feel good about the current status. The books I'm reading -- as well as the ones I have recently added -- are excellent and seem important. I slowed down a bit last week, but now feel like I'm getting back in the groove. The prospect of reading approximately three books a weeks feels manageable at the moment.

2009-05-18T11:42:00.000-07:00

67 books in 33 weeks = 2.03 books/week, which is disappointly back over the 2.0 books/week threshold. However, I'm in the midst of reading some particularly lengthy, though also helpful, books; so in a week or two I will hopefully be back below the 2.0 barrier.

Being back over the 2.0 point has also prompted me to move some books into the "read if I have time" category -- because as 2009 is almost halfway over, I do not want to set myself up to have an unrealistic crunch at the end of the year.

2009-05-10T13:27:00.001-07:00

34 weeks to go and 66 books = 1.94 books/week. I'm up slightly from last week, but still under the 2 books/week threshold. I hope to get the ratio down by this time next week. I'd love to get below the 1 book/week level, but, for now, I'm grateful to still be under 2.0.

2009-05-04T15:38:00.000-07:00

61 books to go in 35 weeks = 1.74 books/week.

2009-04-27T15:23:00.000-07:00

I just spent quite a bit of time culling my "to read" list using a combination of Google Books and the "Search Inside this Book" feature of amazon.com. Google Books, in particular, was incredibly helpful, and I'm grateful to my wife for encouraging me to use this resource more than I have in the past. As a result of that search process, I was able to shift quite a few books from the "need to read the entire book" category to "just order a chapter on Interlibrary Loan." That is good news on two fronts: less reading and less spending (because I don't have to buy the book). Perhaps even more importantly, taking the time to at least look at the table of contents of every book on my "to read" list has given me a sense of relief that there seems to be less and less "landmines" ahead of me -- that is, discoveries of huge swaths of relevant literature of which I am currently unaware.

So, the upshot for this week, with 64 books to read and 36 weeks to go, is 1.78 books/week left to read. And, as my total, again weighs in under the 2.0 books/week threshold, the question emerges of whether I can perhaps finish my reading well before December 2009 -- and thus potentially start writing my dissertation earlier than planned. At minimum, it would be a huge step forward to have my dissertation outlined by the end of 2009.

2009-04-20T11:37:00.000-07:00

74 books and 37 weeks = 2 books/week. I read two books last week, but also added to new ones. With a week less in 2009, I'm up to 2 books a week, now even with the 2.0 threshold. I hope to knock out a number of shorter books this coming week, but we'll see what happens. I also have a lot of meetings, etc.

2009-04-17T13:32:00.000-07:00

74 books to go and 38 weeks = 1.90 books/week.

I've broken the 2 book/week barrier...kind of: the total continues to fluxuate as I add new books, whichI am only now hearing about related to my project (the number of which is thankfully decreasing in frequency), and subtract books, which I now see are not immediately relevant to my project.

I am late posting this week (Friday instead of Monday) because I was hoping to get through a list of possible books that I may need to add from a book I read last week. I wanted to take those potential books into account in this week's posting, but that discernment process will have to wait at least until tomorrow or latest because I haven't yet had time this week to focus on those books, between reading for my dissertation and addressing my primary job at church.

2009-04-05T12:17:00.000-07:00

85 books to go and 39 weeks = 2.18 books/week.

I've moved some books to my amazon wish list in recognition that -- although these books are important and I plan to read them eventually -- they are not vital enough to my dissertation for me to commit to reading them in 2009. I've also decided to not count some books in my "to read" list since I now know that I will likely just read the introduction or conclusion or selected chapters.

So, reversing the trend of the total increasing each week -- or staying the same -- the last two weeks, the total has dropped around ten books/week. I doubt that trend will continue, but those two precipitous drops do make me have more hope in my prospects of finishing the reading for my dissertation this calendar year: the goal this weekly blog is tracking.

2009-03-30T16:03:00.000-07:00

40 weeks to go and 97 books to read = 2.43 books/week.

I was getting frustrated with the dynamic of adding books to my list faster than I can read them, so today I thinned the list. Each week I have a better idea of which books are most immediately relevant to my current work and which books can be read another time.

2009-03-23T09:16:00.000-07:00

41 weeks and 107 books makes for 2.61 books/week.

Looking back over the last few weeks, I started with 106 books to read, dropped to 103, then crept back up to 108. This week I have 107 left -- almost back to where I began despite reading far more than 3 books each week -- but I'm also considering whether I need to read books by Chilton and Levenson, which could put me even higher than my original total. This process of "three steps forward and six steps back" is frustrating, but I'm also trying to be thorough.

An additional factor in the reading process is that I'm becoming more discerning about whether to buy a book or order it on ILL as well as whether to study a book closely or skim quickly. The principle furstration with books that I decide to ILL is waiting for them to arrive.

2009-03-17T15:43:00.000-07:00

Today I have 108 books left. I read way more than 3 books last week, but the books I read lead me to new books to add to my list. I hope soon to get to the point -- since I am reading backwards chronologically -- that the rate at which I add new book will decrease consistently. With 42 weeks to go -- including this week -- that puts me at 2.57 books/week. That number is a bit disheartening; I'd like it to go down. But at least it is under 3 books/week for now.

2009-03-13T15:12:00.000-07:00

Andy Rowell writes, "Did your seminary work adequately prepare you for doctoral work? Yes seminary prepared me well and I bet your seminary prepared you fairly well. But one needs to be passionate about the field they are interested in and to have read beyond seminary courses. Reading needs to be a barely-in-control-passion in your life. :-) ."

Indeed.

2009-03-09T10:58:00.000-07:00

For me, the week begins on Monday. And, this week I have 103 books left on my list. (I'm not even bothering to count all the essays and articles in the total; it's not worth it.) With 43 weeks to go, including this one, those numbers means I have 2.4 books/week to read. At this point, I won't read 3 books/week as long as the total doesn't top 129 books -- so I still have some cushion to read other books that I come across. Also, since I have finished reading all of the 2008 and 2009 books, I am, each week, decreasingly likely to come across books and articles that I haven't already evaluated. Soon I hope to be through all the 2007 books -- perhaps by the end of March.

The main problem with reading this aggressively is that, besides my work at the church, I do not have much time left over for any other activities. In other words, if I'm not at the church, I'm reading.

2009-03-05T09:16:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted on this blog in a LONG TIME. One reason (which I can see now in retrospect) is that "letting go the ego" has not necessarily been aided by pursuing a dual degree program. Continuing education too easily can become "brandishing" the ego or "building" the ego.

So, with that dynamic in mind, I'm considering making this blog into 'truth in advertising' for a while and blogging about my progress toward completing my dissertation. This process is most interesting for me to look back and have a record on my journey, but is this writing is live on the internet, perhaps someone else might find it interesting.

My current goal is to finish the reading for my dissertation by the end of 2009, and submit a draft -- approved by my advisor -- by December 1, 2010.

There are currently 44 weeks left in 2009, although it's about to be 43 since this week is almost over, and I have 106 books left on my "to read" list. The trick, of course, is that I keep adding books to the list. However, I'm reading in reverse order (starting with the most recently published book and working backward). So, hopefully, the rate at which I'm adding books to my list will lessen each week as I read older and older book and are increasingly obsolete and, therefore decreasingly relevant to my topic.

So, crunching the numbers, I need to read 2.41 books/week at this point to finish by the end of 2009.

2007-05-21T13:27:00.000-07:00

Sometimes praying the Psalms feels like just one more form of textual analysis. So, to introduce variety into my practice of praying the hours (at 9am, noon, 3pm, and 6pm), I have begun to take a slow walk around the church building -- or around the block, depending on where I am when my cell phone alarm rings, announcing that it is time to keep the Divine Office. For now, as I pause for a slow walk every three hours -- instead of following a Psalter or breviary -- I am paying attention to Nature, which has been called "The other sacred book."

2007-05-13T12:22:00.000-07:00

E. Suicidal (female, painful/troubling)

Note: This is one of five hypothetical direction scenarios. All actual direction sessions are confidential.

I had been seeing Patricia monthly for direction for about six months. We had spent most of the time reflecting on her desire to grow closer to God and her growing interest in ancient prayer practice. Then, unexpectedly, she came to a session looking depressed and speaking about suicide. She is not currently in therapy.

As a director in this situation, one of the challenges for me is that it is frightening to have someone speak of suicide, and I would want to “fix” the problem. I would hope to keep in mind the “Suicide Intervention Protocol” handout covered in class by Susan Phillips.[1] I would begin by assessing the severity of the suicide, first by simply reflecting back what had been said: “You’re feeling suicidal.” At a minimum, I would likely refer Patricia to a therapist, who could supplement the work we are doing in spiritual direction. In an extreme case, I would call 911, and either accompany Patricia to a hospital or have an appropriate friend or family member accompany her. Most likely, I would facilitate her calling a therapist, perhaps even at the end of the session, and follow-up with Patricia afterward by phone (with her permission), especially if our next session were not for another month.

If the talk of suicide ends, and Patricia is diagnosed with mild depression, I might invite her to experiment with “praying in nature” (or group yoga at a local health club) as a form of active praying – getting her out of the house and engaged with God and the world. Depending on her prayer life at this time, it might also be helpful to recommend Thomas Green’s When the Well Runs Dry: Prayer Beyond the Beginnings and Drinking from a Dry Well.

[1] Susan Phillips, “Suicide Intervention Protocol,” lecture outline (January 16, 2007).

2007-05-12T12:21:00.000-07:00

III. Self as Spiritual Director

When I think about myself as a spiritual director, one recurring image is a variation of the good shepherd imagery from the Gospel of John: shepherding others towards God, who is the Good Shepherd. I particularly appreciate the reassurance in John 10:4-5 that, “The sheep follow the [Good Shepherd] because they know the [Shepherd’s] voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from [the stranger] because they do not know the voice of strangers.” As a spiritual director, I am a shepherd who helps others learn to trust God, who is the true Shepherd. I help them attune their senses to become more aware of the Shepherd’s voice (the inner voice at the center of their being), a voice they have always known on the deepest level of themselves. I also help them discern the voice of the stranger (outside distractions), which they should, in many cases, avoid.

The predominant strength that I bring to the practice of spiritual direction is my mind. It is easy for me to provide directees with language, scripture references, and book recommendations to help them reflect theologically on their experience. It has, for example, been relatively easy for me to provide women with books on feminist theology and to point them to feminine images of God in scripture. Similarly, I can readily provide lesbian and gay Christians with intellectual material regarding the coming out process. In both these cases, I can often speak a word of hope to my directees, help them respond in greater freedom, and equip them to respond to others with clarity and confidence.

My natural proclivity to rely on my thoughts can also be a weakness. It can lead to me depend on the idol of my own intellect instead of listening more deeply for what God may be saying to me through my thoughts. And, even if I am listening for God speaking through my thoughts, I limit the ways in which I listen and respond to God – and the ways in which I help my directees listen and respond to God – if I remain in the comfort zone of my mind. Thus, the biggest challenge I face as a spiritual director is to “widen [my] horizons.”[1] I need to cultivate increasing awareness of the multi-faceted ways in which God communicates beyond the intellectual. Monthly supervision sessions, completing the Contemplative Reflection Forms, and reflection using the Experience Circle are all helping me integrate these lessons into my practice of direction.

As a result, I am starting to pay increased attention to my feelings during direction. This might allow me to say, “When you said that, I felt really sad (or glad or mad),” which might invite the directee to enter more deeply into the affective dimension. I am also starting to pay increased attention to my body. This might allow me to notice something instinctual that I am unable to name cognitively. For instance, a directee might say something that causes tightness in my gut – which might lead me to wonder if there is a deeper concern than what the directee has currently revealed.

My tendency towards the intellectual also means that I am naturally comfortable in the interpretive dimension. Paying attention to (and responding out of) what God is saying to me through my feelings and body can help me invite directees deeper into the affective dimension, but I also need to cultivate my comfort with inviting others into the nonthematic and Mystery dimensions. I have begun to do this recently by inviting directees to “savor” experiences and by leading them through guided meditations. Instead of inviting rational discourse about an experience (the interpretive dimension) or even asking about their feelings (the affective dimension), I am helping them enter more deeply into their experience – where there are often “sighs too deep for words” (the nonthematic). In the future, when appropriate, I hope to invite directees to have intentional, first-hand experiences with God during direction sessions (the Mystery dimension) perhaps through body prayer, prayer in nature, lectio divina, or artistic/creative prayer.

In summary, my growing edges are (1) to become increasingly aware of what God, my feelings, and my body are telling me and (2) to increasingly invite directees towards the nonthematic and Mystery dimensions. The most helpful way I have found for helping myself to accomplish these goals are to respond more slowly to allow time and space for deeper invitations to arise as alternatives to my initial tendencies. This strategy has the added benefit of allowing time and space for the directee to be “self-directed” (that is, to become aware of what God is calling him or her to do or say beyond my awareness of God’s movements).

The theological component to this process is that I need to practice kenosis.[2] In other words, I need to release my grasp on my false self – my learned behaviors of relying on myself, especially my intellect. That means releasing any desire to appear as an “expert,” a temptation to which the ivory tower of the mind is particularly susceptible. And, instead, I need to empty myself (thereby paradoxically connecting to my true self), creating a space that allows God to work through me.

[1] Elizabeth Liebert, “Supervision as Widening the Horizons,” In The Art of Spiritual Direction: Year I (January 2007), 121.

[2] Philippians 2:1-11 (NRSV).

2007-05-11T08:50:00.000-07:00

A poem:

Keeping the Little Hours

The dew still on the ground at terce
The absence of shadows and heat of sext
The shift of shadows in the opposite direction at none.

2007-05-10T12:14:00.000-07:00

D. New Life (female, joyful)

Note: This is one of five hypothetical direction scenarios. All actual direction sessions are confidential.

Tina is twenty-seven, and engaged to be married. We have met once for an introductory session. She comes to her second session – her first, full, hour-long direction experience – full of joy. She has just landed a wonderful new job and found the perfect apartment for a new home.

One challenge in this scenario is that Tina is close to my age and in a similar life-situation: we are both engaged to be married. I would likely need to bracket my own experience to avoid the session having a dual focus – that is, to be about my experience as well as Tina’s. A related pitfall would be having the session devolve into an informal conversation. Tina is not (or at least should not be) coming to direction for a friendship, “spiritual” or otherwise – nor should I be seeking such a relationship from Tina. Spiritual friendship can be a healthy model for spiritual growth, but, in the wise words of Margaret Guenther, traditional spiritual direction,

is unashamedly hierarchal. Not because the director is somehow ‘better’ or ‘holier’ than the directee, but because, in this covenanted relationship the director has agreed to put himself aside so that his total attention can be focused on the person sitting in the other chair. What a gift to bring to another, the gift of disinterested, loving attention![1]

To give this gift of “disinterested, loving attention” to Tina, I would maintain the boundaries of the spiritual direction relationship.

Furthermore, as was the case with Chip, I would also want to give Tina a copy of Sleeping with Bread: Holding What Gives You Life, and invite her and her future husband to do the examen together each evening as way of regularly sharing their consolations and desolations. This could aid communication in their relationship even as it potentially deepens both of their spiritual lives – and provides much fodder for future directions sessions.

During the session at hand, I would want to invite Tina to enter more deeply into her joy – perhaps through savoring various aspects of her experience – or through a guided meditation related to some of her recent consolations: becoming engaged, landing a new job, or finding a new home. I would also want to increase her awareness of the ways in which God has been (and is) Present in all of those experiences – and the ways in which she is responding to God’s call in each of these new areas of her life.

[1] Guenther, 3.

2007-05-09T12:19:00.000-07:00

C. Birth of First Child (male, joyful)

Note: This is one of five hypothetical direction scenarios. All actual direction sessions are confidential.

My first spiritual direction session with Chip was a few weeks after the birth of his first child, Angela. He was filled with joy. After talking through some of the preliminary matters concerning the spiritual direction covenant we were forming, I lit a candle, and invited Chip into a time of silence to mark the transition into the direction session itself. I said, “You can speak out of the silence whenever you feel ready.” I had barely said one Jesus prayer to myself (as a form of self-preparation for “listening the other into speech”) when Chip blurted, “I’m just so happy. (Don’t get me wrong. I’m also exhausted from getting up all the time in the middle of the night to feed Angela – not to mention all the diaper changing.) But I’m just happy. I’ve never been this filled with joy before.”

One challenge for me as the director in this situation is that I do not have children, nor have I ever cared for an infant for any great length of time. However, I do not have to have had the same experience as a directee in order to attempt, as much as possible, to be fully present to another’s experience. An additional challenge in this situation is the speed and exuberance with which the directee is sharing.

In light of these challenges, I would hope to keep in mind that one of the invitations of spiritual direction is to offer a balance to the frenetic pace of many people’s lives and to allow them to become more fully aware what they are experiencing each moment. To accomplish this, it might at first seem easy to reflect his words: “You’re filled with joy” – but this might keep him in the interpretive dimension, potentially inviting another torrent of words. Instead, to invite him to enter the nonthematic, I might notice his body language: “You have such a huge smile on your face” (to help him be aware of what his body is speaking to him – beyond his thoughts and feelings). I would also hope to introduce some times of silence in the session, when he would be invited to savor some of the many recent moments of consolation– to more deeply enter all the facets of those experiences in order to increase his capacity for experiencing future moments of joy, especially related to his child.

I would also want to give Chip a copy of Sleeping with Bread: Holding What Gives You Life.[1] I would invite him and his partner to do the examen together each evening as way of regularly sharing their consolations and desolations related to their daughter’s birth. This could also initiate a ritual that all three of them could eventually do as a family.

[1] Dennis Linn, Sheila Fabricant Linn, and Matthew Linn, Sleeping with Bread: Holding What Gives You Life (Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1995).

2007-05-08T15:10:00.000-07:00

Here's a link to my latest sermon: "The Future is Now."

2007-05-07T12:18:00.000-07:00

B. Troubled Marriage (female, painful/troubling)

Note: This is one of five hypothetical direction scenarios. All actual direction sessions are confidential.

During my first session with Bernice, we agreed that she would practice an Ignatian Examen each evening before going to bed. At our third session, she said that after prayerfully reviewing her notes from the Examen over the last two months, a distinctive pattern stood out: almost all of her desolations were related to her marriage, which had been troubled for many years, particularly since her two children had graduated high school and left the house almost a year ago. She and her husband rarely spent any time together. And since both were often tired at the end of the day, any interaction they did have was often tense and combative. She asked me directly: “Do you think I should get a divorce.”

A challenge for me as a director in this situation would be to bracket my personal opinion. It is ultimately not about whether or not I think she should get divorced. (An exception to this bracketing of my personal option would be the case of abuse – but, even then, it would be ideal to facilitate the directee to seek help by her own initiative.)

In responding to this situation, I would hope to keep in mind the two basic movements of awareness and response. There are many ways of discerning whether to divorce a spouse; however, since this question arose in a spiritual direction session, it seems appropriate to ask Bernice what she feels like God is calling her to do.

The Examen is a tool frequently used in discerning; indeed, it is the tool that was the impetus for the question at hand. However, it would be important to explore more deeply the experience that Bernice has found desolating in regard to her marriage. It could also be helpful to invite Bernice to do a larger Examen on her whole experience of married life, not only to discern patterns of desolation, but also to remember what has been consoling and life-giving – those times when she has felt “most loved” by her husband. This could allow her to see ways of cultivating future experiences of consolation in her marriage.

I would also want to keep in mind two other resources: Gerald May’s reflections on “addicted loving” and Kathleen Fisher’s work on “Spiritual Direction with Women.” First, in his “second freedom question,” May asks,

How free are we within our love? How free are we to be ourselves? To what extent can we play? How much is our freedom confined, restricted, perhaps even imprisoned, by our attachments to the person or thing we love? …The freedom question, then, is not whether we can do whatever we want but whether we can do what we most deeply want.[1]

In light of this insight, I would want Bernice to focus, not only on the desolating thing her husband is doing (or not doing), but also on what she most deeply wants, which may or may not directly involve her husband. There may be a deep longing that could be transformative for her and her perspective on what is consoling and desolating in her life – and perhaps even something that would end up being transformative for her husband and marriage. It is difficult to imagine what that might be in the abstract, but it could be fruitful to invite reflection on the matter.

Second, if traditional “sacrificial theology” were present, I would want to present other alternatives for Bernice other than “I have to stay in this marriage because it is my cross to bear – just like Jesus had his cross.” Based on Kathleen Fisher’s writing, I would invite Bernice to consider, “How can I best love both myself and the other person well in this situation.”[2] In general, this is a helpful question for women, who are taught to embrace the sin of self-abnegation. In particular, this question, as with May’s work, could empower Bernice to consider both what is best for her and for her husband in regard to whether they should seek a divorce.

[1] Gerald May, The Awakened Heart: Opening Yourself to the Love You Need (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1991), 30-31.

[2] Kathleen Fischer, “Spiritual Direction with Women,” In The Art of Spiritual Direction: Year I (January 2007), 45.

2007-05-06T12:17:00.000-07:00

II. Five Scenarios

A. Powerful Encounter with God in a Park (male, painful/troubling)

Note: This is one of five hypothetical direction scenarios. All actual direction sessions are confidential.

I have been seeing Tom monthly for direction for six months. Although I know he is an avid outdoorsman, he has never brought an experience in nature for use in direction. So, at the end of our sixth session, I invited him to consider a prayer in nature: “Tom, your Centering Prayer practice is deepening, and it continues to shape you in important ways. But I want to invite you to experiment with another prayer practice in the next few weeks. You mentioned that you are going camping next weekend at a state park. While you’re there, I invite you to take a slow, leisurely walk for about an hour. Be open to whatever God has to show you. Be attentive to whatever sticks out to you on your walk.”

At the next session, Tom shared: “I tried the prayer in nature that you suggested last time. This is a little strange, but, as I reflected on my experience, the part that stood out most strongly to me was seeing a dead squirrel that had been run over near the entrance of the park. It was really disturbing – and not at all what I expected my prayer in nature to be.”
As a director, one of the challenges of this scenario would be the element of surprise. My expectation was to invite Tom explicitly into the Nature arena, but suddenly there are issues of death and how God is present in the grotesque, the painful, and the troubling – not just in the beautiful and comforting. It also invokes my own feelings of discomfort at seeing dead animals – and my own anger when I see animals run over and thoughtlessly left on the roadside. I would likely need to bracket my own experience and reflections in order to be fully present to Tom’s experience. I would hope to keep in mind that this experience is an opportunity to invite Tom into the affective, non-thematic, and Mystery dimensions – not just remain in the theoretical realm of the interpretive dimension.

2007-05-05T12:15:00.000-07:00

Well, the whole world is filled with speculation.
The whole wide world which people say is round.
They will tear your mind away from contemplation.
They will jump on your misfortune when you're down.
--Bob Dylan, “Ain’t Talkin’”

I. Relationship and Process

In The Art of Christian Listening, Thomas Hart provides the definition of spiritual direction that I have used most frequently both inside and outside of direction sessions:

The purpose of direction will be to sensitize people further to the presence and action of God in their lives, and to assist them to make a fuller and more appropriate response to it. The objectives are that simple: awareness and response.[1]

I continue to be struck by Hart’s condensation of spiritual direction dynamics into two basic movements: “awareness and response.” There are limitations to such a short definition (it masks many complexities), but it is extremely helpful to have an easily memorized definition, especially when describing spiritual direction to someone for the first time. In addition, when acting as a director, I have found it helpful to recall this definition periodically to remind myself of the sessions’ intended focus, which is (1) to increase awareness of God’s Presence and (2) to facilitate a proper response.

Beyond this basic definition, I have also frequently returned to Maureen Conroy’s understanding of spiritual direction in Looking into the Well: Supervision of Spiritual Directors:

The primary goal of spiritual direction is to help an individual grow in a personal relationship with God. Specific purposes are to assist people to:

· recognize, pay attention to, and respond to God’s specific self-communication in life, prayer, and relationship.

· savor, relive, and enjoy the affective touches of God;

· notice differences that take place because of their affective experiences of God;

· explore God’s seeming absence;

· recognize explore, and uncover areas of resistance, darkness, and unfreedom that prevent an individual response to God;

· sift through interior movements;

· grow in deeper intimacy with God; and

· experience greater interior freedom, deeper joy, more grace-filled decisions, a more integrated life, and healthier relationships with self, others, and the world.[2]

In particular, I appreciate Conroy’s emphasis on interior freedom. We often hear about the benefits lifelong learning and proper diet and exercise (a sharp mind and healthy body), but we don’t always have language to describe why we should commit to the long, inner journey of spiritual direction. I have found that, for many, the phrase “interior freedom” articulates a deep longing that remains inchoate until it is named. Many are unaware that they desire to carve out a spacious room inside themselves for play, worship, and exploration. But once this potential is articulated, many desire to seek it.

Overall, for me, the most important dimension of the spiritual direction relationship and process is accompaniment: the director covenants to accompany another on his or her spiritual journey.[3] Spiritual direction, is a specific form of accompaniment, which is principally characterized by the fundamental movements of “awareness and response” to God’s Presence in the life of the directee. “Interior freedom” is an example of equipping the directee with specific language (like “savor[ing]…the affective touches of God”) that helps supplement the basic movements of awareness and response.

It is also crucial to help the directee discern concrete spiritual practices to which she or he is called (for example, Centering Prayer, the Examen, or Journaling).[4] It is insufficient to accompany a directee and provide her with language about God if you do not also help her cultivate first-hand experiences of which she can become more aware and to which she can better respond. Ultimately, however, I am grateful, along with Margaret Guenther, that “when all is said and done, the Holy Spirit is the true director.”[5]

[1] Thomas Hart, The Art of Christian Listening (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), 32.

[2] Maureen Conroy, Looking into the Well: Supervision of Spiritual Directors (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1995), 5-6.

[3] I owe the language of “accompaniment” to Mark Yaconelli in his Contemplative Youth Ministry: Practicing the Presence of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006).

[4] For further examples (body prayer, praying in nature, lectio divina, etc.), see Daniel Wolpert’s Creating a Life with God: The Call of Ancient Prayer Practices (Nashville: Upper Room, 2003).

[5] Margaret Guenther, Holy Listening: The Art of Spiritual Direction (Cambridge: Cowley Publications, 1992), 39.

2007-05-02T12:01:00.000-07:00

Here's a link to my attempt at a recommended reading list for progressive Christianity. I'm open to suggestions.

2007-05-01T16:08:00.000-07:00

In "Disorderly Disciplines," an article published in the May 2007 Christianity Today, Jenell Williams Paris makes a compelling argument for child-rearing as a source of spiritual disciplines -- a source usually neglected in the 2000 years of Christian history. Christian spiritual writing has been mostly done by either men (who have rarely if ever changed a diaper in their life) or celibate woman (same deal with the diapers). Monastic experience doesn't always translate to family life, especially when children are factored in.

Paris proposes some of the following as spiritual disciplines:

Breastfeeding: "It's the most disciplined thing I've ever done...every three hours, around the clock, for nine weeks.... Breastfeeding is my daily office."
Diaper-changing: "cultivates endurance."
Crankiness: "can nurture quick forgiveness."
Exhaustion: "calls for humility and community."
Babies: "provide unlimited chances to live in gratitude and joy."

Men (substituting bottle-feeding for the breast) can practice these disciplines as well. However, the underside of this argument, as my fiancée pointed out, is that, if one isn't careful, promoting the value of child-rearing by women (as noble as that is), can subtly (or unintentionally) undermine women returning to the workplace after giving birth -- another practice that is needed to continue chipping away at institutional sexism.

In an surprisingly related story, Patricia Bennan, an ecologist, has just published an article about duck genitalia. Male scientists studying ducks had long noted (no pun intended) that male ducks sometimes have an extremely large phallus. But, enter a female scientist, and you get a different lens, new questions, and new discoveries: "Gazing at the [male] enormous organs, she asked herself a question that apparently no one had asked before. 'So what does the female look like?' ...Obviously you can’t have something like that without some place to put it in. You need a garage to park the car.'" And, indeed, "When Dr. Brennan dissected some female ducks, she discovered they had a radically different anatomy. 'There were all these weird structures, these pockets and spirals,' she said. Somehow, generations of biologists had never noticed this anatomy before." That somehow being what happens when you don't have women in charge.

2007-04-23T09:08:00.000-07:00

I am only now beginning to recover fully from my recent flurry of meetings and responsibilities. I moved from Holy Week to wedding preparations in Baltimore to the Alliance of Baptists board meeting to the annual Convocation to the post-Convocation children and youth ministers retreat. All of these events were good, but moving straight through without a break disrupted any semblance of rountine.

It is difficult to eat right, exercise, or pray when traveling. And, more than anything else, all of the meetings were relentless -- one after another after another. I was so saturated that I didn't have the energy to carve out time and space for an inner work.

It's good to break-up the rountine occasionally, but I'm really glad to be back home -- especially at my house where there is no Internet and no cable TV.

On the other extreme, I was reading in yesterday's New York Times that psychiatry professor at Harvard has coined the phrase, "'acquired attention deficit disorder' to describe the condition of people who are accustomed to a constant stream of digital stimulation and feel bored in the absence of it. Regardless of whether the stimulation is from the Internet, TV or a cellphone, the brain...is hijacked." I hope I never commit to a job that requires me to have a blackberry. I don't want to be tethered to the office.

For now, one of my growing edges continues to be how to incorporate contemplative practices into travel and meetings.

2007-04-08T17:55:00.000-07:00

Richard Conniff, the author of The Natural History of the Rich recently wrote an article in The New York Times entitled, "The Rich Are More Oblivious Than You and Me." There he presents a case for why there are so many headlines about “Rich and Famous People Acting Like Total Idiots.” He marshalls support for his argument from what he calls the "Cookie Monster Experiment”:

"Researchers led by the psychologist Dacher Keltner took groups of three ordinary volunteers and randomly put one of them in charge. Each trio had a half-hour to work through a boring social survey. Then a researcher came in and left a plateful of precisely five cookies. Care to guess which volunteer typically grabbed an extra cookie? The volunteer who had randomly been assigned the power role was also more likely to eat it with his mouth open, spew crumbs on partners and get cookie detritus on his face and on the table."

I"t reminded the researchers of powerful people they had known in real life. One of them, for instance, had attended meetings with a magazine mogul who ate raw onions and slugged vodka from the bottle, but failed to share these amuse-bouches with his guests. Another had been through an oral exam for his doctorate at which one faculty member not only picked his ear wax, but held it up to dandle lovingly in the light."

"As stupid behaviors go, none of this is in a class with slamming somebody else’s Ferrari into a concrete wall. But science advances by tiny steps." [See Griffin, Eddie]

"The researchers went on to theorize that getting power causes people to focus so keenly on the potential rewards, like money, sex, public acclaim or an extra chocolate-chip cookie — not necessarily in that order, or frankly, any order at all, but preferably all at once — that they become oblivious to the people around them."

"Indeed, the people around them may abet this process, since they are often subordinates intent on keeping the boss happy. So for the boss, it starts to look like a world in which the traffic lights are always green (and damn the pedestrians)."

Reading this article in the context of Holy Week reminded me of the inverse/paradoxical claims of Christianity that sharing power leads to true, deep, grounded power -- a type power that makes you fully present to each moment, not rich and oblivious. Theologians call this power kenosis. Paul described it in Philippians 2:

"5 Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, 7 but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, 8 he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God also highly exalted him."

2007-04-07T17:53:00.000-07:00

Quote of the day: "I've grown tired of people who pimp God." --Roland Martin

2007-04-06T13:33:00.000-07:00

Dr. Philip Zimbardo, a social psychologist and the past president of the American Psychological Association, has recently published a book called The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. Back in 1971, he designed the famous Stanford Prison Experiment, which showed that “anonymity, conformity and boredom can be used to induce sadistic behavior in otherwise wholesome students. More recently, Dr. Zimbardo, 74, has been studying how policy decisions and individual choices led to abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.” For more information on Zimbardo, check out a recent article about him in The New York Times (3 April 2007).

I bring this up because today is Holy Friday, when we remember that bad things happened (and happen) to good people. It is important to remember, not only the victims/martyrs, but also what caused/allowed human beings to be so cruel. Zimbardo's work details the processes by which ordinary human beings because incrementally evil through the influence of their environment. I also just finished reading Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons, where an 18 year old star student from the back country of North Carolina attends an Ivy League college and is corrupted by her environment. The young protagonist's moral fiber is unable to withstand the bacchanalia of a fraternity formal.

Both Zimbardo and Wolfe reaffirmed my commitment to contemplative prayer -- and to teaching contemplation to people of all ages. Without a developed interior life you are left without a ballast -- without any way of defending yourself against the influences of your environment. Charlotte thought she was being set free when she escaped North Carolina; instead, she was cast adrift. The soldiers at Abu Ghraib did not liberate the Iraqis, they captured, tortured, and humiliated them.

The same case could be made on a larger scale for what allowed, in the parlance Daniel Jonah Goldhagen book title, ordinary Germans to become "Hitler's Willing Executioners." Many of those ordinary Germans were Christians, who did not have a sufficient interior life to resist the Nazification all around them. There were notable examples like Dietriech Bonheoffer's Underground Seminary, which took spiritual disciplines seriously -- allowing them to critically examine and resist fascism and totalitarianism. Contemplation and spiritual disciplines are not the only path to individuation, the only way to develop defense mechanisms against "group think," but contemplation is one way, the best way for me.

Incidentally, I use the name "Holy Friday" instead of Good Friday because I don't believe in substitutionary atonement. So, Jesus' death doesn't seem particularly "good" to me. Jesus' death at the hands of the Roman Empire is what almost always happens when God's way meets the way of the world. It is a holy event, a martyrdom that should be remembered. But it is not good or redemptive in the sense that Anselm meant it. To use a vivid image from Dallas Willard, I'm not a vampire Christian: someone who is only interested in Jesus for his blood. John Dominic Crossan has recently published a book on this point: God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now.

2007-03-28T11:59:00.000-07:00

Microfinancing seems like a good "third way" that could bring together liberals (who want to help the poor) and conservatives (who are true-believers in capitalism). Below is article about it, which includes links to two helpful websites:

Monday, March 26, 2007

You, Too, Can Be a Banker to the Poor

NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
The New York Times
March 27, 2007

For those readers who ask me what they can do to help fight poverty, one option is to sit down at your computer and become a microfinancier.

That’s what I did recently. From my laptop in New York, I lent $25 each to the owner of a TV repair shop in Afghanistan, a baker in Afghanistan, and a single mother running a clothing shop in the Dominican Republic. I did this through www.kiva.org, a Web site that provides information about entrepreneurs in poor countries — their photos, loan proposals and credit history — and allows people to make direct loans to them.

So on my arrival here in Afghanistan, I visited my new business partners to see how they were doing.

On a muddy street in Kabul, Abdul Satar, a bushy-bearded man of 64, was sitting in the window of his bakery selling loaves for 12 cents each. He was astonished when I introduced myself as his banker, but he allowed me to analyze his business plan by sampling his bread: It was delicious.

Mr. Abdul Satar had borrowed a total of $425 from a variety of lenders on Kiva.org, who besides me included Nathan in San Francisco, David in Rochester, N.Y., Sarah in Waltham, Mass., Nate in Fort Collins, Colo.; Cindy in Houston, and “Emily’s family” in Santa Barbara, Calif.

With the loan, Mr. Abdul Satar opened a second bakery nearby, with four employees, and he now benefits from economies of scale when he buys flour and firewood for his oven. “If you come back in 10 years, maybe I will have six more bakeries,” he said.

Mr. Abdul Satar said he didn’t know what the Internet was, and he had certainly never been online. But Kiva works with a local lender affiliated with Mercy Corps, and that group finds borrowers and vets them.

The local group, Ariana Financial Services, has only Afghan employees and is run by Storai Sadat, a dynamic young woman who was in her second year of medical school when the Taliban came to power and ended education for women. She ended up working for Mercy Corps and becoming a first-rate financier; some day she may take over Citigroup.

“Being a finance person is better than being a doctor,” Ms. Sadat said. “You can cure the whole family, not just one person. And it’s good medicine — you can see them get better day by day.”

Small loans to entrepreneurs are now widely recognized as an important tool against poverty. Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize last year for his pioneering work with microfinance in Bangladesh.

In poor countries, commercial money lenders routinely charge interest rates of several hundred percent per year. Thus people tend to borrow for health emergencies rather than to finance a new business. And partly because poor people tend to have no access to banks, they also often can’t save money securely.

Microfinance institutions typically focusing on lending to women, to give them more status and more opportunities. Ms. Sadat’s group does lend mostly to women, but it’s been difficult to connect some female borrowers with donors on Kiva — because many Afghans would be horrified at the thought of taking a woman’s photograph, let alone posting on the Internet.

My other partner in Kabul is Abdul Saboor, who runs a small TV repair business. He used the loan to open a second shop, employing two people, and to increase his inventory of spare parts. “I used to have to go to the market every day to buy parts,” he said, adding that it was a two-and-a-half-hour round trip. “Now I go once every two weeks.”

Web sites like Kiva are useful partly because they connect the donor directly to the beneficiary, without going through a bureaucratic and expensive layer of aid groups in between. Another terrific Web site in this area is www.globalgiving.com, which connects donors to would-be recipients. The main difference is that GlobalGiving is for donations, while Kiva is for loans.

A young American couple, Matthew and Jessica Flannery, founded Kiva after they worked in Africa and realized that a major impediment to economic development was the unavailability of credit at any reasonable cost.

“I believe the real solutions to poverty alleviation hinge on bringing capitalism and business to areas where there wasn’t business or where it wasn’t efficient,” Mr. Flannery said. He added: “This doesn’t have to be charity. You can partner with someone who’s halfway around the world.”

2007-03-27T10:19:00.000-07:00

I've been going to synagogue more these days, and one practice that has stood out to me is that each week you read 1/52 of the Torah -- such that you read all of the Torah each year. This has made me question the parts of the Bible that are NEVER read in the Revised Common Lectionary at any time over the course of three years.

Following the lectionary isn't really a problem for me these days since I only preach about six times a year, but if I were to start preaching every Sunday, I don't think I would be content to preach the lectionary over and over and over, three-year cycle after three-year cycle.

A quick google search produced two articles along these lines:

“BCP and RCL Analysis”

“Limitations of the Lectionary”

If you know of other critical voices about the methodology/structure of the lectionary, let me know.

2007-03-07T14:13:00.000-08:00

Shams gave Rumi "the choice between scholarship through text or living sacred experience" (Daniel Ladinsky, Love Poems from God).

I choose first-hand experience with God.

2007-03-02T08:09:00.001-08:00

Presence of God in Spiritual Direction

The primary ways in which I understand God to be present in spiritual direction are (1) Presence and (2) Guide. First, I understand God to be present both within and beyond every aspect of the spiritual direction relationship – just as I understand God to be within and beyond every part of Creation. This means that God is part of what forms and maintains a spiritual direction relationship – as well as the seen (and unseen) effects of that relationship.

Second, one of most important ways in which God is present (especially from the perspective of the spiritual director) is as a Guide. In the spiritual direction relationship, God is the true director – thanks be to God! I hope to become increasingly sensitive to the ways that God is moving in the spiritual direction relationship – specifically in the ways God speaks through the mind, feelings, and body.

Cognitively, many different thoughts and images occur to me during a spiritual direction session. It has been helpful (as was suggested in class) to bracket a concept the first, and even second, time it occurs – only saying it aloud to your directee if the thought or image arises a third time. This allows time to discern if an idea is from God or merely a projection of one’s desire to be wise or helpful.

Emotionally and somatically, the situation is subtler. But there are times in direction when I experience a deep, empathetic emotion, which can be a signal from God to invite the directee to explore the affective dimension of her experience further. Similarly, when a directee says a particular word or phrase, I sometimes feel a brief blunt force (almost like a gust of wind) against my chest or in my gut. My internal response is usually something like, “Woah. There’s something there.” But aloud I would only repeat the word or phrase as a way of inviting the directee to delve deeper into that part of her experience.

2007-03-01T08:07:00.000-08:00

Assumptions and images about/of God

In the large-steeple Southern Baptist Church, where I was raised, almost all public prayers began the same way: “Dear Heavenly Father.” The preponderance of male imagery did not cause me to think of God as an old man up in the sky with a white beard and a penis – although part of me wishes that it had because that would be a hilariously tragic image to remember. Instead, the effect was much more insidious.

Because I so frequently heard God referred to as a male, my understanding of God was shaped by the stereotypes of men that were all around me: white, middle-class men who were stoic (“boys keep their emotions bottled up inside”), workaholics (with the glaring exception of cooking, cleaning, and childcare), and successful (“the man is the breadwinner and must provide for his family”). Thus, I thought of God as the exemplar of all these male characteristics: unemotional, omnipresent, and perfect – kind of like Santa Claus, but more serious and a lot less jolly. Both Santa and God “see you when you’re sleeping…[and] know when you’ve been bad or good,” but I was never worried about Santa leaving a lump of coal in my stocking. There was, however, some level on which I was fearful of divine punishment – especially punishment of the “eternal separation from God” or “lake of fire” variety.

Then, when I was a freshman in high school, my father died of esophageal cancer. The absence of my earthly father has affected my understandings of my “Heavenly Father” in ways that I will probably never fully comprehend. But, to give one example, my father’s death may be a reason that as an undergraduate I was drawn to hyper-skeptical, nihilistic, “death of God” philosophers like Nietzsche. Moreover, being a philosophy major allowed me to think about God in detached and intellectually satisfying ways without having to worry about how I felt about God. As a college student, this dynamic was, for the most part, unconscious. I can now see that by focusing on the development of my mind, I could repress my emotions.

I recovered both emotions as well as positive language for God thanks to feminist theology. As an alternative to unhealthy masculinity, I encountered healthy femininity. These women prayed, “Loving God” or “Mother God.” Feminists helped me to experience God as emotional, nurturing, and caring. I am also deeply indebted to many gay and lesbian Christians who transgressed gender stereotypes in ways that challenged me to expand my understandings of God to account for the diversity of humankind, all of whom are created in God’s image.

Again, however, as I reflect retrospectively, I can now see that feminist theology also caused me, for a time, to overcompensate: to believe that because our world is so deeply patriarchal, God should either be referred to in either feminine terms or gender-neutral terms. I still respect this argument – and think that, ideally, any masculine reference to God should be balanced with an accompanying feminine image. However, in my own prayer life, I am finding it increasingly important to reclaim healthy masculine imagery for God in addition to using female imagery. As part of living into this reclamation of masculine imagery, I am discerning a call to participate in one of Richard Rohr’s five-day, “Men’s Rites of Passage” retreats as a transformative way of celebrating my 30^th birthday, which will be on March 10, 2008 for those keeping score at home.

Since both males and females are created in the image of God, we can find some knowledge of God through the lenses of masculinity and femininity. Nevertheless, my concern ultimately is first-hand knowledge of God’s Presence that is inclusive of both genders and beyond both genders. This is the same impetus that caused me to seek spiritual direction. I felt called to ground my theology (“words about God”) in first-hand experiences of God, not just second-hand descriptions of God.

With the help of spiritual direction, I have experienced first-hand my own belovedness by God, but I feel called to experience God even more fully, deeply, and intimately. God is love, but love is not all of God. I continue to have many assumptions about God (including that God is love, peace, justice, grace, and freedom), but I also feel called to continue to grow in knowledge of God though contemplation of God’s Presence that is more than and beyond all of those assumptions. I do not know – nor do I think I can ever know or comprehend – all that God is, but I assume, at least for now, that to know God more and more is a vocation worth spending a lifetime pursuing.

2007-02-27T16:09:00.000-08:00

I feel called to live contemplatively in the world. I also feel like I am frequently trying to juggle a hundred different small to medium projects, trying to keep ninety-nine in the air -- while I focus in the present on one at a time.... But the other ninety-nine are still up there and gravity is pulling them back to earth, at which time I will either shift my attention to the closest one and hurl it skyward again, or risk one (or many more than one) hitting the ground.

As I juggle, I sometimes find myself hurtling through the day from one task to the next, and suddenly my cell phone alarm will ring, announcing that it is 9 a.m., noon, 3 p.m., or 6 p.m. -- that is, time to stop and keep the hours (either Lauds, Terce, Sext, or None). Increasingly my response to this alarm is slight anxiety (do I have time for this?!) following quickly by gratitude that this spiritual discipline gives me permission to pause and take 10 minutes or so every three hours to practice the presence of God.

My practice of The Liturgy of the Hours is usually something like the following:

Pause - as close to the hour as is possible, depending on what I am doing)

Song - either on guitar or piano

Liturgy - I currently use The Benedictine Daily Prayer: A Shorter Breviary, but I started with Phyllis Tickle's The Divine Hours.

Psalm - I pray one Psalm. It takes me about a little over a month to pray all 150. I shift translations from time to time, but I'm currently using Nan Merrill's Psalms for Praying.

As I sometimes hurtle through the day, the hours feel like anchored poles in the ground that I can grab firmly, come to a stop, and intentionally re-center myself in God's presence -- hopefully allowing that contemplative sensibility to spill more and more into all of my life, those times between the assigned hours of the day.

2007-02-26T16:29:00.000-08:00

Grace Church in London has a Lenten blog. I've found two entries already that I will be using soon for a Contemporary Reading, which we frequently have in our Sunday morning worship.

2007-02-25T12:12:00.000-08:00

As a congregation, we have given up orders of worship for Lent!

The worship leaders and choir have a bare-minimum version, but everyone else is given paperless. We are inviting the congregation to be more present in worship -- and not be distracted by looking down at a piece of paper, or worrying about what is coming next.

I love it.

Thanks to my friend Daniel Wolpert, who recommended this idea. You can read Daniel's excellent second book filled with many other such ways of being in the world: Leading a Life With God: The Practice of Spiritual Leadership. His first book is a great, too: Creating a Life With God: The Call of Ancient Prayer Practices.

Below are a few other creative Lenten practices (this time not from Daniel). These are based on the premise that, for Lent, one is invited to (1) give up something that is keeping you from being who God created you to be, and (2) take on something that helps you become more fully who God is calling you to be:

Give up interrupting (practice taking a full breath after someone finishes speaking before replying for the next 40 days)Take on memorizing a favorite poem each week.

Give up unnecessary stuff (donate one item to Goodwill each day for 40 days).

Take on a daily, random act of kindness (Let a car move in front of you when you're driving, pay for the lunch of the person behind you in the fast food line.)

Give up TV, radio, and internet at home for 40 days.

Take on a twenty minute, leisurely walk each day and notice what you see.

Give up speeding (go the speed limit or under) for the next 40 days!

Take on biking one place a week when you would normally drive (see www.geezmagazine.org/demotorize)

2007-02-23T16:06:00.000-08:00

I biked to work in the first time since Daylight Savings Time ended. I love it! It takes me around 20 minutes to bike, and around 10 minutes to drive. And, on my bike, I save gas (and c02 emissions!). And since I'm moving slower, I can actually notice Creation around me.

I must confess, however, a twinge of temptation to use my iPod while biking, which would be, not only dangerously distracting, but multi-tasking -- distracting me from noticing the world around me.

Also, consider this my official vote in favor of having daylight savings time all year round.

2007-02-22T09:55:00.000-08:00

I just listened to a podcast of LeRon Schuts from the National Pastors Convention. The most resonant part of his talk was (I'm adapting and paraphrasing here) a contrast between "Satan's 'But'" and "Jesus' ears." Satan's "but" is when we say things like, "I really think that God is calling me to do something, BUT...that's just not realistic." Instead, we should have "Jesus' ears to hear" and "Jesus' eyes to see" ways to live out the dreams of God here and now.

It is not so much the brilliance of the analogy that struck me. Instead, I heard it as a challenge to be aware when I am preparing to speak in public of what parts of my talk/sermon will be the most vivid and memorable -- and how, in general, to construct my speech to be heard in a vivid and memorable ways.

2007-02-21T08:16:00.000-08:00

I don't watch television. That's mostly true. I don't have cable -- just a broken set of rabbit ears for an antennea. So, for the most part, there's not anything to watch.

I do watch netflix. However, the television shows that I occaisionally watch on DVD don't have commercials.

In the last few months, I have also been watching Comedy Central and sometime the Sci-Fi Network (does that make me a stereotypical male nerd?) while running on the ellipical machine at the gym. This practice has reminded me how much I hate commercials, especially the same commercials over and over and over -- especially long infomercials that repeat almost every commercial break. No I don't want your diet pill, exercise machine, or financial advice. And I'm fine with my hairline.

Seeking an alternative, I have recently begun downloading sermons and other talks from various folks in the Emergent Church movement. This morning, I listened to Brian McLaren's talk on "A Christian Response to War." This feels like a much better use of my time -- and I can fast forward through any commercials at the beginning or end of the podcast.

I was particularly struck by McLaren's challenge that before declaring war, we should commit to spending twice as much on humanitarian aid for the people of that country (and to rebuild the infrastructure that we bomb!) as spend on the actual violent part of the war. That would make war three times as expensive, and it would make going to war more cost prohibitive. It might make us think more critically about whether it is worth it to go to war, and it would also likely bring healing in the aftermath of war.

Along these lines, McLaren convincingly argues that any way is already a defeat for all sides because any act of violence is always already a failure to live out God's dream of peace: "God shall judge between many peoples, and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more" (Micah 4:3).

To end with a sign of hope, the lead story in the local paper today reporting on the statewide smoking ban that began on January 1, 2007. You can't smoke in restaurants in Louisiana. That's unbelievably awesome. I am grateful that sometimes good does triumph, sometimes systemic change does happen.

2007-02-01T11:14:00.000-08:00

Click here to read my sermon from this past Sunday based on my first three week intensive in San Francisco Theological Seminary's Art of Spiritual Direction program.

2007-01-26T11:54:00.000-08:00

For our class closure, all the first-year DASD students walked the labyrinth together in silence. The experience reminded me that the interior journey is not just about the pace set in the relationship between you and God. The spiritual life is also lived out at community -- and sometimes you have to move at the pace of the community's SLOWEST member. But, hey, we're here to slow down and notice, even if that can be frustrating sometimes. Both the self and the community are vital. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, "Let anyone who cannot be alone beware of community. Let anyone who is not in community beware of being alone."

Surrounded by my first-year community of DASD students in various stages of walking the labyrinth, I opened my eyes after resting in the center of the labyrinth, and the world seemed sharper -- colors and lines more distinctly defined. Living in community is hard, but good.

2007-01-25T21:45:00.000-08:00

We are entering a silent retreat period from 2:00 p.m. today until 6:00 p.m. tomorrow. This twenty-eight hour period allows time for prayer, reflection, and integration. It also includes a twenty minute meeting with two of the small group instructions for an assessment of the past three weeks and discernment of your call to the ministry of spiritual direction.

I'll close today with Colossians 3:12-16, which was a focus verse both in the closing session of our second small group and in the evening chapel service led by the graduating class of DASD students:

As God's chosen ones,
holy and beloved,
clothe yourselves with
compassion,
kindness,
humility,
meekness, and
patience.

Bear with one another and,
if anyone has a complaint against another,
forgive each other;
just as the Lord has forgiven you,
so you also must forgive.

Above all,
clothe yourselves with love,
which binds everything together
in perfect harmony.

And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts,
to which indeed you were called
in the one body.

And be thankful.

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly;
teach and admonish one another in all wisdom;
and with gratitude in your hearts
sing psalms,
hymns, and
spiritual songs
to God.

2007-01-24T20:37:00.000-08:00

This evening's chapel service was a "Service of Prayer and Healing." During the middle of worship, there was an invitation to be annointed with oil. This experience strengthened my growing attentiveness to my body: exercising regularly (working out my body five to six days a week -- not just working out my mind with books), incorporating my body into prayer (using different postures, walking prayer, and rituals like annointing), and being gentle to my body (regular massage). I am increasingly aware of how my body registers stress in my gut and how my body communicates to me during spiritual direction sessions.

2007-01-23T21:41:00.000-08:00

Spiritual directors discern at many times in a direction session whether:

(1) to speak to invite the other to share more or differently, or

(2) to remain silent to allow the person to share at their own pace or to have time to reflect quietly.

Often, the voice encouraging us to speak ("Be clever! Be clever!") is our voice. And the voice encouraging us to be silent ("Shut up! Shut up!) is God.

2007-01-22T20:19:00.000-08:00

After a demonstration this afternoon of a supervision session, I'm convinced that monthly supervision is a necessary and integal part of practicing spiritual direction -- just as, for instance, most therapists have supervisors. However, I hadn't counted on another monthly meeting, or, more importantly, another $40-$60 monthly fee ($400 - $600 annually). But you find a way to pay for what is important.

For more information, see Supervision of Spiritual Directors: Engaging in Holy Mystery, edited by Mary Rose Bumpus and Rebecca Bradburn Langer; or Looking into the Well: Supervision of Spiritual Directors by Maureen Conroy.

Conroy, for example, says that the goal of supervision is to help the spiritual director, "grow in self-awareness and interior freedom in order to better stay with a directee's experience and be attentive to God in a direction session."

2007-01-21T17:04:00.000-08:00

Today I went to the Church of "The New York Times." I sat on the porch in the sunlight, read the paper, and loved it. Another good option some week is the Church of the Holy Comforter (think about it).

2007-01-20T17:22:00.000-08:00

Today I attended a DASD alumni retreat hosted by Daniel Wolpert, who has recently published a book entitled, "Leading a Life with God: The Practice of Spiritual Leadership." When he invited us to spend on hour reflecting with God on situations in which we were spiritual leaders, I felt suspicion creeping in. I felt anxiety about an hour of the retreat away from the "expert." After all, I could reflect with God on my situation anytime. But, part of his point, is that I -- most others -- despite our best intentions, won't spend the time later. And, we are tempted to focus on the finger pointing at God (the so-called "expert") instead of following the trajetory of that finger and listening to God ourselves.

In the end, his invitation to spend an hour in discernment felt like too short a time. His invitation felt like an hour of directed spritual direction. We could hypothetically realize many of the epiphanies we have in spiritual direction on our own (without paying a spiritual director $60), but, in many cases, we won't take the time.

2007-01-19T17:01:00.000-08:00

Today in small group, I was the directee. Even though I have been going to spiritual direction every six weeks for over three years (and perhaps because of being in spiritual directions training for the past two weeks), it was delightful to not be responsible for being present (not that I was absent or distracted...just that I wasn't responsible) -- to not have to pay attention to every repitition, theme, or shimmer. Instead, my story was held in the care of another, creating a space for me to notice God's presence and call in my ordinary life.

I chose to share the story of walking the labyrinth just before orientation on the first day of the DASD program (see previous blog). Among other things, I heard an invitation to walk the labyrinth again -- to SLOW DOWN...since I was likely walking the labyrinth TOO FAST on that fateful day (despite my intentions to the contrary and paralleling my need to slow down in general). I also heard invitations to explore the meaning of the word labyrinth in my life (since I said "labyrinth" more times than any other word in the twenty minute spiritual direction session?).

Perhaps it is auspicious that I felt called to walk the labyrinth prior to the beginning of my DASD orientation -- symbolic of my spiritual journey into Yin: passive, dark, feminine, downward-seeking, and corresponds to the night. Symbolized by water or earth.

2007-01-18T17:04:00.000-08:00

Many of the assigned readings for this course addressed the distinction between therapy and spiritual direction. In the weeks leading up to the first day of class, I grew tired of this discussion. But, as we have entered into the practice of spiritual direction, the distinction has become sharper and more significant -- particularly spiritual direction as accompanying another on his or her spiritual journey, helping him or her notice the presence of God.

2007-01-17T21:24:00.000-08:00

In small group today, we did a lectio on Psalm 139:1-2, using Nan Merrill's beautiful translation Psalms for Praying: An Invitation to Wholeness. At the beginning of the first of four readings, one phrase leapt at me: "my Beloved."

The strong resonance, especially of those two words, surprised me because a week and a half ago I had the opposite reaction. I was listening to a sermon on the Baptism of Jesus and one of the major themes was remembering that we are God's Beloved. But what I heard for over ten minutes sounded like the Charlie Brown school teacher was delivering the homily: "Blah, blah, blah, beloved, blah, blah blah, beloved." During the sermon, the words didn't seem authentic. It felt like the preacher was just going through the motions -- like hearing Henri Nouwen third-hand (which is ironic because I love, respect, and believe Nouwen's writings about belovedness).

The invitation I heard was to spend more time embracing my own belovedness by God -- and perhaps to lead a congregational retreat about belovedness. If I did so, I might use a format based off Nouwen's Spiritual Direction: Wisdom for the Long Walk of Faith.

2007-01-16T17:01:00.000-08:00

The national-security expert Gergory Treverton has famously made a distinction between puzzles and mysteries: Puzzles result when you don't have enough information. A simple, factual answer is the key to solving a puzzle. Mysteries require judgments and the assessment of uncertainty. The implication for spiritual direction is that God is a mystery to be experienced -- not a puzzle to be solved.

For more on this, read (or listen to) Richard Rohr's recent piece on NPR, "Utterly Humbled by Mystery." Or, read Malcolm Gladwell's New Yorker article, "Open Secrets: Enron, intelligence, and the perils of too much information" (which reminded me of Treverton's distinction).

Speaking of Rohr, I recently enjoyed reading his book Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer. But, more significantly, I am interested in learning more about his work on masculine spirituality (see malespirituality.org). I am discerning whether one of his "male initiation," five-day, "rites of passage" retreats would be a transformative way of celebrating my 30th birthday -- which will be on March 10, 2008 for those keeping score at home. And, if you're wondering, it's not about getting naked and sitting around a fire while beating a drum...not that there's anything wrong with that (see Mcconaughey, Matthew).

In short (in my limited understanding of Rohr's work), we live in a patriarchy comprised of much unhealthy masculine spirituality: "The state needs conformists and unfeeling warriors to go about its business." We have also, in recent decades, benefited from women reclaiming their voices to develop an authentic feminine spirituality, grounded in the sacred feminine. What we haven't seen as much of is an authentic masculine spirituality:

"A masculine spirituality would emphasize action over theory, service to the human community over religious discussions, speaking the truth over social graces, and doing justice over looking nice. Without a complementary masculine, spirituality becomes overly feminine (which is really a false feminine!) and characterized by too much inwardness, preoccupation with relationships, a morass of unclarified feeling, and endless self-protectiveness."

Rohr also talks a lot about healing the "Father wound" -- which could be important work for me to do since my father died of esophageal cancer when I was a freshman in high school.

Also, the Diploma in the Art of Spiritual Direction program here at San Francisco Theological Seminary is providing me with a lot of experience in developing my inner life and feelings -- what Rohr would call "feminine spirituality" (which is great!). But his work in masculine spirituality could provide an important yang to the DASD yin:

Yin is the darker element; it is passive, dark, feminine, downward-seeking, and corresponds to the night. Symbolized by water or earth.

Yang is the brighter element; it is active, light, masculine, upward-seeking and corresponds to the day. Symbolized by fire, or wind.

Yin and Yang are descriptions of complementary opposites rather than absolutes. Any Yin/Yang dichotomy can be seen as its opposite when viewed from another perspective. The categorization is seen as one of convenience. Most forces in nature can be seen as having Yin and Yang states, and the two are usually in movement rather than held in absolute stasis.

2007-01-15T19:59:00.001-08:00

"The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority."

--Martin Luther King Jr.

2007-01-14T19:14:00.000-08:00

A few thoughts on Sabbath adapted from The Church of the Sojourners:

• Start and end Sabbath with candlelighting.
• Refrain from using (for example): money, watches, and electronics (computers, cellphones, TV). Do we even need to add washer, dryer, dishwasher?
• Allow the day to unfold without making plans in advance.
• Do physical activity if you sit at a desk all week.
• Allow your work rhythm to adjust to a 6-day work cycle (that is, don’t count Saturdays as a day of potential labor). (I work on Sunday).
• Don’t do any “to-do list” stuff.
• Physically put work out of sight if possible.
• Be in nature.
• Practice a Sabbath mindset throughout the week: contemplative prayer in the morning, keep the hours (the divine office) throughout the day, and do an examen in the evening.

"Stopping is doing nothing...

for the purpose of becoming more fully awake

and remembering who your are."

--David Kundtz, Stopping: How to Be Still When You Have to Keep Going (1988, p. 14)

2007-01-13T19:38:00.000-08:00

"Resistance is always an invitation from the Spirit. Pay attention to it. Honor it." And, of course, the resistance can arise in the director, the directee, or both. For example:

On Monday, I checked my e-mail for the first time since arriving on campus Sunday morning. I sat in a chair in the computer lab adjacent to Geneva Terrace, and jiggled the mouse to activate the computer screen. Sunlight poured through the windows. It was a glorious day. I typed in my user name and password as I have done countless times. But when I clicked "enter" to open my account, I felt a sudden construction in my upper chest. I paused and thought, "whoa." My body was trying to tell me something. I took a slow, deep breathe, then exhaled rapidly. I stopped for a moment to center myself before proceeding to read and respond to the messages in my inbox.

As I have reflected on this experience, I have gleaned at least two possible lessons:

(1) In general, check e-mail more mindfully. To help myself be fully present to both e-mail and other daily tasks, I am going to uninstall yahoo messenger and check e-mail no more than once an hour -- not just whenever one arrives.

(2) For next January, I am considering setting up an e-mail auto-response message that would instruct anyone who e-mailed me to call the church office in case of an emergency -- so that I will not have to check e-mail for the entire three weeks I am here. My blog and cell phone will be my only links to the outside world.

2007-01-12T18:48:00.000-08:00

Being in class all day again (and sleeping in a dorm room!) invokes occasional thoughts of further study. In that vein, I visited the Graduate Theological Union (GTU) website to investigate details of their doctoral program in Christian Spirituality. Here's a description:

"The doctoral program in Christian Spirituality prepares students to read and interpret biblical texts for Christian Spirituality; to contextualize the major figures, texts, and themes in the historical development of Christian Spirituality; to achieve a dialogical understanding of another spirituality not within the Christian tradition; and to do research and create analytical arguments in this interdisciplinary field. With these skills students have graduated from the program and gone on to teach religious studies, Christian Spirituality, and theology in undergraduate and graduate programs in colleges, universities, and seminaries; to administer and deliver programs at retreat centers; and to serve churches at local, regional, national, and international levels."

After reading that paragraph, I continue to have much more interested in the pragmatic D.Min., than the theory-laden Ph.D.:

The purpose of the SFTS D.Min. program is to improve the practice of ministry. The major objective is the development of professional competencies, including critical reflection on ministry, interpersonal skills, the capacity for theological interpretation, and special skills for service in particular contexts. Specific objectives include: Encouraging trust and cooperation among peers in ministry. Encouraging students to think independently and to take responsibility for their own education as a lifelong enterprise. Developing a critical theological interpretation of life and purposeful activity in ministry, along with new skills. Developing theological breadth through a grasp of current intellectual trends in other disciplines. Developing an understanding of social issues and the mission of the church in an international context. Developing creative forms of ministry through research, writing, and implementation of a major dissertation/project.

2007-01-11T19:00:00.000-08:00

I blogged about all my coursepack readings, but I never finished blogging about the assigned books. In short, two of the books we had to read were two of the best books I've ever read as far as being wise, grounded in God, and grounded in lived experience.

(1) If I had to recommend one book to someone discerning a call about whether to become a spiritual direction, it would be Margaret Guenther's excellent book that is full of deep wisdom from years of being a spiritual director: Holy Listening: The Art of Spiritual Direction .

(2) If you are interested in learning more about contemplation, try an equally (thought differently) excellent book by Gerald May: The Awakened Heart: Opening Yourself to the Love You Need.

2007-01-10T21:04:00.000-08:00

Through the practice of contemplative listening, we seek to "listen one another into speech."

That's a really wise insight. But, as someone who has been intently listened to multiple times everyday for the past week, let me testify that it is also possible to listen someone into silence. Think of it as the collateral damage of a spiritual direction training program.

It may be that there is a paucity of active listening in our society, but when I am listened to with great intensity -- with the other person perched on the edge of his or her seat -- it makes me shrink inside. Instead of wanting to share, I was say, "BACK OFF." Or, "get out of my grill!"

I want to be listened to in a relaxed spirit: a non-anxious presence in a hospitable, open, non-judgmental atmosphere. Extra-active listening is filled with the fear of missing something. That's not the point. A good reminder to me as a spiritual director to relax.

2007-01-09T16:33:00.000-08:00

Are you ready to do only one thing at a time?

Contemplation is a "long, loving look at the real" -- as opposed to a multi-tasked, distracted look at the surface. For this program that means that "we begin slowly, so that gradually...we can slow down." For someone like me with a proclivity towards efficiency coupled with an impatience with inefficiency, a slow pace can be frustrating. But, I feel the promise of great freedom and delight (and lack of stress!) in being "wonderfully unhurried, gloriously unharried." And achieving that end requires that I start by slowing down now -- because as old Ray Moss said (my college Health and Exercise Science professor), "If you don't start today, what makes you think you're going to start tomorrow?"

Speaking of tomorrow, I love this dialogue:

Daughter: When will it be tomorrow?

Mother: Go to bed, and when you wake up, it will be tomorrow.

Daughter [the next morning]: Is it tomorrow yet?

Mother: No, it is today.

Daughter: When will it be tomorrow?

Mother: When you wake up in the morning, it will be tomorrow.

Daughter [the next morning]: Is it tomorrow yet?
Mother: No, it is today.

Daughter: When will it be tomorrow?
Mother: When you wake up in the morning, it will be tomorrow.
Daughter [the next morning]: Is it tomorrow yet?

Mother: No, it is today.

Daughter: Oh, I get it. There is no tomorrow.

Are you ready to do one thing at a time? Multi-tasking is always a temptation, but, with God's help, I'm willing to try. I'm starting with "just eating" at breakfast...no reading.

2007-01-08T20:57:00.000-08:00

Ever wonder what would be in a DASD supply closet?

vases - to be filled with fresh cut flowers -- signs of Creation, new life, and beauty
cloths - to be draped over almost any small table (or just spread on the ground) to create the base of an altar
candles and lighters - reminders of God's presence
tissues - for when the feelings flow

All you need to create sacred space, holy ground.

2007-01-08T20:32:00.000-08:00

I've never "messed up" walking a labyrinth...until yesterday. A Chartres-pattern labyrinth begins with a short jut forward before you are led to the left, circling a quarter of the circumference, your path three layers from the exterior. Next comes your first sharp turn, doubling back, one more layer towards the center. That's where I went awry: the first turn. I was noticing the lush green hills and distant mountains surrounding SFTS and didn't notice that I had stepped back into the lane I had just walked moments before. (View a 360 degree view of the Geneva Terrace Labyrinth at SFTS here). Still absorbed in the landscape, I found myself suddenly exiting the labyrinth, having barely begun.

I took a sharp breathe. My heart skipped a beat. I shook my head in disbelief before a wry smile crossed my lips. I had come to take this labyrinth walk immediately prior the DASD orientation (the first scheduled event of the three weeks). Maybe God was trying to tell me something: "You've walked many labyrinths in many different places (including this one!). You're familiar with this spiritual discipline. You've facilitated labyrinth walks for many different groups. But you have come to this place for the next three weeks to be formed in the art of spiritual direction by this particular community. You need to return to the beginning."

Phrased another way: "You know intellectually about the spiritual journey of which the labyrinth is a microcosm: purgation, illumination, union. But you need to go back to the beginning. You need to experience the spiritual journey fully with your whole self. This will take a lifetime. Go back to the beginning. For now, descend from the terrace vista. Head down the steps to orientation.

You crown the year with riches

All You touch comes alive:

untilled lands yield crops,

hills are dressed in joy.

--Psalm 65:13, ICEL

God, I give myself over to You. Touch me that I might come ALIVE.

2006-12-19T11:18:00.000-08:00

The last coursepack essay is Wendy Wright's "Passing Angels: The Arts of Spiritual Discernment." I couldn't identify with her anecdotes and most of her theology seemed a trite distillation of writers like Henri Nouwen, but I did appreciate her summary of the three major streams of Christian discernment:

(1) Ignatian (16th c.) - discrimination of affectivity ("how one feels"). Paying attention to "consolations" and "desolations" based on the understanding that the fruit of the Spirit is "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control." In contrast, whatever is not of God leads to "confusion, disharmony, and anxiety." See Sleeping with Bread: Holding What Gives You Life.

(2) Quaker (17th and 18th c.) - communal discernment, "a listening in shared silence, to the 'weight' or groundedness of various alternatives...validated by the intuitive acknowledgment of those gathered." See Listening Hearts: Discerning Call in Community.

(3) Mystical (16th c.) - "gradual, ecstatic, painful process of stripping away all objects of desire and coming to know that it is only God, in God's unfathomable, unknowable mystery, where desire's end can be found." See St. John of the Cross or The Cloud of Unknowing.

I have used the Ignatian method the most -- both daily in my life and weekly with groups ranging from children to teenagers to adults. I am open the other forms and will be interested to see how much emphasis is put on the various methods at San Francisco Theological Seminary.

2006-12-16T04:21:00.000-08:00

In "John Calvin on Mystical Union" (the third and final coursepack reading centered on Calvin), Dennis Tamburello's writing is replete with sentences like, "Calvin's understanding ... Calvin himself speaks of ... Calvin's conviction ... Calvin's own words on this point ... Calvin actually speaks of ... Calvin is referring here to ... Calvin is tireless in ... Calvin's rejection of... Calvin wishes to ... Calvin does not make much use of ... Calvin sees it as ... When Calvin brings up ... images used by Calvin in ... Calvin remarks ... It is clear that for Calvin ... Calvin does not characteristically speak explicitly of ... Calvin's tendency is to speak most often of ... Calvin's comment on ... Calvin does not forget that ... Calvin himself shuns ... Calvin would make such a distinction ... Calvin is not opposed to speaking of ... Calvin assigns different roles of ... Calvin's notion of ... Calvin's answer to ... Calvin recognizes a time when ... it is fair to say that for Calvin ... Calvin directly connects ... Calvin rejects any interpretation that...."

I don't care.

More accurately, I am weary of articles that seem written merely to clarify a minor point in an academic field such as "Calvin Studies." I am, for instance, interested in Calvin's theology on unio mystica only in as much as his writing encourages, strengthens, or clarifies experience in the present of unitivity -- which is why I'm glad, at least for now, that I am serving in a church (and not a classroom) and pursuing a Diploma in the Art of Spiritual -- and perhaps eventually a D.Min. (and not a Ph.D.). Theory is vital, but without application and practice, it its fruit withers on the vine. And arguably the best theology emerges out of actual church practice, not vice-versa.

2006-12-15T18:08:00.000-08:00

The third-from-last reading in the coursepack is also the longest: the first three chapters of Philip Sheldrake's Befriending Our Desires. My appreciation for spiritual readings may be dulled at this point, but I didn't find that much substance in the lengthy excerpt. It didn't help that the version copied into the coursepack had someone else's "footprints" (underling, notes, and stars).

I did appreciate his point that contemplative prayer can expose our true self, thereby (ironically?) making petitionary prayer more effective. By practicing the presence of God, we can unmask our true selves, increasing the possibility of petitioning rightly (as opposed to falsely or shallowly), that is, asking God for what we truly, deeply desire -- not for what the world (our culture of conspicuous consumption) tells us we desire. Contemplative prayer, opening oneself to receiving the present moment, can "stimulate" "our deepest desires" -- which are not always evident given the ubiquitous "temptation to counterfeit behavior." For a negative example, I'm reminded of Augusten Burrough's descriptions of the manipulative advertising market in his memoir Dry: "Advertising makes everything seem better than it actually is.... It's an industry based on giving people false expectations." For a positive example, Kierkegaard calls this purity of heart "willing one thing."

And, oh yes...Happy Hannukah! It's the first night of Channukah! It's also the youth lock-in at the church. We're watching The Hebrew Hammer to celebrate.

2006-12-07T13:19:00.000-08:00

The next readings are basically two handouts: "Clergy Reporting Law" and "Professional Reporting: The California Reporting Law." At least in California, clergy are "mandated reporters" if he or she "knows or reasonably suspects" child abuse. The same was the case in North Carolina for camp counselors back when I worked at Camp Rockmont for Boys in Black Mountain.

In such a case, you are to contact a "child protective agency immediately or as soon as practically possible and...send a written report...within 36 hours."

The good news is (1) "the reporter's name is held confidential" and (2) you are "provided immunity from civil or criminal liability (unless the report was made maliciously)." You are further encouraged to report because "failure for a mandated reporter" can result in a "misdemeanor" and "possible civil liability." Being a mandated reporter also means that clergy can "find out the 'results of the...investigation and of any action.'"

This, of course, begs the question of whether congress should be included in the list of mandated reporters. But, in all seriousness, I'm glad clergy are mandated reporters. The only exception is "penitential communication," and -- while the Alliance of Baptists does not have the same theological history of confession as Roman Catholicism -- one of my ordination vows concerned confidentiality. But, in the case of child abuse (or really any abuse such as rape, murder, Domestic Violence, etc.), there are grounds to break confidentiality -- especially when there is a threat or potential for further abuse. Even if there isn't the threat of more abuse, the victims still likely need therapy and other help.

Confidentiality is necessary so that parishioners have a safe place to talk, but, in the case of abuse, clergy sometimes have to break confidentiality. I don't think it is too much to say that, in this instance, it's what Jesus would do....