Healing Power

This week I am living into the opportunity to be with the Spiritual Care Network team on Bowen Island. We have gathered we have worshiped and we have prayed. We have acknowledged our joys and our exhaustions. And we have dug deep into spiritual practices.

And yet once more I have been struck by how much we in our lives of ministry are exhausted. This week I have been reminded of the words of Peter Short as we worked together “Never look down on a struggle for life.” I have come to believe that we all in our lives and ministry are often in a ‘struggle for life.’ How do we care for one another in this? I wonder do we need to root ourselves in a piece of our tradition that for many has been lost? Do we need healing as individuals, congregations and church?

This week we have be lead into a conversation about healing. We have found ourselves asking “What is healing?” “What is healing prayer?” “What is God’s part in our healing?” “What is our part in healing?”

So we invite you to ask these questions we have asked:

“What is your experience of healing prayer?”

“What do you believe happens in healing prayer?”

“What do you believe does not happen?”

“What is God’s role?”

“What is our role?”

We would love to hear your responses.

Some of us have found this very familiar prayer helpful this week. We spent time in worship this morning praying this for our congregation and church.

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Reinhold Niebuhr

Hear the voice of the Holy One whispering to you ...

Lately I’ve been feasting on the wisdom of Desmond Tutu and his daughter Mpho Tutu, as recorded in their book, made for goodness and why this makes all the difference.  Each chapter ends with a poem based on scripture, with reminders of God’s deep delight in us and invitation to us to live into this awesome reality. 

Hear the voice of the Holy One whispering to you ...

You are a child after my own heart.

Seek out your deepest joy and you will find me there.

Find that which makes you most perfectly yourself and know that I

     am at the heart of it.

Do what delights you

And you will be working with me,

Walking with me,

Finding your life

Hidden in me.

Ask me any question.

My answer is love.

When you want to hear my voice,

Listen for love.

How can you delight me?

I will tell you:

Love.

The tough, unbreakable, unshakable love.

Are you looking for me?

You will find me in love.

Would you know my secrets?

There is only one:

Love.

Do you want to know me?

Do you yearn to follow me?

Do you want to reach me?

Seek and serve love.

Sharon Copeman

Trusting in the melody of God

“It is not the nature of the task but the consecration that is the vital thing.”

 ~ Martin Buber

In a book from the 1940’s, The Reed of God, the author, Caryll Houselander, tells how painful it is to become a reed that carries the melody of God. The flute has to be carved and cut out, it has to have many openings for the breath to come through and for the music to be heard. So too in our lives. Our work will not always be pleasant and easy. There will be times of confusion  and frustration. We will not always want to do the things we are called to do. The pain and stress can be a means of hollowing out, of becoming more open to the music of God. These hollowing out experiences call for faith. Sometimes we simply have to trust in God’s melody and believe, in spite of few results and self doubt that we are each capable of being instruments of God’s dream.

Sometimes that is the wonder of it all. That we can carry the melody of God even  when we feel we cannot carry a tune. Thanks be to the spirit that continually creates harmony out of our lives.

TAKE HOME MESSAGE

A torrent of large and small mistakes and broken things have characterized these last ten weeks in our house.   Like the geothermal heat compressor and controls, the surge protectors, the smoke alarms: all destroyed as the result of a nasty power surge.  Like having to find a new house insurer.  Like the weather causing folks to cancel out, over and over.  Like the screen door lock and the back hall cabinet pull falling off in my hand.   Like the working relationship gone sideways, maybe upside down.  And this week, like the dog I was caring for running away and—in the midst of trying to find her—having a monster truck back into the car, ripping a hole in the hood.

I was whining about it all last night, and a friend said to me, “Well, what’s the message?”  I stared at her and said, “I don’t know!   That’s the problem!”

But on reflection I do know.  I just didn’t want to look too hard because frankly, I love the drama. 

In virtually every one of these situations, it’s all fine.  Things broken got repaired; there were warranties, there’s been generosity, there’s been help, there’s been insurance.  Even in the broken relationship, a chance to revisit priorities.  It seems like in the end, if we do the work, things generally come round right.

I get scared when things go wrong.  Some deep part of me, I think, is afraid that this means the end: I’ll starve, I’ll have no place to live, no one will love me, I’ll die.  But the chances of any of these except the last are remote.  And given that I’m professed to be a Christian, that last isn’t the end either, although I have to admit I’m a bit unclear on the details.

If there’s a take home message in the mess of the last months, I have to say that it is that everything really is fine.  If I do the work, toil like a real human being, take the irritations and sufferings as part of life rather than some insult or detour, then it all is really fine.  And so am I.

Therese desCamp

To Change ... (part 2)

“To change we must

hurt enough to need to,

learn enough to want to,

and feel safe enough to try.”

I began some thoughts on this quote in a blog post on Dec 11/10 on hurting and needing.

... to continue ... “learn enough to want to”

This is a profound shift of the heart. It feels like waking up. We wake up many times in our christian journey. For many people our initial experience of christian commitment often brings a spontaneous and effortless practice that is nurturing, filling and filled with new life. As newly minted disciples, discipline is freedom.

There comes a time when we leave the mountain top and go back to the valley. After enlightenment ... the laundry.

We naturally hit dry times, times when familiar practices and disciplines aren’t working. This is not surprising as we are changed from our practice, and as our understanding of God matures. So here is one way that the ‘hurting’ arises, dry times, and we have the choice of learning about and testing practices and disciplines to sustain us.

We can “learn enough” that our desperation and need shifts to wanting and desiring’. There are some wonderful ‘personality roadmaps’ in the Myers Briggs Type Indicator and the Enneagram that can identify things that may work for you.

Here is a pitfall where you may relate to my experience. That knowing about a practice substitutes for doing it. Centering Prayer is sustaining (and changing) me well, now that I have a few years of daily practice. I had a decade during which I learned it at several introductory workshops, felt inspired and didn’t do it. And I lost my desperation and desire. As I pondered this blog post I asked about the experience of several people in my Centering Prayer group. They had come to their first Introduction, started the next day, came to the weekly group and have rarely missed a day in over 4 years! They seemed to take to it so easily. When I asked how they could make such a significant change in their life one said “It’s simple Bill, I was teachable. It was a teachable moment. I was ready.” The rest agreed. “And this group support to my work on my own was essential.”

There it is, a ‘teachable’ moment is found in the movement from hurting through learning to safety. From needing to wanting to trying.

How does this movement fit your experience?

Are you being formed in the desert to be teachable?

Please share in the comments !