I have been thinking about space lately.  Not outerspace, but how physical space impacts my interior space.  It is a bit like how space or what we call rests between notes is what makes music intelligible. Let me explain.

As I am writing this I am sitting in an airport half way around the world on the continent of Africa.  Several times in the last two weeks I have had an abrupt shift in physical environments that has brought a sense of awareness that was acute and spiritually powerful. I had the opportunity to speak with the staff of an incredible church that has one of the most contemporary designed church campuses I have ever seen in the world.  Not overpoweringly large just fresh, unique, and architecturally spectacular.  But amidst this contemporary complex of buildings was chapel.  On the outside the building fit with the rest of the campus, but the inside?  A total shift in space feel.  Starkly minimal, dim catacomb like lighting, traditional pews and an incense I had never smelled before.  We were gathering for 12.00pm prayers; the whole staff and administrative team, there must have been 70 people.  The abrupt shift in space made me very aware.  I sensed something different in me and in my ability to listen to God as we did some Taize type chant.  The residue from that experience lingered as I noticed my ability to listen and ask questions during the next 3 hours I shared with the staff.  My 20 minute shift in space had actually created a shift in me…

Last year I had the opportunity with 40 others to spend 5 days with the Benedictine Monk Father Thomas Keating.  Keating is the head and heart behind the explanation and practice of centering prayer.  We met for a one week event at a hotel in Colorado.  What was interesting to me though was how we took a conference room and transformed it into a special space.  I am not a fan of the distinction between sacred and secular space.  Everything is God’s and to quote Richard Rohr Everything Belongs.  But what was interesting as we entered this conference room made “temple where we meet God,” something shifted with each of the participants.  We walked into room where prayers mats and cushions, an altar full of artifacts we had each brought that held some symbolism for us, and then incense, candles and art all contributed to a shift in all of us from casual and common to alert and special.  This shift was noted and discussed on several occasions during the week…

How physical space impacts our moods, self understanding and outlook is a fascinating and sometimes overlooked dimension in our spiritual formation

This raises an interesting thing for me as I reflect on the double entendre of space/rest and it’s interplay with the correspondence of architecture/music.

Jesus changed locations for altering his perspective and for shifting his awareness.  For him the desert held special significance, but we see him heading to mountains and sea as well.   (This incidentally is the idea behind Len Sweet’s water, mountain and desert Advances.)  For Jesus changing locations brought altered awareness and perspectives.  He was the one that said I only do that which I see the Father doing.  His rhythmic away-ness in a different space colored and toned his with-ness in ministry.  His intonation to the people around him, the flow of power in and out of his body, his unapologetic movement away from people in need to recoup his own rhythm are all notable characteristics in his life and work.

The spaces we create in the long musical note of life noise is what gives it the potential to transforms into music.  For our lives to sound different than our culture we have to have a rhythm punctuated with rest/space that let’s noise undergo transformation into a musical score that actually goes somewhere.

Largely out of my Keating experience I decided to create a place in my house where I could do my centering prayer practice each morning and evening. In the space I face the woods in my back yard, I have a prayer mat and cushion, I have candles and a small platform I can place some reading or quotes if I choose.  It’s portable and movable.  No big deal really.  Now I admit this may sound like “Quiet Time 101” to use that old term I remember hearing in my early Christian days, but I have to say something has happened to me that is hard to describe.   The inserted space into the physical architecture, is symbolic of inserted space in the noise of my life. One impacts the other in deep and spiritual ways.

My entrance into the chapel this week, half way around the world, has been but one of the many reminders I have had recently that spirituality and the ensuing formation from it are sometimes as much about form as they are content. That is true of architecture as well as music.  I have a renewed commitment to pay attention to both.

Possibilities…

1. Consider how the tempo of life unfortunately and often dictates your outlook
and feelings.

2. Really consider a 2x daily centering practice.  If you are unfamiliar with this a
good place to start is with Keating’s book Open Heart Open Mind.  The entire
book is available free online. (http://www.centeringprayer.com/OpenHeart/index.htm)

3. Consider making some space special for your centering times.  It can be
portable and movable.

4.  Monitor what happens in twice daily rhythm and how your creativity soars,
your ability to listen and hear becomes more acute and intonation to
the Spirit’s promptings naturally emerges.

My personal rhythm flows out of having faced some deep questions over the last several years.

While I think my days as a church pastor, where our church mission statement was to lead everyone to full life development in Christ, caused me to face many purpose type questions, nothing has transformed me like the following battery.

• Who are you? Not as self but as Self?
• Why are you here? What is your Work not work.
• How are you unique? Confluence of all the stuff that makes up you.
• How can you make a dramatic difference? Best contribution.
• Who cares? Do you?

These questions come from a combination of questions asked from a consultant and a professor.

I wonder how often we operate aligned with well thought through answers to these types of questions and how often we are on autopilot doing whatever it is we think we are supposed to be doing…doing the daily grind so to speak.

The problem of course with these questions is a very egoic construction of self if you aren’t careful. If our ego is a container for all of our background, experiences, upbringing, geography, education and vocation, there are good chances that if we aren’t careful we will simply build our lives around a thinness that is self and not a richness rooted in Self. When that happens self tends to do work(s). The richness and depth of Self found in imago dei gravitates toward Work.

My sense is that in my life self and work lead me deeper into ego, whereas Self and Work lead me deeper into the pure sense of Being and I Am-ness placed at my core by the Creator God.

Maybe this is a function of personal maturity, vocational transition, personal pain, stage of life, wisdom, great coaching by those around me, or simply convergence of a number of factors, but my journey the last several years is that Self and Work, when they converge, lead to a deep sense of wholeness and shalom in me that naturally leaks out to others. It seems my life and ministry is deeper and richer these days. I have a sense of deep gratitude because of it.

This post started some time ago when I had been asked about my rhythm. Well finally we get to that issue.

Let me say a couple things before I share what a day for me looks like.

Rhythm should reflect health for you. Not health for me, for your friend or for the next guy. Rhythm by definition is created by contact then rests, contact then rests. The pattern of contact and rest is what creates rhythm. Please remember that.

Second, no one elses rhythm should create guilt in you. Reread the previous few lines again.

Third, when someone else’s rhythm appears attractive and inviting ask a couple questions. Why is it attractive? Is the reason a healthy and legitimate reason? If the answer to the previous question is yes then the next question is important. What are you to learn from this person that you can alter or be integrated into your rhythm?

A couple other things you should know. While my kids are now in college and high school and obviously require little if any monitoring, what I am about to share applied to me in one way or another even when we had no kids and even as the kids were born and were young.

So here goes.

Because life long learning is a premium value for me, I have always made sure I read no less than an hour a day, and usually more. Won’t miss it, can’t miss it, it is what makes me tick, stay healthy, lead well, remain fresh, and it is the primary fountainhead of creativity when coupled with the next inviolable piece. Steal time from sleeping, eating and day dreaming but make sure your input channels are flowing.

As far as content goes I have spoken and written about this quite a bit. You have to constantly work those areas you feel will help your life/ministry/leadership/parenting/vocation soar. I don’t know what that is for you but you NEED to know what they are. Plan your work in these areas and then work your plan. I have done this for almost 20 years now. And the dividends in my life are incalculable. I read between 100-170 books a year not to mention hundreds of book reviews. And by the way yes I have taken three professional speed reading courses. Worth every penny.

Spiritual solitude is key for me as well. I have already mentioned the value and importance of a regula fidei and I genuinely believe in it’s centrality. That said, there is one thing I do every day, that is centering prayer. I have been on this pattern for nearly 4 full years now. Two times a day/20 min. (sometimes only one but ALWAYS at least one) I do centering prayer of the Father Thomas Keating sort. This is the way I enact and live into Psalm 46.10. I am convinced a centering practice along with daily input channels are what accounts for whatever creative and theological reflection I have going on in my life. My writing flows from the confluence of these two patterns.

Be relationally deep with at least two or three other people who share similar passions, desire for dialogue and of course great food and drink. At least weekly I connect with 2-3 of my closest friends and confidants for a check in. Sometimes it is simply shooting the breeze over a bottle of some fine libation at other times it is theological conversation or ministry model deconstruction for understanding our current predicament in the church a bit better. But whatever the venue and reason, a couple times of week seems to be a minimum requirement for me.

Work out and physical activity is key. This is nearly daily. I am always at 5x/wk. On the road of course (which is about half the time) this is always a challenge. But it is a non negotiable. It is the thing that keeps my head clear, my sleep patterns regular, my eating healthy (I have always eaten more healthy when my work out has been consistent) and my body young. Over the years my workout has morphed. I used to be an avid runner. But my joints just don’t like pavement pounding like they used to. Seven years ago I started down the yoga trail. Ashtanga Yoga is the power yoga, get a hard sweaty workout type of yoga. Some of you hear the word yoga and all sorts of red flags go up. Get a grip and do some reading. Yoga practice does not require you to be Buddhist so relax. My nearly daily practice has improved so much. Yoga’s interface with a centering practice is actually a very interesting interplay. Maybe sometime I will write a post on that.

More to come. But feel free to make comments.

Let me finish my comments on the three axioms and then next time will comment about rhythm. In my original post on this I said ….

Axiom # 3
Life long learning is a non negotiable for development and creativity.

I am going to be honest with you, this just happens far to infrequently. Not only does it not happen in the life of the average American (the number of Americans who actually buy non fiction to read is woefully small. The number who actually read more than the first chapter - miniscule) it happens as rarely in ministry.

I am not unrealistic in realizing the average person in ministry should have a balance between the various spheres of life. But never read a theology book? Never consider what is emerging in the world of cultural critique? Never consider a consistent practice of familiarizing themselves with cutting edge leadership and semiotics? This sort of laziness is just a recipe for church malaise; a vibe more common than anyone would like to admit. And it is a prescription for a boring, self absorbed person.

This is the single practice that has kept me fresh over the years. (in the next post I will talk to you about THE most important practice you could daily engage to revolutionize your life) You don’t have to read three books a week, listen to 12 podcasts and surf cultural trend websites daily. But you do need an intentional plan.

What areas will you become an expert in over the next 10 years (take the long view)? Why not commit right now to one full day in a bookstore getting book reading ideas and creative insights? I did this every month without fail over a 15 year time period.  It was enormously helpful. How much time will you commit to taking in new material whatever the format it takes? Input may be the most important determinate in creative flow and we just don’t take time for it.

One of the biggest reasons for input is to release our mental models from becoming to set up, read as in concrete.  Fresh input that jars and disrupts our current way of seeing things is the only way to make sure we don’t become smug and arrogant; certain we already have it all figured out.  Very little in life is “all” figured out.  There is always more to learn about almost everything imaginable.

Life long learning is not only the way to remain at an exciting place but it is the source of creative injection for the primary vocation into which you are living at the moment. Your ability to enact, creatively shift, and think beyond the box to the sphere or pyramid is dependent on your commitment to new idea intrusion. Go for it!!

I continue here with my pervious postings on personal patterns. The second axiom I mentioned I repeat here.

Axiom #2
In an external world of increasing noise creating an internal world of increasing quiet may be one of the premium patterns we need to learn.

Quiet is a rare commodity. You can’t buy it, borrow it, or use someone else’s, you have to cultivate it. I have asked pastor after pastor and spiritual formation specialists on church staffs but I have yet to find a satisfactory answer to this question, “What does it mean to “be still and know that I am God?” How do we actually do the “be still” thing?

Most people I ask have honestly raise their hands in surrender, shrugged their shoulders in frustration or quickly admitted they weren’t really sure. Upon following up with further conversation what seems obvious to me and them is we have not done a very good job understanding stillness and quiet, how valuable it is, and how to cultivate it in our lives.

For most of my 20 years of pastoral ministry I knew very very little about cultivating a quiet center. It wasn’t until the last 5 years or so that I have really come to a place of consistent practice in cultivating interior silence. The overflow of this practice impacts everything in my life…and that isn’t hyperbole, I mean everything.

The mentor that has done the most for me in this is Father Frank Stroud, a Jesuit Priest at Fordham University in New York. My time with him the last several years both at Fordham and off the continent have deeply shaped my current practice. His resourcing me with Anthony DeMello’s work has literally changed my entire spiritual formation practice. (Stroud is responsible for taking up Anthony’s mantel. Tony died unexpectedly at Fordham when we was visiting from India. Father Stroud took it upon himself to publish posthumously notes, lectures and seminars Tony had been doing all over the world.)

Father Thomas Keating is another, who through his Centering Prayer teaching over the last 70 years has made an enormous contribution to balancing our cognitive-heavy textual addiction with a strong emphasis on quiet non verbal centering. His invitation and emphasis has been to encourage us to enter into the places Jesus did when he went away to the desert or the mountains. Those quiet places provided the horsepower Jesus drew on that enabled him to say he would only do that which he saw the Father doing.

For many of us who are deeply shaped by Western Protestant spirituality to tap other strands of teaching in our rich and variegated Christian tradition seems a bit threatening. And I understand those feelings because I too have had them. But allow me to remind you, Western Protestantism is the new kid on the block. That is neither indictment nor celebration merely the statement of a chronological fact. It is that fact which should enable us to realize brothers and sisters in other strands of our very own tradition can provide us with potential patterns and practices that are deeply transformative and ministry altering.  

I understand the resistance to exploring the new. But I also realize the freedom and joy that comes from living and breathing a sort of Psalm 46.10 kind of living.

Personal Patterns pt 2….Axiom #1

In a previous post on personal patterns I began to talk about some guiding principles for me. I thought it might be helpful to engage each of these axioms in more detail and then wrap up down the road with my personal rhythm. Here was the first thing I noted.

Axiom #1
The more you progress through stages of faith development (I am thinking Fowler’s stages here, but Scott Peck or Ken Wilber’s Altitudes apply equally well) the more important a changing menu of patterns and practices.

My sense is that as I have grown, and as I have watched other people grow and develop, I realize that what was helpful early in my growth maybe isn’t as important or doesn’t pay the same dividends later in the growth process. That doesn’t mean they don’t have value any longer or won’t have huge value again later. One of the things we learn from stages of faith work is there is a definite movement from certainty and formal answers to an embrace of mystery and an expanding view of God. For me I have recognized there are things I do now that help me sit within the mystery of God’s workings that I hadn’t even have thoughts about 10 years ago.

What this highlights is something the ancients called the regula fidei. Translated to English this is the phrase “rule of faith.” The rule of faith was the current cadre of patterns and practices engaged at any given time to continue the formation of the soul. “Current cadre,” and “given time” are the operative phrases. The idea is that based on the circumstances of life, maturity level and the context, different patterns this month might be better for my formation than other practices.

So for me early in my journey, while I was still in my early 20’s and in seminary, heading down to inner city Chicago with Alan to visit homeless friends became a very seminal experience for me. Having grown up with little need, pain or understanding of the world of homelessness you can see how this became an important and formative pattern for me. Today my sensitivity to those around me is altered because of that. My nearly weekly conversations with one particular homeless guy in my community probably wouldn’t be happening if it wasn’t for those early experiences that were part of a regula fidei for about a year.

The first step in understanding how this works for you is the recognition that any and all patterns and practices you engage should help you develop. Anything you are engaging that isn’t helping that endgame is simply wasted time. So step one, cut yourself free from guilt that says you must do “X” every day. If you are like the average person there is an awful lot of guilt motivating spiritual patterns and practices which almost every time will void it of any transforming power.

Second, start thinking out side the box for what might be a molding and shaping pattern. Visiting homeless people isn’t listed in Matthew 6 or Galatians 5 but it was a spiritual discipline. I have a close friend who lives a in a warm climate (read Bahamas) and one year committed to watching the sunset every night for a year and talking to God during that time. He said it was one of the most healing and important things he has ever done. It was so transformative to him he just spoke about it at a national conference. In short keep a growing list of patterns that you can draw on and use whenever you need them.

Third, craft a rhythm that will work for you right now in this season and station of life. Different life stages and different growth seasons require different patterns and different practices. I used to get up very early for study and meditation because it was the best time for me in the office of a large church and staff to get that quiet stuff done. I now do sitting meditation mid morning, except when I am on the road then I do it every evening. It is all above daily rhythm and not being legalistic about it all.

Lately I have been asked a lot about my personal rhythms, as in what kinds of reading, blogs, books, meditation, and spiritual patterns do I engage. With that question usually comes the personal balance question as well.

Since I haven’t written much about this lately I thought I would log a few thoughts for your consumption, critique or blatant disregard.

A few axioms to start the conversation. This will serve as installment number 1 and we will follow it shortly with a 2nd.

Axiom #1
The more you progress through stages of faith development (I am thinking Fowler’s stages here, but Scott Peck or Ken Wilber’s Altitudes apply equally well) the more important a changing menu of patterns and practices.

I have become increasingly convinced a locked in or set pattern is the quickest way to stagnation. I say be wary of the phrase “but you always have to do _________ don’t you?”

Stages of faith. Are you familiar with the concept? You need to be and you need to understand how a regula fidei changes as we move through various stages.

Axiom #2
In an external world of increasing noise creating an internal world of increasing quiet may be one of the premium patterns we need to learn.

I am quiet certain most of us in Western Christianity have little understanding of this and for us quiet means we pray silently, telling God what we need, how he needs to act on our behalf, and how to basically run the affairs of the world. But actually creating a quiet center and then sitting in it? That seems to be relatively rare in my experience.

Question. Can you sit for 20 or 30 minutes without daydreaming? Without your thoughts wandering? Without being distracted? Can you sit in utter interior silence? The great mystics say this is the beginning of insight and connection with the God.  And it can create a healing space, a sense of unshakable stability and even a crazy confidence.

Axiom # 3
Life long learning is a non negotiable for development and creativity.

I am discouraged by the patterns I see guys and gals in ministry engage when it comes to really stretching their learning. Many haven’t read a challenging theology or philosophy piece in years. Many haven’t done any cultural analysis in years. Very few have book lists with books that really force new thinking. Part of this though is we allow writers to write simplistic ruminations because we buy the stuff.

What is on your reading list? Oh….reading list? Let’s ask that questions first. Do you have a reading list? What on it is really going to intellectually stretch you, what on it is simply fluff?

Axiom #4
You have to have creative outlets for fresh insights to dawn.

I love to cook, paint, do digital art, and read architecture books. The one to one correspondence to these outlets and creativity isn’t visible but I am convinced it is present.

What are you creative outlets? When was the last time you had a real creative ah-ha or hit a creative zone that was off the chart? What things catalyzed it? What surrounded the experience? Can you reproduce the zone?

I have often heard leaders talk about the need to transform others lives (presumably followers).  While we might be able to comment on the leader/follower relationship within the above idea, it is what leaders can and cannot do that I want to comment on.  As I speak and consult with churches I am continuing to find churches challenged by the consumerist mentality that manifests itself in people leaving because they aren’t “being fed.”  This is without doubt the #1 reason given for leaving a local church.  While I often think that is an excuse and smoke screen for other issues let’s talk a second about what underlies such a statement.

My sense is that we, the leaders/pastors, are the guilty culprit.  We tell people come and be served.  We want you to be comfortable here.  We want it to be fun and safe and inviting and non-threatening and and and.  The list goes on and on and on.  In other words we will transform you if you just show up.  While we never say that directly, and I don’t think we believe it either, it is what that front end value offers people that implies to them “Just come!”  we will do the rest.

The truth is transformation, as tricky as it often can be, isn’t the leaders responsibility at all.  It isn’t the churches responsibility, the small group facilitator’s or the personal mentors.  Leaders and churches, at best, create containers of possibility where transformation can take place.  In other words leaders create and monitor ethos.  This was the thesis and burden of my first book Morph!  Leaders broker tools, create context, coach application and model the way.  But what leaders do not do is transform lives.

While that may be to state the obvious it is not obvious to the scores of people leaving the church.  This is a national problem. On the front end we do not make clear to people all we can provide is a context of possibility and a bevy of resources.  Other than that the work is theirs.  Of course the Spirit is involved.  But the Spirit doesn’t  work against or instead of or unbeknownst to the individual.  The Spirit works WITH.

This is one glaring example of what we “market” on the front end biting us hard on the back end (double entendre intentional).  When people get past the first blush of hearing new things, making a few easy applications, they wake up one day to the reality that growth in the early stages seems easy, but not so much once the preliminaries are out of the way.

Leaders can’t transform.  In the words of the iconoclastic business guru Tom Peters…’Nobody “transforms” anybody else! Instead we create opportunities for people…and then encourage them to apply their latent talents to grasp those opportunities.  Leaders do NOT….”transform people.”  Leaders instead construct a context in which…. Voyages of Mutual Discovery….can take place. Leaders provide access to a luxuriant portfolio of of projects.  Projects that challenge people to express their innate curiosity and to visit places that they had never dreamed of.’ (emphasis and punctuation Tom Peters).

I think we might need a brash business guy like Peters to sometimes wake us up to our own short sightedness.  Let’s get to work creating context.

There are 3 distinct phases in the creative process. Each phase has it’s

own life and class of actions.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi- Creativity

The well-balanced leader is continually learning how to bring their God-given visions into reality. We tend to see that ability for the super-gifted due it it’s near mystic basis. The honest fact is creative visionaries understand and use a process that helps the creation in their sprit come to fruition in reality.

Step #1 Germination: Idea generation and rumination, most leaders know when and where this happens best for them. There is lots of excitement in this phase and the newness of he idea creates lots of energy and drive. Truth is most visionaries of this sort have learned to be in the world in very present ways. They have learned to extract from intuition and how to be sensitive to the emergent. Germination usually happens in these moments of sensing what is trying to find air. Germination requires shifting the location of our listening from within the organism we serve to the future which is embedded at the junction of our presence, our imagination and God’s best possible future.

Step #2 assimilation: this is where things typically breakdown, this is the least obvious phase. Initial thrill is gone and work starts. Here there is a spinning out of the details of the “germ” or idea. More than anything though, this stage moves you from a focus on internal action to a focus on external particulars to put wings on the creation. This has recently been referred to as crystallizing and prototyping.

Step #3 Completion: Energy ramps up again because tangibility is just around the corner. Specifics are now acted upon and the creation is birthed. And from here we can begin to operate within the sphere of the new creation and begins adjusting it on the fly.

These three steps are all risky, exhilarating and intimidating. But that is precisely why not all people are Creators.

The greatest statesmen in history have not been problem solvers. They have been builders and creators.

Robert Fritz – Author

There is a profound difference between problem solving and creating Problem solving is taking action to have something to go away – the problem. Creating is taking action to have some thing come into being  - the creation. Most of us have been raised n the tradition of problem solving and have little insight or experience in to the creative process.

Problem solvers propose elaborate schemes to identify and define the problem, and equally detailed analyses of the best solutions and options. If successful you may eliminate the problem; you have the absence of something. But you still do not have the presence of a result you want to create.

We do have many problems that constantly need solving. But from politics to education, from business to church ministry, problem solving will never create the outcomes, the preferable futures, the compelling alternatives that we seek. That is simply because elimination of anything no matter how bad never creates anything.

Is God fundamentally a problem solver or creator? What do we typically ask of God? What is you fundamental orientation? How much time do you spend on each? What are the concrete ways to move toward creating? Can you see creating something simultaneously that can solve some of the problems you had? What is your creative process?

Concretely?  Think about a personal best on creating something.  Go back and try and think about your state of mind, the environment you were in, the intuitional sense you had.  Now how did you prototype that new thing about to be born?  What experiments did you try?  How long did it take?  These questions will start to get you in touch with your process and what it takes to creatively birth instead of laboriously solve.