Thursday, October 25, 2007

Conformity can destroy us

In Paul’s letter to the Roman church he urges the recipients to be careful not to conform to the standards of their world but to be transformed by the renewing of their minds. Paul says, this is how God’s will, will be tested and understood. Eugene Peterson pulls out all the stops in his paraphrase of this text but saying, ‘don’t allow yourselves to become so well adjusted to the world around you that you’re dragged down to their level of immaturity and just simply fit in’.

Richard Lawton wrote an article for the Australian Christian online recently which has created some discussion about what it really means to love our enemies. After all this is one of those outrageous teachings we understand as coming from Jesus that many of us aren’t sure what to do with when confronted with a situation where we cannot reconcile a love for someone we are completely at odds with or has done something terrible against us.

It is times like these when someone raises a topic or a popular teaching we have come to know as a follower of Jesus, that a button is pressed within us and something stirs and rises to the surface. Our temperature may rise a little, our heart might start beating a little faster or tears may begin to well up in our eyes and we begin to defend why we simply cannot do what the Gospel teaches us about the outrageous lifestyle of loving our enemies and forgiving those who have devastated us. It is in the quiet places of renewal that we begin to check in with that which rises up within us and have the opportunities to test it against our understanding of God’s will. That simply being… a place of shalom (peace). Jesus’ forgiveness of sins or love and acceptance of the other (who is unacceptable) is what deeply offended people. This is non-conformity at its best.

So where do we find the models of such lives in our modern day where people are forgiven extraordinary debts and the worst of the worst criminal or deviant is loved? We certainly don’t find such leadership displayed in many of our world leaders. Perhaps this is why many who look from the outside in to the Christian way criticize and call us hypocrites, because they know what we are supposed to be doing but we’re not doing it. It is hard to find many people of influence who testify to the Jesus way, who are prepared to put their reputation and ego on the line for such a way of life

Yet it is this way of life that is freeing of everything of this world that would cage us such as anger, revenge, resentment and vengeance. The way of conformity is to retaliate, get even, take matters into our own hands. If you conform to the standards of this world it will surely destroy you. The way of the Gospel (good news) is to let our very being be renewed by letting go of that which consumes us and imprisons us. Don’t conform because you’re able or the expectations or our world allow you to, allow yourself to be transformed by spaces of renewal which move you to such actions as bringing the light of hope into the shadows of a world which so desperately needs it.

Shalom
Mark Riessen

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Life changing spaces

This past two weeks I have been taking you on a journey of listening to life. It’s been about finding the spaces, the stillness and the silence, the spirit within us longs for and taking a journey deep within to find and reconnect with true self.

My desire is not to take you on a touchy feely, feel good journey of narcissistic self satisfaction, in fact my own practices of this are anything but. It is a journey towards the heart of the soul where we discover what we have neglected or hidden away hoping to ignore. In many cases it is the voice/call of God, and/or the yearning of our vocation, that being which is truly who we are.

The challenge is to emerge with a sense of truly engaging that which we have encountered and allowing it to change us and form us into the true sense of who God has called us to be. It is never an easy journey but it is the most rewarding. It is the journey we must take to truly have an impact on the world around us as a disciple of Jesus called to serve and to be in community with the other and one another. Beginning with this regular practise in life is the best thing we have to offer of ourselves in our mission and ministry as people of Christ.

I could not resist sharing this reflection below with you:

‘One must do it (pray) for God’s sake; but one will not get any satisfaction out of it, in the sense of feeling “I am good at prayer. I have an infallible method.” That would be disastrous, since what we want to learn is precisely our own weakness, powerlessness, unworthiness. Nor ought one to expect a sense of the reality of the supernatural of which I speak. And one should wish for no prayer except precisely the prayer that God gives us – probably very distracted and unsatisfactory in every way.
On the other hand the only way to pray is to pray.
And the only way to pray well is to pray much.
If one has no time for this, then one must at least pray regularly. But the less one prays, the worse it goes. And if circumstances do not permit even regularity, then one must put up with the fact that when one does try to pray, one can’t pray – and our prayer will probably consist of telling this to God.
As to beginning afresh, or where you left off, I don’t think you have any choice. You simply have to begin wherever you find yourself. Make any acts you want to make and feel ought to make, but do not force yourself into feelings of any kind.
You say very naturally that you do not know what to do if you have a quarter of an hour alone. Yet I suspect the only thing to do is to shut out everything and just give yourself to God and beg for God’s mercy and offer God all your distractions.’
From The Spiritual Letters of Dom John Chapman OSB

Shalom
Mark

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Riding the wave

Last week I reacquainted myself with the surf down south for the first time this season. It was a perfect day with a good sized solid swell and offshore breeze. I suited up and went down onto the beach. The shoreline was covered with large rock that the wave would eventually come crashing into. There was a narrow sandy channel where if you timed the waves right you could paddle out to the break safely.

Once I was out there sitting on my board among the other surfers the waves suddenly looked a lot bigger than they did from the car park. I could see a set brewing on the horizon and as it approached I began surveying the situation in my mind. There was no escape I was sitting between the rocks and the waves and when it’s your first surf in a while a healthy dose of anxiety creeps up inside you. The anxiety begins to step up a couple of notches when you see the expressions on the other surfers faces change and suddenly they slip from sitting to lying on their board and paddling like crazy for the waves at the back.

As the waves got closer I could see them lining up one after the other with the crest of the wave feathering in the wind. The waves loomed closer and closer and I found I was faced with two choices. Follow part of the crowd that was scrambling like crazy to get behind the waves before they broke or brave it like few others and face the inevitable. I managed to clear the first but knew that the ones behind were bigger and would break sooner. I caught the third wave of the set fro the ride of my life.

As I cut across the face of the wave the wall began to build and build as it edged closer to the shore. I knew I wasn’t going to make the section so two more choices faced me, turn out in front and risk riding the whitewash being smashed into the rocks, or duck in under the wave closing in on me. Either way I was going to get pounded.

I chose the latter…boom! After a couple of seconds I popped up on the other side of the wave in calm waters and braced to duck the next couple of waves of the set. I saw that no-one had escaped the brutal pounding of the surf during that set. While some like me had braved it and taken the plunge on one wave, others who tried to avoid it ended up taking a beating from every wave of the set and they were left weak, coughing and spluttering, heading for that narrow opening to shore.

Sometimes things loom up in our lives and line up like waves on the horizon. Often every instinct within us tells us we must avoid getting pounded at all costs, yet they’re there on the horizon and we’re sitting in the water and we know eventually we’re going to have to face whatever it is we are trying to avoid. We always have choices, do we go with the crowd or do we listen to the voice within that says with reason, ‘you must deal with this eventually’?
Eventually the wave catches up and our character is tested as to how we will ride this wave or are we still scrambling to avoid it. You will come face to face with it eventually, it’s either take you unwillingly or you’ll be prepared for the ride. It’s amazing the confidence we can get out of facing that which causes anxiety within us and popping out the other end still in tact. The looming wave on the horizon will inevitably hit the shore. When you’re sitting between it and the shore the question is, what are you going to do with it?

Shalom
Mark