Epiphany Stars, Water Words

I saw this picture that a friend of mine, Diane Roth, posted of water words surrounding a baptismal font:

You may have seen many of us doing star words last week, as a way to celebrate Epiphany, and as a way to have a word to take with us through the year:

What to do with these words?  We could meditate on what God might be saying to us, or we could see where the word appears in our reading.  We could consider the opposite of the word.  We could just flip the star over and enjoy a blank side.

I like the idea of water words for the Baptism of Our Lord Sunday, which will be this Sunday.  It's good to remember that even if we missed Epiphany, it's not too late to have this kind of experience.

Visio Divina in Seminary Class

One of the cool things about being in a seminary class is that we can actually engage in spiritual practices and not just talk about them.  On Wednesday, in my Spiritual Formation for Ministry class, we did a session of Visio Divina, after reading Henri Nouwen who talked about this practice.

I reached for my sketchbook, but it wasn't going to be that kind of Visio Divina. It's a class conducted via Zoom, so our teacher pulled up this image, "Emmaus," by Emmanuel Garibay:

On Wednesday, we looked at this image, while our teacher led us through the meditation.  "I invite you to . . ."--much of what our teacher offered was preceded by this phrase.  She invited us to focus on different parts of the image.  She invited us to close our eyes.  She invited us to consider where we see God in this image.  She invited us to consider what God was saying to us in this image.

Then we broke into small groups.  My group was me, another woman, and a man who is also in my CD group, so I knew him.  He's a Seventh Day Adventist, so I wasn't surprised to hear him say that he found the image too disturbing to even have it on his screen.  I talked about how it was hard for me to meditate on the image because I wanted to analyze it, especially the background, which reminded me of both depictions of Hell and Pentecost.

We came back together as a group to discuss.  Not surprisingly, we had a wide range of experiences.  Our teacher reminded us that "God will reveal Godself in any image."  She suggested we try it with images out of the news.  Interesting!

I'd like to try this again, only this time with a less unsettling image.  I found it hard to shut up my analytical brain long enough to let God, or anyone else, speak to me through the image that we used on Wednesday night.  But I'm not unhappy to have had the experience--or to have found the work of an artist whom I hadn't heard of before Wednesday night.

If your brain is like mine and wants more insight into both the artist and the art, this essay by Rob Pattendon in Image is a great place to start.

God as the New Moon Cradled in the Arms of the Old

This week, my seminary Spiritual Formation for Ministry class studied the practice of meditation.  We were given a task, to go on a 10 minute walk and meditate on creation while we were walking.  Then we had a discussion post thread that asked, "What was your experience of meditating on creation? What did you notice? Why did your mind drift during your experience?"

I really loved my response, so I want to record it here:

"When I went out on a morning walk, I intended to notice the trees and the living creatures. I was surprised that my mind kept looking at the moon and thinking about God revealed in the moon. This morning, the moon was a tiny sliver shining, but you could see the outline of the whole moon, and I thought of the old saying, “The new moon cradled in the arms of the old.” I thought about how God is often revealed in just a sliver and/or just an outline of the whole. I thought of the inbreaking kingdom of God, the now and the not yet, and how the moon this morning seemed an apt metaphor. My mind did wander because it was dark, and I was walking, and I didn’t want to fall or be surprised by other creatures on my walk."

Several of my small group members mentioned that moon metaphor, and I confess my thoughts have returned to that image several times.  I don't often see the moon and think about God.  I'm more of a sunrise gal, and if I'm going to find the moon worthy of notice, it's usually when the moon is full.

It was a great experience, and I'm glad to have had it.  It seems like the kind of experience that could be useful in a variety of settings, which is another reason I'm noting it here.  All of my groupmates talked about the value of the experience, which makes me think it would be worth replicating:  with students, with a parish, on a retreat . . . 

Unsettling Mystical Experiences and a Special Word from God

I had an unsettling mystical experience yesterday.  That's a sentence I didn't anticipate writing.  I thought I might write many observations about my onground intensive to become certified in spiritual direction, but not that.

Have I had a mystical experience?  Have I ever?  I've had a mystical experience here or there, but I've also been a bit skeptical.  Were they really mystical experiences?  Was it just a tired brain?  Most of my mystical experiences have happened as I did a guided visualization/meditation, so maybe it was God speaking to me or maybe it was my subconscious or maybe it was something innocuous that gets transformed into something that seems important.

Yesterday's later part of the onground intensive revolved around silence, and the leader of the last session offered us an extensive guided meditation.  I tried so hard to follow the directions.  I sat in my desk chair and closed my eyes.  I visualized energy moving through my body.  After what felt like an endless journey from head to toe, we got to a space where God was waiting for us.  We visualized the space.  We visualized God.  Then the leader said, "God has a special word or phrase for you. Let's sit in silence and wait for that word or phrase to emerge."

It didn't take long for my word to emerge:  patient.  Not patience, but patient.  I thought about the difference between the two.  I sat resisting the urge to open my eyes and flip through other online sites.  I was not concentrating on God or my word.

I opened my eyes and reached for my sketchbook.  I decided to write the word across the page, and then I wrote it on other parts of the page in different ways (all capital letters, block print, cursive).  I turned the page around.  I wrote patience instead of patient, but I turned that word back to patient.  I revolved my sketchbook again.

Then I wrote Pain.  I only realized what I wrote when I paused to think, how do I spell patient again?  Then I looked down and realized that I wasn't just a letter or two off.  I looked at the word.

So if I believe that God was sending me a word, is my word patient or patience or pain?  My brain remembered that pain means bread in French, and that seemed relevant too.  I looked up some definitions to see how the words wind/wound their way together.  I tried to figure out if pain had interesting meanings in other languages.  I liked this definition for patient:  "not hasty or impetuous."  I have certainly had impulses, especially in the past 9 months, that have seemed hasty and impetuous, like my yearnings to sell everything we own and move to a place on higher ground that's more affordable and less hurricane prone.

I felt a bit of anxiety--was God trying to warn me that pain was coming my way?  Was God telling me I would be a patient?  Was God telling me to be patient with pain?  My first thoughts had not gone in these dire directions--my first thoughts had been, Yes, I will be patient in the the belief that better days are coming.  I will be patient; I will hold on.

My first exercise in embracing patient/patience was the meditation itself.  I had done as much thinking about the word, sketching, pondering, as I had in my tired brain. I looked at my computer screen again--surely the leader would bring us back soon?  How long could I sustain this meditation?  Were all those people on my Zoom screen meditating or napping?

Finally she brought us back.  We had a question and answer session, and some of us asked about alternate ways to do the exercise, with journaling or sketching or walking.  She replied in language that seemed significant enough to capture:  "Respond in a way that's consistent with who you are."

At least I did that.  At most, I got some interesting information from God or from the Collective Unconscious or from my own subconscious.

Sitting in Silence, Moving in Silence

I am about halfway through a program that will leave me certified to be a spiritual director.  I loved the original design of the program:  4 onground intensives (2 in June, 2 in January), with one book to read a month.  It seemed doable with my life.

Well, here it is, one year later, and how life has changed.  One onground intensive, June 2020, was cancelled, and the one this week will be held online.  We've been given all sorts of resources to explore in advance.  I thought those resources would be written resources, but most of them seem to be videos--with all sorts of ancillary readings, if one is so inclined.

I've just watched my way through a series of videos on silence; the irony is not lost on me.  While the ideas are not new to me, I'm happy to be reminded of them.  But as I was watching, I did wonder if there was an angle we might be missing.

We were told to experiment with silence first by finding a place and time when we could be silent.  For me, that's a stumbling point, and if it's a stumbling point for me, a woman with no children in the household and a supportive spouse and an office door that I can close at will--if I'm having trouble visualizing that, imagine how difficult others would find it.

I thought back to a piece of wisdom that I discovered about meditation.  I have tried meditation through the years, but I have similar issues with meditation.  I can't empty my mind.  I can't sit cross-legged.  My back wants to slump.  If I close my eyes I go to sleep, but if I leave them open, I'm distracted by all the dust.

In one of Julia Cameron's books, she mentioned that Western minds have trouble with the kind of meditation that mandates that we sit in a quiet space and empty our minds and think of nothing.  She recommends writing as a means of meditation.  It gives us something to do, which helps quiet some part of our brains.  And for many of us, writing gives us the space for some inner wisdom to bubble up, wisdom we might not be able to access any other way.

I wonder if the same might be true of silence.  If we write, might we be more successful?

But for me, writing is a kind of noise too.  It's a good kind of noise, but how can I be sure I'm hearing God?

Maybe instead of sitting in silence, we should exercise in silence.  For those of us who want to focus on a single image, we could do that, if we were working out on a machine.  For those of us who need to move through space, we could do that too, by walking or jogging or cycling.

I'm also thinking that knitting or crocheting or making a series of lines on the page could be useful.

This line of thinking has made me wonder how many other spiritual processes we might need to rethink.  How many traditional methods of practice might be opened up to many more people if we widen our approach?

Meditation Rocks

In this high stress time, let's remember how simple it is to create a Zen garden:

How soothing it can be to rake shapes in the sand:

Those photos reminded me of the time that my spouse and I made meditation stones:

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed writing on the stones with a gold pen:

I don't usually wear clothes with pockets, but if I did, I might slip one of these worry stones in my pocket to take with me through the day:

I love how rocks turn into footprints:

There's probably a metaphor here.

The Need for Silence

Once, I would have watched the presidential debate, each and every one.  Once, I recorded them (on tape!) and made my students watched them--we then discussed the elements of argument present or not and wrote analytical essays.

That woman is no longer me.  I watched 15 minutes of the debate, and once the voices went up and the talking over each other started, I called it a night.

Once, I thought I needed to watch the debates to be informed, to be a good citizen.  This election, I don't feel I need the debates to tell me what I need to know.

If I had counted on last night's debate to get solid information, I don't know that I'd have gotten that.  Where was that moderator?  I'd like to see moderators have the power to cut the microphone when rules of good debating are ignored. 

I just don't have the patience for modern life, the shouting, the refusal to listen to each other to be able to find middle ground, the shouting.
This morning, I turned off the radio, and instead of rushing to fill the silence, I sat with it.

Later, I read this article by Andrew Sullivan, and this quote leapt out at me:  "The reason we live in a culture increasingly without faith is not because science has somehow disproved the unprovable, but because the white noise of secularism has removed the very stillness in which it might endure or be reborn."

The white noise in the context of his article is the ever-present stimulation of our phones and devices.  But the old-fashioned white noise of radios, TV, and words acts in much the same way.

I feel a need for silence, for stillness, after our hectic travel pace of the last week.  However, today is a day of many meetings.  But I often come up with interesting poem ideas on these days against that particular white noise.  Stay tuned!

Silent Spiritual Formation

Friday's blog post about the rise of the unaffiliated made me think about all the articles I've been reading.  I've seen articles about how we shouldn't worry, how we should keep doing what we've been doing and trust the Holy Spirit.  I've seen letters from Millennials instructing us how to change.  I've seen many a post about how we need to be raising our children and how church can help.

And I just feel tired when I think of the morning ahead:  the 9:45 service where we will share our highs and lows, then I'll be assisting minister at the 11:00 service, and then we'll count money.  It's a lot of human interaction in a week that's been more full than usual of human interaction.

I find myself continuing to think of Julian of Norwich, whose feast day we celebrated recently.   I find myself longing for a cathedral cell.  I want to believe I'd be more creative if I could just find quiet.  I'd certainly be less irritable.

I find myself yearning for the calm that comes in the best sacred spaces.  But I want to be less busy in those sacred spaces.  I love liturgy and music, but once again, I return to my yearning to just sit in silence.  I know that spiritual formation is important, but we've given too little time to the possibility that spiritual formation doesn't have to involve words, sound, and relentless interaction.

Not for the first time, I find myself wishing that Lutherans had a more contemplative tradition. I just want to sit in silence. Maybe I'll let you interrupt occasionally to read the Word of God.  But nothing too long.  I don't want a sermon full of others' interpretations of the Word.  We can do a bit of liturgy to prepare for the Eucharist. But maybe we could simplify it down to the words of institution.  Maybe we could sit silently and each pray our own prayer:  praying together in silence.  Don't bother me with lots of instruments. Don't amplify. It's O.K. to remain in the background.

I know that lots of churches have spent lots of money on sound systems.  I know that many of us are doing multimedia shows with screens.  I know that lots of churches have spent lots of money on grand organs--maybe on whole orchestras. But I can't be the only woman who finds her nerves increasingly jangled, who needs a space of quiet where she can hear God speak.

Those of you who are casting about for your niche in the mission field, hear my whisper!

A New Kind of Prayer Flag and Exploration of Spiritual Journaling

A week ago, I'd have been preparing to lead a workshop on spiritual journaling.  We talked about all sorts of approaches, including keeping a prayer journal.

One of the participants told us about her creation, a variation of Tibetan prayer flags. She writes prayers on tulle fabric. She ties them to a pieces of lattice in her garden, and she takes great joy in seeing them flutter in the breeze. The fluttering reminds her to pray.

I love this idea.  I love the idea of being reminded to pray.  I love what I understand to be the purpose of prayer flags:  that we release the prayers to go to the Creator who can handle it from there.  I love the visual reminder to let go of some of these issues once I've prayed about them.


I've wondered about this practice and how we might use it for non-prayer purposes. We could write our wishes for our creative work on tulle or write our problems for which we need solutions. We could write our dreams and visions, our hopes for what we'd like to see in our lives.

If we write them out, we may find ourselves able to release the anxiety that often comes from our unacknowledged needs or our inability to find solutions. If we tie the tulle in places where we'll see them, we can be reminded of both our goals and our wildest dreams. We may be more likely to stay focused with this kind of reminder.

We did a similar kind of project a few years ago, as a big group at the Create in Me retreat, when we wrote prayers onto strips of fabric which we braided together.  Then we attached the braided strips together.  And then a group of us took them to the chapel where we laid them out in labyrinth form.

Here are the blog posts that I wrote about the process, one with pictures and one without.

I find much of my spiritual disciplines coming back to fabric.  Even the ones that I think are word-based, like the spiritual journal, have some interesting possibilities in fabric.  I wonder how many other spiritual disciplines that I think involve other mediums could migrate to fabric.

Now that might make an interesting approach to a book!  I'll keep thinking about this.  Hmmm.

Channeling Our Spiritual Mentors

A week ago, we'd have had a full day of retreat planning at Lutheridge.  We met from September 9-11 to plan the Create in Me retreat.  I'm always amazed at the process.  There's a point at which I despair and think, we'll never get it done!  Then it comes together.

We started every day with Bible study, and for me, it was revelatory.  In the past, we've had pastors lead the Bible study.  This year, we approached it differently.  This year, I was in charge, but I didn't know that I was in charge until I arrived.  There was no time to prepare a traditional Bible study, the way I might have if I had more time.

In so many ways, my lack of preparation turned out to be a good thing.  It opened the door to something new.  Today and tomorrow, I'll talk about what we did and what I learned.

When we met on Sunday, we spent time brainstorming about the theme of the retreat:  Spirit Blazing.  Each year, we focus on a different aspect of God:  Creator, Christ, Holy Spirit.  We talked about all the places we see fire in the Bible, both as aspect of God and in other ways.  We talked about Bible passages.

For Bible study on Monday, I decided to focus on 2 Timothy 1:  3-7:  "3 I am grateful to God—whom I worship with a clear conscience, as my ancestors did—when I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. 4Recalling your tears, I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy. 5I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you. 6For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands; ⁷for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline."

I gave the group paper to write on and read the passage.  I had them write about what needed to be rekindled in each of them individually and/or in the groups and communities of which they are part.

Then came the interesting part.  I talked about the presence of spiritual mentors in the passage.  There's Paul, writing to the younger Timothy who he has known for many years.  There's Timothy's grandmother and mother.  I asked the group to think about our own mentors.  Then we moved into a free writing exercise.

The ground rules are simple:  keep writing.  Don't stop, don't go back, don't think--just write until told to stop.

My students usually last 45 seconds until they start whimpering and wanting to stop.  Not this group.  I think they could have written all morning.

I gave them the prompt:  if your mentors were here, what advice and insight would they give you about rekindling?

I wasn't sure what would happen.  In college classrooms, I have a good sense, but I've rarely tried this experiment outside of a college classroom or my own writing desk.

Our group was mildly to wildly enthusiastic.  I did the exercise too, and I came away with important insights, which I wrote about here.

I find this process interesting, and it's a different approach to Bible study than what we usually experience.  In my experience, Bible study usually consists of an expert who has studied the text and can give background and insight.  Or it consists of the participants saying what they think--but they often haven't given the passage much thought.  That surface level, first-exposure approach can be interesting, but what we did leads to depth.

We had talked about the 2 Timothy passage on Sunday, and I'd spent the whole night thinking about it.  Then we arrived on Monday to write.  We dove deep.

Writing intensely can serve as a kind of meditation.  Many people aren't good at sitting and quieting their minds.  Free writing gives the brain the focus it needs and gives the body something to do.

I'm amazed at what bubbles to the surface in free writing.  I should do it more often. 

Meditating on a Spin Bike

Earlier this week, I wrote this post about praying while on a spin bike in an exercise class.  Yesterday, I did a guided meditation.  I gave it a spiritual twist.

I've done this guided meditation in spin class with this instructor before.  We start off with visualizing a color that symbolizes to us the way we feel when we're totally engaged in a task, so engaged that we lose all track of time.  We visualize it first as a dot and then we enlarge it.  Eventually it becomes a tunnel of color through which we pedal.

Yesterday, I tried to envision the color (purple with green edges) as God.  I tried to imagine the color as God's love dripping into me.  I tried to imagine my cells, which all week have been filled with anxiety and worry, filling up with God's love.  I tried to imagine God's love squeezing all the negativity out of my cells.

I was able to meditate in this way successfully.  I haven't always been successful with meditation.  My mind drifts off, and I look at my watch, and I wonder when it will all be over so that I can go on to something else.

Yesterday, we did our spin class in a dark room lit only by some violet light.  We did our meditation in the middle of our spin class, which meant that our bodies had something to do as our brains explored.  That kind of meditation works for me.  I don't do as well at the end of a yoga class when we all assume corpse pose on the floor and lie there still and silent for 15 minutes.

I mention these experiences to remind us that there are all kinds of ways to do spiritual practices.  You may not do well with prayers in which you chat with God.  So, try fixed hour prayers out of a prayer book where the prayers have been written for you, often centuries ago or try reading the Psalms as prayer (see this post for more on fixed hour prayer).  Maybe you'd like to keep a journal but you hate writing.  Play with collage or photography.

And don't be surprised if your preferences change as the years go by.  What worked well one year might not work as well a decade or two later.  Be flexible.  Try new things.  Look for practices that let you listen for the invitations that God offers you.