There’s one reason I prefer total solitude: rhythm. When my daily life has taken on arrhythmia, I need a restored rhythm for my soul.

Thus, I have adopted two cardinal rules for solitude retreats:

• Don’t bring an agenda
• Find a rhythm for prayer

When I begin a solitude retreat I’m seeking a spiritual rhythm that will attune my mind and heart to the voice of God. For me, praying the four services of the Daily Office establishes that rhythm I need to slow my mind and anchor my thoughts in Christ.

I don’t follow a schedule for the Daily Office set by hours and minutes of the day. I simply follow the order—Morning, Midday, Evening, Compline—receiving the day as the Lord gives it.

Desperate for Silence

In between the hours of prayer, I pursue two treasures on retreat that I want to embrace more often in regular, daily life: silence and creation. Yet over the years, I noticed not only how much I needed silence and the beauty of creation, I noticed a dis-ease within. I was arriving at solitude retreats desperate for silence. To be desperate for silence means there was a deprivation within—I had forfeited the gift of silence on a routine basis. I chose other things to rest and renew my mind and body. It is an unobserved decision I make too often: choosing sounds and images over silence. If I’m desperate for silence, to hear the voice of God, that means there has been far too little silence in ordinary days.

As blood needs iron, the soul needs silence for health. Madeleine Delbrel, who devoted her life to serve the poor on the outskirts of Paris, shared these meditations on silence in her collection of essays We, the Ordinary People of the Streets:

We do not need to find silence; we already have it. The day we lack silence is the day we have not learned how to keep it.¹

Silence is indispensable, even among those with a radical call to serve the world’s poor, heroic servants such as Madeleine Delbrel and Mother Teresa. Mother Teresa was alarmed in her time that priests were abandoning the life of prayer to immerse themselves in social work. She noted how our Lord Jesus ‘sacrificed even charity for prayer…to teach us that, without God, we are too poor to help the poor!’²

Putting Pressures on Time Away

When one reclaims the treasures of silence and the beauty of creation on retreat, there’s an instinct to store up every moment of solitude because regular life will bring demands upon returning home.

It’s not discussed nearly enough, but one can actually feel pressure when taking a retreat. One feels pressure to make the most of the time away, to get the most rest, to write as much as possible in a journal, to sit in silence for hours after months of constant activity. When one has been formed by an efficiency mindset by the world, that doesn’t disappear once you check into a peaceful mountain cabin.

A scarcity mindset can also set in during a retreat, especially for those serving in vocational ministry. We know the inbox will be full upon returning to daily rhythms, appointments will fill the calendar, obligations will fill to-do lists. The gift of uninterrupted time presents the temptation to sort out all of one’s interior issues in a weekend. And this is when the first cardinal rule of retreats must be guarded: don’t bring an agenda.

Instead of bringing a spiritual agenda, seek a spiritual rhythm on retreat instead. It took several years before I noticed the necessity of rhythm while on retreat. But I noticed that a different order of time was a reason I was seeking retreat at all. I want to embrace time as grace and gift (kairos time) and not feel constantly defeated by chronological time. Retreats are occasions to redeem the time.

Retreats and the Reordering of Ordinary Days

I have realized that I do not take retreats because my Myers-Briggs temperament is introverted. I take retreats because God put eternity in my heart. Metropolitan Anthony Bloom believed that there are spiritual moments of ‘depth, light, serenity…when we feel that we are on the frontier of eternity.’³Retreats bring us to the frontier of eternity, a foretaste, however brief, of living outside the pressures and demands of chronological time.

These experiences of time ordered by grace aren’t meant to happen only on occasional getaways, brief reprieves so that one can survive one season to the next. Finding rhythm on a retreat is not just a psychological necessity; it is not onlya way of restoring equilibrium and sanity. Retreats are meant to change us. However, it is not grand, illuminating epiphanies that one ought to seek for interior change. In fact, the desert fathers say that one who seeks grand spiritual experiences is filled with ambition, not the love of Christ. Instead of seeking an experience, retreats ought to change our ordering of time back home, as well.

Retreats help me not only to recover from, but to re-examine the arrhythmia of my daily life. A retreat is a catalyst and a prompt to re-examine my schedule and daily rhythms. Instead of deferring long spaces for silence to retreats, I want retreat rhythms to gain ground in my daily rhythms back home. I want to have more pauses in my weekly rhythms to savor the beauty of creation. Deep renewal in Christ doesn’t require a 1-2 hour drive to a scenic location. Retreats teach me that silence in the presence of God will restore my soul. The silence of God is available to me each day at home, especially in the early morning hours before the world awakens. I can choose silence or I can choose something else, but make no mistake, we have freedom of choice in the matter.

Yes, there is a different rhythm to our daily lives than retreat rhythms. Work, errands, family, friends, and church require our time and energy. Even still, the hours at the beginning and end of the day, even certain transition moments in the day, present opportunities to bring spiritual practices from a retreat into daily life. Prayer, silence, enjoying Christ in creation, taking an easy stroll (not walking for exercise!), spiritual reading—these are choices we have in our daily lives. These are the practices that I want to be normative in my daily rhythms. These rhythms help push back against the hurried pace and the disordering of time in our world. Retreats aren’t the only time and place when we can experience the frontiers of eternity. That experience awaits each day and each evening—at home.

1. Madeleine Delbrel, We, the Ordinary People of the Streets, 54. ︎
2. Quoted in Robert Cardinal Sarah, The Power of Silence, 47. ︎
3. Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, Churchianity vs Christianity, 46. ︎

The post Bring Retreat Rhythms into Daily Rhythms first appeared on The St Benedict Center for Spiritual Formation.

Eleazar was in trouble. Eleazar was an old man, a scribe, a person who held a high position and was respected among the Jews. And, he was living at a time when ”the king sent an Athenian senator to compel the Jews to forsake the laws of their ancestors and no longer live by the laws of God…”(v1) Eleazar was being required to eat “swine’s flesh” upon threat of death.

Among the oppressors were those sympathetic to Eleazar. They encouraged him to stash a little of his own meat in his pockets and only pretend to eat the pork, but really eat his own meat. In this way he could avoid being executed. But Eleazar was a man of integrity.

“Such pretense is not worthy of our time of life,” [Eleazar] said, “for many of the young might suppose that Eleazar in his ninetieth year had gone over to an alien religion, and through my pretense, for the sake of living a brief moment longer, they would be led astray because of me, while I defile and disgrace my old age. Even if for the present I would avoid the punishment of mortals, yet whether I live or die I will not escape the hands of the Almighty. Therefore, by bravely giving up my life now, I will show myself worthy of my old age and leave to the young a noble example of how to die a good death willingly and nobly for the revered and holy laws.” (V24-28a)

What a great example of living with integrity and finishing well. What perspective he had on life and death, on faithfulness in the midst of extreme hardship. What understanding he had of himself, of other people and of God. Having been faithful into his nineties, why would he choose even the appearance of unfaithfulness (while still technically being faithful)? It was not only those he would be trying to fool who were watching him, and he was very aware of that. There were vulnerable ones watching also, and there was himself, he would know and would have to live with his own deception, and then there was God—the Almighty would know.

Is this in sharp contrast to our current practices in much of the Church? Are we trying to walk a line sometimes? Are we trying to appear the same as our culture but not be? Pretense.

Eleazar is expressing something I sometimes try to articulate in Spiritual Direction. To live with the integrity of our deepest, most Godly, most genuine, most essential selves will make us different than the world. It will afford us the deepest inner peace, and we will actually go through our lives easier and with more contentment within ourselves. Our inner lives will be lived-out with the least pain and the least anxiety, the most assurance, the deepest groundedness and stability.

At the same time, however, the lives we live from our more shallow selves, closer to the surface, will be much more painful. If we walk with the kind of integrity Eleazar chose, we will be distinctly different from most of those around us. There is undeniably profound loss in that, and with loss comes pain and grief. This is very real, and often very compelling. We long to fit in, to be liked. We want to be invited to the parties. Though living in a way that satisfies those shallow desires is more immediately comfortable, it leaves us at odds with ourselves. No matter what we gain on the outside, we are left with loss of that deep inner peace.

We, like Eleazar, do well to keep our focus on the more important, more lasting things. We must listen to our deepest longings and allow ourselves to be compelled by the profound and abiding peace that comes with knowing who we are and by moving through life as our truest selves. 

We must learn, as much as we can, that even when we are functioning from those more shallow places where the majority of life happens, we can face the pain and choose to live from that deepest place. 

All told, we will be choosing the path of less pain and greater peace. We will be choosing reality over pretense, that which is lasting over that which is fleeting, what truly matters over what ultimately will not.

The post A Good Life, A Good Death first appeared on The St Benedict Center for Spiritual Formation.

Asking that question took courage, and my sister articulated a question and experience for many believers. Is it dishonest to sing joyfully or pray holy words when you feel no emotion within?

Emotions are as predictable as the wind. The instability of one’s emotions raises the question of authentic worship. Can worship be authentic when you feel dead inside? Is it hypocritical to pray when you feel hollow within?

Praying When Exhausted

One need look no further than the psalms for wisdom with these questions. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, the psalms are ‘the prayerbook of the Bible.’ Anytime one brings questions about authentic prayer and worship, we must turn to the psalms first.

In Psalm 38, David confesses that his suffering so weakened him that he’s barely able to speak:

O Lord, all my longing is before you; my sighing is not hidden from you. My heart throbs; my strength fails me, and the light of my eyes—it also has gone from me.
I am like a deaf man; I do not hear, like a mute man who does not open his mouth. I have become like a man who does not hear, and in whose mouth are no rebukes.¹

David’s weakened moments, painful though they be, became a school for learning authentic worship. When he was most empty, David learned that his emptiness and brokenness were, in fact, the most important offering of his heart:

For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.²

Where the psalms give words for prayer in times of weakness and brokenness, the Gospels give us stories of the same. In John 4, Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well in the heat of the day. She was exhausted in spirit (John 4.14-16) and Jesus was exhausted in body. Very soon, the conversation turns toward the subject of true worship. I find it comforting that Jesus taught the truth about pure worship in a setting of heat and exhaustion. The Samaritan woman wonders about the correct location for worship, whether that was Jerusalem or other sacred sites. Jesus responds saying:

true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth…God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. ³

Authentic worship is an offering from the spirit, which is not the same as one’s emotions. The human spirit is deeper than emotion. The spirit is ‘the hidden person of the heart’, the ‘inner self’, which still moves toward God in prayer and worship, even when no accompanying emotions can be felt.

Worship from the Heart

The call of worship is to make an offering from the heart. Both in Scripture and the spiritual theology of the desert fathers, the Greek word ‘nous’ expressed the mysterious depths of the heart. One’s affections and feelings are certainly within one’s heart, within the nous. Yet, the heart remains active even when one feels numb. Prayer is possible when we do not know ‘what to pray for as we ought,’ as St Paul said. ‘The Holy Spirit himself intercedes for us with groaning too deep for words.’⁴

Attention > Emotions

On the whole, giving God our attention is more important than tangible affections. Emotions and affections are so often self-oriented rather than other-oriented. Attention, on the other hand, draws the heart outward.

The Latin meaning of attention is a helpful word picture here. Attention means ‘to strain toward.’ The image of straining toward a goal also implies deliberate effort, effort that, at times, becomes difficult.

When I have no tangible emotions in prayer, I have learned to focus on my attention. To concentrate on Christ, even with a sentence prayer such as the Jesus Prayer, is a sacrifice of worship. I heard someone once describe the contemplative life as ‘paying attention to what you’re paying your attention.’ To fix my thoughts on Christ takes effort, yet this is an act of love even when emotions are absent.

Worship is work. Liturgy literally means ‘the work of the people.’ Some days, some seasons, even some years, prayer and worship will require great effort. Yet Scripture and the saints attest that this is the purest offering we can give. When we do not emotionally benefit from the offering of worship, we are giving a selfless offering, a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving to bless God for who He is.

Make An Offering

In her scriptural and historical study of Christian worship, Evelyn Underhill summarized the essential place of sacrifice in the life of prayer:

Sacrifice is the sum of worship, the way in which man must approach God, his first lesson in creaturely love. For sacrifice is a positive act. Its essence is something given; not something given up. It is a freewill offering, a humble gesture which embodies and expresses with more or less completeness the living heart of religion; the self-giving of the creature to its God….Real sacrifice is essentially a movement of generosity. Without it, worship may easily degenerate into emotional admiration.⁵

We were made to return all the goodness of creation back to God in sacrificial acts of thanksgiving. When feelings fail, our hearts are being purified from mere admiration to offering true adoration. If ‘real sacrifice is a movement of generosity,’ then the movement of our hearts toward the Triune God is a selfless movement of lovingkindness.

To Pray with a Holding Cross

When my wife and I experienced the miscarriage of our third child, I was utterly empty inside. Death is a thief, separating the living from those they love. Death also leaves us bereft of words and feelings. Some days I felt numb, unable to comprehend our loss. Other days I wanted to be numb because the ache seemed like it would never end.

Shortly after this death, a dear friend and brother gave me a simple and holy gift in those days of grief: a holding cross. He said to me, “When you hold onto this cross, know that we bear your cross with you.” Prayer was simply a grip during those days. My attention was not mental, it was manual; five fingers gripping the cross.

Austin Farrer helped me see that Christ is the only way we can lift up our hearts, and especially when we bear our crosses:

All his life long Christ’s love burnt towards the heart of heaven in a bright fire, until he was wholly consumed in it, and went up in that fire to God. The fire is kindled on our altars, here Christ ascends in fire; the fire is kindled in the Christian heart, and we ascend. He says to us, Lift up your hearts; and we reply, We lift them up unto the Lord.” ⁶

Lifting Up Our Hearts With the Church

There’s a final aspect of worship when feelings fail: worship is a communal action, never dependent on the waxing or waning emotions of one individual. Christ is the head of his Body, the Church. We are members of this Body individually, which means we belong to one another in all seasons.

If on a given Sunday, or even a season of Sundays, one becomes like David in Psalm 38, unable to speak, it does not mean that one ceases praying. Especially in seasons such as these, one’s presence in the Body of Christ is the offering of worship. The act of attending worship is a sacrifice. Sometimes one’s strength is spent even before worship begins. I remember David’s prayer in Psalm 71, ‘forsake me not when my strength is spent.’⁷

Even when one’s strength is spent, we are not alone when we approach the throne of grace. Belonging to the Church often means that we’re saying with our presence ‘help me offer an offering.’

When the Church comes to the Table of the Lord, the priest addresses all members of the Church, ‘Lift up your hearts!’ The liturgical response to this invitation carries so much weight, so much meaning, so much heart for those who feel nothing: ‘We lift them up to the Lord!’ On days of weakness, these words arethe sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, the giving of one’s self to God. Yet a self-giving that is neither isolated nor private. It is a self-giving offered with the Body of Christ that ascends in worship with hope and trust that all its members will ‘taste and see that the Lord is good.’ And what goodness will the faithful taste? The broken bread and poured out wine, which become the Body and Blood of Christ, who gave his very self an offering and sacrifice to God for our redemption.

1. Psalm 38:9–10 (ESV) ︎
2. Psalm 51.16-17 ︎
3. John 4.23-24, ESV ︎
4. Romans 8.26 ︎
5. Evelyn Underhill, Worship, 48. ︎
6. Austin Farrer, The Crown of the Year, 34, emphasis mine ︎
7. Psalm 71.9 ︎

The post When Feelings Fail, Lift Up Your Heart Anyway first appeared on The St Benedict Center for Spiritual Formation.

Sentence prayers have a precious place in the hearts of our spiritual ancestors. The Jesus Prayer is the most known and beloved of sentence prayers among the desert fathers, though they also suggested other brief scriptures to ‘pray without ceasing.’ (1 Thessalonians 5.17) ‘O God make haste to help me!’, ‘Lighten my darkness,’ or even ‘Help!’ were other sentence prayers the desert fathers commended to abide in Christ. I quite like the simple prayer that St Barsanuphius advised, too: ‘God knows what is best.’¹

In practice, one need not belabor which sentence prayer is the ‘correct’ prayer. Praying and staying with a phrase is the key. Spiritual fruit comes from stability. And for Christians who practice the liturgical year, praying a phrase or verse of Scripture drawn from the spiritual theme of the season for an entire season shapes and heals the soul.

The Inner Conflict of Vicarious Compassion

Taking these words to one’s lips and one’s heart is one thing; to truly pray them from the heart is easier said than done. There are only eight words in the meditation: ‘The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.’ Yet how many Christians feel distant from an actual experience of God’s compassion? The compassion of God seems remote for many.

In my pastoral experience, I’ve noticed a pattern among many devoted, faithful Christians: it is much easier to believe in the compassion and tenderness of God for a friend than to believe it for one’s own soul. How often in the church do you hear someone casually admit, ‘I’m my own worst critic’? Pastors struggle with this, too. I’m familiar with the struggle myself.

This is compassion experienced in a vicarious way, a second-hand encounter with God’s mercy. It is like living out the second half of the Great Commandment to love your neighbor by cutting off the final two words ‘as yourself’. This is neither a holy practice of self-denial nor the way of Christ. It is more akin to self-rejection than holy self-denial. My favorite novelist, George Bernanos, wrote these words, spoken through one of his characters: ‘Above all, never despise yourself. It is difficult to despise ourselves without offending God in us.’²

This instinct to extend the tenderness of God to another while refusing it for one’s own soulf is, in fact, rooted in shame. The source and causes of this shame is a topic for another day, and it’s a lengthy topic at that. Sources of shame are endlessly variable from person to person. Suffice it to say that a culture obsessed with productivity, image, and performance provides ripe conditions for shame. Daily messages from these cultural idols leave one in a spiritual wilderness, aching for relief.

The sources of shame are not only external. We are culpable ourselves, too. Shame dwells within us because we have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We can easily pray like David in his great penitential prayer, ‘For I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me.’ (Ps 51.3) Yet we often pursue healing and redemption in a disordered way. Like our ancient parents, we hide. We seek shelter in the world’s shadows, turning to comforts that cannot redeem or heal. In these moments, the Enemy of God seeks to shape our minds with doubt. His strategy with shame is that one doubt the character of God to reallyact with gentleness. It is another form of our Enemy’s ancient deception, ‘Did God say…?’

Repenting Into God’s Compassion

When shame shapes one’s thinking, it’s crucial to heal one’s thought patterns with scripture and prayer. Combining scripture with prayer is the best remedy to flawed or distorted thinking. That’s why I embrace this simple prayer phrase to retrain one’s thoughts, ‘The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.’

The wisdom here is to wrap the mind around a brief phrase so that the soul pursues the presence of God in a specific way. St Paul warned about being conformed to the patterns of this world, urging the church instead to ‘be transformed by the renewal of your mind.’

Though it may not seem so, this kind of prayer is repentance. Repentance is not simply changing one’s behavior from sinful patterns. The original Greek word for repentance, metanoia, means ‘to change one’s mind.’ When the Evil One has assaulted us with doubts and lies, we change our thinking in an active way. We place true words of God on our lips, in our minds, and on our hearts. Renewing one’s mind with the truths of God is a way of practicing repentance—a Lenten practice, to be sure.

The Compassion Word Picture

The word ‘compassion’ in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin also redeem and illuminate our understanding of God’s compassion toward us.

The Hebrew word for mercy or compassion is rahamim, which may also be translated as ‘womb.’ As Thomas Torrance notes, ‘God’s mercy or compassion is described in terms of the compassion of a mother for her unborn or newly born baby. Hence, compassion is a good translation for the feeling which a mother has for her baby for they are both within one body or of one body.’³

In our world, compassion is often a passing sentiment, but in the ancient world, it emerged from the depths of one’s body and soul. The Latin etymology of compassion means ‘with suffering’, to be with another in their suffering. In the Gospels, Jesus is ‘moved with compassion’ when he sees the multitudes suffering from hunger and disease. English translations of Jesus’ compassion do not convey the deep movement within our Lord’s body and soul. The Greek word for compassion is splagchnizesthaiwhich refers to one’s guts or intestines. The Greek word itself sounds like a violent movement! As Torrance said, ‘compassion is one of the most pregnant and profound words in the whole of the New Testament.’⁴It means that Jesus literally felt pain in his own body when he witnessed human suffering. This powerful force, this deep movement is the true meaning of God’s compassion for us.

An Ongoing Epiphany

To discover God’s compassion as a powerful force may be an epiphany itself. But the most important epiphany—a recovery, of sorts—is reclaiming God’s compassion for one’s own soul, not only the souls of others. With any recovery, any insight, the way of deep change lies with simple, daily habits. Simple habits like repeating the prayer ‘The Lord is full of compassion and mercy’ over and over again, not only in Lent, but in any season when one doubts the gentle, tender love of God for their wounded soul.

1. Barsanuphius and John, Letters from the Desert: A Selection of Questions and Responses, ed. John Behr, Popular Patristics Series. (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003). ︎
2. Bernanos quoted in Jacque Phillippe, Interior Freedom, 36. ︎
3. TF Torrance, Incarnation, 132. Emphasis mine. ︎
4. Ibid. ︎

The post Reclaiming God’s Compassion Within first appeared on The St Benedict Center for Spiritual Formation.

These are questions Christians need to ask. In our time, the virtue and practices of self-care are often promoted from an altogether different religion–secular humanism. What is the ultimate good in a secular view of human beings? Self-fulfillment without God. The International Self Care Foundation lists 7 pillars for self-care, and spiritual life has no place among these seven pillars. This is self-care that sees no room for relationship with God. It is therapy without the goal of redemption.

When the flourishing of the self is the ultimate good, there’s no stopping a culture from the escalation of another disease: the disease of narcissism. As Christopher Lasch anticipated in the late 1970s, our time has become a culture of narcissism. Lasch perceived the following reality even in the 1970s:

People today hunger not for personal salvation, let alone for the restoration of an earlier golden age, but for the feeling, the momentary illusion, of personal well-being, health, and psychic security…Plagued by anxiety, depression, vague discontents, a sense of inner emptiness, the ‘psychological man’ of the twentieth century seeks neither individual self-aggrandizement nor spiritual transcendence but peace of mind, under conditions that increasingly militate against it.

There’s no question that our age has urgent needs to improve mental health and well-being. I pray that anxiety and stress will diminish and depression will lift from all who suffer these internal maladies. May it be so.

Yet our means of healing need not exchange one illness for another. Without the wisdom of Christ, self-care will become the means by which the idol of the self will be enthroned in the soul. In the virtues of good physical and mental health, one can sweep away numerous unhealthy habits, only to introduce new and subversive problems.

The spiritual forces of evil seek to disguise themselves among virtues, to appear as angels of light (2 Corinthians 11.14). Jesus said when an unclean spirit leaves a person it is like a house which is swept and put in order. Except that those expelled spirits return to that same house, summoning seven more spirits to occupy the dwelling anew with an even greater stronghold. (Matthew 12.43-45) The principalities of our secular age seize on our weariness to lead us astray from the way of Christ. Practice self-care from a secular worldview and you will never take up your cross to follow Jesus.

Self-Care Anchored in Baptism

Self-care must be care for the whole person made in the image and likeness of God–body, mind, soul, and spirit. To redeem self-care, we must see these practices anchored in our baptism. Baptism is both an identity and a vocation to grow in Christlikeness. At its best, self-care is cooperation with God the Holy Spirit to redeem one’s whole being and fulfill our baptismal calling.

In baptism, one hears the same words of blessing that the Father speaks over Jesus: ‘You are my beloved.’ Self-care means renewing your mind with the love of God for yourself. This is a rightly ordered self-love: to embrace the love of God and find rest in his love.

Care for one’s self needs to include this rightly ordered way of self-love. I can love myself because God in Christ has loved me first (1 John 4.19). A disordered self-love is ego-centered; a rightly ordered self-love is Christ-centered. To love oneself in Christ–accepting gentleness, compassion, and grace for yourself–leads to healing and a rightly ordered self-love.

Yet here is the great paradox of this rightly ordered self-love in God: the one who speaks the blessing of his love also calls us to deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow Jesus. The way of Jesus leads one into a paradox of self-love and self-denial.

Self-denial has often been mistakenly taught as a kind of self-loathing. This is not the self-denial Jesus teaches in the Gospels. Self-denial means that love for neighbor is equal to the love of one’s self. Self-denial is the way of Jesus, but not self-hatred.The French Catholic novelist Georges Bernanos wrote these words in his novel Dialogues of the Carmelites, “Above all never despise yourself. It is difficult to despise ourselves without offending God in us.”

Self-Care, the Great Commandment, and a Sabbath for the Sake of All

The question we need to be asking is this: how does self-care lead us to fulfill the Great Commandment?

Jesus gave his disciples the Great Commandment to ‘love the Lord with all your heart, all your mind, and all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself.’ The Great Commandment is the wisdom of God, bringing order and beauty where there has been disorder and weariness. The Great Commandment offers healing where there is brokenness.

If the Great Commandment is the measure for faithfulness to God and others, I believe the Great Commandment is the best measure for rightly ordered self-care. Self-care that aims to love God and neighbor will lead to something that is even greater than renewing one’s strength–it will lead to a fulfilling life with ‘righteousness and joy and peace in the Holy Spirit.’ (Romans 14.17)

The sabbath command is another instruction in wisdom that incorporates care for one’s self and others. When I began practicing sabbath as a young priest, I focused on stopping from my activity–a good habit to develop. However, it wasn’t long before I realized that the sabbath had become a means of self-indulgence rather than self-care and renewal. Whether it was watching movies or eating too much, I noticed at the end of sabbath days that I wasn’t feeling renewed. I was taking a break, but not receiving the sabbath.

Abraham Heschel said the following regarding the Sabbath:

the Sabbath is not an occasion for diversion or frivolity; not a day to shoot fireworks or to turn somersaults, but an opportunity to mend our tattered lives; to collect rather than dissipate time.¹

A closer look at the sabbath command in Exodus changed my understanding of what embracing the sabbath means. The sabbath is not exclusive self-care. It is self-care fused with loving, gentle care for others, especially one’s family and neighbors.

the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. ²

Not only does one receive the sabbath, one also creates sabbath spaces and rhythms for others, too. Here is the biblical way: God provides rest for you and calls you to offer and provide rest for others. The sabbath is not a zero sum game.

Renewal in the Image of God

Recovering the sabbath as a Christian practice is not only beneficial for one’s own health, it leads us to practice self-care in spiritual community. Here is, perhaps, the greatest paradox in Christian self-care: the most effective form of self-care is that which is practiced in Christian community, which means celebrating the sabbath together. If renewing my strength is solely up to me and my willpower, I’m not going to receive regular renewal. But if I embrace the sabbath rhythms of Christ in spiritual community, I will find much greater consistency and help renewing my strength in Christ.

Should we be surprised that the most effective form of self-care can only be found in spiritual community? For we are made in the image of that ineffable spiritual community which is One God in Three Persons, the Holy Trinity. Redeeming self-care means finding renewal in the image and likeness in which we were made, the image of God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

1. Heschel, 18 ︎
2. Exodus 20.10-11, ESV ︎

The post Redeeming Self-Care first appeared on The St Benedict Center for Spiritual Formation.

So much in the world confuses me. If I listed the things I find confusing, it  would take a lot of words and a lot of time. I find that exceedingly  uncomfortable. Experiencing confusion makes me fearful and sad, even  angry. Confusion can feel oppressive; it can chase me into a corner so that I  feel desperate. I most definitely do not think of confusion as a positive  thing, so you’ll understand my surprise when I came across the suggestion  that confusion could be useful. 

I was reading St. Gregory the Great’s The Book of Pastoral Rule when a  phrase he used jumped out and slapped me in the face. St. Gregory referred  to a “useful confusion,” and I got stuck. 

Useful confusion. What? 

I read that phrase and stopped reading. It didn’t sit right with my modern  mind, and at the same time, it touched me deeply and felt profoundly  important. I knew I needed to ponder…this was something I needed to sit  with and learn from. I didn’t like it, but there was truth in what St. Gregory  said. 

How could confusion possibly be useful? It seemed so wrong. The phrase echoed in my head, ringing and rankling. It felt like grit in my heart and created a holy dissonance within me. But I stuck with it because it spoke to the deeper places in me in a way that I knew would be  illuminating. 

On the one hand, I will tell you that I am comfortable with the word useful. It is  good and direct, non-specific yet potent with meaning. The word confusion, on the other hand, is just…irritating. 

The modern mind is not accustomed to being confused, even less to staying  with it, believing it might be “useful.” If we moderns feel confused, we  conclude that something must be wrong. We need never be confused. We  can find the solution to anything. We have the brainpower it takes…or we  have Google. Confusion is just another word for weakness.  

How often have I bumped into “useful confusion” only to turn away from it  rather than acknowledging and allowing its presence? When I feel  confused, my first move is to work to solve the riddle that confuses me. If I  can’t find the answers I crave, I often construct my own parameters and  definitions to ensure my own comfort. And quickly! The tension of  confusion is nearly intolerable. 

Probably the last thing I think when I feel confused is that it would be good  to remain in that place of confusion, that it might be useful. Noticing confusion and seeking relief is not always wrong. But the simple fact of  being human means accepting that some questions have no answers. There  is a choice to make about what to do with my confusion, and this is where I  decide if I will allow it to be useful in my life. 

Surely a “useful confusion” is one that leads me to bow before the One who  is greater than me, and who is mysterious beyond my ability to fathom.  Surely a useful confusion reminds me that He is God and I am not, and I  can rest my weary striving in the peace of knowing that although many  things confuse me, His ways are not my ways. God’s wisdom and man’s  wisdom do not compare, and although I am confused, nothing is confusing  to Him. 

Confusion will be useful when it causes me to wait in God’s presence for the  solution, or for no solution. When I let it teach me to depend more upon  God’s goodness than my own understanding, confusion will be useful. When  it causes me to lean into my own inadequacy and to open-handedly  prostrate myself before His greater wisdom and understanding, then  confusion will be useful. I can choose how to respond to confusion when it comes.

I can refuse to allow confusion to be useful. I can meet it with anger and indignation, or I can deny that I am confused at all. I can craft my own explanations for things that confuse me and create definitions for that which I do not understand in order to make it all more manageable. I can draw my own lines over the blurriness to make myself feel more comfortable and more in control. I can demand that conditions bend to my happiness.

Or, I can choose to be soft. I can choose to be humble. I can choose to be  open to the Holy Spirit, willing to bend, and willing to accept my  limitations. When I am willing to trust beyond my own understanding and not insist on my own comfort, then God will be able to use my confusion to  draw me closer to Himself and to lead me closer to my own true, flawed, finite, human self. Ultimately, this will make me more dependent upon my Creator and more Christlike. 

When I recognize that I am confused, I do my best to take my confused heart and enter into the Holy place. I do well to accept my human limitations and remember that God is good. It is right to ask for divine clarification and to seek God’s illumination. But I must also be willing to remain in the tension of my own lack of understanding if that is where God keeps me. If I handle my confusion with humility, God can make it useful for His purpose in me and His Glory in the world. Then can confusion be truly useful. 

Still, I may or may not like it.

The post Useful Confusion first appeared on The St Benedict Center for Spiritual Formation.

Moses, tending sheep for his father-in-law, Jethro, leads the sheep “beyond the wilderness.” And then he arrives at the “Mountain of God”.

Beyond the wilderness. That means he went into the wilderness and kept moving through it until he got beyond it and that is where God called him. The burning bush came beyond the wilderness.

Wilderness is such a beautiful word. I like the way it looks and the way it sounds and the way it feels to say it. But the meaning is painful. The wilderness is wild, and lonely. It is perilous, cold, dark and mysterious. The wilderness is deep and desolate. Moving through the wilderness requires faith and hope and perseverance. It requires the belief that the wilderness will eventually come to an end. And, unless it is a familiar wilderness, the one moving through it knows neither when it will end, nor what the end of the wilderness will bring.

At the end of this particular wilderness, Moses came to the “Mountain of God.” He took his father-in-law’s flock beyond the wilderness and it was there that God called him.

At the Mountain of God Moses saw the burning bush, noticed the oddity of it—a bush that was on fire, but not consumed. How is that? And he intentionally went to look at it. There is something in this as well. He turned himself and his attention to the burning bush, to the frightening, mysterious, impossible thing which was right in front of him at the Mountain of God at the end of the wilderness.

If I was to see a burning bush, or something equally mysterious, would I intentionally wonder at it, or would I run screaming in the other direction? Or, would I think of a million reasons why it couldn’t actually be what it seems to be? Moses paid attention.

I am not always sure what I am paying attention to, but I am trying to notice. I suppose the point of noticing is to then intend to pay attention to those things which are of greater importance than the things I tend to default my attention toward. Or, as in this case with Moses, to intentionally give my attention to that which is in front of me but beyond my understanding, and therefore something I would rather avoid.

Moses never did comprehend the burning bush, but God spoke to him because he turned his attention toward it. God called him when he did.

Wilderness and attention. Moses went beyond the wilderness to the Mountain of God and gave his attention to the incomprehensible mysterious, impossible he found there. And all of that prepared him to hear the call.

The post The Burning Bush first appeared on The St Benedict Center for Spiritual Formation.

First, one of the greatest spiritual struggles is that against delusion, a blindness to one’s true spiritual condition.  By definition one cannot see one’s own blind spots.  What I would see and name and challenge in a directee’s life is hidden from me in my own; as my own director I would truly be the blind leading the blind, and we would “both” fall into a pit.  This is not unlike looking in the mirror.  I see my face clearly, but I am blind to the back of my head.  Likewise, I see the spiritual face I present to the world clearly, but not always what lies behind it.  A different perspective is needed — a perspective a director can best provide.

Second, self-direction cannot address the deadliest of the eight deadly thoughts, or the chief of the seven deadly sins if you prefer that numbering:  pride.  Only the proudest man would dare think he can guide himself.  Such was the heresy of Pelagius who was certain that he could pull himself up to perfection by his own spiritual bootstraps.  A good director is always on the lookout for the telltale signs of pride in a directee:  a too ready taking of offense, an over scrupulous dejection at one’s own sin, a constant comparison with others, an insistence on one’s own way, a certain fascination with novelty or with the sound of one’s own voice.  Pride generally masquerades as something else, as something seemingly noble.  A watchful director can see it, but a self-director almost never.  In fact, pride can even appear as humility, just as the devil can appear as an angel of light.  Then, a self-director holds onto it tenaciously as if cultivating a virtue, for he thinks he is doing just that.  Only an outside intervention will reveal this false spiritual consolation.

Third, one cannot truly confess to oneself, not in a way that renders temptation impotent.  Anglicans, I’m sad to say, traditionally have a rather anemic approach to the Sacrament of Reconciliation (confession):  all may, none must, some should.  This is the Anglican via media at its worst.  All should.  That’s it:  all should.  Why?  Because opening up to a trusted spiritual guide and revealing one’s struggles and temptations weakens them so that the temptation does not become sin, so that sin does not become captivity, so that captivity does not become passion.  Not all spiritual direction includes formal, sacramental confession; but all true spiritual direction includes self-revelation of the best and worst in oneself to a faithful, wise, and compassionate companion on the spiritual journey, to one who has only the directee’s spiritual welfare at heart and in mind.  Every recovering alcoholic in AA has a sponsor to call in moments of doubt and crisis — a confessor, if you will.  No recovering alcoholic would dare sponsor himself.  That is ancient spiritual wisdom, not modern, therapeutic insight.

Fourth — and this one is puzzling — I find that I cannot say to myself what I say so readily to my directees:  God loves you; God takes great delight in you and rejoices over you with singing; you are God’s son or daughter in whom he is well pleased; well done good and faithful servant.  Why is that?  Why can I not imagine God saying to me what I so clearly hear him saying to my directees?  Why am I ready to proclaim the good news to others but can scarcely believe it to be true when I dare whisper it to myself?  It is, of course, a great tactic of the enemy, but one I fall for again and again.  I need a director to assure me that the truths I apply to others apply equally to me.

These are just a few of the reasons that a spiritual director needs a spiritual director.  I could also have mentioned prayer, accountability, discernment, encouragement and a host of others, but perhaps the point is made.  Physicians should not treat themselves.  Lawyers should not defend themselves.  Spiritual directors should not direct themselves.

Now, if you are not a spiritual director, why do you care about any of this?  It’s quite simple really; if you are a Christian without a spiritual director, then you are, to a greater or lesser degree, self-directed.  Since the very great majority of Christians past and present have not had and do not have a director, I must be clear about this.  Spiritual direction occurs in many forms.  Full engagement in the life and sacramental worship of the Church is a form of spiritual direction, the most fundamental and essential form.  Good spiritual reading — the Fathers, the classics, and even some modern writers — along with study of and reflection on the whole counsel of God’s Word is spiritual direction.  Friendship — sharing life together — with other Christians can be a form of spiritual direction.  These are the most foundational forms of spiritual direction, and they are available to all.  A good director will — through prayer, holy conversation, and Spiritual discernment — guide you more deeply and deftly into each of these disciplines.

But, there are those who want to go “further up … further in,” as C. S. Lewis writes.  For these, a spiritual director serves as a guide and companion along paths that are both somehow familiar and ever new.  

The post Physician, Heal Thyself first appeared on The St Benedict Center for Spiritual Formation.

This post originally appeared on KnoxPriest

Summer seems to be two seasons in one. One really should distinguish between Summer I and Summer II, for they are vastly different, both in the weather of the world and the weather of the soul. Beginning on Memorial Day weekend and ending around the Fourth of July (or that great midsummer American tradition, the Major League All Star Game), Summer I gives no few occasions to find joy in God’s beautiful world.

The perennials I planted in April are behaving just as I planned. Foxgloves and delphinium bloom and brighten our garden, transforming winter’s drabness into early summer’s pastel warmth. It is a pleasure to be outside in these early summer days. The oppressive allergens have waned a bit after spring’s rainfall. Goodbye Flonase, hello evening walks. Fireflies appear for the first time in the year in these cool summer evenings. Cicadas announce their return, too, but their hum only seems a faint echo.

When Summer II comes, all has changed. Or all seems lost. In these late July days, I resent the incessant thrumming of these obnoxious cicadas. I now wish them a swift death so I can sleep. My plants have gone to seed or burnt to crispy ends, fireflies are in retreat, and I have no desire to be outside after 8 a.m. My lawn and garden beds are evidence that creation truly is cursed with thorns and thistles—and privet, crabgrass, and Virginia creeper. Summer evenings can only be enjoyed outdoors in spurts of 20-30 minutes thanks to the ubiquity of mosquitoes. The praise, joy, and thanksgiving of Summer I has collapsed into curmudgeonly grumbling and listlessness of Summer II. With a long stretch until Summer II ends around Labor Day, it seems the goal of these dog days of summer is simply to survive the heat. These dog days are truly a no man’s land in our calendar.

The No Man’s Land of Ordinary Time

It can be difficult to maintain spiritual focus this time of year. The weather of the world, not to mention vacations, change our rhythms and routines in this summer season. The dog days of summer can be dog days in one’s spiritual life as well. New Year’s Resolution are probably a distant memory. The spiritual disciplines of Lent, which give so much focus and space for spiritual growth, concluded with Easter Sunday and [the Great Fifty Days]. But the dog days of summer are some 100 days or more removed from those Lenten days of devotion. The longest season of the church year—Ordinary Time—coincides with summer. Without a major feast day or focus for the season, Ordinary Time can feel like a no man’s land in the Christian calendar.

But Ordinary Time and the dog days of summer need not be a season of listlessness. In fact, this time of year can be a season for spiritual renewal, even with the limitations we sense in the weather of the heart and the world. Ordinary Time and the dog days of summer can be a season of embracing our limits and practicing the wisdom of small beginnings.

Embracing Limits as a Way of Spiritual Renewal

When I look at my garden beds in these summer days, I’m tempted to despair. I see the potential of what could be—garden spaces that are well-planted, well-maintained, and ‘pleasing to the eye. But all I see this time of year are weeds. And vines. And stumps. And unfinished projects from my springtime plans and resolutions. I still have a vision for transforming this small landscape, yet I don’t acknowledge my limits of time, energy, and the weather patterns around me. Ironically, it’s not the limits themselves that delay my progress. It’s the illusion that I have limitless resources to transform these garden spaces.

Gardening, especially in the dog days of summer, reveals my naiveté, my impatience, and my resistance of limits. Few things in this world reveal my hubris like God’s humus. In late July and the scorching days of August, I’m confronted by my humanity when I look upon weedy gardens and sprawling vines. And this point I have two options: 1) sulk in discouragement from the overwhelming amount of unfinished work or 2) find a small space and start weeding.

As with the landscape of the home, so also with the landscape of there heart. There is always work to be done in one’s inner life to conform our lives into the likeness of Christ. But our vision for spiritual growth or healing usually encompasses more work than we can handle.

Even still Christ promised us his yoke is easy and his burden is light. Yet when we seek to renew our spiritual lives, we often take on heavy burdens by setting unrealistic goals, ignoring the limitations within our lives—our time, energy, and the variable weather of heart and life. Instead, we would be wise to accept our limits and renew our spiritual life with one or two spiritual disciplines—the Daily Office, praying the psalms, or practicing solitude.

The Wisdom of Small Beginnings

Taking the first step in spiritual renewal is always difficult. But one real action is better than a dozen resolutions. Making resolutions, plans, and lofty goals for renewing our spiritual life don’t matter unless we take the concrete steps in doing the discipline themselves. It is reading the Bible that actually stirs my hunger to read more of God’s Word. It is the experience of Christ in solitude that reveals my hunger for his presence. I simply have to begin.

In the tradition of Desert Fathers and Mothers, we have examples and stories of saints who understood the wisdom and power of small beginnings, practiced in the arid and stifling landscapes of the desert wilderness.

In one example, a distressed monk sought to renew his spiritual life, but couldn’t begin because he was depressed by the amount of interior work he needed to do. He was advised to visit an elder monk who told him the following story:

There was a man who had a plot of land; but it got neglected and turned into waste ground, full of weeds and brambles. So he said to his son, ‘Go and weed the ground.’ The son went off to weed it, saw all the brambles and despaired. He said to himself, ‘How long will it take before I have uprooted and reclaimed all that?’ So he lay down and went to sleep for several days. His (spiritual) father came to see how he was getting on and found he had done nothing at all. ‘Why have you done nothing?’ he said. The son replied, ‘Father, when I started to look at this and saw how many weeds and brambles there were, I was so depressed that I could do nothing but lie down on the ground.’ His father said, ‘Child, just go over the surface of the plot every day and you will make some progress.’ So he did, and before long the whole plot was weeded. The same is true for you, brother: work just a little bit without getting discouraged and God by his grace will re-establish you.'[Rowan Williams, Silence and Honey Cakes: The Wisdom of the Desert, 88.]

Such is the paradox of the spiritual life. The more I accept my limits, the more promptly I begin good spiritual work, God blesses my small beginnings with the help of his Holy Spirit. “Always we begin again” St. Benedict said in his Holy Rule. And these dog days of summer might just be the ideal time to begin again with the God who sustains us in all seasons.

The post Spiritual Renewal for the Dog Days of Summer first appeared on The St Benedict Center for Spiritual Formation.