Barton Invitation to Retreat

1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8308-7393-7
Verlag: InterVarsity Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 160 Seiten

Reihe: Transforming Resources

Academy of Parish Clergy Top Ten List 'Come away and rest awhile.' Jesus invites us to be with him, offering our full and undivided attention to him. When we choose retreat, we make a generous investment in our friendship with Christ. We are not always generous with ourselves where God is concerned. Many of us have tried to incorporate regular times of solitude and silence into the rhythm of our ordinary lives, which may mean that we give God twenty minutes here and half an hour there. And there's no question we are better for it! But we need more. Indeed, we long for more. In these pages Transforming Center founder and seasoned spiritual director Ruth Haley Barton gently leads us into retreat as a key practice that opens us to God. Based on her own practice and her experience leading hundreds of retreats for others, she will guide you in a very personal exploration of seven specific invitations contained within the general invitation to retreat. You will discover how to say yes to God's winsome invitation to greater freedom and surrender. There has never been a time when the invitation to retreat is so radical and so relevant, so needed and so welcome. It is not a luxury, but a necessity of the spiritual life.

Ruth Haley Barton is a teacher, spiritual director, retreat leader and author. She is cofounder and president of The Transforming Center (www.thetransformingcenter.org), a ministry dedicated to caring for the souls of pastors. Ruth has ministered in several congregations, including Willow Creek Community Church. Her other books include Sacred Rhythms and Invitation to Solitude and Silence (both InterVarsity Press). This book was previously published by Waterbrook under the title The Truths That Free Us.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Barton, Ruth Haley

Leseproben

STRATEGIC
WITHDRAWAL

I have lived too long where I am reachable.

RUMI

B RAD IS A PASTOR WHOSE CHURCH IS GOING WELL. Attendance at weekend services is growing steadily, and they have just completed a building project that is enabling them to grow and provide a variety of ministries to meet needs within their growing congregation and the community surrounding them. People respond well to his preaching, and his church is known around town as being a church that cares. Brad is growing in stature and reputation among local leaders—even becoming a respected voice regarding important issues facing the community—which means he is in demand and attends many meetings. He is increasingly aware that it takes a full-time schedule and more to keep all the plates spinning. His two young children could use much more attention than he able to give them, and his wife is exhausted from picking up the slack from his busy schedule. When he looks in her eyes he sees a hollowness that mirrors the emptiness he feels in his own soul, but the demands of being a young pastor whose star is rising, the husband and father of growing family, and a soul that is longing for more seem mutually exclusive.

Jen is a stay-at-home mom with four kids. She loves being a mom and sees this as her highest priority, yet over the years she has had a niggling sense that there is something more she is supposed to do with herself and her gifts. Her husband travels regularly for work, which means the lion’s share of care for home and family falls to her; she has little time to devote to getting in touch with her spiritual desires and her sense of calling. Most of the time she is able to put aside her questions and desires in order to make sure everyone else’s needs are cared for, but lately they have been pressing in on her. She finds herself close to tears a lot, questioning her worth, questioning her motives, and wondering if she is doing enough for all the people who need her. She feels her sense of self slipping away and is alarmed by feelings of anger, unsettledness, and even depression.

Jeremy is a gifted entrepreneur who is just starting to achieve recognition for the work his creative company is offering. The phone is ringing with offers of more work than their company can handle, and they have even received a few awards for their work. At the same time, there are internal problems in the company—dissension in the ranks, stress fractures in the leadership, and temptations when he travels. Given the external accolades, he cannot understand why things feel so broken on the inside. He realizes that if he does not get some time away to reflect on what’s really going on, to listen to God, and to get a handle on his motivations and behaviors, he may ruin everything he’s worked so hard for due to bad decision making—decision making that is disconnected from discerning God’s presence and activity in his life.

PULLING BACK FROM DANGER

When we hear the word retreat many of us think of the military use of the word, which refers to the tactic troops use when they are losing too much ground, when they are tired and ineffective, and when there have been too many casualties or the current strategy is not working. When any of these scenarios are in play, the commander might instruct the troops to pull back and put some distance between themselves and the battle line. We often see this as a negative thing; however, military retreat can also be a wise tactic—an opportunity to rest the troops and tend to their wounds, to stop the enemy’s momentum, or to step back to get a panoramic view of what’s going and set new strategies. In fact, the military is now using a more positive term—strategic withdrawal—to describe retreat, and I like it!

Strategic withdrawal captures the more positive connotations of the word retreat, namely, that there are times when the better part of wisdom in combat is to withdraw for good reasons—which can apply to us as well. There are times when we too need to pull back from the battle line in own lives rather than continuing to fight the same battles in the same old ways. We need to pull back from our busyness, from life in our culture, from other people’s expectations and our own compulsions, from whatever is not working in our lives.

The other thing that is true for those of us who have been walking with God for a long time is that all of us have either sustained real wounds in the battle of life or we’re just plain tired. Many of us just soldier on, hoping time will heal all things. But experience tells us that while time does stop the bleeding and heals our wounds, scar tissue often remains. While on the surface it might seem like all is well, a hardening has taken place; ironically, those tight, hurting places are tender and can flare with pain when touched in the wrong way by some unsuspecting soul. And there might be numb places where we cannot feel anything at all.

At some point in our Christian life, many of us realize no one ever told us how to deal with our wounds that are still there—buried deeper than ever—but still there. Father Ronald Rolheiser aptly describes this dawning awareness:

Once the sheer impulse of life begins to be tempered by the weight of our commitments and the grind of the years, more of our sensitivities begin to break through, and we sense more and more how we have been wounded and how life has not been fair to us. New demons then emerge: bitterness, anger, jealousy, and a sense of how we have been cheated. Disappointment cools the fiery energies of our youth, and our enthusiasm begins to be tempered by bitterness and anger . . . where once we struggled to properly control our energies, we now struggle to access them.

No matter how far along we are in the spiritual life, there is no time when retreat —or strategic withdrawal—ceases to be an essential practice.

The point is that the evil one is never done stirring up trouble up and instigating new skirmishes. No matter how far along we are in the spiritual life, there is no time when retreat—or strategic withdrawal—ceases to be an essential practice. The battle lines might be drawn in different places at different stages of our lives, but retreat is always a practice we can engage when we too are tired or wounded, lacking in wisdom, or seeking more effective approaches to engaging the fight. Retreat is a time when we are strengthened for battle, putting on the whole armor of God that Paul describes so specifically (Ephesians 6:10-17).

While it might seem strange to begin our reflections on such a gentle topic with such a harsh metaphor, the truth is there are times when the invitation to strategic withdrawal is exactly what we most need!

ON THE FRONT LINES OF A SPIRITUAL BATTLE

So much about the military tactic of retreat is applicable to Christians. If we are following Jesus—especially if we are trying to serve meaningfully in Christ’s kingdom or exercising any kind of spiritual leadership—there is no question we are on the front lines of a spiritual battle. Ephesians 6:12, in particular, reminds us that we are engaged in a spiritual conflict with the evil one: “Our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh,” Paul says, “but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”

Paul describes the Christian life in rather dramatic terms as a battle in which the evil one attacks us with flaming arrows. Paul’s counsel in the face of this reality is that we must stand firm and confront these deadly forces by putting on the whole armor of God—which he then describes in detail.

While I am not one to see a demon behind every bush or spiritual warfare in every difficulty, the fact is that we are regularly engaged in the struggle against good and evil—whether we know it or not. And as we mature in our faith, the battles become more subtle and hard to detect: the good is often the enemy of the best and it is hard to know the difference. Of necessity, the weapons of our warfare must become more precise as well.

A point may come on the spiritual journey when persons who deeply love God must be aware of, understand, and reject certain attractions to good and holy things that, if undertaken, would distract them from the different good and holy things to which God is genuinely calling them. . . . They will need to discern between spiritual consolation that is authentically of the good spirit and deceptive spiritual consolation that is not of the good spirit, and that will lead, if followed, to spiritual harm.

I will say more about discernment later on, but for now it is enough to note that the military definition of retreat as “strategic withdrawal” fits this reality of the spiritual life quite well. There comes a time when the Christian who is awake and aware notices that the battle is different than it used to be, and the battle lines are drawn in different places. Satan’s tactics are even more devious and hard to recognize than they were earlier in our life, and the weapons of our warfare must be wielded differently. Such times can actually be quite confusing, and wisdom whispers deep in our souls that we must pull back in order to gain perspective and set new strategies.

WHERE AM I IN DANGER?

The first invitation contained in the more general invitation to retreat is to notice where our lives might be in danger—to...