E-Book, Englisch, 192 Seiten
Reihe: Transforming Resources
Barton Sacred Rhythms
1. Auflage 2009
ISBN: 978-0-8308-7829-1
Verlag: InterVarsity Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)
E-Book, Englisch, 192 Seiten
Reihe: Transforming Resources
ISBN: 978-0-8308-7829-1
Verlag: InterVarsity Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)
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.
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Introduction
One can begin one’s [spiritual] quest by attending to the desires of the heart, both personal and communal. The Spirit is revealed in our genuine hopes for ourselves and for the world. How brightly burns the flame of desire for a love affair with God, other people, the world? Do we know that to desire and seek God is a choice that is always available to us?
Elizabeth Dreyer
Years ago, I sat in a staff meeting at a church I was serving; the purpose of the meeting was to talk about how we could attract more people to join the church. At one point someone counted the requirements for church membership that were already in place and made the startling discovery that somewhere between five and nine time commitments were required of those who wanted to become church members!
Outwardly I tried to be supportive of the purpose for the meeting, but on the inside I was screaming, I was already becoming aware of CFS (Christian fatigue syndrome) in my own life and couldn’t imagine willingly inflicting it on someone else.
The clarity that dawned in this moment caused me to start being a little more honest about what my own Christian life had been reduced to. While I was trying harder and doing more, there was a yawning emptiness underneath it all that no amount of activity, Christian or otherwise, could fill. It made no difference at all that I had been a Christian all of my conscious life, that I had been in vocational Christian ministry since early adulthood or that I was busy responding to what appeared to be God-given opportunities to become involved in many worthy causes. The more I refused to acknowledge the longing for more, the deeper and wider the emptiness became—until it threatened to swallow me up. In the midst of such barrenness, it was hard to even imagine what Jesus might have meant when he said, “I came that they might have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). My responses to sermons and devotional reflections on this verse were cynical at best. The Christian life just didn’t feel that way to me.
It was hard to know where to go to talk about such uncomfortable realities. Life in and around the Christian community does little to help us attend to our longings, to believe that deep within there is something essential that needs to be listened to, or to offer much hope that our deepest longings could take us somewhere good. At times the deeper longings of our heart are dismissed as mere idealism—beyond the realm of possibility this side of heaven. At other times, subtle fear or outright discomfort arises in the face of such expressions of our humanity. The emphasis on human depravity in many religious circles makes it hard to know if there is anything in us that can be trusted.
Sometimes the language of longing is used to stir the emotions of a crowd, but most often what is offered in response is found wanting in the end. Our longing for love is met with relationships that are fairly utilitarian and prone to fall apart under pressure. Our longing for healing and transformation is met with self-help messages that leave us briefly inspired and yet burdened by the pressure of trying to fix ourselves with some new technique or skill. Our longing for a way of life that works is most often met with an invitation to more activity, which unfortunately plays right into our compulsions and the drivenness of Western culture.
My first response to this awareness of longing was to try tweaking my schedule, learning how to say no more decisively, adopting new time management tools. But there comes a time when desire is so deep that mere tweaking is not enough. Finally I just gave in to it all, making the choice to radically reorder my life to listen to the longings of my heart and arrange my life for spiritual seeking. This was a time of utter openness, of questioning almost everything, of letting many of the outward trappings of my life—particularly my spiritual life—fall away until the deepest longings, those that are embedded in the very essence of our humanity, began to be revealed in all of their raw beauty and power. The longing for significance, the longing for love, the longing for deep and fundamental change, the longing for a way of life that the longing to connect experientially and even viscerally with Someone beyond ourselves—these longings led me to search out spiritual practices and establish life rhythms that promised something more.
Opening to the Mystery of Spiritual Transformation
Perhaps one of the most basic things we need to understand about spiritual transformation is that it is full of mystery. We can be open to it, but we can’t accomplish it for ourselves. Paul alludes to this in his writings by using two metaphors. The first is the process by which an embryo is formed in its mother’s womb: “I am in labor until Christ be formed in you” (Galatians 4:19). The miracle of conception, the formation of the embryo and the birth process itself are natural but also full of mystery. Even though I have conceived and given birth to three children, even though I have marveled at photos of an embryo forming in its mother’s womb, even though I think I understand the facts of life, something in the whole process remains a mystery to me, something I cannot control or make happen. The miracle of birth is always a miracle. It is a God thing. Every single time.
It is the same with the process of metamorphosis. Paul refers to this process in Romans 12:2 when he says, “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed [] by the renewing of your mind.” The Greek word is “metamorphosis” in English: the process by which a caterpillar enters into the darkness of the cocoon in order to emerge, eventually, changed almost beyond recognition. This change is so profound that the caterpillar transcends its previous existence to take on a completely different form with a completely different set of capacities. I doubt that the caterpillar has much cognitive understanding of the process itself or the end product. Something much more primal is at work. Something in the very essence of this little being says, And so the caterpillar obeys this inexplicable inner urging and enters in.
Both of these metaphors place the process of spiritual transformation squarely in the category that we call mystery: something outside the range of normal human activity and understanding that can be grasped only through divine revelation and brought about by divine activity.
What does this mean for those of us who are seeking to give ourselves more fully and concretely to the process of spiritual transformation? One thing it means is that whatever we think we might know about it, the decision to give ourselves to the of spiritual transformation brings us to the very edge of what we know and leaves us peering into the unknown. Even though it is normal for each and every redeemed person to experience spiritual transformation, something about it will always remain a mystery to us. It is one thing to be able to tweak and control external behaviors; it is another thing to experience those internal seismic shifts that change the way I exist in this world—from a worm crawling on my belly to a butterfly winging its way to the sky. kind of change is something only God can do.
In the end, this is the most hopeful thing any of us can say about spiritual transformation: or anyone else for that matter. What I can do is create the conditions in which spiritual transformation can take place, by developing and maintaining a rhythm of spiritual practices that keep me open and available to God.
A Journey of Discovery
When we are in touch with our deepest longings (instead of being completely distracted by their surface manifestations), a whole different set of choices opens up. Rather than being motivated by guilt and obligation—as in “I really to have a quiet time” or “I really pray more”—we are compelled to seek out ways of living that are congruent with our deepest desires. Sometimes this feels risky, and it often opens up a whole new set of questions, but this is fundamentally what spiritual transformation is all about: choosing a way of life that opens us to the presence of God in the places of our being where our truest desires and deepest longings stir. These discoveries are available to all of us as we become more honest in naming what isn’t working so that we can craft a way of life that is more congruent with our deepest desires.
The journey begins as we learn to pay attention to our desire in God’s presence, allowing our desire to become the impetus for deepening our spiritual journey. This is the substance of the first chapter, and it is not to be taken lightly or skimmed over as a precursor to the disciplines themselves. If we skip this part of the process, our work with the disciplines will be nothing more than another program entered into on the basis of external prodding or superficial motivators. Stay with this chapter for as long as it takes for you to land on something solid within yourself, to discover what it is that you really want. It is not until after we have settled into our desires and named them in God’s presence that we are ready to be guided into the spiritual practices that will open us to receive what our heart is longing for.
The movement from desire to discipline is important:
What shapes our actions is basically what...
