52 – Silence – Intention on the Spiritual Journey

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How did you “silence inventory” go?  What did you find out about silence in your days?  Does it appear anyplace?  Do you seek it?  Do you avoid it?

If you haven’t taken some time to consider if silence is part of your day, I encourage you to stop now and think about that.

If it is not enough in your days and you want to make it part of your days, where do you begin?  What are the even small things you can do to bring silence into your life?

Do you go for a walk anytime in your day?  What do you do while you are walking?  To you listen to a radio or mp3 player while you walk?  Turn it off.  Instead of listening to “something” hear the sounds the around you.  The cars going by, the wind, the birds and animals, your own breath, your heartbeat.

Do you commute to work in your car?  Try not tuning on the radio or cd player.  Hear what is there already.

Do you exercise at home or in the gym?  Is the TV or radio or music on?  Again,  turn that off and hear what is there.

When you want to take a few minutes to sit down and rest what is the first thing you do?  Turn on the TV, get a newspaper, a magazine, a book?  Why not sit down and not put something in your hands?

By intentionally not “filling” these times, you can begin to open the time to silence.  By becoming aware of the sounds already there, you begin to “give up” putting something more in the space and accept the space, the time as it is.

How many times today can you open the door to silence?

51 – Silence – Intention on the Spiritual Journey

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Think about your day, your week, and look though the days for where you have silence.  Do you?  Are there periods of silence in your day(s)?  If you find silence in your day(s), does it come by accident, by happenstance, or is it intentional on your part?

Perhaps you do not find silence in your days.  Is that the way you prefer?  Do you shun silence?  Do you fill your days with activity and noise to keep silence away?  Perhaps you want to know silence better but do not know how to find it.

We have already seen a number of writers claim silence is important in our journey and in our “formation.”  Do you agree with them today or find their claims hard to understand?

Why not spend some time this week thinking about silence in your life.  Start with a “silence inventory” and make note of periods of silence in your week.

50 – Silence – Intention on the Spiritual Journey

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“In a noise-polluted world, it is even difficult to hear ourselves think let alone try to be still and know God. Yet it seems essential for our spiritual life to seek some silence, no matter how busy we may be. Silence is not to be shunned as empty space, but to be befriended as fertile ground for intimacy with God.”

Susan Muto from Spiritual Disciplines Handbook: Practices That Transform Us, by Adele Ahlberg Calhoun, p 107.

Is silence a friend you seek company with or an uncomfortable and perhaps threatening emptiness you seek to avoid by noisiness and busyness?

49 – Spiritual Disciplines – Intention on the Spiritual Journey

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Last week a quote from Evelyn Underhill came to my inbox and I thought it worth sharing as we think about spiritual disciplines,

“Christianity is a religion which concerns us as we are here and now, creatures of body and soul. We do not ‘follow the footsteps of his most holy life’ by the exercise of a trained religious imagination, but by treading the firm, rough earth, up hill and down dale.” (School of Charity, p 52)

Just as we are not Christian only on Sunday or whenever we might happen to be in a church building or at a church related meeting, but are so as we tread “the firm rough earth, up hill and down dale.” Spiritual disciplines/practices are not something we do only on Sunday or in a church building or at a church meeting.  They are what God draws us to do so that our entire life may be more rooted in love for God, for others and for ourselves and as that love forms us, our every thought and action find its origin and power in God’s love.

48 – Service – Intention on the Spiritual Journey

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In The Spirit of the Disciplines. Dallas Willard writes,

“In service we engage our goods and strengths in the active promotion of the good of others and the causes of God in our world….  Not every act that may be done as a discipline need be done as a discipline.  I will often be able to serve another simply as an act of love and righteousness without regard to how it may enhance my abilities to follow Christ….  But I may also serve another to train myself away from arrogance, possessiveness, envy, resentment, or covetousness.  In that case, my service is undertaken as a discipline for the spiritual life….  Service to others in the spirit of Jesus allows us the freedom of a humility that carries no burdens of appearance.  It lets us be what we are – simply a particularly lively piece of clay who, as servant of God, happens to be here now with the ability to do this good and needful thing for that other bit of clay there.”  (pp 182 – 184)

When might you need to engage in the discipline of service?

47 – Service – Intention on the Spiritual Journey

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So, is service a spiritual discipline?  Is it formational?  For a moment consider these words from the letter to the Philippians,

“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (2:5-11)

To have the same mind as Christ Jesus, the same character, then is related to being a slave, a servant?  Scripture would suggest so.  In speaking of service Richard Foster writes, “… through [service] we experience the many little deaths of going beyond ourselves.” (A Year with God: Living Out the Spiritual Disciplines).

How do you practice “going beyond” yourself?

46 – Service – Intention on the Spiritual Journey

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Adele Ahlberg Calhoun may help us to see how service can take us beyond superficial activity,

“… many of us look right through others and never see them let alone care about what they need.  When we are preoccupied with our own concerns, much of the world is simply invisible to us.  Service is rooted in “seeing” – in seeing others as God does….  The Spirit of Jesus is a compassionate, serving Spirit that always works for the good of others.  Jesus maintains that radical love for others demonstrates whether we know God or not.”  (Spiritual Disciplines Handbook: Practices That Transform Us, p 146)

What do you think?  Does service done in the Spirit of Jesus, transform us into Christlikeness?

45 – Service – Intention on the Spiritual Journey

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We want to continue today our thinking about service as a spiritual discipline.

A couple of weeks ago I had occasion to look at the website of the Rescue Mission in Roanoke, Virginia ( http://rescuemission.net ), and was amazed at the number of “services” they offer. For example, housing for men woman and children in need, recovery programs for those dealing with addiction, a recovery arts program which uses art as a means to help, The Mending Wings Learning Center which offers courses and tutoring, meals are served, there is a free clinic, Angels with Scissors (where hairstylists provide service), a legal services ministry, a thrift store, a Super shopper program (you purchase a Kroger gift card, can add more funds to the card and 3.5% of anything you buy with the card goes to the rescue mission), they sponsor a running event each Thanksgiving to raise funds, and then there are the volunteers and board members who give their time to help the mission and the people using the services of the mission.

Their mission statement is “helping hurting people in Jesus’ name.”  I saw on the web page, “The Rescue Mission is the the church in overalls.”

Would any of us question that we are all called to love our neighbor and help hurting people?  Is not such “service” at the core of our Christian life.  But have you ever thought of service as a spiritual discipline?  How or when is service a spiritual discipline for us?  Is all service a spiritual discipline?

Was St Francis de Sales saying something mistaken, meaningless or profound when he said, “It is our works, whether good or bad, that form us …”

44 – Service – Intention on the Spiritual Journey

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Adele Ahlberg Calhoun covers a lot when she writes about service in Spiritual Disciplines Handbook: Practices that Transform Us, p 144,

“Service is a way of offering resources, time, treasure, influence and expertise for the care, protection, justice, and nurture of others.  Acts of service give hands to the second greatest commandment: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.'”

43 – Service – Intention on the Spiritual Journey

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For the next few weeks, I would like us to explore the discipline of service.  To begin our thoughts on service I have shared below a reading from the Gospel of John that many will hear at Maundy Thursday services,

John 13:1-17, 31b-35

“Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.  The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself.  Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him.  He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”  Jesus answered, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”   Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.”  Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!”   Jesus said to him, “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you.”  For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, “Not all of you are clean.”  After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you?  You call me Teacher and Lord–and you are right, for that is what I am.  So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.  For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.  Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them.  If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.

“When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him.  If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once.  Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’  I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”