hold that thought: practicing the discipline of Christ-filled thinking

I once offered a friend "a penny for his thoughts."  She looked at me sideways and said, "Oh, they're worth a lot more than that."  

I hadn't meant to insult.  The 400 year old expression used to imply that a penny was worth quite a bit and that the listener would be willing to give a good gift to find out what was going on in someone else's mind. 

But she was insulted, and let me know that the complexity of her thought-life was causing turmoil and restlessness.  And there was no way that she could possibly change it.  

We spend so much time in our heads: thinking, thinking, thinking...  

Not all of us agonize over it, but many of us do.  

And so much of what we do is a consequence of what we've been thinking about.  

Mark Twain wrote, “What a wee little part of a person’s life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself. All day long, the mill of his brain is grinding, and his thoughts, not those other things, are his history.” 

Our behaviours, choices, spoken words all reflect what's going "up-stairs." 

So, does that mean we control what goes on in our minds?  Is it possible to act differently and to change our speech simply by thinking different thoughts?  Is it that easy?  

I wish I knew a clear answer to this.  As it is, there are many theories and approaches to "fixing" the way we think.  

What I do know is this: after struggling for years with my thought life with what seemed to be a perpetual disposition toward "glass-half-empty" thinking, I am sure that it is not possible to change the way we think without some kind of intervention.  And I am sure that of all the disciplines to keep, practicing a disciplined thought-life is one of the most life-changing and powerful spiriutal practices.  It is the one that has the potential to direct most, if not all, of the other disciplines we practice.  

If it were just as easy as changing the way we think, it wouldn't be so hard.  

But thoughts are as ingrained as instincts.  They are immediate and sometimes insidious.  We draw conclusions in the blink of an eye and then proceed to act on those conclusions. It is also not possible, by will power alone, to reverse thought patterns, or to take up a totally new way of thinking.  Most of us simply aren't resilient enough to do that.  We're either totally stuck in a rut and can't get out, or we don't even realize we're in one!  (Because they can be nice and predictable, after all.)

In these cases, negative assumptions spiral toward hasty conclusions.  
Or optimism laced with denial permits behavior that's no less unfortunate than its pessimistic counter-part.

But how do we get out of these patterns?

So how do we get to thinking thoughts honestly?  Thoughts that will free us up?

Paul says with urgency to the young believers:

Renew your mind ...   (Romans 12) 
Hold every thought captive to Christ. (2 Corinthians 10:5)
Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. (Phil. 4:8)
To put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds.  (Ephesians 4:22-23) 

I can just hear the "yah but's."
Yah but... it's easier said than done.  (I know!)
Yah but... no one knows how much I've been through.  (You're right!)
Yah but... I struggle with depression and anxiety or..._____ and that's a whole different story.   (Right again.) 
How can you expect me to think differently?   (It's not going to be easy.)
Yah but... I'm kind of tired of hearing people (especially pastors) refer to Scripture as reason for me to "renew my mind."  (Me too, sometimes.)

But what else can we do?

We honestly, truly need help.  Help from outside of ourselves, help from some renewed, grace-filled, well-watered source.

Which is the mystery of the Holy Spirit indwelling our minds, hearts and spirits.   

You think it's all up to you until you relinquish your right to think your own thoughts, 
and then finally discover the relief of a renewed mind. 
I believe this is true for all of us, whereever we are on the mental health spectrum.  
We are all invited to admit that our thought-life is broken, and that we all need mental interventions.  
So, we give over that cerebral space to the Holy Spirit and plead for replenished gray matter and for the gaps in those synapses to be re-ignited with hopeful instincts.  
We let go of the tendency to clench the fists of our minds.  
We allow the furrow in our brows to relax.
And we take a deep, baptismal breath, the kind that people do just before they're immersed.    
         And the Spirit does it. 
The Spirit moves in, and takes up space.  Floods our senses, washes the grime of entrenched thoughts and begins to stir up a new current.  Redirecting the flow and pressure of thoughts, and permitting a fresh spring to provide life-giving energy.  Jesus himself promises this.  (John 4)  

You participate by allowing the void to be filled with gratitude.  Holding even the tiniest expression of thanks and letting that thought take up residence. 

You cooperate by practicing surrender.  Putting a hold on the anxious thoughts and clinging to the impressions prompted by reading Scripture.  

It's a kind of mistrust in your own thoughts until you notice that the place previously filled with anxiety or worry, anger or doubt is replaced with trust and generosity, patience and joy. (Prov.3:5) It's evident in the way he prayed.  (Read or reread John 14 and 15.)

What are your thought patterns like?  

How are you being invited to hold every thought captive to Christ?  

deep people

It's this quote from Richard Foster that rings in my ears:

"The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people."

Perhaps you think "deep people" are overly serious, or out-of-touch, or unable to have fun.

Maybe that's partly true.... Deep people are sometimes serious, sometimes prone to be contemplative and often eager to enjoy times of quiet.

But it is possible to be deep and also to be practical.  To be deep and also be "with it," to be deep and also to enjoy life with spontaneous laughter and frequent humour.

This is what practicing the disciplines is about.  It's about how to be both deep and joyful, and not to try to make it happen by thinking harder or trying more.

Because it's not actually us who causes the change within us, it's God who does it.

Richard Foster emphasizes that the reason we practice the disciplines is that, "The disciplines allow us to place ourselves before God so that he can transform us."

Some say that we first need to want it, but it's possible that even when we simply make ourselves available, even with very little desire, things begin to happen.  Like seeds in the ground, practically innocuous, but potentially huge.

Our oldest son understood this when he recently took a "helicopter seed" from one of the Douglas Maples lining our street and showed it to us with excitement.  It had begun to germinate on top of the ground.  When I suggested that we plant it somewhere in the yard, he looked at me with wide eyes and said, "But do we really want such a huge tree there?"


The Celebration of Discipline -- Richard Foster 

homes and Homes: embracing a cosmic view of house-keeping and learning to trust

Jesus invites us to release our ideas of what we think we ought to be or what we need to do to get approval.  "Don't let your hearts be troubled," he says, "I am preparing a place for you."  

How we needed these words this week.  We recently had some work done to our place and needed to have the work inspected.  We went over (and over) the details, wondering how the updates would look to a fresh pair of eyes.  

I confess that I fretted.  It was because we did have some control, but then again we didn't.  There's sometimes a bit of subjectivity when it comes to tradework.  There's more than one way to do things and having an older house which has undergone a series of random renovations by various owners doesn't make things particularly straightforward.  

So my fretting seemed warranted.  

Which is why the reading for this coming Sunday caused me to pause:  

Don't let your hearts be troubled.  

I am going to prepare a place for you.  

Don't be troubled? 

Prepare a place for us?  

...

Trev and I sometimes refer to "the view from 30,000 feet" as a way to get perspective on things.  Rather than fixating on our relatively small problems, or rehearsing our minor grievances, the idea is to zoom out and consider our situation from a macro perspective.  

In the case of John 14,  Jesus is inviting us to view things cosmically, to embrace this view which stretches from eternity to eternity.  

Here's the practical question I just have to consider: how can we still be residents of this property that's in our care at this point in history and not let it determine the way we feel about ourselves? ... and not give into anxiety?    

While our furnace room was being looked over microscopically, I stayed upstairs in the kitchen (wiping down the counters for the umpteenth time) and remembered the cosmic view -- those words of Jesus ringing in my ears...  he is preparing a place.  Don't let your hearts be troubled.  (Don't be anxious.) 

What this has to do with Lent is this: we receive this time as a season in which to allow our lives to be inspected.  We undergo a kind of merciful scrutiny that applies the demands of love to the rambling spaces of our lives.  

The good news is there are so many ways to live a well-ordered life.  

And the other good news is that it is really not primarily our responsibilty to create the place in our lives where love must dwell -- either in this life or the next.  In both cases, we are the recipients of love. 

We don't create a life that God deems worthy.  We receive one.  It is not because we have any particularly special skills that makes the places of our lives remarkable; it is simply that we are willing to listen and receive all that grace.  

We actively receive what is being offered.  We go along with the "don't be anxious" motto because we've discovered that the anxiety itself can quell the gift of the given place (that welcoming space by the still waters).  It can quell the gift now because we might be so preoccupied with the physical structures around that we can't see beyond them... and anxiety can put a shadow on the hope of the place yet to come because we haven't allowed ourselves to receive the cosmic view which Christ holds out to us.    

Don't be anxious.  
Don't let this throw you. 
Que votre cœur ne se trouble pas.  
Μὴ ταρασσέσθω ὑμῶν ἡ καρδία.  
Euer Herz erschrecke nicht!
No se turbe vuestro corazón.
Huwag mabalisa ang inyong mga puso.
“你们心里不要愁烦，要信神，也要信我。
Don't let your hearts be troubled.  

...

Sometimes we need help to ease our grip on anxious living: help from people who know what they're doing.  

All the time, with or without help, we can take up the practice of rehearsing the hope we receive rather than capitulating to anxiety which can rarely be satisfied by making improvements or getting approval.  That is the haunting thing about anxiety which Jesus promises to release us from.  And so he gives us his Spirit to be for us the very nearness we yearn for, the ultimate antidote to anxious living.    

And then Jesus asks us to believe him.

For those of us who like things complicated, this is almost too quick an answer.  Just believe him?  There has to be more.  Just receive his love?  

Well, there is more. (There is always more.)  

That is simply where we must begin everyday because nothing else can really be done unless that comes first.  

Believe him.  Don't let your hearts be troubled.  

ROAD notes -- taking up the practice of writing things down

It was over coffee sometime near the end of last year.  The kids were playing in the background and we were enjoying a second cup.  My brother and sister-in-law still had their journals and Bibles on the breakfast table and were filling in a few lines while we talked.  I was so intrigued, I just had to ask.  I mean, I journal, have journaled for years, but never at the breakfast table with relatives sitting nearby and kids' games going on just feet away.  It gave me a whole new set of possibilities for writing things down.  

Previous to that, I had always envisioned the journaling experience as something that really ought to be done in private, in silence (maybe with some music, I suppose) and definitely in an environment that was conducive to very reflective thoughts.  

It had just never occured to me that this could be done in the midst of everything else.  

My assumptions about the necessary conditions for journalling are exactly why I was journaling less often since our lives became filled with young boys.  I still don't journal at the breakfast table.  It just doesn't work for me.  

But I am more likely not to wait until everything is "just perfectly suited to journaling" because that time will never come. 

Now, during this season of Lent, this season of laying things down in order to receive something new, this season of getting out of a rut by following the well worn path, is the time to write more than the hasty text messages you send and the administrative emails you have to respond to. 

This season of honesty and humility can be strengthened by identifying your thoughts, observations and questions in writing.  It is sometimes only by writing that we gain clarity on what we were thinking.  This is the mystery of holding swirling thoughts and taming them into words and phrases.  

So, that's when I quickly jotted down these ideas in order to help me (and hopefully others) read the Bible and then take a few notes to engage and remember what was read.  

This is where ROAD notes come in: 

ROAD NOTES  ... for the Gospel of John

One of the best way to internalize what you read is to engage it through taking notes or journaling.  Try following the ROAD.  

Read - Read the passage. Head over to Bible.com to begin reading (or listening to!) the gospel of John.

Observe - Make one or more observations.  For example, "I think it's interesting that Jesus says What do you want?  Or, I have never noticed the part about   “The verse about God wiping away all the tears really stands out to me.” 

Ask  - Ask a question or lots of them.  For example, How do we know if we're born of God? Or,  Why would John the Baptist have been baptizing before Jesus said, "Go and baptize?"  

Or, What did baptism mean before Jesus got there?

Desire - Finish with desire.  Let your heart yearn for God’s presence and to know God’s character.

Ask yourself, what is it that you want to tell God or to hear from God?  Desire doesn't necessarily have to be an emotion that is all awash in glowing contentment; desire could be your urgent need for connection with the one Being in the entire Cosmos who truly understands you.  Let whatever emotion surfaces be the thing that pulls you toward God.  Anger, confusion, questioning and contentment: all of these things have a place in this expression of desire to know God and to be loved.  

 

You can write the notes in a journal or open a file on your computer.  You could even put a few ideas into a “note” on your phone.  It’s the process of articulating what you’ve observed and setting it down.  What we like about the acronym “ROAD” is that it gets at the idea that we’re on the way to somewhere.  We are “followers of the Way” and we’re on a journey together. 

to get out of the rut, follow the beaten path (taking up old practices that will transform us and get us somewhere new)

I hear him say the words as if he's said them all his life.  One phrase following another effortlessly, like water tumbling over round boulders.  I wish he would have slowed down a little and let me take them in, along with the beautiful purple vestments and the way everything shone, even though we were thinking about ashes.

It was like his words were going swiftly over a well-worn trail, familiar and quick.  No obstacles.  He was making haste to proclaim truth and grace.

With a solemn kind of joy, he read:

"Ash Wednesday is a day for honesty, a realistic assessment of the human heart.  By tradition it is a day when we assert (unfashionably but rightly) the sinfulness of our nature, and ask God to "create and make in us new and contrite hearts" and many come forward to have ash placed on their foreheads in the shape of a cross.  But even in these stringent days of Lent there is a complentary truth which also needs affirming.  We may be dust, but we are dust that is full of mystery and that dreams of glory; dust (we sense) that is to be changed, transfigured, into God's own likeness." 

Michael Mayne, Pray, Love Remember.  1998

Today is the day of Ashes.  Ash Wednesday was not a familiar path for me; we were raised in the tradition that skipped from Christmas to Easter without much explanation in between.  But it is path I'm happy to travel; it is a signpost, something to guide our feet as we remember Christ's Way.  We link up arms and hearts with each other and with him as we decidely walk the path that has been walked before us.  The Lenten Path beckons us to recognize that this is not the time to blaze our own trails.  This is Christ's Way and we follow him.

I followed trails all over the farm we grew up on, near the edge of the spawling Alberta prairie.  On clear days, we could see the mountains, though it would have taken us three hours to get there.

Between the house and barns were stretches of wild grass: prairie fescue, timothy grass, wispy brome grasses and other easily overlooked stalks that bent quickly underfoot.  This farm my parents homesteaded in the late '70s wasn't around long before well worn paths showed the way from house to barn.  The outdoor animals had their paths, too, which were always stunningly narrow and randomnly curvy, considering the lack of obstacles between destinations.

I want to help us do this with our practices and our words, our thinking and praying.  Let's together trace old well worn paths.  Even if our lives feel cumbersome and unwieldy, it's possible for us to follow a clearly marked out path, the way old cattle with their wide bellies amble through tall grass on narrow trails.

Almost everyday I hear someone balk at the restraints of spiritual disciplines:  I get so sleepy... I don't have enough time... I don't know where to start... Been there, done that...   

I totally get it.  But blazing your own trail isn't the way either.

In some ways it takes more courage to let Jesus show us the way.  Courage to let someone else mark the path.

When we do it, we learn that not only is Jesus the way, he is also the sustenance for the way.  He is the bread of life.  And the light for the path, and the guide who knows the way to the quiet waters.

You don't have to do all this, but you won't know necessarily know what you're missing if you don't.

This is the WAY for us: dwell in the rich words of Scripture together.  Gather to pray, to worship, to be renewed by the body and blood of Christ.  Renew the old practices of fasting and setting things down in writing; commit the Word to memory in your heart of hearts.  

Will you join me in these practices?  Let's go together, making haste deliberately, as we travel these dusty, well worn paths, marked by all those saints and disciples who first followed in Jesus' footsteps, all of us in pursuit of mystery and of being transfigured from dusty, weary travellers to radiant, well-watered companions.

Stay tuned for posts on how to up the practices of well-watered thinking, journaling, and preparing for and receiving communion.

keep on singing

I looked behind me and there he sat, his head about level with the top of the pew, nestled in between two other tenors.

So, I have not forgotten about this writing.  But I haven't sat down to it at all since we've returned from our sabbatical, which is a shame because there have been so many things to tell.  I think it was more difficult than I had anticipated it would be: this country-dweller-at-heart returning to the steady drone of trains and traffic, constant movement and steady stimulus.  I notice the serenity of the park, I do, and I enjoyed the crunch of the fall leaves under my feet as much as ever.  And yet, it's taken more effort to transition back to our Vancouver routine than I had thought it would be.

But the moment I turned around to see him sitting on his own last night, I realized: this is home for him.  It's where he was born, where he is growing up.  How do you raise a kid in the city when you didn't grow up in one yourself?

And then we turn to these old hymns and I wonder the same thing... how can we sing these old songs we didn't write, jotted down hundreds of years ago, thousands of miles away?

But we did sing, and we still do.  We sang, a bit cautiously at first, finding our way through the parts.  And then somehow, it all came together and I saw the pianist's eyebrows go up slightly as he played the last note: he nodded a quick approval to the director and there was satisfaction in the air.  We had sung well, from the bottom of our hearts and it was so good.  Our shoulders relaxed, up and down the pews, and we sighed happily after we captured the twirl of black dots on the page and interpreted them as delicate harmonies.  Delicious.

And the old, old words were like home-coming in our mouths.  Even the lines written oceans away and centuries ago took root again in this place yesterday.  I glanced at my young son two rows behind me, and then back to aging, grey hymnal, the one we are about to replace, and I hope, hope, hope: please keep singing.

coming back to the point (and packing our bags for re-entry)

I haven't flipped the calendar yet, but I've been thinking already about the moment when I will tomorrow.  It's because I'll be able to see clearly that we are entering our last week of Sabbatical.  We've already been reflecting on the activities and highlights of the past weeks, and are beginning to anticipate what it will be like to "re-enter" our lives and work in Vancouver.  Gideon said today, "I am ready to go back but I will miss it here."  And Levi said, "I miss our living room in Vancouver."

So, each of us is eager to go back for various reasons.  We have missed the Farmer's Market every Saturday, and the new playground at Trout Lake.  We miss our neighbours and will be happy to bump into them on the sidewalk.  (We miss sidewalks for that reason!)  We miss seeing the babies in the church... how much they must have grown since we left in April!   We miss the eclectic, familiar congregation which we have grown to love so much.  We miss the worship in our congregation.

We are even looking forward to the routine of going to school in the fall, knowing that the rhythm is good for our family.  

But once we are back, we're sure that we'll miss the flexibility of sabbatical, the unforced rhythms and the daily delight of being together without interruption.  We've loved the freedom to take another book from the pile, with the permission to sit coffee in hand, and delve into another topic.  We've fully embraced the joy of evenings at home, the pleasure of putting the boys to bed without hurry, knowing that we can recline in the quiet living room with a glass of wine and the time to unwind.  

Which goes without saying, I suppose, that I am sort of dreading the return of meetings.  I once came across a trailer for an old British comedy called "Meetings, Bloody Meetings."  Having watched only a few minutes of it was enough to spark side-splitting laughter.  The parody of a disengaged, unprepared chair person and a room full of equally unprepared attendees was as funny as it was tragic.  

What seems to go without being said about church meetings is that they must happen.  But why do we do them the way we do?  I don't just mean to wonder about our unswerving loyalty to the guidelines for meetings a la Robert's Rules.  I understand that if we didn't schedule the gatherings the way we do or record and conduct them the way we do, that we might spiral to the poor depths of misery experienced in the "Bloody Meetings" by the employees in the comedy.  However, what is so sacred about meetings that we repeat them the way we do?   

The best meetings, in my mind, are the ones that are held ad hoc in response to a particular need, or that somehow deviate from the agenda so that we can discuss what really matters to people in the church.  I know it's important to discuss administrative details, and for this reason it's necessary to have scheduled meetings, but I believe we have mistakenly overlooked some of the more important matters, the things which our people really find to be close to the heart.  Somehow, we've agreed that it isn't necessary to have a clearly articulated vision or purpose as a congregation.  But for how long can we go on this way?  

One of the things I gleaned from the conference for Women Speakers early in the spring was that any time a speaker does not clearly articulate her objective, the hidden objective will take over.  75% percent of the time listeners will not be able to identify what the main point of the talk was... even as they are heading out of the auditorium. In fact, 50% of the speakers can't identify the objective of their talk/lecture/sermon unless they have clearly stated their point ahead of time.  The point worth noting is that whenever the hidden objective takes over due to the absence of a clearly articulate objective, the hidden objective is usually not a good one.  

How many of us can clearly articulate what the point of all of our meetings is?  Why are we actually gathering?  What is the thing burning in our hearts?  What has prompted us to forego a potentially sacred, quiet evening in our homes to sit around a table in a dark basement poring over an agenda?  

What about our prayer meetings?  Do we dare talk about the ratio of time spent in our administrative meetings versus the time spent in worship and prayer meetings?  What does that say about what's really important to us and where we feel our decisions are actually made?   Is this the way we want it to be?  Without having made a clear objective, it's possible that the hidden objective has already taken over... the hidden objective of asserting control over decisions and "progress" according to our pre-established ideas of what ought to happen in church, which is usually based on what has happened in the past.  

But are we prepared to crack open the possibility of allowing things to look different than they have?  And will we be willing to train ourselves to approach decision-making from a posture of worship and prayer rather than from a desire to maintain control while leaning on rational-logical-responsible protocol?  

I'm reminded of Paul's letter to Timothy where he gives instructions about how God's household of faith ought to conduct themselves.  Paul is wise and rooted in Christ, so compassionate toward the  community of believers and firm about his convictions that the church must cultivate purity and godliness.  Doing things with order and decency is good, as he mentions to the Corinthians, but the real value is being firmly established in Christ.  

Paul writes: 

¹⁴ Although I hope to come to you soon, I am writing you these instructions so that, ¹⁵ if I am delayed, you will know how people ought to conduct themselves in God’s household, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth. ¹⁶ Beyond all question, the mystery from which true godliness springs is great:

He appeared in the flesh,
    was vindicated by the Spirit,^[d]
was seen by angels,
    was preached among the nations,
was believed on in the world,
    was taken up in glory.

Does what we do spring from our contemplation of this mystery?  If it doesn't, what is our activity rooted in?  And if we are not actively pursuing the command to love with a pure heart, good conscience and sincere faith, what are we doing? 

____________________

"If you are walking backward, away from something you think is a mistake, you may be right in supposing it is a mistake, but for you to be walking backward is never right.  You know what happens to people who walk backward....  We are meant to walk forward, not backward, and reaction is always a matter of walking backward." - J. I. Packer