Never have I found a more appropriate prayer for my first day back to work after a long sabbatical than the Welcome Prayer by Father Thomas Keating. At the first reading, you might be tempted to say, "What a nice prayer." And then move on. But Gwen and I have sat with this prayer on an intentional basis for the past few months. We have attempted to excavate the meaning and suck the marrow out of each phrase and sentence.It is rich. It is deep and it is transformational.Here it is:The Welcoming Prayer (by Father Thomas Keating)Welcome, welcome, welcome.I welcome everything that comes to me todaybecause I know it's for my healing.I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions, persons,situations, and conditions.I let go of my desire for power and control.I let go of my desire for affection, esteem,approval and pleasure.I let go of my desire for survival and security.I let go of my desire to change any situation,condition, person or myself.I open to the love and presence of God andGod's action within. Amen.To Welcome this day, our first day back to work means to enter this with no regret, apprehension or fear. It, the first day, the first week and the first season is for me. It is for my good. It is not for my demise.For my healing... returning to my work is also a part of my healing and transformation as much as our season of rest has been. Now, I can live out of the fruit of what has been gathered. I can also begin to integrate these precious truths into my work--not just my time off.The Welcoming of all thoughts, feelings, emotions, persons, situations and conditions---means for me, that I believe in a God that is good and is not ought to bring me down or to step back and watch my life spin out of control. God is vested in the process of everyday encounters.I let go--much of my work over sabbatical has been right here. To learn how to let go and to release things, people, my past and my future into the hands of God. Knowing that I cannot control these things helps me to learn to loosen my grip. The three sentences in the prayer that speak of "letting go" really are the three temptations of Jesus: the temptation for power; the temptation for approval; the temptation for security. I, too, will work through these temptations as I work--and being tempted to lean into each of these areas to find love, approval and security. To let go--is my daily business.I open myself---believing in a God who is good and who loves me allows me to become open. I open myself to the love and goodness of God. It is my intention to live each day in this posture and I consent to my participation of the work of my transformation.I posted this book on Facebook recently and got many "likes." Now, I regret doing it. I don't think this prayer or perhaps any prayer can simply be liked. The Welcome Prayer undoes us. I truly believe that this prayer can't be just read and put down. It will mess with you. It has with me. And isn't this, perhaps, the greatest purpose of prayer?
The Gift of Bewilderment
“Only at the periphery of our lives, where we, and our understanding of God, are undone, can we understand bewilderment as an occasion for another way of knowing.” Belden Lane There is nothing like being the only one walking on a desolate beach in the cool dawn of morning and stumbling upon a beautiful, broken shell that speaks to you. Now of course you know that I don’t mean the shell said something, yet it was as if, it did. I couldn’t help but plunge into the wonder of its delicate markings that formed a spiraling circle, as if to be the very mapping of the journey my heart was on. I couldn’t help but go subterranean, that place deep inside where there is no vocabulary to articulate the feeling or what I knew to be true. I was in awe, speechless. So much was being said and I was listening intently. Pondering the beautiful and the brutal of what I was ushered into left me silent and still. I dared not move for fear of losing the very encounter that my heart always longs for.So how do I describe to you what it was like for me to encounter God through a shell? It was strangely sacred, like God and I have this private exchange about the realities that are too deep for human words, so paradoxical, the silent beautiful and brutal truths mingling together way down deep, with just God and me. At times like this a gnawing frustration burrows deep too. What do I do with these wordless ponderings? The painful emotions of grief and the soothing comfort of the salt air undo me. I’m left bewildered by my inexpressible soul.While being steeped in stillness for a while, God showed me something about myself and about himself. Frustration was coming from trying so hard not to be bewildered by the deep stirrings in my heart. I was actually trying to make common sense out of something holy. God assured me of the need for quite the opposite. My bewilderment is blessed and not to be boxed up and clearly identified. Bewilderment is, as Belden Lane expresses, “an occasion for another way of knowing God. “ To be undone by the ripping grief of death is an occasion for another way of knowing God. Consoled by the beauty of strolling on a lonely beach was an occasion for another way of knowing God. Listening to the loud silence of what a shell had to say was an occasion for another way of knowing God. I didn’t have to articulate and make it understandable. It was all it had to be.To articulate what is deeply spiritual isn’t always the right thing. I wonder if a lot of Christians talk incessantly, preach too long, and teach too much because to remain in mystery is too threatening to their stated faith. Perhaps, we thirst for more information about God than experiencing the mystery of God. To embrace the mystery of the unseen and indescribable is to experience a quiet peace that surpasses the need to explain or understand. And it is a sweet peace that is palpable.Sabbatical often ushered me into this bewildering place and I found myself glad and knowing that I can rest in bewilderment.
Our Sabbatical Journey: Insights on the Road Back to Life
Friends, I"m excited to share that both Gwen and I will be blogging soon about our Sabbatical Journey. As many of you know, we've unplugged, gone under the radar and not worked at Potter's Inn for five months. Fifteen years of pioneering Potter's Inn; giving and giving; caring for the souls of so very many leaders across the world left us tired, worn out and weary. Let me just spill the beans... our sabbatical has exceeded our hopes and expectations in every way. Despite witnessing our grandson dying and consumed with grief in our sabbatical time; despite the marriage of our third son, Cameron--and the addition of Lindsey whom we love already; despite knowing the fragility of raising our support and the thinness of finances at Potter's Inn--we felt called and compelled to take the time we've written about; taught about; coached so many folks across the world to do what we had NEVER done for ourselves----we took a Sabbatical.Both Gwen and I will be sharing our insights, lessons, take-a-ways and on-going questions and nagging fears about re-entry. I'm excited because Gwen has finally said "Yes" to documenting her own journey and pulling back the curtain--so to speak so you can witness her own journey and in her own words. I'll be sharing my road back to health in losing 60 pounds and watching my blood pressure drop significantly. I'll be sharing what I did and how I did it. It's been the biggest paradigm shift I've ever made thus far in my life. With the help of my medical doctor, now turned coach, friend and colleague in our teaching at Potter's Inn, we will both be blogging about the maze of un-doing habits, thinking and addictions and having our minds transformed about how we are now looking at food. I'm afraid for decades, I lived to eat---and now I am eating to live!Living in a world where we live 24/7 being "on", wired to the max and always available, we will both share why we stopped doing "social media" and insights we gained from our technology fast. The blog will be rich with insights we WANT to share and it is our hope that our own journey might benefit you in some, life giving way.Spiritually, renewal has come. A stream has come to the desert and we are rejoicing. We'll be sharing the significant books we've read that have nursed us to life and sustained us with courage for the next leg of our journey.In late May, Gwen and I will be doing our own "Re-entry Retreat" with a wise sage who will guide us to re-enter our life and work with all we've learned in these good yet hard months.You'll need to subscribe to the blog as it will be a DAILY update from Monday-Friday and will be replacing the Food for the Soul Daily Devotion for the month of June and perhaps a bit beyond. We'll see how it goes; how you're enjoying it and what your feedback is for us. So please do leave us comments.If you are subscribed and are already receiving FOOD For The Soul--the daily devotional I send out of my writings, no need to worry. You'll receive a link each Monday-Friday which will direct you to the blog.Take a moment and ask some friends to join you on our Sabbatical Journey and consider our journey as a place to have your discussions about your longings, desires and yearnings in your heart for your own life.This new way of sharing through this blog will begin mid-May. Be on the look for it and share it on your own streams of Social Media! We'd be so grateful.Every blessing,Steve and Gwen
The Place in My Heart
There is a place in my heart that I’ve been renovating. It’s been a crowded, noisy and daunting space that has needed much attention. I’ve tried conferences, books, seminars and such where I have learned tips and techniques that promised to help me with my life transformation. All have failed me, save one.I remember thinking that peace was a place somewhere on an island with a beautiful sandy beach with tropical trees and drinking coconut juice from cracked open husks. But I realized as you have also, that as we pack our bags to visit such places that our dirty laundry and inner chaos goes with us. No matter how serene the setting, the interior life can wreak havoc.People use to call their church buildings “sanctuaries.” God knows we need a sacred space to go to from time to time in this busy world we are living in today. But even that word is going the way of the dinosaur. We have stages today, not pulpits; auditoriums, not sanctuaries. We’re terrible confused—we modern people who have come so far, but feel so terribly lost. We are still in search of sacred space—a place where the heart can call home.The old monastics built places in the woods to retreat from the world’s noise. These little cabins were called “hermitages” and a Russian word—“Poustinia.” They were small places—simple spaces with no distractions, no competing sources of entertainment. They were rustic. Simple. Inviting. Safe.So, this year, our ministry has set out to build a Poustinia at our retreat in Colorado. It’s a small 12x16 log sided cabin with a green metal roof where you can hear the rain as you gaze out on Pike’s Peak, a snow capped mountain today over 14,000 feet in the air. There’s a small covered porch where one rocking chair will be placed. This little cabin in the woods is the modern day answer to the modern day plague that has infected the beautiful souls of we—the modern, wired and always “on” people. To be clear, I am one of you. I am not a monk nor am I thinking of becoming one.But one thing I do know, the building of the Poustinia for me, is an outward symbol of an inner reality that is going on inside of me. As the Poustinia is taking shape, I feel the same thing happening in me. My soul is taking shape. It would seem like I would and perhaps should have gotten my soul in shape by now. But in all honesty, it takes a long time for a saint to be made.My Poustinia is really a space within me. It is a space I need to build to connect with God; to relax in my own skin and to be my true self. It is a place of solitude where all of the insanity and chaos of this world, all of the “giddy-up” and let’s hurry faster is left outside. It is a place of shalom—that place of well-being where at last I can be with God and God with me. By going to the little cabin in the woods, I am really on a journey to go to the Poustinia within me—that place that Jesus described so aptly as a closet where you can at last be alone. Be quiet. Be still and know God at last.Competing demands; rivaling priorities and inner chaos flood our lives every single day. We seek balance but know in the end that balance is truly bunk. The journey to go to the Poustinia is a journey that every spiritual master I have ever read about has taken—and has taken alone.Our Poustinia, will have one chair, one table, one bed, one tiny wood burning stove and windows to look out and space to look inside. It is sacred space and in my heart that sacred space is being born.In her remarkable book, “Poustinia: Encountering God in Silence, Solitude and Prayer” which has mentored me in this understanding, Catherine Doherty says, “...you have, as it were, a poustinia within you. It is as if within you there were a little cabin in which you and Christ are very close; it is with this attitude that you go about your business. God forbid that you should all become recluses or hermits! That is not what is meant by being a Poustinik in the marketplace. It means that within yourselves you have made a room, a cabin, a secluded space. You have built it by prayer.You should be more aware of God than anyone else, because you are carrying within you this utterly quiet and silent chamber. Because you are more aware of God, because you have been called to listen to him in your inner silence, you can bring him to the street, the party, the meeting, in a very special and powerful way. The power is his, but you have contributed your fiat. He has asked you and chosen you to be the carrier of that silent poustinia within yourself.”So, we are all building a place within our hearts, aren't we? That is precisely what the work of spiritual formation is all about. More room for Jesus. That he might increase and I decrease. Let the renovation continue! Copyright@ 2014 Stephen W. Smith. All Rights Reserved. You may "share" this post but not copy for distribution. Thank you. Important Note: All of our retreats are fully booked for the remainder of the year. We will SOON be announcing news of 2015 retreats and our brand New Soul Care Institute, a two-three year training program.
The Anatomy of a Retreat
Over the course of the next few days, I want to offer you an inside look at the anatomy of a retreat.I'll be doing this while leading a retreat.I'll be giving you an inside look at the anatomy of a retreat...confessing my private fears and sharing my observations while the retreat is going on. I'll be a detective of divinity as Barbara Brown Taylor describes. In my off time, I'll be posting to you--letting you know what I think God is up to in me--and in them. It will be your invitation to be a witness of a retreat and perhaps experience a blessing in some way as you make your way through your own weekend in the days ahead.Twenty four people are gathering at this very moment in a beautiful coastal house on a barrier island off the coast of North Carolina. Today, we're prepping for their arrival. Putting food in the 10 bedroom/10 bath house. Stocking the refrigerator. Making gift bags that will welcome people. Buying a Sabbath Candle for each couple and placing it in their rooms with a box of matches.A couple has come with us and their help and work is invaluable. We could not do this without help. I'm so grateful they are here and working as hard as they are. I now have a chance to be alone for an hour before the guests start arriving.A spiritual retreat is an event that has intention, purpose and a rhythm to the time that people will invest.Intention...our intention will be to flow through the new book, The Jesus Life. We'll gather from 6 states across the US at dinner with most people having never met. It will be an uphill climb as we journey together to seek to form a bond--a spiritual link between man to man; woman to woman and couple to couple all being linked to God. The Bible promises that a "cord of three strands is not easily broken."I'm imagining stress in many of the couple's lives as the dropped of their kids; said good bye to their jobs a day early because this retreat begins on Thursday---not Friday and this too was intentional. I felt we needed an extra day to create space and time--a mood of not rushing to get through the material and to allow the retreat itself to become the agenda. It's never about the material--or shouldn't be. The people who come are material enough for God to reform, transform and conform just as the Potter does the clay. The intent of this retreat is for our Divine Potter to do with us as He wills and wants. It is all a process and learning to submit to the process is key and foremost in being a good retreat leader or facilitiator. Don't drive the people like cattle. They've been treated this way all week long. Love them. Serve them. Expect God to do great things in them... in me.Purpose...the purpose of our retreat is to encounter the living Lord Jesus Christ. Nothing short. Right now as I sit on the deck anticipating the first person's arrival. I'm praying for them. For me. For God to show up. There's a strong wind blowing right now and I"m imaginging this to be the Spirit invading this tiny island with great things in store for us. To meet the Living Lord Jesus on the shore where the waves are pounding--pounding the beach will be another Easter morning for us.People will rock in the 15 rocking chairs--yes, I counted them. They will sit by the pool....our beach house has its own private pool. They will wade in the water and some will swim. Refreshing waters will revive our souls. For some who are coming are weary, tired and burned out.Am I prepared enough? Every retreat leader must ask themselves this question and for me, I am probably not prepared enough--even though I know the materiel well and wrote the book we will study. But I'd like another day of quiet---more time of solitude. I broke out into a a sweat as I helped get the house ready and thought..."Oh great, now I have to go put on a new shirt that I wasn't planning on wearing. Did I bring enough shirts? Do I feel comfortable in them? Or deeper---do I feel comfortable enough in my own skin and soul to lead the people to the water---the Living Water? That's a good question as a retreat leader to ask themselves. I need to pause now. Bow low. Come before the Lord. Get my heart right and open my self as a vessel before the Lord and say, "I've done all that I can do. Now, Lord, you must do the rest. It's up to you. Not me."So, as we begin this retreat pray for us. If these 24 people who are here are touched by Jesus, then return home and live out what God has poured into them...then the retreat will have met its goal.What is my goal in this retreat? For those that come to encounter the living Jesus. If that happens then it will have gone well enough. And how will I know if this happens?I will see the prisoner's set free.I will see the lame in body dancing again.I will hear music rise above the waves and it will be glorious praise.I will simply know that Jesus was among us and this, after all is why people want to come to a retreat.
Marshalling Your Energy Wisely--it's what God wants!
A group of young, German church planters have invited Gwen and I to come lead a retreat for them on how to care for their souls. Their young wives will join them. What a great audience to pour our hearts into!It's interesting that in German church history, the word, "pastor" is rooted in an expression meaning "soul physician". It's lost it's original meaning today and in our busy culture, a hurry sickness has infected the hearts of many.How we are so in need of a soul physician. In all reality, that is exactly our calling, our work and our mission.Actually, this dis-ease is systemic invading all parts of a leader's life--their marriage, their parenting--their desire to live The Jesus Life and more. So, it's with great joy that we pack our bags to lead them in a rather long retreat. For six days, we'll have this captive audience and we will attempt to pour wisdom, counsel, common sense and what Eugene Peterson says, of "self-control"--the 'ability to marshal your energies wisely.'Who would have ever thought that the Greek meaning for self-control--one of the fruit of the Spirit actually means...."The ability to marshal your energies wisely." It's listed right there in Galatians 5:22 as one of the fruit of God's work in us. It's what he wants in us---the ability to marshal your energy wisely.Just today in my office I sat with a female executive for a leading organization in Colorado Springs. She was breathless arriving late to our scheduled meeting. As she apologized, she listed a litany of reasons why our life was a bit "out of control." Her children...her busy husband's schedule. Her "mom" duties and her full time job as a leading exec in her company. We began to talk about learning to live in rhythm and to give up the lie of the balanced life. We spoke about learning to marshal your energies wisely. As she cried and wiped tears from her eyes. She said, " I didn't realize that God actually wanted me to learn how to marshal my energies. I've felt so totally out of control."We will travel tomorrow to Germany offering young pastors in a once of the most competitive, successful and leading countries in the world---where the church is in absolute total decline and disarray--the opportunity to care for their souls. Pray for us in our ministry. We need it. Pray for no travel glitches. That we can overcome jetlag. That we can be prepared to talk three times a day in this retreat and to love these dear ones well.It will be a great blessing for us to have a few days at the end of our trip with our son, Cameron who is stationed in Kaiserslaughtan. He's apartment is a proverbial one... right over a German butcher shop on a narrow pedestrian street. Sounds picturesque! We'll let you know when we return. All blessings,Steve and Gwen
Sitting in the Potter's Inn: My need for Transformation!
by Stephen W. Smith at Potter's InnAs we began moving furniture into the brand new Inn, I sat alone in the Great Room for some moments to let what what happening sink into my soul. As I sat in a chair we had thought would look good in the Great Room and the thought came to me, how ironic to be sitting here alone in this place of transformation.I well remember in 2003 when Gwen and I started the venture of establishing an actual place for transformation to happen that it would be me, the first one called to sit upon the Potter's wheel and hear the Potter's wheel being spun around and around. If transformation is going to happen, then it has to happen with me first. That was my thinking....and that is what has been happening. As we have called others into the journey of spiritual transformation, we have always been mindful of our need for the Potter's hands to pinch here; squeeze there and impress hard here.As I sat yesterday in the Great Room, that same feeling came over me. If anyone needs transformation, then I must be willing to yield to the same process that we are calling others to embrace.So I sat. Sat some more. Prayed and asked the Potter to be so ever gentle with me for I have been feeling fragile.
This is a sculpture that God gave me a vision for in 2004 showing the two shaping hands of the Divine Potter. One is ever so gentle and one is digging in hard. Transformation requires both! I had the vision for this but could not actually sculpt it so I asked Clay Enoch, a renowuned sculpter in Colorado Springs, to help me. "Forming Hands" was the result and our ministry sold 2,500 of these sculptures which greatly aided in funding the early days of Potter's Inn ministry. Currently we are sold out and have no plans at the moment to resurrect this limited sculpture.
I'm Going To Look for Jesus... in the wilderness
I've been outside each morning for the past five mornings up at our retreat. This image shows what I've been able to sit in. The Aspens are turning gold. The sun has been shining bright. The air has been warm. One could not ask for a better fall here in Colorado.Yet, like the leaves, I feel something inside of me is changing. Something feels like it is dying. As I reflect back on this past year, it's been a hard press. I have written a book (Soul Custody); been focused on the entire transformation of the barn to morph into becoming a 14 year long vision of having an "Inn" for people to come who are worn out, tired and burned out on religion. I've led several dozen retreats and met with scores of people. It's time for me to take a break. Take a break to look for Jesus. Go into the wilderness so that I might find him.But these golden Aspens reveal a deeper secret I have within me. As much as I have tried to advocate for; be passionate about and help others to experience--I have to admit, I'm wrestling inside about some things that are just plain, making me tired.The scared bark of our beloved Aspens show the wounds where elk, deer and other critters have come to rub themselves against this precious bark. The bark, like my soul has grown weary with a few wounds to prove it.I am going on a respite. It's much deserved but as this day of departure looms for me to pack my bags and go into the wilderness for a three week journey, I feel everything inside of me saying: "Don't go. You have too much to do. It's not the right time." And I listen for a while to those old voices which I know all too well and I know that they are speaking to me lies. Lies to make me sign up again; stay for another card in the game and go for one more ride around the ring. When I feel tired...life and almost everyone and everything looks tired also.I read the lyrics to an old Black gospel song which simply says, "If you want to find Jesus, you gotta go into the wilderness." I've sat with that song now for about a month since discovering it. I've realized how true the song really is when friends fail you; church seems like nothing but a programming machine and the idea of 'community' has never seemed farther away. I need to go into the wilderness. It's time.For three weeks, Gwen and I will be in Alaska. I've never been--but always wanted to go. I am going into the wilderness. I'm not going on a cruise. I'm not going with a tour. It's just me and my companion now of 30 years. Together, we are going to fly in; rent a car and get as lost as we can get for three weeks.At the end of these three weeks, I'll be with 20 pastors and spouses up in the tundra of Alaska...in a place so remote that the only access is to be flown in on a plane. There's no electricity. There are few cars. And I just heard that the daily diet of most of the folks I'll be working with is whale blubber. I've never eaten whale blubber. It doesn't sound too good right now. They are living in the wilderness and I wonder here if they might know something I need to know...about Jesus and the wilderness. I'll be anxious to find out.I'm taking a few books. A pair of binoculars. Some rain gear and we're off. I'm going into the wilderness. I'm going into beauty--about the last sacred thing on earth that can revive a person's soul I think. I'm going into the wilderness to look for Jesus.SWS