It's called an "oxbow." Notice the shape of the river flowing through this beautiful scene that I saw yesterday and blogged about. See the meandering of the river, creating what is called, an oxbow effect. It's named that due to the river carving out a shape similar to that of the curves of an oxen yoke.I texted this picture to a friend of mine back east and he immediately saw it and said, "An Oxbow. Amazing how you can travel so far on a river only to wind up just a few hundred yards downstream by foot."Isn't that true in life. We can travel so very far through the years, yet make so little progress it seems. After all we go through in life, only to find we're just a few feet from where we started.I can easily imagine the oxbow effect on the early disciples who tried to follow Jesus wholeheartedly, yet kept stumbling back through the same issues of pride, power struggles and not really getting Jesus' intent at all after multiple times of hearing him and watching him. Aren't we really like those early followers---people who just can't seem to get what Jesus is up to in our life and we keep coming back to learn, re-learn and learn again the most basic principles of the spiritual life: I am the Beloved. Trust God. Lean on him not my own understanding and so much more.Stephen W. SmithPotter's InnAre you in an Oxbow place in your life? How can you move on through to greater and deeper realities of the spiritual life
Beauty Helps!
I saw this with my own eyes today. It's found in a place 30 minutes from the retreat near Tarryall, CO and called, the Lost Wilderness.I felt lost so going to a place called the Lost Wilderness was for me, like being pulled there by the Puller of My Soul. We got bad news twice yesterday. One kick in the gut for me about having to re-write most, if not all of my book I've been working on now for two years. Gwen's kick is for her to tell but both blows have made me seek some solace today.Beauty helps. Simone Weil wisely tells us, "There are only two things that pierce the soul. One is pain. The other is beauty." When you stop and think about it, how true that statement really is for us mere humans on this planet and who find themselves on the long, arduous journey to heaven. Pain shatters us--drops us to our knees and makes us cry out to anyone or anything in the Cosmos that might even remotely hear us. Beauty helps. Beauty draws us to humble amazement and we wonder as we wander through it and soon we find that beauty has helped. Beauty assuages the deep grief of the soul and heart.I'm going back to this place tomorrow. I'm glad it's close to where I'm doing my re-write of the book. I'm going to walk into that beauty with my bride. I texted her today and said, "You have to come up here tomorrow and walk into this epic scene of beauty. It will help you. It will help me. It will help us."Stephen W. SmithPotter's Inn
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.
The Place of Transformation
Transformation does not happen in a vacuum. A key ingredient in the transformation process is place. We are not Halloween ghosts floating through time and space. The soul's address is a physical body and every soul needs a place to experience change. Think about it with me. Remember back on some life-changing experiences that you've shared. Where were you? At the beach, in the mountains, attending church, with a friend, driving down some road, hiking a winding trail?When and if we really change, we always change in a place. A wonderful author, Robert Hamma has named these places, "sacred spaces". He calls them sacred because these are thin spaces--thin because you can see the sacred through them.Eleven years ago, my work changed. I left the place of church and entered the place of retreats. I came to the realization that for me, change was happening in me and in most of the people I worked with in places where they could focus, get a way from the buzz of life and cocoon in a place where they could think, feel and experience God's love in major and new ways. I am not saying that change does not happen in church--because it does. But when you think about it, Jesus never attended church like you and I do today. He used the thin places of forested Olive trees to disclose his deepest truths. He used the natural world of vineyards, lakes and mountain tops to reveal the deepest truth about himself and about those he loved. It always involved places.In these eleven years of focusing on this insight, we have set out to participate in the construction of a retreat---a cocoon for the soul. It's the retreat now known as Potter's Inn at Aspen Ridge, a 35 acre place--thin place near Divide, Colorado. I actually like the fact that our address is "Divide." At our dividing place many new, life giving decisions have been made that have resulted in transformed lives and changed hearts. Each heart has required a sort of spiritual cocoon to morph into something that they could not do on their own. They needed a place. They needed space. They needed a retreat.Where are the places God has used to change you?What special places to you call "thin" or sacred?What role have retreats--at any length impacted your life?What room in your home feels thin? What places do you long to go and experience?Fodder for the fire of this discussion on the role of "place" in our spiritual formation!StevePotter's Innwww.pottersinn.com
Doubters Are Welcome!
This is the remarkable painting by Caravaggio titled, "The Incredulity of St. Thomas."No one shows the emotion, the detail and the awe like this remarkable painter. His version of the raising of Lazarus is one of my all time favorites and this is a close second.I'm choosing this painting this week because we are now "post-Easter." The Gospel writers reveal several incidents which all fall into the category of post-Easter appearances--those times when Jesus appeared after his resurrection.Thomas' hand.... watch it enter directly into the flesh of Jesus and look at his curiosity. Doubters are welcomed by Jesus--not shamed! Jesus did not shun Thomas or ridicule him and this is our invitation to also bring our doubts to the encounters with Jesus and not hide them or go sub-subterranean with them. Jesus lets us bring all of our doubts into his presence and somehow accepts them--accepts us--and loves us despite them.I am struck with the vulnerability of Jesus here. He's exposed. He's ready. He is not withdrawing. Always available. Always waiting on us. Always ready to take us--doubts and all. How he does this, I do not know but THAT he does this humbles me. What does this painting stir in you as you sit here and enter this amazing scene?In this post-Easter season, we need to bask in what has happened this past week. It's the soul's D-Day. It's the soul's most important holiday and not just the church's.Pause with this painting and be invited, like Thomas to truly enter the presence--the person of Jesus.Stephen W. SmithPotter's Innwww.pottersinn.com
Silent Tears
The author of Hebrews tells us that before he died, "he offered prayers and pleadings, with a loud cry and tears, to the one who could rescue him from death." But he was not rescued from death and this is where we are today. He was not rescued.I'm struck with the haunting sound of the loud cries and tears---and as one translation puts it...."silent tears."I've had my own, haven't you? Silent tears of over a situation that seems impossible--so dark that there simply is no light at the end of the tunnel. Today is the day we face the cul de sacs of our lives with no way out but to wait right here...right now.This is where we are today on Holy Saturday.This is my Lenten Journey.Stephen W. SmithPotter's Innwww.pottersinn.com
Staring Through Good Friday
It is enough to stare at this scandalous image for a while on this Good Friday and sit with what might get stirred up inside. Art shows us what we cannot see in words. Wordless silence transports the heart faster than a hundred paragraphs of sentences with nouns and verbs even amazing adjectives. We are visual learners---aren't we? Perhaps that is why the crucifixion happened so we could really see with our hearts and somehow grasp the love of God after all.We are too wordy perhaps these days when silence can tell us more.Words fail to communicate what has happened...what did happen.So we sit in silence and stare.This is my Lenten Journey.Stephen W. SmithPotter's Innwww.pottersinn.com
The Jesus Vigil
We are approaching a horrible night. Everything turned south for Jesus on Maunday Thursday. His intent was to gather his closet companions to share a meal and to share time but in the end, everything changed. Jesus went from community to agony. It's a journey not so unfamiliar to many of us when we seek out our friends to be our solace only to find ourselves in total isolation.When Jesus went into the Garden of Gethsemane to pray, it became a sort of vigil. A time of watchfulness. A time of waiting. A time of looking into his own heart deeply and to hear from God. This is what a vigil is. It's a time of waiting.When the mother waits all night with her sick child...When a man waits to hear if he will get the job offer...When parents wait for a teenager to come home and it's after the curfew...When you wait to hear the results of the medical tests which you fear will not be good...I've been thinking about vigils since my pastor asked me to preach on this for our Maunday Thursday service tomorrow night. I"ll be leading our congregation at 1st Pres into a night of vigil.... a night of waiting... a time for desperate prayers.I've been able to remember four different vigils that I have experienced: the death of my mother-in-law, the night I begged God for my fourth son's life who was in the intensive care for 38 days and the doctors said, "Prepare for the worse."; the night I stayed awake all night when our first-born son was in the Iraqi war and doing convoys; and a night a couple of weeks ago when we got an unexpected bill from our contractor on work he had done on our big, red barn and there was no money to pay for it.You enter a vigil when you are over your head. The vigil reminds you that you have no control, no power, no might, no strength to change the outcome of what is looming in your mind and stirring up anxiety. Jesus entered his vigil and we must enter ours. The Jesus Vigil, however is the night we share the journey with Jesus and think through all that he was about to lose in order to gain what he could not grasp at that moment. Shortly, he would hang in suspension and that's what you do in a vigil.We hang in suspicion and wait. There in that wordless place we wait for the tenderness of God to give a peace that defies our understanding yet assuages every anxious feeling inside.Jesus, we will wait with you.By the way, join me at 1st Pres on Maunday Thursday at 7pm MT in person on on the internet at www.first-pres.org and you can view me speaking on The Jesus Vigil. I'd love your thoughts on any vigils you've witnessed that might help me with this message.This is my Lenten Journey!Stephen W. SmithPotter's Innwww.pottersinn.com
One Week from Today
One week from today is Maunday Thursday---that scandalous night when Jesus orchestrated a dinner party that ended in his arrest and eventual death the next day. Of all the days of Holy Week, this one day is the most awful and most beautiful.Here we find Jesus eager to share a meal where the food would merely transport them to a deeper meaning of his true identity and what he was about to do. He told his companions that he was eager to share the meal with them--but why eager?There is a holy eagerness that we find ourselves drawn into as we journey towards Easter. An eagerness for the music to switch from minor keys to major melodies! In some churches, you can't say "Hallelujah" until Easter Sunday---all through the Lenten Season---imagine no Hallelujahs. We find ourselves eager to say and to believe in the Hallelujah of Easter.One week from today, we'll be on the final countdown towards Lent ending and Easter's gift to us.Am I ready for this change?What do I need to give attention to in this season of waiting?One week from the world began to alter its course.This is my Lenten Journey.Stephen W. Smithwww.pottersinn.comPotter's Inn
My Sabbath and Lenten Thoughts
I'm thinking tonight about my friend, Lazarus...my need for this Sabbath day...my Lenten Journey. Let me explain.Finally, I've taken the time to have my sabbath--my time of ceasing. I thought it would never come. My personal rhythm has been sadly interrupted and neglected due to travel, work and choices that have not always been wise or life-giving. So, it's been a life-giving day which included fasting from food in order to re-align my life and get my rule of life back in order. All of the things that I have intentionally chosen to do this Sabbath have helped to refuel my soul and helped what felt dead inside to come back to life. For such is the journey of Lent and when combined with Sabbath makes me glad--yet again to be alive.It's remarkable this week that across much of the Orthodox world, this week is the Feast of Lazarus. Sadly the protestant church has neglected this important story and event in the life of Jesus. Lazarus was actually resurrected a week before the week of Passion that Jesus experienced. He foreshadowed the death and resurrection of Jesus and thus, Jesus knew full well that only in a few days that he, too would experience this scandalous agony and ultimate victory.The Lenten Journey for me this year has forced me to be more mindful--more awake--to what is happening both inside me and around me. I started my Lenten Journey by asking this important question which I blogged about: "What in me that seems dead--needs to come back to life? Now, several weeks into my Lenten Journey I know the answer.It came to me today on my Sabbath walk on the Santa Fe trail. It was a beautiful day here in Colorado. I wore short sleeves on the trail and walked through the wind and it came to me....that which felt most dead.... felt a rumble of a tombstone being slightly--oh, so every slightly back and some light came in.Lazarus... you heard that too--didn't you...the faint sound of the tomb being moved back....yet still asleep in death... you waited for His Voice to all you. He called. You moved. You came to life. So, I too, wait on His Voice.This is my Lenten Journey!Stephen W. SmithPotter's Innwww.pottersinn.com