The Disillusionment of Holy Week

Growing up, I never heard of “Holy Week.” Now, it’s all the rage. I am left to wonder why? As a child, I just anticipated the big day of Easter. I knew nothing about the week before. Now, as an adult, I know that I cannot fully grasp the day of Easter without being grasped by the week before Easter. Perhaps this is why I can fully realize this week as a Holy Week.Our world has become so secular; so filled with eggs and bunnies, robins and nests, chocolate and brightly colored baskets. We want all the color, comfort and cozy things of life without the pain and passion of these days of “Holy Week.” The week before Easter has nothing to do with bright color; nothing to do with bunnies; nothing to do with celebration.Holy Week is a journey of seven days and seven long nights to examine the pain and passion of Jesus. It’s about examining unmet expectations; shattered dreams and painful realizations of disillusionment. When one embraces one's own betrayal; dashed dreams and discarded illusions we've clung to in life, then we are ready for a deeper meaning of Easter.All the people around Jesus were dashed to the ground, along with their dreams and illusions, because of this week. Each one: Mary, Peter, Judas, Lazarus, Martha—all had their personal hopes go bankrupt. Each faced a disillusionment of their own seismic proportions. Each person lost something. Peter lost his loyalty. Thomas lost his faith. Judas lost his life. Mary lost her son. Each day of this week became a new ground zero of faith and failure; betrayal and conviction; courage and cowards. Holy week is holding on to what we have lost in life--or will lose soon. There are no exemptions for some kind of loss. None. Every person must walk through their own holy week of loss, disappointment and bewilderment. These are the very things that prepare us for a new opening in our lives--even the opening of a tomb.On Thursday in particular, it was a day of the bottom falling out of the sky. This happened to us, just today. We had hoped of spending our Easter days with a couple of our sons and their families. Our grandchildren were coming. We found a small house at the beach to hold us. They found a house to hold them. It was all set. Then, it came-- a phone call of Maundy Thursday proportions. There house fell through and a phone call brought the shocking news of a tightly held illusion going south. They were told that their house was double booked and they could not come.When the news came, I at first felt a lunge of panic---my hopes of finding sea shells by the sea shore with my grandkids were harpooned and I was left sinking and felt my dreams drowning in the high tide. We would be alone. We would be by ourselves. A shattered dream--again.But my illusions of Easter are pitiful in comparison to Mary—the mother of Jesus. The son she bore in her womb would soon be crucified and she would stand at the cross as she stood when that angel's message pierced her virgin soul. How Mary did it, is how we all must learn to do it--to do life--to endure and to overcome--for this is the real message of every Easter.I had a Mary moment on Maundy Thursday when that phone call came from my son. I mustered courage to say, “All is not lost. Something will open up.” And it did. Another house came open due to someone elses cancellation and alas, my grands and my sons and their wives will come. It will be Easter after all. There will be sea shelling and eggs and crab benedict to boot.You and I stand this week in a week that truly is holy. Each day as we move close to the grave opening up—which is far, far, far better than a house at the beach opening up, everything in our lives will change.May the disappointments, betrayal, shattered dreams, stings of the many deaths of our journies, converge to a Blessed Easter--a day of every tomb opening for us because of the opening of Jesus' tomb that very holy morn.But until then--until Easter, we must wait in our shattered dreams.

It Takes a Long Time to Grow a Salad

SaladIMG_0029It takes a long, long time to make a salad like this. Let me explain. In 1997, I woke up in the middle of the night and it was, as if I heard an audible Voice telling me to get a pad a paper and to start writing. It wasn’t really audible but it was as sure as a message telling me to do something that I have ever heard. So,  I got up. I picked the yellow pad on my desk and began to write these words, “It will be called the Potter’s Inn.” What followed was about an hour of note-taking where I wrote down the vision of Potter’s Inn ministry. That document became for us, as important as the Magna Charta or the Declaration of Independence. We have it to this day and still refer to it in times of discouragement.The vision was clear and precise. There would be an actual, physical place where those who were weary and tired would come for a respite. The journey of life and faith is hard and challenging and ever since the beginning of Jesus’ teachings, there were always “places” where people would come for renewal, guidance and rest.The English novelist J.R.R. Tolkien described such a place in  famous, Lord of the Rings where he gives words to such a place. It would be  “a perfect house, whether you like food or sleep or storytelling or singing, or just sitting and thinking best, or a pleasant mixture of them all. Merely to be there was a cure for weariness, fear and sadness.”  Gwen and I have long wanted our own Potter's Inn retreat to resemble Tolkien's description. We sat out to live this vision.  Today, 19 years  later, people from over 80 nations have come to Potter's Inn.  Some tired; some needy; some thirsty but all in search of a resting place for their own journey.This was the beginning of Potter’s Inn. Step by step for the past 19 years, Gwen and I put this vision and transformed it to what is now known as The Potter’s Inn at Aspen Ridge, a small, beautiful retreat nestled in the  Colorado Rockies. A part of the vision that we followed called for a garden where guests and staff would go to pick fresh greens, pull carrots from the good Earth and harvest tomatoes from vines that were ready to give up their goods. 19 years later; 19 years from when this first vision was “seen”—today Gwen and I picked the first fruits—the very first vegetables from the Potter’s Inn garden. We came home. We made a fresh salad composed of tender lettuce; fresh spinach, young orange carrots and a few other goodies. We sat down on our porch and it felt like church. I was overwhelmed with the beauty in my bowl. I was humbled knowing that it took 19 years to make this salad.Eugene Peterson describes a journey like this as a “long obedience in the same direction.” I can give witness to the fact that our long obedience in the same direction has been long; been one of obeying the Vision and the Vision giver and with a resolve to keep going forward. At times, we wanted to quit--for it has been so uphill.  When people come to our retreat, they are often amazed at the beauty but they do not know the long, hard winters both physically and emotionally, as well as financially, we have endured. They do not know the people who have come and gone--the sheer amount of work it has taken to put legs to this vision. Its been a lot of plowing so to speak. It's been a lot of hoeing. It's been a lot of work.In our day of instant, quick and immediate returns, we have perhaps forgotten the long obedience needed not only for a vision to be fulfilled but for a life to be lived well.Luke wrote a biography of the life and teachings of Jesus and Luke described the childhood days of Jesus by saying, “And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years and in divine and human favor (Luke 2:52). Jesus indeed had a long obedience. As his years increased so did his wisdom. As he lived well, he was graced with favor by both people and by God. It was a long obedience.  Through trials, testing and tribulation, we see the seeds Jesus himself planted. some have taken root in me and some in you. What he began, we now are feasting upon today. It took him sacrifice and for all who persevere today, sacrifice is not an option--it is a requirement.I am thinking as I write this, of my grandchildren. They have a long obedience in front of them. The journey is going to be uphill, hard and challenging. They will not be able to fast-track their formation. They will not be able to get all they will need at “fast-food” joints. It takes a long, long time to grow character. My grandchild, still in utero, will need to go through pain and birth and pain again many, many times to form their soul. They will have to be tested. Their morals; their choices; their beliefs will have to be tried by fire and tempered by the anvil of failure and forgiveness. Mistakes will happen. Failure will come. Contentment will be learned.   Through all of this and more, character will be forged. It will take a long, long time.It takes a long time to grow a marriage. Everyone knows the wedding is the simple part; the easy part and perhaps in the end, the least expensive part of growing a healthy marriage. Some lessons a couple will learn will be very expensive to learn. There will be unlearning and re-learning and transformation. The man will fail and ask for forgiveness. The woman will succumb to a force she may have never known; never admitted to nor ever wanted. But through time; in time and by time, the heart of the couple will grow deeper in love than the innocent love expressed on their wedding day. One day, one partner will lay his spouse down. It will be a giving up that is unimaginable to those of us who have never done this kind of laying down. Couples who hit bumps in the road through failure, unfaithfulness, and other collapses can, indeed find a new place of beginning yet again.On my 60th birthday, I will never forget the horrible fight that erupted between Gwen and me. I said to her in utter hurt and frustration, "Gwen, we've been married a very long time. You should have known this about me by now."  I was angry, disappointed and totally frustrated that I was having to explain what I thought was a basic like and dislike.  As we cool down, we learned how much we still have to learn about each other. We learned how deeply we still needed to really listen to each other. It was yet, another turning point for us in our maturing marriage.It takes a long time for a preacher to learn how to become a pastor and not just a teacher. Lessons are easy to spin off each week. But to earn the mantle of being a pastor is sacred honor that comes only in time where trust is nurtured and wisdom is cultivated. Getting the degree is the easy part. Earning the trust is far more challenging.It takes a long time for a entrepreneur to take a breather from the uphill climb of starting a business; of launching a new product. Nine of out ten new businesses fail. Nine out of ten new churches fail.  Nine out of ten partnerships fail. There is a lot of failing before we find our sweet spot and recognize what true success really is all about.It takes a long, long time for a boy to become a man; for a girl to become a woman; for a youth to grow their soul as well as their bodies. A soul tends to mature far slower than does a physique of an athlete.  The literal meaning of "education" means to pull out what is already inside. It is not the amassing of information that leads to greatness. It is all about transformation.  No one who knows everything recognizes that they need to be transformed. Only the broken beg for change and forgiveness--the proud never do and never will.The Bible gives this kind of notion a word called, “perseverance.” To preserve is to endure; to live with determination; to have the resolve to not quit; not give up but to stick to the task until it is complete. We learn through the writings of Peter--a man who failed many times as a leader--that perseverance is a true virtue. It is something to be rewarded and the reward really comes only to those who do not quit.  Our salad was our reward.Our salad tasted as if it were the bread and wine of communion. Just like we hear by the pastors and priests, the bread had to be broken and the wine had to be poured out—both symbols of loss and a seeming dead end. But as we chewed on this leafy, green eucharist for our dinner, we were transported to a place of profound thanksgiving. We bowed—we wanted to bow—because God did this. Through the 19 years, through the cancer; through the death of other dreams; through the walking by faith and not by sight, we saw, yet another piece of the vision fulfilled. I placed a fork in my salad and slowly lifted the spinach, lettuce, carrots drizzled with a homemade dressing, I was so, very, very happy—do deeply content.To be honest, I would have to tell you that not all of the Vision I received that night has happened. Some of it has and I still find myself wondering how in the world will what is not yet—will actually become. Will it happen in my life time? Am I only the one who planted and there remains another who will come water and yet another who will see the harvest. I am old enough now---through my long obedience to trust that my part is really but one, small part. As a wise man once said, “We are but the light bulb and our real job know is to just stay screwed in.” I like that and it makes sense.This sacred salad serves as a moment in time for me to see; to have and to enjoy a true respite on the journey. I can still taste this sacred salad. Can you? 

Pondering Means Not Hurrying

“But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.” Luke 2: 19I love this painting of Mary in contemplation during and after the Angel told her what was to happen.In a single verse, we are privy to what Mary actually did—after she was told that she was going to have a baby and that her baby would have a sacred role in God’s plan for humanity.We see in Mary’s response an action that is beautiful, humble and meaningful. She doesn’t rush around telling her closest friends what has happened. She doesn’t make a plan. She doesn’t fret, worry or let her nerves get the best of her.Mary’s heart reveals two needed postures in today’s frenzied world with 24/7 news in the ever-ready, always on world we live in today. Mary “treasures” the information she has been given. Then, Mary “ponders” it.To treasure and ponder both the seen and unseen things of our lives grounds us. By treasuring and pondering truth, we develop and grow a contemplative soul—a soul that ponders the invisible; a soul that responds rather than reacts and a soul that is anchored in a bigger picture of life than just the urgent, pressing and hurry.[tweetthis]There are five components needed to grow a contemplative soul.[/tweetthis] These five components have been the foundation for Gwen and me in our life in our sabbatical and post-sabbatical. photo-1440557958969-404dc361d86f

  1. We need silence. In today’s world of outer noise and inner confusion, silence helps us find our heart. It’s only 18” between our head and our heart but that journey is said to be one of the longest journeys in the world. Silence helps us de-clutter our minds; center our hearts and work through the mental congestion where it seems there is always a sort of committee meeting happening in our minds. Silence is necessary to grow a pondering heart. Without silence, we are told that it is virtually impossible to live a spiritual life.  Every day, seek to spend 10-20 minutes in silence. Start with 10 and grow your time to be more like 20. Most spiritual masters encourage us to spend 20 minutes in quiet---learning to treasure the Presence of God in our midst. There what’s unimportant in our lives grows smaller while what is really important becomes larger and Great.  By far, the very best book I've read on silence this past year is Martin Laird's "Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation."
  1. We need Solitude. Solitude is not just being alone. It is understanding the movement of beginning alone and entering the realization that you are not alone—really. You are in God’s presence. As Mary spent time “pondering” her aloneness was transformed in hearing again and again what the Angel actually told her. She relished in that experience. We can relish in ours. When we learn how to “do” solitude, we are entering a movement on which all spiritual mothers and fathers would agree: Without solitude, we cannot find our heart or True self. Solitude grounds us from the applause of people, the scaffolding of position and power and helps us leave the tyranny of the urgent to connect with the Ground of our Being.  I'd highly recommend, Henri Nouwan's The Way of the Heart to help you grasp the classic understanding of solitude.
  1. We pray. I’ve found that prayer is the great stumbling block for most people who follow Jesus. We either don’t pray at all or our prayers are more quick rescue pleas from some situation we are hoping to avoid. Prayer is conversation. It is dialogue not monologue. It is a two way, reciprocal conversation where we speak and God speaks. The Ancients said, “God’s first language is silence” and if all we hear is silence from God in our prayers then we posture ourselves to experience a sort of Grand Silence—a quiet that assuages our aches and fears. The silence brings us to Presence. As we “ponder” and “treasure” we articulate what is stirring. We give words to the wordless feelings we experience. We connect. We sit in our connection.  The book that rocked my world this past year on prayer is Cynthia Bourgeault's Inner Awakening.
  1. We become slow. There is an art of slowing that our culture is missing today where everything is fast and instant. The cult of speed causes us to move so fast that we speed by Heaven in our midst. No one who lives with “hurry” as a mantra has time to “ponder” and “treasure” and thus, we miss the richness of a feeding that can be ours. Walk slowly. Move slowly. Be attentive to your taste buds rather than scarfing down our food where there is barely time to taste or “taste and see that the Lord is good.” For more on slowing please read: The Jesus Life by Stephen W. Smith. There are chapters describing the way of the table and the rhythm of life that helps one foster a contemplative heart.
  1. We experience consolation. A person who nourishes a heart to “ponder” and “treasure” is a person who learns where the source of consolation really is and how consolation works in the soul of a person. Ignatius of Loyola said that if a person spent time every day to notice how they were consoled by the love and grace of God every single day for three months, they would never, ever be the same again. This is the practice of examining your day---and tracing back through the seen and unseen events of your day and noticing how God was seeking to console you—the way a mother would console a fretting child. Does he do it through beauty? Does God do it through a conversation or something you notice? And the opposite is also true: how did you experience the desolation of God’s seeming absence? Where did it seem that you were totally on your own with God no where in sight?  Jim Manny's book is a classic on this!

  As we enter these days of Christmas an in anticipation of the New Year--- Mary can become a teacher for us—a mentor we need to become less busy and deeper in our hearts!  

Going Unplugged

My heart was like this pole: wired, tethered and always "on."For me to have a true time of sabbatical—a true time of ceasing from my work, it was necessary and mandatory that I abstain from social media during my season of rest, renewal and restoration. There is no way, that what has happened in me could have happen or would have happened if I would have stayed wired, on and available. You might think you are the exception and that you could rest and renew your heart by staying on and wired but that, my friends is an illusion that you are hooked into actually believing. In order for me, and perhaps you as well, to live sanely and with a sense of vitality and not mere survival, we need to discipline ourselves to go wireless in order that we can live in a robust, abundant kind of way. I had to do this. I needed to do this. Perhaps you do also.In today’s world, fasting from technology and dis-engaging from forms of social media are vitally important and needed. When we are so wired and insist that WiFI be omnipresent, we are submitting ourselves to a false and dangerous world. Let me be clear, I am an advocate for social media. I use it every day. However in my sabbatical, I unplugged and went off line for months and I believe in doing so, I created the space where I could cultivate my inner life; do more inside work so my outside job would go better and cultivated a sense of serenity and well-being that being wired seemed to rob me of in my life. Here are five reasons why:I found this in a store in Sedona while on Sabbatical. Do you think it is true?1. Social media nourishes illusions about life that are not true. The images we post ; the snippets of updates we read; the “trending” of our interests builds and re-enforces a false view of life. No picture reveals the whole story, does it? Behind every smile, there is something else we do not see but is as real as all the grins we are staring at online. There is something unsaid behind every post and every instagram photo. Photos don’t reveal our child who is ADD; our son who we caught on a porn site our aging parents feeling unwanted or perhaps unloved. Pictures of men don’t reveal their inner struggles. Pictures of a ladies night out don’t clue us in on one of them having a secret addiction. Images, themselves are not the whole truth.2. When we are always present to social media, we are not present to ourselves, our hearts and God. By skimming scores of quotes, posts and images, our minds are simply taking in what it seems everyone else is doing and everyone else is saying on a particular subject. We don’t take time to reflect, to become mindful of our own thoughts, feelings and convictions. We simply react and “like” things. We grow numb to ourselves—perhaps even numb to the promptings of God. Paralyzed in doing anything else other than hold our phones and go into a catatonic trance—we withdraw to live in a wifi world- a world that is void of human touch; eye contact and presence. We grow impatient in conversation privately insisting and demanding that someone we’re trying to talk to get to the point so we can move on to something else. We do not linger with deeper implications of thoughts and are void of the ability to reflect—that one important aspect in humanity that distinguishes us from my dog and the birds that feed at my feeder. To reflect is what makes us more god-like than perhaps any other quality or characteristic in life.3. Many forms of social media enable us live on the surface rather than moving deeper in our hearts. Social media has a way of enabling us to live at the edge of subjects by reading quotes or hearing a few sentences about a subject. We don’t have the time, we think and we don’t take the time, to reflect more about something. We don’t look at both sides of the argument because our hurriedness causes us to skim and not to process.4. Addiction to social media is as real as an addiction to porn or alcohol. It is as dangerous as a meth addiction. By taking regular times of fasting from social media, we can break and curb what we feel is our “need” of it. Turning your phone off during meal times; turning all forms of beeping, buzzing and vibrating off for two hours a day or going dark or off by 8pm at night creates the needed space for conversation and reflection. Many forms of social media are actually pain remedies. We do not want to be alone or feel alone so we “engage” with an illusionary world that enables us to escape from a world we are navigating. Try fasting from all technology for your Sabbath—a true day of ceasing, which is the literal meaning of to Sabbath—is to cease.5. Social media helps devalues human relationships. Sure, it’s great to get the birthday greetings and to quickly read the news of something you really do need and want to know. But, when we lean heavily into social media by picking up our iphone every 72 seconds to see if something new is posted—while we are having lunch, coffee or a meeting with another human being, we are saying: “My social media life is MORE important than you are.” It’s rude, insensitive and uncaring to use social media in a meeting, during a conversation or sharing a meal. I’ve gotten to the point of asking the person I’m meeting with if they would mind to turn off their phone so we can be focused, present and truly "with" each other in our time together. Social media fosters a culture of living in a true attention deficit world. Can you create a “No Wire Room” in your home or workspace where phones are not allowed?To do this is part of the answer. It is part of fostering resilience. Here’s what helped me to unplug, go dark and get unwired. I asked one of my teammates to read all my emails and to decide what I really needed to know during my sabbatical. Yes, I did this. Do this for your vacation so you can really be “off” and not always checking. The checking is what gets us into trouble. What you think will be a 5 minute email results in getting pulled into so many issues, stories and crises. I put an “auto-responder” on my email telling anyone who needed me that I was off and my teammate would decide how to respond. I told my team that I was not to be called, emailed or texted by them during sabbatical; that if I was needed in case of death or the retreat center had burned down, that only one person was to get me the news. This helped to establish a boundary for them and a boundary for me. It gave me permission to go off the grid and in my going off the grid, I was able to find myself and come back with a greater sense of life inside me than I really knew was possible. We decided to not interact with our staff, Board, donors or anyone related to our work to really help me have the much needed space. It was hard. All have been gracious and kind and this one thing---protective of us during this time. They surely knew how much we needed it. Their silence was, in the end, love to us.Did I look at Facebook some? Sure. Going cold turkey was hard and it is in any form of withdrawal. It was hard for me to give up double stuff Oreos but when I chose to give up those edible demons, something better happened. My desires changed. I wanted to go off of social media; not just that I needed to go off social media and that is precisely the place where transformation happens—not in obeying the rules but by changing what you really want. When our grandson died, I wanted the world to know. When I read something that felt life altering, I did not want to withhold it. So I broke my own rules and posted a few things. But I did not look for responses of how many people liked it. (Well, I tried not to look.)

Shedding Old Skin

A snake shedding its skin has been a rich metaphor for me to work with during sabbatical.My problem with our sabbatical being over is that I’m not ready for it to be over. Things have not jelled. I need more time to process some things. I’ve not read all I want to read. I’ve not had the time (believe it or not) to think about some things and get them in concrete. I wish we would have taken longer. Perhaps I needed two more months for things to jell in my soul.John Climacus wrote in the 7th century, “A snake can shed its old skin only if it crawls into a tight hole.” Sabbatical has given me a tight hole in which I've been able to shed some things, find some things and experience some things. It's been rich and rewarding. But here's the deal: I still have old skin on me and in me. Despite my best efforts and intents, I want to come out of this sabbatical time: clean, new and different.With just a few days remaining on Sabbatical, I now know I’m going to walk with a limp. I’m going to still struggle. I’m going to disappoint many of you and my family cause one would think: You should be different given this time!Illusions of being different are born in the waters of baptism. We long to be more than we are. We want to become different than how we see ourselves. We think it's a whole new world when we start out on the spiritual journey. But on the journey we find we carry with us a lot of stuff in our suitcases that never seems to get unpacked and cleaned out. Call it snake skin, graveclothes, habits or addictions--there are some things that just seem like we struggle with--perhaps till we die. Sabbatical has been a time of stripping down my own suitcase and throwing off and away that which simply does not work anymore. Carrying baggage can be so tiring. I’ve found not much dies in those waters of baptism. Demons breathe underwater despite our best efforts to get rid of them. That’s how I feel about re-entry. Not all my demons have died--despite my best efforts to drown them.I’m 60 years old for crying out loud. I thought I’d be done with some stuff by now. Will I still wrestle with the demons of drivenness; performance and pleasing others? Would I not really be better off by doing this…or doing that?One of my grandchildren is almost ready to be potty trained. Being potty trained is all the talk now when we Skype. I can understand my grandson's dilemma. Something has just got to give and change. I’m “almost” ready for a new phase of life myself but somehow when I look down, I feel all messy. It’s not clean. I need someone to help me.Before we even started our sabbatical, we scheduled a re-entry retreat. It begins tonight. So, I'll be able to have some great conversations with a sage like saint whom I've grown to trust. This person, in so many ways is my pastor, my soul friend, my companion but just a head of me a bit--or a lot--depending on what day it is.So, this week, we are leaning into the wisdom of my spiritual director (someone older, wiser and more potty trained than I am). We begin this final act of transition. I want to explore what is for me in my sabbatical and what is for our team. What is for my family. What needs to remain private. Who knows, maybe after my third day with my spiritual director I will have shed my old skin once and for all.