P.S. – Some Musings about Father, Son and Holy Spirit

(A few people have asked about the relevance of Jesus or the Spirit to our relationship with God. I knew I couldn’t address this without being longer and more theoretical than I have tried to be in these posts. So here I offer some thoughts as a P.S. If you think it’s heretical or simply too long or interrupted by too many parentheses, you should have unsubscribed after I told you it was the last post. You’ve been warned…)

Post-biblical formulations of the Trinity have always left me distinctly cold. Most annoying for me are when these formulations have been used over and over again as the foundation for an emphasis on community and relationships. It’s annoying because these are often thinkers I otherwise admire and because they are trying to describe a theological foundation for a perspective that means a lot to me. But it doesn’t work for me. I don’t see any sense in the basis for community being in the Trinity (I do get Jesus’ relationship with God serving as an example), and I so much wish a few others out there would admit it doesn’t make sense to them either because I don’t think I could be the only one. When I read the silly love-fest between the Trinitarian characters in The Shack, my annoyance reaches epic proportions (but I like many other parts of the book).

But the point of this post is not to rant about my frustration on this, but to muse more positively on how I understand Father, Son and Holy Spirit because in spite of my just-stated disinterest in traditional Trinitarian doctrine, this is all very important to me. So here’s an attempt to describe what the Father, Son and Holy Spirit mean to me and what each has to do with my relationship with God.

When I think of the Father, I think of the essence, meaning and being of God. I think of the infinity of God present in everything, yet somehow personal enough to give particular attention (love) to individuals. I think the parental metaphor is important because it helps us understand some sense of likeness (we’re made in God’s image) and also some sense of distinction (we are children not parents – there is a “generational” boundary between us).  Less politically correct, I also think that it is important that the primary metaphor is that of Fatherhood with a secondary metaphor of God being also maternal. Normally, I’m for inclusive language, but I believe there is a strong psychological argument for why God as Father works better for us (and therefore why God chose to reveal himself to us more often through a paternal metaphor, perhaps?). Ancient cultures were quite capable of considering a female god – in spite of obvious patriarchal tendencies – but I believe the psychological effect of relating to a female god is developmentally regressive (appeals too much to our unconscious desires to be mothered like infants) and tends to be sexualised in religious practices and imagery. Ideally it might be preferable to consider the gender-neutral term “Parent,” but to make something gender-neutral is to make it artificial and un-personal. Metaphors have power because they relate to experience and we have no experience of a gender-neutral parent.

So I relate to Father God as Ideal and yet Real – comprehensible and incomprehensible at the same time. I believe there is much wisdom and much I agree with in Peter Rollins’ book How (Not) to Speak of God. Ultimately, it is always God, the Father I address (and worship and pray to) and mean when I speak of God.

Philosophical descriptions of the divinity of Jesus are difficult for me. I understand that somehow Jesus was/is the unique incarnation of God – that somehow in his very real and fleshly life on Earth we see God revealed in a fullness not known otherwise. I think it can only trip us up to try to think of the human person Jesus hanging around with God at the creation of the world (which is where my brain tries to go when I hear others talk and I end frustrated). When I read biblical passages about the pre-existent Christ, this mental trick does not seem to me to be their intent. I think it’s a territory in which we start getting oddly literal about biblical metaphorical language (do you really think there’s an actual chair/throne in which Jesus is sitting around next to Full-bearded Father for ever and ever??).

But Jesus gives us a face for God. Jesus enables us make the incomprehensible a little more comprehensible. We really see that God’s love is about serving and being vulnerable not about cold domination and judgement. We really see that God wants to act in our lives, enabling real-life forgiveness and healing and deliverance from evil powers. In the metaphor I used in an earlier post about “relating to Someone who isn’t there,” Jesus is the one who gives us a real tangible memory to base the relationship on. In Jesus, God is not abstract; inner psychological or societal distortions about God are corrected. It was and is a real battle: strong powers want to resist these corrections of who God is, and so we’d rather kill God than see God for who God really is. Seeing God, in Jesus, as the One who dies on the cross and is raised to new life reveals the deep truth about life and humanity – we will only be saved, be truly human, when we, like God/Jesus, vulnerably die (rather than kill) and see new resurrection life in response.

In the present, Jesus is still crucial to my relationship with God because it is through remembering and imagining Jesus that I understand and relate to God’s presence and love in my life now. I believe that imagination is at the heart of what makes us spiritual beings. Imagination is the primary playing field on which things that are spiritually true break through into the material world. Without Jesus, my imagination has nothing to hang onto when trying to connect with the presence of God. The Spirit of Jesus, which I will talk about soon, brings this imaginative connection to life ensuring that it is more than just inner wish fulfillment, that it is more than just memory. It becomes a real spiritual relationship and not me playing fantasy games with myself. (And I trust this because I have seen countless people healed and transformed into healing agents of others through this kind of spiritual relationship – schizophrenic, delusional fantasies tend not to do this.)

Finally, when I think of the Holy Spirit I think of the manifest (demonstrated, enacted) presence of God in and among people. Again, I simply do not know what to make of the insistence that the Spirit is a distinct third person. My spirit is not a person that I relate to. The Spirit is the breath of God that gives life, the Advocate that gives us inner encouragement, peace and guidance. The Spirit is the Illuminator of the Word so that mere words don’t become chains hardened around a living God’s communication with us. This illumination happens best as a dance between the inner voice and the discernment of a community.

God’s Spirit in us enables us to do the impossible. God’s Spirit is the same Spirit we saw incarnated in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, and so that same Spirit enables us to forgive, heal, deliver, die and live again (in all kinds of ways literal and figurative). Just as Jesus came in vulnerability and was often rejected, we can easily reject or quench the Spirit, choosing to be led instead by our fears, laziness, and perceived entitlements (had to stick that word in after last Sunday’s sermon). So we continually need to invite, permit and submit to the Spirit in order to be transformed. The reality of this Spirit is often experienced and often doubted – frequently both by the same people.

So, I will leave those who care to argue about doctrinal formulations, and if you insist that the love among the Trinity is the reason that community and relationship are central, you have my blessing if not my understanding. But for me, I love and relate to Father, Son and Holy Spirit as the means by which I experience and live with God. I hope my sharing these musings offers more encouragement than confusion to others trying to do the same.

Ask a Dangerous Question

According to Myers-Briggs personality tests, I’m a strong “N.” One of the traits of us Ns is to love starting things and then let them fade away rather than pay proper attention to completing them. So I’ve been having trouble knowing how to end this well.

I’ve decided I’ll wrap this up with an idea that I’ve been playing with along the way, and that is to encourage you to help make something new happen by asking a dangerous question  – the kind of question that lets the horses out of the barn. One of the reasons that I’ve hesitated with this idea until now is that I’m not entirely sure that I’ll come up with enough examples or description of what I mean so that you’ll get a glimpse of the kind of question that might be just right for you. And I think each of us would benefit from asking very different kinds of questions to different people.

So here are some ideas that come to mind:

Ask a Christian friend: “What would church look like if we made it up from scratch?” or the even more radical “If I wanted to get toegther with other Christians in a way that enabled us to encourage each other to live in the best way possible, what might that look like?”

Ask a spouse: “Are we actually living the kind of life that we want to be living – the kind of life we really believe God would want us to be living? What major thing is missing or would we like to do way more of”

Ask an acquaintance or friend who is not a Christian: “What do you see when you look at Christians (including me)? What do you think Christians should do differently?”

Ask an older person: “What do you wish you would have thought more about or done differently when you were my age?”

Ask God: “Please show me clearly any ways that you would like me to live differently. Help me be the kind of person who lives a good and true life.”

Ask a friend: “How could we get together more often in a way that was more intentional? Is there something we do together as a weekly kind of thing”

No, I’m not great at asking these kinds of questions, but there have been times when I’ve asked something like one of these or been asked. And big things have happened as a result. One of them was when my brother and I realised we had similar dreams and one of us (I don’t remember who) said, “So why don’t we do it.” We did and I ended up in New Brunswick as a result.

All of Me

OK – so you don’t like questions (but thanks, Jeremy, for the unexpected direction of your answers). In that case, I’ll make up some of the answers that seem true for many Christians (in spite of the pronouns I’m not really talking about myself personally here).

Parts of me I include when I think of my relationship with God:

• - my intentional worshipping self (i.e. most of us would give our conscious primary allegiance to God when we think about it)
• - my major moral decision-making self (i.e. most of us would think of what God would have us do when considering [not] cheating on our taxes, stealing from the neighbours, or lying to our spouse)
• - my overall flavour for my family culture self (i.e. most of us would want our kids to grow up with Christian values)

Parts of me I often don’t include when I think of my relationship with God:

• - my eating & self-care self (i.e. do we think of how God would encourage us to eat and otherwise take care of our bodies?)
• - my consumer and financial self (i.e.  the whole 100% part not just the 10% part – do we think of how [and how much] God would want us to buy stuff or how or whether we invest or save?)
• - my work self (i.e. do we think of what we do at work as part of our service to God?)
• - my entertainment self (i.e. do we converse with God about the methods and content of how we amuse ourselves?)
• - my sexual self (i.e. do we think of the life-giving implications for what God intends with the gift of our sexuality?)

I think one of the reasons that we tend (by default) to exclude many of these latter parts is that we have a lingering belief that it would be really annoying to think of what God wants in all of these areas. We may think of a lot of “thou shalt not’s” or as if it were the spiritual equivalent of a lot of annoying bureaucratic paperwork. How often do we think that including these parts of ourselves in our more intentional spiritual lives would actually encourage and empower us to more joyful and life-giving choices? Is that not the point (Jesus: “I came that you may have life, and have it abundantly.”)?

I think it is usually both very exciting and frustrating to try to make all of life relevant to our relationships with God. Exciting because it gives all of life meaning and possibility; frustrating because idealism creeps in when we struggle with making this practical, especially when we try it alone.

Just as an example of what this means to me: I believe that one of the most spiritual choices that I make (by which I don’t necessarily mean the most moral but where I struggle very directly with God about what  I am called to do here) is not to invest in mutual funds. I think corporate greed, violence and domination make up probably the single biggest spiritual issue of our day – corporations are the Rome, Babylon and Egypt of modern prophetic faith. This isn’t to say that any corporate investing is wrong – if I had the time and energy I’d be tempted to try to buy shares in a company and then use the shareholder voice to bring change. And not that I’m doing much better by leaving my money in a bank account (where it still probably helps corporations use my money for evil). So I am somewhat frustrated at my parked RRSP funds, but my choice to wait feels right and I believe that one day soon God will show me a life-giving use for these resources.

Here’s my suggestion for you. If there is one of the areas listed under “parts of me I often don’t include,” then experiment with more intentionally bringing some of that area into discussion with God. Expect something positive to come from it (maybe with just a bit of frustration too).

Relating with My Whole Self

What parts of me do I include when I think of my relationship with God?

What parts of me do I exclude when I think of my relationship with God?

That’s it this time – just two questions. If you’re willing toss your answers out there (hit the comments link to the left).

Commitment

Growing up, I had a lot of opportunities (probably too many) to commit and re-commit my life to God. Looking back, there were a lot of things associated with these invitations that I don’t (and didn’t)  like. A classic example was the “just slip your hand up when no one is looking” and then later ask those who privately slipped their hand up to walk up now in front of everyone. Somewhat reluctantly, I forgive such manipulators and deceivers, though I don’t understand why churches let preachers get away with that kind of stuff.

One reason that I forgive them (though, of course, I should forgive without justification) is that I was stubborn enough, even as a kid, to resist most of the emotional garbage around those invitations and simply re-commit my life to God. My inner dialog was often along the line of “God, I’m not going to do what this guy is asking for but you know my life is yours, right?” Getting baptized was a more important and appopriate way of making this public than any altar call. But being used to the idea of actually making such inner (or outer) commitments to God was, I think, important for me.

Recently, I articulated this commitment in a way that tries to clarify what I really believe God is now calling me to. It is written in “we” form because even though it is personal and grows out of my understanding, it is a commitment I want to make together with others and invite others to either enter into or dialog with. It is very loosely called a “rule” in the sense of an old monastic shared commitment of a life together. The language and flavour of it will certainly not be for everyone, which, of course, is fine.

This is not a statement of faith (though it may share some similarities). I don’t believe in statements of faith. Statements of faith are often tools of those in power that are used to draw lines in the sand, guarding hardened doctrine and stopping conversation rather than encouraging it. The attempt of this “rule” is to express and invite others to consider a personal commitment to action in a certain direction. I assume this collection of commitments could only be improved with dialog and disagreement.

Finally, you will note that it is written in various levels that get more specfic. I believe there is one level of specificity still missing. It is the level of immediate and unique application for any specific moment. I think a great “use” of this rule would be to consider what those missing specific applications might be. So I invite you to read this and consider your own commitment. Change it freely for yourself. Suggest that I change mine if you think I should. And then consider what specific actions this might actually lead to in your life.

Rule of St Croix

If anyone has any trouble opening this, please let me know either by commenting or emailing me.

Leaping/Falling/Resting

After my last post, Jeremy rightly asked the question of how we “try God out”? This is an attempt at suggesting some possibilities. (And if you want to skip everything else, don’t skip the poem at the end.)

There is an old controversy between those who think one can rationally come to the point where the Christian understanding of God simply makes the most sense versus those who think it comes down to needing to make a “leap of faith” (a la Kierkegaard). I place myself pretty firmly among the latter group. Given lots of room for paradox and contradiction (which I rationally believe in), I think one can come to an understanding of Christian faith which is quite rational. But, psychologically speaking, I don’t particularly trust my (or others) rationality in any ultimate sense, and I don’t think most of us are particularly rational beings. We normally rationalize decisions that we make for emotional reasons.

So my response to the question is a suggestion of ways to consider making “the leap.” I would break this leap into two parts which I have previously thought of as the “trust and obey” combo like the old hymn suggests. Lately, I think these are actually two different parts of trust. The first is the kind of trust where you walk “out on a limb” (where the preacher says that trust is spelled R-I-S-K); the second is the trust of a “trust fall” where you fall over backward believing someone there will break your fall.

In other words, we actively try God out – in the first sense – by doing the things that we believe we are being called to do. A lot of times these actions may seem very sensible and appeal to our natural understandings; in these cases, there is not a lot of risk, but there is still a mild sense of trying God out because if we are faithful in these long term life choice kind of ways, most of us would feel that we see the very real fruit of those choices. When we feel like we are being invited to live out more radical and risky choices that are not always immediately sensible and don’t appeal to our natural (or selfish) understandings, then there is a more immediate sense of needing to try God out.

For me, one of the times that this was most true was when we had a signed deal on a house we loved a lot. We had a complete legal right to the sale but it seemed the realtor had made someone else feel they had a verbal claim on it. In spite of the fact that it deeply broke our hearts to give it up, we felt a clear sense from God that we shouldn’t take it. What made it worse was that we were desperate to move into town and there were no other places we liked at all. “Trying God out” in this case seemed like the only option and God felt very real to us through the process. Even before things worked out quite well for us in the end, we felt like God showed himself to us in this by confirming inside each of us that it was “good” to do this and that we would have missed that “good” if God hadn’t invited and enabled us to make that choice. Reading the Gospels, trying to apply them, and chatting with friends about what this really might look like should provide plenty of opportunities for us to try God out in this practical, sometimes ordinary-sometimes risky kind of way.

The other kind of trust can also be small or huge – mild or intense. This one seems a little more mystical and hard to put into words. Like the “trust fall” image, it’s like getting glimpses of God on occasion with an invitation to simply rest, to let oneself fall into God, into the deep “ok-ness” of the God-created universe (like Julian of Norwich’s “all will be well, and all will be well, and every kind of thing will be well”). I see this as a relatively continual spiritual saying yes to God as a choice of trust. Recently a poem on Kate Gorrie’s blog (brought by Rachael to the Celtic Service) said this incredibly well. Just hearing this poem (and responding with an inner, spiritual, relaxing into God) made me feel newly “put right.” I’ll close with it:

Of Course It Hurts
Karin Boye, trans. from the Swedish by Jenny Nunn

Of course it hurts when buds burst.
Otherwise why would spring hesitate?
Why would all our fervent longing
be bound in the frozen bitter haze?
The bud was the casing all winter.
What is this new thing, which consumes and bursts?
Of course it hurts when buds burst,
pain for that which grows
and for that which envelops.

Of course it is hard when drops fall.
Trembling with fear they hang heavy,
clammer on the branch, swell and slide -
the weight pulls them down, how they cling.
Hard to be uncertain, afraid and divided,
hard to feel the deep pulling and calling,
yet sit there and just quiver -
hard to want to stay
and to want to fall.

Then, at the point of agony and when all is beyond help,
the tree’s buds burst as if in jubilation,
then, when fear no longer exists,
the branch’s drops tumble in a shimmer,
forgetting that they were afraid of the new,
forgetting that they were fearful of the journey -
feeling for a second their greatest security,
resting in the trust
that creates the world.

The Struggle – Getting Unstuck

Jacob wrestles with an angel

In counselling, one axiom that generally holds true is that if you’ve been stuck for quite a while, your usual way of coping with the original problem is probably a part of what is keeping you stuck.

I think the same is often true when we get stuck in our relationship with God. Certain kinds of doubts or fears or questions or frustrations with God (or the world) come up. Then our usual way of coping with those doubts, questions or frustrations keep us from overcoming them – and we stay stuck. Consider what we often do in response: 1) get afraid and bury the thought, 2) get overwhelmed and give up, 3) get angry and passive-aggressively withdraw, 4) assume we must be wrong and don’t do the work to figure out how or whether  we are partly right, etc.  I suspect all of these frequent kinds of responses do a pretty good job of shutting down our relationship with God.

So let me suggest some common kinds of doubts/questions/frustrations and some alternative ways of struggling through those that might be more life-giving.

Common doubts/fears/questions/frustrations:

• the idea of God is silly, old-fashioned, and makes no sense in the modern world
• if I make real-life decisions because I trust in a God who may not exist I will get screwed
• what if I become a boring do-gooder or doormat and miss out on all of the fun I could have had in life looking out for myself (like other people have and do)?
• do I only think I should believe in God because I grew up in a Christian home?
• why the heck should I think the Bible is somehow reliable? (It’s kind of weird sometimes after all.)
• the world is so full of crap, it doesn’t make any sense that there is a real, loving God
• I am so ticked at what has happened to me (or has not happened) or feel so ripped off at the “hand I was dealt” in life that  I can’t possibly trust God

I’m sure we could add many more if we shared these doubts out loud, which we usually don’t.

You might have noticed that in the ineffective coping styles I mentioned above, they all pretty much lead to avoiding the actual doubt. However, we beat phobias by facing them not avoiding them. If we’re afraid of dogs, every time we avoid one we teach or confirm for our inner being that a) dogs actually are very scary and b) I remain safe if I keep avoiding them. Same thing with God – every time we avoid our doubts/fears etc I confirm in my inner being: a) there is probably some real scary truth behind what I’m not facing, b) I will only remain spiritually safe if I desperately avoid this doubt/fear.

So here are some alternatives to help wrestle:

• honest, intellectual inquiry (but remember that all sources are biased and flawed – if you read authors like Dawkins and Hitchens, make sure you also read some C. S. Lewis, Francis Collins, Peter Rollins and/or John Polkinghorne.)
• ask some people whose lives show good fruit how they have dealt with those fears/doubts
• lament – articulate your doubts/fears/questions/frustrations and throw them at God
• read some lament psalms and realise that this is meant to be a normal process. Click here for some samples of paraphrased psalms – LAMENT PARAPHRASES
• remember that there may be a risk in trusting, but there is also a risk in not trusting (and I don’t mean hell) – try God out and see how it works

Relating to Someone Who Is Not There

I think the rhythm of these posts is likely to be that of alternating between somewhat practical posts (with suggestions/challenges) and somewhat reflective posts addressing or raising questions that you might have about relating to God.

On the latter note, one of the more distinct challenges many of us face has to do with wondering exactly who it is that we’re relating to and how do we do this relating with Someone who is not physically present (in any usual sense). That’s what I want to explore today.

So, how do I relate to God, in theory the most important relationship in my life, when God is not present with me in the physical sense that I am used to people being with me? I wonder if it would work to explore an extended metaphor: how it would compare to a man whose wife was off in a faraway place on some kind of long term mission that took her away from the internet and phone lines. In this situation, the man would still experience himself to be in a very real relationship in spite of his wife’s absence. He would think of himself as being her husband, living often in that awareness. His actions would be affected by this. He would look after the plants that she left in the house. He might write her letters even if he were unsure when she would see them. He would read old, saved letters from when they were dating. If he listened to “their song” he might paradoxically sense her special nearness and more poignantly yearn for her.

This would not only be a private individual relationship, but it would have social reality. He would public identify himself as her husband, acting like a married man, wearing a ring. He would choose to be faithful to her and discuss his wife with those who knew her. He would imagine how she would feel about different things happening in his life, perhaps even asking his internalized memory of her what she thinks he should do. Though there may be nights when her absence was painful, most nights he could rest in the confidence of their relationship, not feeling alone in the world – knowing there was someone he was connected to who knew him, delighted in him and was thinking about him.

All these experiences of relationship would be enhanced whenever he heard word of her. A friend comes back from travels to the same country and shared about her work and her thoughts about her husband, perhaps passing on a letter. On birthdays and anniversaries, he would celebrate her and proclaim his love for her.

It’s possible that doubts could threaten this relationship. Some might suggest that she would have returned by now if she really did love him. Some might speculate that she had died. But the degree to which these doubts affected him would be based on the depth of his trust not on the reality of the relationship itself.

Finally, all of these points would describe the fairly simple, straightforward way in which the relationship continued. There might also be the occasional, unexplainable, moments of deeply sensing her presence. Or of a rare gift arriving in the mail on the exact day that encouragement was so badly needed.

Sometimes, I think, some of us are afraid that as Christians we’re living out some strange pretence or group delusion when we talk about being in relationship with God. I wonder if that is just a result of drawing too firm of a line between a relationship with someone physically present and someone who is not (again – in the usual sense of the word). Experientially and, I would suggest, in reality, we are quite capable of relationship with some who is “not there.” What is required is trust. Maybe that is the essence of what makes us spiritual beings.

A Solitary Act of Worship

First: a tentative definition of worship (with apologies to Dan Wilt whose writings on this I should read more and remember better)

- an act of love or longing in which we seek to align ourselves with the living truth of God (whether through struggle or submission) and in so doing give ourselves in loyalty to God

[If you get bored at the idea of reading a somewhat long post – skip to the challenge at the bottom.]

Now, here’s what I suspect: Most of us are very individualistic in some ways (like not appreciating others challenging our actions) and quite communal in other ways (like being reliant on others before we actually do something about worshipping God). Obviously both of these aspects of ourselves have strengths and weaknesses.

What I notice in my own life is that, according to the above definition, I worship God fairly well in the following ways:

• read books (sometimes even the Bible) that encourage thoughtful interaction with God’s truth
• pray well in a general “pray continuously” attempt to thoughtfully live my life in God’s presence
• try to live my life relatively obediently to what I think God is calling me to

What I notice that I don’t do much unless with others (family, church, friends, clients) are these kinds of things:

• pray articulately (with specific words) or out loud
• sing
• give thanks
• worship with my body (dance, raise my hands) – OK, I don’t do these with people either, but I just thought I’d mention it. I do make the sign of the cross in Celtic Service which I truly believe is the same kind of thing (and makes me much less self-conscious)

I’m sure I could keep going, but do you see a pattern? On my own, any acts of worship tend to be very general and abstract. It’s only when I’m with others that I get drawn out of my abstract life with God into something concrete and specific. I’m going to guess that there is some potential benefit from learning to be more concrete and specific in my worship of God even when I’m alone, and I’m going to guess that I’m not alone in this.

So here is my challenge to you: At least once this week, and hopefully a few times over these next weeks, choose to do a solitary act of worship – something concrete and specific that fits the definition at the start of this post. I’ll list some possible ideas:

1. Get off by yourself and say a short prayer (or read a liturgy) to God out loud. Better yet, do something with your body to posture yourself in a way that matches your words.
2. Go for a walk as an intentional act of worship. Think specifically of relating to the Creator as you walk, noticing his handiwork.
3. Put on a CD (sorry, I’m old, an ipod will do) and play something that you feel can be an intentional act of worship (could be anything – classical or thoughtful folk music is my favourite for this). Through at least one song, enter the music as an act of worship.
4. Write out a prayer – maybe letting God know what you’d like over these next few weeks of “getting intentional.” Don’t call this journaling if it means imagining a life of constantly doing this and only writing what is profound and hence getting paralysed.
5. Do a very specific act of service (that you weren’t already planning to do) as an intentional act of worship.
6. Read a gospel story in which Jesus interacts with someone (opening a New Testament and sticking your finger on a verse is allowed but don’t assume that makes it God’s choice). Read it a second or third time until you have the story basically memorized. Then, as tangibly as you can, imagine you were the person interacting with Jesus.
7. Remember in the definition of worship the part about struggling? Put something you struggle with or have doubts about into words. Wrestle it out instead of hiding from your doubts or questions.
8. Come up with your own idea and share it by posting a comment.

I’d love to hear lots of people describe how that goes, good or bad, in the comment section.  I might add some other ideas over the next days so check back here if you don’t like any of the ideas so far.

Apologies if you found this far too long – most of the time I’ll either be shorter or I’ll give a short version on the top and longer bits for those with time to read it through. Finally – read the comments and stories of others and make this a more communal exercise.

Where am I at?

A life-giving. world-changing relationship with God and others is possible. If that is not true, I’ve got nothing. If it is true, I need to periodically ask myself where I am at. Are there things that I could be doing right now that could make a deep difference – in my life, my family, my community?

Somehow a lot of us – most of us probably – seem to be programmed to feel a little guilty as soon as we ask this question, as if someone were demanding of us an account of why we’re not in a better spot. As if we all should be doing better. Well, of course, we all could be doing better, but the good news about being in a relationship with a loving, gracious and forgiving God is that guilt isn’t the point. Guilt, once it gets repetitive, is a lousy motivator, just as likely to make us give up as to do something different. What is needed at a moment of taking stock is not guilt, but a sense of opportunity. Can this moment be a turning point – a transforming moment? Can I take up the reins of my relationship with God (the implied horse in this metaphor is our relationship with God, not God himself) and see what is possible?

So – any guilt or other unnecessary negativity aside – where are things at between you and God? Are you feeling connected? Full of doubts? On fire, but frustrated about which direction to point the flame?

Consider these questions at the beginning of this season of “getting intentional”:

- What would I like to take more seriously (or more playfully) in my relationship with God?

- What do I really wish for from/with God?

- Consider the things that frustrate or discourage you about our community, our town, our culture, our world – how could your personal response be a meaningful part of changing this?

Over the next four weeks, I’ll be posting thoughts, suggestions, challenges and encouragement to stimulate some new thinking and new action. Please join in. Subscribe by clicking the link at the bottom left. If you’re not careful you might wake up one morning and find that things look a lot different.

Feel free to share some of your thoughts in answer to one or more of these questions by adding a comment to this post (or feel free not to)? I’d love to see this site host some real dialogue and your interaction will quite likely affect the way this month-long journey will go. Just for fun, try answering the anonymous poll below, adding an option if none of them fit.