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7 Steps To A Meaningful Lent

7 Steps To A Meaningful Lent

The Liturgical Season of Lent starts this Wednesday, February 6 with “Ash Wednesday.”  This is one of CCC’s most celebrated Liturgical Seasons (if you can have such a thing.)

Here are a few suggestions on how we might have a more meaningful Lenten experience.

Step 1 - Find Out What Lent Means To You.
One of the great things about Lent is its ambiguity.  It has a rich and diverse history and is celebrated in a variety of different ways by a variety of different Christian traditions.  Covenant Community often focuses on the "inward" journey during this time, but there are a variety of different lenses through which to interpret and embody it.  So, find out more about this Liturgical Season and decide how you want to frame it for yourself.  Do a "Goggle" search and see what you can find out! 

Step 2 - Make a Commitment To Something Specific and Practical
Celebrating a Liturgical season holds to the old saying, "You get out of it, what you put into it." Because Lent lasts for forty days (not including Sunday's) it is a conducive season for taking on something new or giving something up or focusing on something specific. So, it’s a great time to think about spiritual practices.  It has a natural starting time, Ash Wednesday, and an ending time, Easter.  Perfect for developing a good habit or breaking yourself of a bad one.   This quote might helpful as you think about what to "do."

"Within the liturgical framework of the life of the congregation, corporate and individual observances of Lent have three elements; fasting or some other form of renunciation; prayer; and acts of Compassion.  "Prayer, Fasting ad Compassion - these three are one, and they give each other life.  For fasting is the soul of prayer and compassion is the life of fasting.  Let no one tear them apart, for they cannot be separated." (St Peter Chrysologus)

Step 3 - Find an Individual or Community With Which To Journey
Even though Lent often has an inward solitary focus it does not have to be an isolated one.  Talk to others about how they are celebrating the season and share something about your experience. Finding another person or a community with which to debrief your experience and find support and accountability can be an important or your experience.

CCC will be focusing on issues of discernment and call during Lent.  In our worship we will be using a book by Marjoie Bankson entitled, “Call to the Soul: Six Stages of Spiritual Discernment.”  Each week we will explore a different stage or phase of discerning who we are called to be and what we are called to do. 

We will also be offering two ecclesia project courses during lent.

• Fear Not This Strangeness You Feel…: Practices of Discernment (on Sunday nights)
• The Enneagram: A Spiritual Journey Through Lent (on Wednesday nights)

Either of these classes would enrich your lent experience.  Sign up

Step 4 - Come To The Fat Tuesday Party
(Feb 5 , 7:30 PM at the Irish Rover)
Even though Lent officially begins on Ash Wednesday, traditionally a somber day of prayer and penance, many cultures and traditions begin the season with a great festival or party (i.e. Mardi Gras).   Plus, maybe Fat Tuesday can provide you with something to be penitential about!

Step 5 - Come to The Ash Wednesday Service
(6:3O PM at James Lees)
The Ash Wednesday Service provides a great ritual and celebration to mark the beginning of your journey.  The cross of ashes on your forehead provides a great symbol for the journey on which you are embarking.

Step 6 - "Do" Holy Week
Lent is often scene as preparation for Holy Week and Easter.  There are five main celebration in Holy Week.  Palm Sunday - Jesus entry into Jerusalem, Maundy Thursday - Last Supper, Good Friday - Death on Cross and Easter - the resurrection of Jesus.  Finding someway to celebrate and remember these events provides a great ending to the celebration of Lent.

Step 7 - If you don't do anything there is always next year!

Hope this is helpful!
Jud

Dancing With The Stars

Unfortunately, It seems no one in my family is self conscious.  This leads to behavior that should never leave the kitchen, but as Jake said, "it sure was fun!

Tao Te Ching

Chapter 2
When people see some things as beautiful,
other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good,
other things become bad.

Being and non-being create each other.
Difficult and easy support each other.
Long and short define each other.
High and low depend on each other.
Before and after follow each other.

Therefore the Master
acts without doing anything
and teaches without saying anything.
Things arise and she lets them come;
things disappear and she lets them go.
She has but doesn’t possess,
acts but doesn’t expect,
When her work is done, she forgets it.
That is why it lasts forever.

Reflection
The first part of this section speaks to the concept of “dependent arising”  - that happens naturally in the dualistic mind.  When one concept or idea arises the other arises with it naturally, because its meaning is dependent upon its opposite (beauty and ugly, good and bad). This is the natural working of the ego mind, and yet, if we can rest our awareness in our soul or spirit this dependent arising does not have to lead deeper into dichotomy or the spiritual pitfalls of “grasping” and “rejecting.”   If we can rest in the “pure witness” or in consciousness itself there is no need to react strongly by grasping onto that which arises as beautiful or good and no need to reject its opposite of ugly or bad. 

The mind naturally judges and has opinions, it makes categories and assigns value.  Then the ego seeks to consume or attach to that which the mind defines as good and it seeks to reject or push away that which the mind defines as bad.  Either way, grasping or rejecting causes us to be bound and unavailable to the fullness of the moment.  These ego-mind tendencies remove us from the flow of life and keep us in our “small selves.” The Master, the one who is able to be fully present to the moment and flow with the Spirit is able to:

have but not posses and
act but does not expect

What a beautiful dance that would be!  The challenge and opportunity is not to “reject” possessing and expecting, because that is again to be caught in the dualistic self.  The challenge is to rest in a more integrative place beyond duality. The opportunity, if we can say it that way, is to be identified with the Source itself – the source of the arising stimuli and the source of the possessing and expecting tendencies – which is the ego mind.  To rest in the Source allows one to freely and appropriately respond – and not to react or grasp anything. 

Good luck with the not grasping and not rejecting thing!  It's hard as hell but central to the spiritual path.

Peace,
jud

Tao Te Ching - Chapter 1

Chapter 1
The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.

The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.

Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.

Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.

Reflection
If we the people of the world would truly embrace the insight of this first stanza we would relieve a great deal of suffering caused by religious persecution and conflict.   The first stanza points to the reality that all of our religious and theological words are symbols that point beyond themselves.  If it can be named it is not the ultimate.  If you can point to it, speak about it, hold it in your hand, give it to another person, then it is not fully God or the fully the Spirit, or fully the Gospel.  If you can share it, its not the gospel!  If it can be bought or sold, if it can be looked at under a microscope - it is not the Spirit, the ultimate, the infinite.   This is not to say that what can be held, studied, spoken or shared is not important it's just not ultimate.   To confuse them is to become what Paul Tillich warned us about being - "little idol makers."

So, why do we spend so much time analyzing and dissecting what is not ultimately important and transformative?  Why do we fight over language and symbols?  Why do we argue our point of view?  prop up our little idols? and share our gospel with mere language and symbols?  For if they get it, if they accept it, if they can grasp it, then - they have lost it, they been confused, they have been mislead. 

Instead, free yourself from your thoughts and desires and then Gospel will freely flow through you.  Free yourself from opinion and certainty then Mystery will rise up from your like a flowing spring.  Free yourself from yourself and you shall be Truth.  Un-know yourself and you shall be knowledge. 

This first stanza feel like it is all we need.

Taoism & The Tao Te Ching

2008 – A Year With the Tao

Each week during 2008 I am going to contemplate and reflect on a different chapter from the Toa Te Ching. Of course my reflections will come as a western Christian, which is my primary place of commitment and practice and the worldview which I most naturally wear.  I would imagine my reflections to be an effort at integrating Taoism, which comes from an Eastern Chinese tradition, with and through my primary commitment as a western follower of the Way of Christ and a covenant member of a Christian community.   On the other hand, I also understand myself to be a mystical integrative theologian and to some degree, I trust I am able to rest in a unitive experience of reality beyond my personal or cultural bias and to reflect from a place where there is no distinction between Taoism and Christianity.  From that place and deep source even the apparent dichotomies between these traditions become meaningful paradoxes rather than problems to be solved or even integrated. 

Why Taoism and the Tao Te Ching?
As I continue to be attentive to the concept of “flow” in my life I find the texts and traditions of Taoism to be insightful and helpful.  They intuitively feel “true” to my soul and insightful to my journey of seeking to be transparent or “flowfull” to Spirit or reality as it presents itself moment by moment.  Toa is usually translated as “way” or “path” but feels to me more active - like “Spirit.”  Unfortunately, Taoism has been associated with one of its primary ideas of wu-wei (non-action) which western liberalism associates with not “taking a stand” or not “doing justice.”  In actuality wu-wei is “non-ego-attachment action” or action that originates from a place of harmony with the movement of the Spirit rather than from personal ego drives and desires.  Soul flow rather than ego drive!

The Toa Te Ching was written in the 6th Century BCE, by Lao Tzu and is foundational text of Taoism, similar to the way the gospels function for Christianity.   Not sure why this text is the one I have chosen to journey with over the year.  It feels more like it has chosen me.  So, we will see how that unfolds over the year.  Unless noted otherwise, I will be primarily be using the english translation done by Stephen Mitchell.

I welcome your thoughts and comments along they way! 

A Few Intentions of 2008

I have a few intentions for the new year - meditate, read and write. (sounds like elementary school) 2008 is a Sabbatical year for me, so I have the opportunity to be especially intentional this year.     On my Sabbatical day (Tuesdays) these are the three things I hope to be doing. 

1) meditation - When I can get quiet and allow my soul to whisper its subtle message it usually says, "keep getting quiet."   Finding daily and extended time for meditative practice feels essential for my year.  I would always be open to having my community ask me how its going.  Your encouragement and accountability will be helpful. If you ever wonder about a helpful question to ask something around meditation would be great.

2) read - I usually don't have trouble with this one, but I specifically want to read about Taoism and more specifically the Toa Te Ching.  I plan to write a blog on this sight once a week around reflections on my readings.

3) write - two things - One - I want to continue to blog.  I am finding this a fun and meaningful practice.  Two - a book on the integral church that I have been trying to write in some way for the last three years.  I have made myself a promise to have it written by the time I turn 40. (13 months away)

Beyond Rational Theology

God is At Home

Video I made using poem from one of my favorite mystics - Meister Eckhart

Insights From Art of Hosting

If the group is an art form of the future, then convening groups is an artistry we must cultivate to fully harvest the promise of the future.

- Jacob Needleman, Centered on the Edge   

Back this fall I attended an Art of Hosting Conference here in Louisville.  It was a beautiful experience and continues to influence the way I understand the emerging church and the task of Christian leadership.  Check out their web sight.  What if church gatherings were conversations rather than business meetings?  My sense is that the Spirit flows more freely in an open conversation than in Roberts Rules of Order.  Yes, but there is work to be done and decisions to be made.

Rumi

Today is a great day to remember and celebrate the mystic Rumi (December 17,1273). Today marks the celebration of his presence being freed from its locality and physicality making him more present and available to all of us.  There is some good stuff on him on public radio. Listen to the September 13th SOF download. 

To celebrate him it would be appropriate to drop into a mediative trance and swirl around in a circle - swirling dervish style... or just read some of his poetry, which will take you there as well. (picture is of Rumi's tomb)

I thought it appropriate to remember him with his own words on death, a poem called, "Death is our Wedding."

Our death is our wedding with eternity.
What is the secret? "God is One."
The sunlight splits when entering the windows of the house.
This multiplicity exists in the cluster of grapes;
It is not in the juice made from the grapes.
For he who is living in the Light of God,
The death of the carnal soul is a blessing.
Regarding him, say neither bad nor good,
For he is gone beyond the good and the bad.
Fix your eyes on God and do not talk about what is invisible,
So that he may place another look in your eyes.
It is in the vision of the physical eyes
That no invisible or secret thing exists.
But when the eye is turned toward the Light of God
What thing could remain hidden under such a Light?
Although all lights emanate from the Divine Light
Don't call all these lights "the Light of God";
It is the eternal light which is the Light of God,
The ephemeral light is an attribute of the body and the flesh.
...Oh God who gives the grace of vision!
The bird of vision is flying towards You with the wings of desire.