chris erdman

Can living life in community help us draw closer to God? “Come and see,” says Karen Sloan, Presbyterian pastor and author of “Flirting with Monasticism,” a book in which she takes readers through her personal journey with ancient Christian traditions.

While I’m not sure why anyone would want to walk the John Muir Trail in seven days, this nevertheless is a marvelous witness to what it means to immerse oneself in the Creation through silence and solitude (even if racing alone at over 30 miles per day in rugged terrain).

WINTER IS COMING – Seven Days on the John Muir Trail from Ryan Commons on Vimeo.

Here’s a link to an audio of the sermon I preached on Sunday, June 20, 2010.

Some background . . .

One out of every 10 Americans will experience clinical depression during their lifetime.  Dark emotion will become chronic and debilitating, affecting their ability to function, interact with others, and derive pleasure from life.   One out of every four women will be clinically depressed at some point in her life. Because of our increasingly complex and interrelated world, clinical depression has become a modern epidemic.

Says Parker Palmer: “People walk around saying, ‘I don’t understand why so-and-so committed suicide.’ Well, I understand perfectly why people take their lives. They need the rest. Depression is absolutely exhausting. It’s why, day by day for months at a time, I wanted to take my life. What I don’t understand is why some people come through on the other side and reclaim life with new vividness and with new intensity. That is the real mystery to me.”

Depression is real, common, and treatable. Contrary to the way it makes us fee, it doesn’t disqualify us.

In this audio sermon, I explore the nature and experience of depression through the life of one of Israel’s greatest prophets, Elijah.  With Elijah, we listen for the negative messages that play in our heads tumbling us into despair, we watch for the presence of those angels who nudge us and tell us to do such things as “get up and eat,” and we walk the long journey into the dark cave that can become a womb of rebirth into human community.

Jesus said, “When you pray, go into your closet, shut the door, and pray to God in secret.”  Matthew 6.6

“But I can’t find such a place to pray,” a young mother tells me. “My life’s hectic. The only secret place in my house is the bathroom, and my four year old makes sure not even that’s guaranteed.”

You may not find such a place, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enter the closet of your heart.

Let go your idealizations of prayer, and just breathe.

“The breath that does not repeat the name of God is wasted breath,” wrote Kabir.

The purest forms of prayer aren’t complicated. That’s their genius.

The Resurrection is likely a belief you affirm (or maybe don’t), a doctrine that’s part of the religious faith you affirm.

But the Resurrection is not a mere idea. It is to be lived. Not just by Jesus or by others, but by you . . . in the ordinariness of your daily life.

A woman with young children tells me that resurrection is something she practices each day–when doing dishes, parenting a child with a challenging emotional make up, talking with her husband about her day. It’s no longer an idea, something she confesses in the creeds. It’s a reality that feeds her way of life.  She says she’s learning that she can’t live life anywhere other than where she is, what’s in front of her, who she is right now.  Resurrection frees her to open to Life here and now.

Religiously we say that the Resurrection is God’s triumph over sin, death, and evil. It is, in a word, freedom.

So, as St. Paul says: “Awake sleeper, rise from the dead.” (Ephesians 5.14)

You’ll make the Resurrection more than nice ideas by practicing the resurrection daily. Free now to embrace this moment as sacred, this moment as the meeting place between you and God, this moment as alive with wonder.

The holiness of daily life; the sacredness of this place, this moment, this body of yours; practices that open you to see and embrace the presence of God here, now.

That’s what this site is about.

In her book, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith, Episcopal priest and college professor, Barbara Brown Taylor, summons us to that life and gives guidance for embracing it. I love the way she calls to us with the voice of Holy Wisdom (Proverbs 1.20-21):

“What is saving my life now is the conviction that there is no spiritual treasure to be found apart from the bodily human experience of human life on earth.

In a world of too much information about almost everything, bodily practices can provide great relief. To make bread or love, to dig in the earth, to feed an animal or cook for a stranger—these activities require no extensive commentary or lucid theology. All they require is someone willing to bend, reach, chop, stir. . . .

In a world where faith is often construed as a way of thinking, bodily practices remind the willing that faith is a way of life. . . .

So welcome to your priesthood, practiced at the altar of your own life. The good news is that you have everything you need to begin.”

This site focuses on awakening the spiritual life.  Frankly that’s easier said that done.  Sometimes there are forces at work in us that make awakening on our own pretty damn tough, if not downright impossible.

Holy Saturday seems an apt time to reflect on the nature of depression and the spiritual life.  We live most of our lives somewhere between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.  And for millions of people clinical depression can make us feel so far from Easter that it’s announcement of life’s triumph over death seems little more than whistling in the dark.

The recent and tragic death of a cherished friend has made me more more aware and sensitive to the effects of depression, as well as the dangerous and debilitating stigma we still attach for mental illness.  We must work much harder to remove this stigma, and find ways to stand with and support suffers and their families so that clinical depression is no longer a hidden and isolating disease.

Here’s a link to a remarkably candid and healing interview on Speaking of Faith—one of my favorites podcasts (you can download the MP3 or just listen to in on your computer; see the links under the photo banner; it reads like this: SOF OnDemand: » Download (mp3, 53:18) ¦ » Listen Now (RealAudio, 53:00) ¦ » Podcast).  If you prefer, here’s a link to the written transcript.

In it Krista Tippet not only engages a few remarkable people who explore their own experiences with depression from a spiritual perspective, but she shares her own journey through the darkness.

I commend it to all with the prayer that a thin ray of Easter’s light may break in upon us and help us find healing—both in us and through us.

Following up the last post on the distraction of thoughts and multitasking and the power of the breath, here’s a breathing prayer from Christine Sine’s Godspace site (see also Jonny Baker’s site in the UK).  She uses it in groups and alone.  ”I suggest that people sit with their hands in their laps,” she writes, “palms up while they say the first line and take a deep breath then turn palms down and breathe out as they say the second line.”

Breathe in the breath of God

Breathe out your cares and concerns

Breathe in the love of God

Breathe out your doubts and despairs

Breathe in the life of God

Breathe out your fears and frustrations

We sit quietly before the One who gives life and love to all creation,

We sit in awe of the One who formed us in our mother’s wombs

We sit at peace surrounded by the One who fills every fibre of our being

Breathe in the breath of God

Breathe out your tensions and turmoil

Breathe in the love of God

Breathe out your haste and hurry

Breathe in the life of God

Breathe out your work and worry

We sit quietly before the One who gives life and love to all creation,

We sit in awe of the One who formed us in our mother’s wombs

We sit at peace surrounded by the One who fills every fibre of our being

Find a quiet place and sit down (or lie down) and spend a dozen or more minutes with God. Not the kind of prayer when you talk at God (there’s place for that). But the prayer that listens deeply. Yields. Is simply present to God. Being with the Mystery. Communion.

What do you do?

Begin this way . . . step one of three.

Sit (or lie) still. Alert. Become aware of your body. Find places of tension with you. (I carry my tension in my jaw and cheeks. My gut too.) Find the tension and release it gently. Let your body, settle into a natural stillness. Now let your breath fall into a natural rhythm. Don’t control it. Let it comes to a natural in and out rhythm, as if you were sleeping.  Feel the life in your body.  The Orthodox Fathers searched inwardly until they could feel their heart beating. Tough. But most beginners can feel a sense of aliveness in their hands.

You seek God alone. But your body is a vessel for the Holy Spirit. The fullness of God dwells in your body, scandalous as that may be. The Incarnation teaches us to honor the body; so does Christian thought and practice. If you’re going to meet God, you will meet God by becoming more aware of your body, letting your body be that vessel of encounter. If you’re not in your body, you’ll not meet God. You’ll be everywhere else but the one place God’s come to meet you.

Sit still. Sit straight. Breathe. Relax. And as you do you may begin to gently let a prayer (like the Jesus Prayer) rise and fall with your breath. In . . . “Jesus.” Out . . . “Mercy.” Or something similar.

Don’t fret if your thoughts drag you away. They’ll try. When they do, simply and undramatically return to your senses—follow your breath into your body, and corral the mind with a simple prayer.  Classically, this is the purgative or cleansing step.  With each breath, confess your tension.  Confess the difficulty you have getting still.  Confess the thoughts, ideas, images that want to lead you anywhere but here.  Confess your need for God.  Let go. Release.  Unburden.

Begin with 10 minutes and work up to 25 minutes. Once or twice a day.

Step two next post.