chris erdman

Continued from the previous post . . .

But now I’m learning to see.

It’s taken many miles, many place and faces.  It’s taken a rattling and a shaking I thought would undo me. It’s taken a descent into a darkness that I couldn’t know at the time to be a gift of grace—a mercy, though terribly severe. But what I see now—made possible because of all this—I wouldn’t trade for anything.

It’s taken a long time to open my eyes to this Light, to see the Marvel that’s as near as the beating of my heart.

Sometimes I regret that, and wonder why I was so dull. But regret doesn’t get me anywhere. And wishing only keeps me fixated elsewhere. I’m learning to live where I am—here and now, on the ground, in this place, this body.

When I do, I come face to face with the Mystery that is always right before—indeed, within—us all.

Continued from the previous post. . .

Some people say we look for love in all the wrong places.

It’s true, our longing can take us into dangerous and destructive places, but there is no place on earth where God is not present, where Love is not as near as our next breath.

In our search for God, our yearning to return to the center, we’re always looking exactly where we can find what we’re looking for. We’re just not trained to see. We have such little schooling in real holiness. We may have heard all about God, our ideas about God may be straight-laced and orthodox, but that doesn’t mean we’d know how to recognize God even if God were standing, in all God’s radiance, right before us.

To be continued . . .

For most of my years, I’ve wandered the Earth in search of God, longing for a real encounter with divine love.

I was a spiritual vagabond, always looking somewhere else for God, over the next hill, in the next book, at the next conference, a different technique, experience, or idea—seeking fulfillment and meaning and happiness in achievement, recognition, influence, even possessions.

I figured God was somewhere other than where-I-was because I didn’t find where-I-was to be all that interesting.

I was perpetually restless. And because I was always looking elsewhere, I was blind to what—or Who—was right before me, beneath me, around me . . . indeed, within me.

To be continued . . .

When cultivating the spiritual life, don’t focus first on “how?”  But “how” is generally the first question people ask me.  It’s not ultimate.  How inevitably follows why or what.  Get why or what right and you’ll get to how.

So, focus instead on the disposition of your heart—that is, why you seek God, and what the experience is like.

Here’s Theresa of Lisieux:

“Sanctity does not consist in this or that practice; it consists in a disposition of the heart that makes us humble and little in God’s arms, teaches us our weakness, and inspires us with an almost presumptuous trust in his fatherly goodness.”

It’s that that’ll carry your where you need to go.  What’s more, you can rest yourself humbly and little in God’s arms whether your arguing a case before a jury, teaching kindergarteners, balancing your checkbook, or walking in a meadow.

Awaken your heart and all of life is prayer; daily life becomes sacred.

Every human heart yearns for God; we are restless vagabonds upon the earth until we stop in our tracks and behold the light shining all around and within us. Here and now. Not somewhere else.

To experience God in the midst of daily life—whether changing diapers, arguing a case before a jury, painting a wall, teaching third graders, or walking in the woods. To burn with a holy and playful fire. To live intentional, happy, and compassionate lives in our turbulent world. This is what we’re made for and this is the spiritual life. Through prayer, meditation, and contemplation, the dawn comes; we kindle a fire upon the hearth of our hearts.

But most of us are hurried and harried, fragmented and frustrated. We want to pray, but we don’t really know how to pray; and few of us have someone to show us the way.

Here are the stories of young, urban Christians who are recovering our historic spirituality, coming alive to who they are in Christ, and who are living lives of meaningful involvement in our world:

An example of holy reading, lectio divina, on Scripture, Psalm 104.  It illustrates my meditation and listening early one morning as I readied myself spiritually for the tasks before me that day:

The psalm is a meditation on the goodness of God’s creation and praise for God’s gracious administration. God sets up the conditions, the environment, but doesn’t control us.

How can I follow God’s lead as an administrator? I often struggle with the I experience people’s performance, their own self-management. I feel responsible for what they do, and can get trapped by my own over-functioning, which is an effort to increase their performance.

Scripture shows me that God may grieve human performance, a person’s failure to live into the goodness God has set up for us, offered us. But God never controls us. God gets angry, even demanding (Hosea 11), but backs off again and again, realizing that anger goes against God’s own virtues.

Like God—as a servant of God—I can step up the conditions for people to live and work, but I cannot make them perform; in fact, I must not. The genius of human life is that people can find ways of performing that are astonishing—just as they can be immensely disappointing.

This is the splendor of freedom.

Each individual must be given freedom if we are to see their brilliance. Freedom is a risk. You may guide, pray, even sometimes urge, but beware of your own needs and attachments to outcomes. Attached to such things, you will become a tyrant.

So, give them bread (104.15); provide them with water (104.10). Set up the boundaries (104.9). But remember, you cannot make them eat or keep them from wandering.

Your delight is in giving them what they most need—love. What they do with these things is ultimately their business, not yours.

from my journals, October 6, 2007

Here’s a poem I wrote in 2009, expresses the intention of prayer.  It joins both the necessity of human effort in the pursuit of God, yet meets our effort with grace—without which there will be no real meeting, no holy fire, no true prayer.  It also joins together the three elements of the person in a fully Christian psychology—body, mind (or soul), and heart (or spirit).

Unless these three unite and meet grace, there is only a superficial meeting with God.  We bring our full humanity to meet God’s full divinity.  Only then can we become what we are made to be.  As both St. Athanasius in the Eastern Church and St. Augustine in the Western Church teach: “Divinity became humanity that humanity might become divinity.”  This is the goal of prayer—Fire.

The Pyre

Desire Fire,
and God will send a spark.

When body, mind, and heart
unite,

You become
the Pyre.

October 2009

This is an excerpt from Cyprian Consiglio’s excellent little book on prayer: Prayer in the Cave of the Heart: The Universal Call to Contemplation.  The book’s a primer on the historical center of Christian spirituality—drawing from resources from the Christian East and West, as well as illustrating parallels to other religious traditions enriching our prayer experience.

In this selection, Cyprian introduces holy reading, or lectio divina, as a particular practice of prayerful feeding of the thinking mind with holy things.

“When choosing the object of our meditation, pride of place is given to scripture.  In addition, though, there is a long tradition of other types of reading (of devotional or spiritual books or of poetry) and other types of experiences (listening to music, looking at art) that can serve the same purpose.  At times we read academically, to learn facts and figures, dates and names, or we listen to music or look at art critically, analytically.  Lectio divina, however, is totally different.  It is gentle, like reading a love letter, or hearing a loved one’s voice, or gazing on a loved one’s face.” (p. 96)

It is my habit to read a very small section of holy scripture each morning, in addition to the non-reflective reading of a psalm, and invite the Trinity to be the Host of this encounter.  I read and listen, waiting upon the voice of the Beloved.

It’s one thing to offer a prayer expressing your intention to love God in prayer (see previous post). The form of prayer that follows that little prayer may be a meditation on Scripture, holy conversation with your Beloved, or intercession for others.

But, at some point Love will invite you into the Silence where no words can ever go.  It is the Silence from which words come, the home of the Word.  To go there, you’ll want to express your intention clearly for that journey as well. Here’s a prayer I often whisper as I ready myself for stillness before the Beloved:

I still my lips that my mind may seek;
I still my mind that my heart may seek;
I still my heart,
and hide inside the Great Silence,
till What I seek finds me.

It expresses my intention to gradually move from the outer parts of my body toward my deepest inner self, where Christ awaits. Such a prayer charts the path I will walk toward the divine encounter, every step a renunciation of self-will, self-interest, and self-control—a yielding to God who alone can carry me across the threshold of what I’ve known, into the Mystery I cannot know except through the blindness of unknowing, the renunciation of all previous ways of knowing.

As you enter into prayer, express your intention to love God with all you have (Luke 10.27).

I will often improvise on some alluring passage of Scripture that arouses my love, my devotion, my pursuit of the Beloved. Song of Solomon 1.1-4 or 2.8-14 are my preference. These intimate love letters once used between two lovers are, in the history of spirituality, invitations to the divine romance. Express them to God, your Beloved, and let them set your heart aflame.

Obviously, your heart will not always “burn within you“–especially at dawn after you’ve stumbled out of bed, and perhaps haven’t slept well or had your morning coffee. You may have difficulty focusing at the end of a long and troubling day. No matter, you’ve expressed your intention.  That’s what matters.

Your body and mind will follow your words eventually. If not today, then after the hundredth time you’ve mumbled the words.  One day you’ll speak the words as you have ninety-nine times before, but this time there’s a sudden brush of wings, a gentle nudge, a voice that comes to you.  You look up and see your Beloved running toward you, and you’ll feel yourself rising up with a desire you’ve not engineered. Love has come for you, unexpected, unforced.

You expressed your intention, then waited. And Grace has come to you; your prayer becomes a dance, or better, a holy bed for lovers.