chris erdman

A few days ago, I sat on a train, headed to Los Angeles for meetings. I was minding my own business. Since Amtrak has wireless, I was grading student reflections on their reading of Thomas Merton and Henri Nouwen. The readings invited them to move out of the zone of their own comfort to encounter God in others. One of them, Joseph, wrote:

“God created us to be in relationship with one another. It is my tendency (and I believe most of humanity’s tendency) to shut out those around us. I can no longer assume that God can’t use all people and all relationships to speak to me.”

No sooner had I read this, than a man behind me asked if he could use my cell phone. Busy with my “work” I’d taken no real notice of him. “I said ‘no.’” And went back to my work. He stood up and started down the aisle with an handful of five dollar bills asking people if he could pay to use a phone.

He was a middle aged black man, dressed in a black T-shirt and sweat pants. The T-shirt was new. It still had the crease lines from being recently liberated from its package.

“I need to call my wife and tell her I’m arriving at Union Station in LA.”

He looked desperate. And his desperation pulled me out of my cramped, little world just enough for me to say, “Hey, use mine. But you don’t have to pay for it.”

After he’d made the call, I learned that he was on his way home after several years in prison. “Just out this morning,” he told me. “Can’t wait to see my wife. But I can’t walk from the station, ’cause the shoes she sent me are too small.”

He grinned happily despite his discomfort. A man who’d just be let out of prison was seeing the world with new eyes.

I’ve never known a day behind bars, but captivity doesn’t require a jail cell. I need others, people very different from myself, to step out of all that holds me captive inside my own cramped little world.

Intention: Help me today, Lord Christ, to see the world with the eyes of one who’s not so used to it all that I can’t enjoy its wonder.

“We should not be too sure of having found Christ in ourselves until we have found him also in the part of our humanity that is most remote from our own.”

Thomas Merton

What will it take for a true Christian revolution to take hold of us?  It’s too easy for us to build walls between us.  Who’s right.  Who’s wrong.  Who’s in.  Who’s out.  The dividing walls are becoming more numerous.  Thicker too.  Before long we’ll be trapped in a maze of our own making.  Prisoners in our own little worlds, having excluded everyone else but those who are just like us.  Far from what it truly means to be human, in-dwelt by the Divine.

Intention: Today, I’ll open myself to someone who I would otherwise ignore as too different from myself.  As I do I’ll find something of myself, some part of me I’ve ignored, judged, dismissed, and excluded from the loving embrace of Christ.

Gordon Cosby may be the most influential pastor you’ve never heard of.  He’s a model and mentor of the kind of life I write about in these posts.  And today, we need strong models, witnesses to the life of the Spirit.  He’s one who attracted thousands upon thousands to the Jesus of the Gospels, many who were either burned out or turned out by the Jesus of suburbia bandied about buy a large segment of American Christianity.  His vision of Jesus and his way of life is particularly important in these days of increased suspicion, hostility, and violence.

Gordon died on March 20, 2013 in Washington DC.  The co-founder of the Church of the Savior co-founder and life-long servant leader he passed into the full presence of God at Christ House, a hospice he helped to found for the homeless.

From the Washington Post:

Gordon was absolutely Christian. He was focused on Jesus and sought to live deeply in Christ. I once asked him if his intense focus on Christ did not get in the way of interfaith conversation and respect. He told me that it was his experience that those who went most deeply into their own religion’s truths seemed to understand each other and communicate with each other best. He was profoundly and distinctively Christian without an ounce of parochialism.

I was working with a group of preachers this morning to help them find their voices.  On a regular basis, preachers use their voices publicly.  But as these preachers recognized today, the voice they use publicly isn’t always their real voice–their own voice.

Your voice–my voice–is deeply spiritual.  Your voice arises out of who you are–your own God-breathed originality.  Your voice is different from the words you may speak.  Your voice is the living witness to all that makes you who you are; it comes directly out of the experiences that have shaped you, the truth that’s real to you, your intimate connection with the Divine.  It is the true you God’s made you to be.

If you know your distinctive, God-breathed voice, you’re on your way to owning the gift you have to offer for the healing of the world.

The trouble is, our voice is usually hijacked by the voices in our heads that come from parents, older siblings, friends, enemies, religious leaders, affinity groups, and so on.  The voice we usually present to the world is the voice we think the world around us wants to hear.

If you want to live with integrity, to live as God desires you to live, you must find your own voice–peel back the masks we wear, strip away the falsehoods, stop the charades.  Only then can you live as the unique person you are meant to be.

Finding your voice is critical if you want to live a more focused, strategic, purposeful life–a life aligned with the God who made you–and to make a real difference in the world.

Intention: Today I will begin my search for my one, authentic God-breathed voice–so that I may live a more focused, compassionate, purposeful life.

EXTRAS . . .

Here’s a witness to a young Indian woman who has found her voice and is leveraging it for good:

Pranitha Timothy: a voice for the voiceless

Here are two good pieces that can help you find your voice:

4 Steps to Finding Your Voice

10 Questions that Will Help You Find Your Voice

So maybe you’re in conflict with a family member, friend, or co-worker.

You think they’re wrong; they think you’re wrong. Maybe they’re being belligerent, aggressive, hostile. And you, not wanting to be a pushover, are preparing to push back.

You can push back, of course. But to what end? You’re reciprocal act of self-assertion is a summons to a fight, and a fight is what you’ll have. Part of you would like that. There’s part of you that thinks at a very primitive level. “Eye for an eye.” It’s a trap and it’ll make you part of the universal spiral of conflict and violence that’s plagued us for millennia.

You must find another way. And that other way doesn’t mean being passive, a pushover, a doormat.

No, it means letting go of your attachment to being right, proving the other wrong. It means learning how to see what is really true, sticking with the real facts–not your illusions, opinions, or perspective. And speaking that truth in a way that helps the other let go of their attachment too. If you need to be right, you’re already in a trap. But a commitment to “the truth will set you (both) free” (John 8.32).

But that commitment to truth requires you let go of your petty opinions.

Intention: Today, when I’m drawn into conflict over this or that, I’ll take a deep breath in prayer, step back, let go of my need to give someone a piece of my mind, and seek a way to move toward a truth that’s bigger than both of us.

The stuff that makes us so serious often isn’t so serious to God. “Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain?” asks the psalmist. “The One who sits in the heavens laughs” (Psalm 2.1 and 4).

That doesn’t mean God doesn’t care about what scares us, or worries us, or troubles us. It means that God sees things differently than we do. God has a longer and larger view.

That fact may bother us; we’d like God to care more about what worries and wounds us and our world. But who’s to say God doesn’t? Who can say for sure that God isn’t caring in the best way God can care? Who can really say that God isn’t working behind the scenes in ways that are better than the ways we’d devise?

You’ve been around those who are serious and concerned (and perhaps that makes them get involved in fighting what’s wrong in the world). But while their serious concerns makes them energetic in righting wrongs, they’re frankly a drag to be around. Their eyes don’t shine, their words are hard, their touch isn’t gentle.

God’s levity in the midst of a world in pain might seem to us to be inappropriate. But isn’t it possible that playfulness, humor, and lightness might have their own power in healing our hurts and righting what’s wrong?

If we can let go our obsession with handwringing, maybe we’d be be able to better hear God’s call and follow God’s path as we participate in the Lord’s mysterious, cosmic dance of life that’s transforming our world.

Intention: Today, I’ll let go of my grievances and grumbling. I’ll smile a little more often. And I’ll try to trust there’s a mighty Hand at work behind what makes me feel powerless and angry. And I’ll listen for the distant sounds of God’s laughter.

People often dismiss the contemplative life, the praying life, as disconnected from the realities of daily life.

That’s a terribly naive and myopic assessment.  This site is dedicated to a robust and compassionate life lived in public, sourced by Divine power.

Here’s a recent book I’ve come across…an important work on the relationship between the contemplative and active life.  Contemplation ought to lead to the deepest forms of involvement in daily life–especially the struggle for all to live well on this increasingly trouble, yet beautiful planet.

“The key to compassion is conversion of self; prayer enkindles the grace of conversion. As Francis prayed, he became more deeply attuned to the experience of God in his own life which in turn deepened his compassion for others. Through prayer Francis reached the deepest oneness with God; he realized this oneness by sharing in the human poverty and humility of Christ. Compassion transformed Francis into another Christ ‘because of the excess of his love.’”

There’s a growing emergence of compassionate folks whose acts are sourced by prayer.  You’re among them.

For stuff about the book, click on the image.

Too much spirituality is made complex, even unworldly.  Prayer gives hearts to do love not merely think or talk about it.

An award-winning brief film.  It has only a handful of words, but speaks volumes.

What is love trying to do through you?

. . . fully awake to the splendor of God’s creation, united with the One whose glory fills the whole earth (Isaiah 6.3):

To create beauty is to testify to God’s restoration; living beautifully facilitates justice. Check out this testimony from an artist exploring the role of spirituality, art, and justice:

A video from workofthepeople.com