by David Hicks, CFDM Faculty Member

Driving in the fog can be a frightening and unsettling experience. On a trip from L.A. to Seattle once my wife and I found ourselves driving for several hours through fog so dark it made the afternoon feel like midnight. With hands clutched to the wheel all my senses were hyper-aware of everything around me. I drove slower and was far more attentive to my driving than I normally am on a bright and sunny day.

In the story of the healing of the blind man of Bethsaida in Mark 8 there is an interesting and unusual progression that this man’s healing takes. Jesus first of all spit on his eyes (not sure He could get away with that today). He then asked the man what he could see and the man said, “I see people that look like trees walking around”. Now, if you are as near blind as I am without contacts or glasses you know exactly what he is talking about. Jesus then touches the man’s eyes again (this time apparently with no spit which kind of makes you wonder what the point was). This time, “his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.”

When I read that story I find myself deeply desiring that second touch of Jesus that will clear away the spiritual fog and blurry darkness that I walk with most of the time. I want some clarity to the ‘questions of the fog’ like: Who am I? Who is God? Where am I going? How will I get there? When will I get there? How will I know when I get there? Do I even want to get there? I deeply desire for that second touch to come and make me, “see everything clearly.” But more times than not I find that I am asked to simply live within the fogginess of the first touch.

Sometimes we have experiences where everything seems clear. Jesus has allowed us to look with clarity upon a particular situation or question we have. Sometimes. But more times than not I think He asks us to sit with the un-clarity for a lot longer than we would like. Sometimes He calls us to wait in the fog of our souls unknowing because when we wait in the fog it forces us to slow down and pay attention. We become more vigilant and aware. We can’t rest in the comfort of our own clear vision, we must trust in the vision of another.

Some say that “clarity” is the goal of the spiritual life. “To see Thee more clearly” as the old musical Godspell tells us. But given human nature, at least the human nature that I struggle with, clarity does not always lead to better vision. Sometimes clarity causes us to be less aware of what we need and desire and being more aware is exactly what we need in order to draw closer to the One who is with us, even in the fog.

My experience has been that life with God is mostly lived somewhere between darkness and blue skies. Between midnight and noon, in the hazy twilight of a foggy dawn when I can only see blurry “people like trees walking around”. This is where I seem to spend most of my time. But somewhere in that place between confusion and understanding is where I usually meet God. When I have those rare times of clarity when everything comes into focus I cherish and thank God for them. But I’m also thankful for the times of plodding slowly through the fog because Jesus is just as present with me then as He is when all is bright and clear. That’s the great power, I think, of the story of the blind man of Bethsaida. Not WHAT happened to him, but WHO was with him the whole time.

by Rev. Terry Tripp, Co-Director, CFDM Northwest

“Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb, and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?’ She said to them, ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.’ When she had said this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?’ Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to him in Hebrew, ‘Rabbouni!’ (which means Teacher). John 20:11-16

We could say many things about Jesus’ first appearance post His resurrection. One might comment on the open tomb or the angels, as proof of Jesus being alive. One might wonder at the same question being asked Mary, by the angels and Jesus. Or why did she not recognize Jesus when she first saw him? But for me, today, it’s all about the recognition coming through relationship. Jesus calls her by her name and it is in that naming that there is the restoration of relationship that had existed in one form before the cross and now, in yet a newer form, post. She is asked not to cling to Him – not to hold onto how they once were in relationship, in order for her to move into a new way of being in relationship with her God.

There have been many times that “My tears have been my food day and night,” (Ps. 42:3) I have wept for a life I knew and is no longer – a husband I had and is gone – a ministry I loved as was and has now shifted – family members who have died and a home that is no more. But each time I hear my name being called, I remember “By day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life” (Ps. 42:8). The recognition of God in relationship with me, always doing a new thing, is the ground of my being and the call of my life – the relationship that is always offered that names who I’ve been, and who I am becoming.

by Rev. Mona Chicks, CFDM Board Member

Lent is a time of preparation. Some say it is a time to put on the suffering of Jesus, but I’ve been reflecting lately that God put on our suffering, stepped into our shoes, so that we could be lifted above our circumstances and participate in the glory of God. God became human flesh and walked among us, lived a life that was completely and fully human in the person of Jesus. He can walk with us through our suffering and through our celebration because he has walked through them on his own. He knows. He’s been there.

But the significance of Jesus’ life and passion isn’t simply in his humanity and relevance to our human experience. It’s truly redemptive in that Jesus has taken the one thing that was keeping us, individually and collectively, away from God – sin – and He bore it upon his own shoulders so that there would be nothing more to keep us away. There would be no more curtain separating us from the Holy Place – there’s no need for endless sacrifices and offerings. Jesus did it – once for all, High Priest and sacrifice in one being. And why? For the glory of God.

Hebrews 12:2b-3 says,“Because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame. Now he is seated in the place of honor beside God’s throne.Think of all the hostility he endured from sinful people; then you won’t become weary and give up.” There was always the final goal in mind – the suffering was not the purpose. Our suffering is not the purpose. We will endure it, we must go through it – but all of it is preparing us for something greater than we can imagine. The joy that is awaiting us all. 

In the final days of this Lenten season, I am seeking out God’s glory and letting it filter more deeply into my life. I walk the path to Jerusalem in preparation for the joy, the hope, and the salvation that the resurrection has already secured for me. Glory be to God.

 

by Boni Piper, Director, CFDM Northwest Spiritual Formation Program

“And a little child shall lead them.” Recently, my daughter and a friend were attacked in her driveway. It was an ugly sort of thing with wrestling on the ground, sucker punches and screaming. No one was seriously hurt but the experience was frightening for everyone. The children were in the house and safe, but knew what was going on. When my daughter went back into the house to check on them, the girls were crying (6 & 9) and her son, age 11 was praying. I see him there, in some way knowing that the only place to really turn in such a difficult situation was to Jesus. Such faith! Such maturity! What was he thinking? In a confusing situation of crying sisters, a stunned nanny and obvious trauma on the other side of the door, he turned to Jesus for help. Not as his second choice, but as his only choice.

Oh how I want to be like Ryder. I want just one choice too, one idea, one refuge. Too often I need to get lots of opinions first. I need to exhaust myself by trying different solutions. And then, when all else fails, Jesus help me!

The woman who reached out to touch the cloak of Jesus had used up all her wealth to find healing, to no avail. And then there was Jesus. The man who had a son with an unclean spirit went first to the disciples for healing, but that didn’t work. And then there was Jesus.

“God is our refuge and our strength.” He covers us like a hen does with her chicks. He’s called our stronghold, the watchman in the tower, the one who makes our way straight. We know these images given to us by God do not mean we will never have trouble. We get sick, people die, we watch our children struggle… But what we must ponder is, “Where does our help come from?”

Those who have walked with God for many years know the difference between facing adversity with God and facing it without him. Is there anything we can’t handle when God is with us? Only with the Spirit’s covering are we emotionally and spiritually safe.

I don’t know how Ryder knew that at such a young age. He’s been through a lot in his young life. So, maybe through experience, good teaching, something he heard in church, he knew that we have direct access to God in times of trouble. I think he knows we have that access to God in times of joy as well. It is this deep connection that makes us call out to the lover of our souls, and transforms us. The connection to Jesus is the transforming connection.

You have heard that sitting with Jesus changes us. How could it not? Sitting with Jesus regularly makes us turn to him for help, laugh with him in joyous times, listen to him when we don’t understand our world. It’s in these moments that transformation happens. Oh that turning to him would be so ordinary in our lives that it becomes the natural place to go with all our life experiences! Sitting with Jesus regularly prepares us for the day we must run to him. Are you ready?

by Gwen Shipley, CFDM Northwest Faculty

This weekend, we could have been making progress on the bathroom remodel, but we popped popcorn with a grandkid or two, played pickleball and put together a jigsaw puzzle instead. I had a blog post to put final touches on, but Mr. S has had the luxury of a few extra days off due to a holiday work schedule so the routine was off. I succumbed to the fun.

So on this January morning when things returned to semi-normal, I returned to the business at hand and found that what I had previously written felt flat. Frustrated—mostly at my lack of self-discipline, I poured a cup of coffee and let my heart be open to how I might experience God’s coming near that we are celebrating in this season. January 6th is Ephiphany, after all.

My eyes fell on a stray Christmas gift lying nearby, an adult coloring book. They’re apparently all the rage this year. I picked it up and looked for a page to doodle on.

After the busyness of the last few days—and too much TV (let’s be real), it might be good to just be still, I thought. Me, God, a blank page—and a spot of color to break up the winter wonderland outside my window.

I responded to the nudge.
I chose to be as gracious to myself as God is with me.
I made an intentional choice to slow down and turn my thoughts to God for a few moments.
I remembered that my word for the year is OPEN and changed my grasping inner posture.
I ignored the impulse to obsess over the design before me. Rather, I randomly selected a color from the pencil box then started on the part of the design that caught my eye, letting it come to me rather than preempting the process with a plan of my own. Trusting, not controlling.

Before long, the more prominent figures began to emerge, then other parts. I followed the nudge to color those, holding my control loosely, doing what made sense then reaching for the next color, still without looking, to fill in what, as yet, didn’t.

The little project that began as a distraction, just a jumble of disassociated scribblings, took on beauty in which some sort of pattern could be seen. Could this be a metaphor for encountering God in our daily lived experience, I wondered? Is there a beauty to our lives that is difficult to see at first glance but when we turn aside, we begin to see possibilities of God’s workmanship? Can we trust it or must we control it? What if we…

Respond to the nudge to be still

Choose grace for ourselves

Intentionally slow down and turn our thoughts to God

Take an open posture

Refuse to obsess over what is not yet clear; begin anyway

Let Life emerge, moving forward when the next step on the path becomes clear

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

The coloring page is not finished, nor is any one of us. However, it is enough—as are we.

Although we may find ourselves uncomfortable that transformation is often out of our control, God assures us that he can be trusted, that what he is doing is enough. As the Beloved, we can be “confident of this, that he who began a good work…will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. (Phil. 1:6 NIV)

by David Hicks, CFDM Northwest Faculty

“Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, ‘Where is the one who has been born King of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship Him.” Matthew 2:1-2

Travelling is a part of life. You may enjoy travelling, you may not, but we all travel. It’s built into the fabric of humanity. It’s how we all arrived where we are today, it’s how we will continue on into the future. Humanity is on the move. It always has been, it always will be.

As this advent season begins I am thinking a lot about this idea of travelling and journey. Journey lies at the heart of Christmas. The wise men journeyed from the east. The shepherds journeyed from their fields to the manger. Mary and Joseph journeyed from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Jesus journeyed “from heaven to earth come down”. The Jews themselves had been on a long journey ever since the call of Abraham, and even before. We cannot really understand the Christmas story without paying attention to this idea of journey. All of these journeys come together and find their focal point in a manger in Bethlehem. But this is not the end of the journey. The manger of Jesus is both destination and starting point.

Our journey brings us to the manger, but we don’t remain there. We eventually move on to places like Galilee and Samaria and Capernaum and Jerusalem and Golgotha. But these aren’t places we just visit once and move on. Our journey involves frequent trips back to these places both to remember as well as to see for the first time. We are brought back here because there are always new things to gain from them. Each time we are changed and sent on our way only to find ourselves back again at some point. And each time we come back we are different people, so we see these places and hear these stories differently. That’s the amazing power of advent. Each time we come here we are different. Our journey has taken us to new places and we have seen new things and then our journey brings us back again to the Christmas story and we see it differently because we are different.

There is no real destination to our journey. I know that goes against our very western mindset that every trip must end at some place. I mean that’s the purpose of a journey right, to go someplace? Not really. In our journey there is no ultimate destination. Even heaven, commonly thought of as our final destination, is not so much the end of our journey as it is the beginning of another, greater journey. The purpose of our journey is not to get someplace. The purpose of our journey is the journey itself because our ultimate destination is simply to be with Jesus. Walk with Him, rest with Him, BE with Him. Our journey is not about going someplace, it’s about being with Someone.

This Christmas season I am participating in a journey that has been going on for thousands of years, really ever since humanity first learned how to walk. Walking with Jesus I will see the sights, hear the sounds, experience anew the rough and raw humanity of Christmas. This Christmas is different because I am different. And I fully expect to leave this time different from the person I was when I got here. And so the journey continues.

 by Sara Wagner, CFDM Faculty

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:9

I was asked if I could write a blog about awareness. It is rather humorous because I tend to be a fairly oblivious person most of the time as my spouse will attest. But tonight, there was awareness. Not the felt presence of God, but a real and growing awareness of His promise of purification to meet my growing awareness of how much I need that purification. I had a deepening of the understanding that to be the Beloved is to become aware and attuned to the promises of God… to realize they are not merely words on a page but cool, living water to a dry and thirsty soul. To be the Beloved is to be caught up in the promise… to be held by it and nurtured in it… allowed to soak in it… enabled to let it penetrate to a deeper place within. Becoming aware within one’s self of the promise, from my experience, takes time. I have noted that when I do seem to receive that deeper message… that deeper awareness of the message and what it promises, I look back and see that the message has been sent on many occasions, I just hadn’t been aware of it. I have also noticed that there tends to be a genuine physical sensation within me once I do become aware. Perhaps it is like a pregnant woman who suddenly starts to notice that the movement inside of her of the unborn baby (quickening) really is something moving in her that is other than herself. She didn’t “cause” it, it happened of its own accord. So it seems to be is the movement of the Spirit. I can not cause it, nor can I, in and of myself, become aware of it without the grace of God providing both the movement and the awareness of the movement of His Spirit.

It has been a rather hard season for me with lots of confusion and dryness and some very deep darkness. Tonight, however, God gave me the gift of this passage. He illuminated the phrase “… and purify us from ALL unrighteousness”. This promise seemed to first wash over me and then sink into the crevices of my soul…. Purify me from ALL unrighteousness?….. ALL unrighteousness!! This promise became alive within me…. ALL unrighteousness. This truth seemed to ebb and flow within me. It brought calm and hope…. ALL unrighteousness. How Blessed! I hope this blog will give you hope if you are also in a dry, dusty or dark season. Even if the promises of God seem far away right now, don’t lose hope…. all of a sudden a promise will sneak up on you and catch you by surprise like a rogue wave… for those promises are real and they are meant for you, the Beloved.

by Rev. Terry Tripp, Spiritual Direction Program Director

The summer heat has abated and the signs of Fall are coming in. It was an unprecedented summer. I wonder what this new season of change will be that is upon us. Each new season pretends a promise of movement in weather, in scenery, in rhythms, in hoped for change or in kept relationships. Yet, what God always promises in change is His faithfulness. But I have come to wonder about His faithfulness. Faithfulness to what?

More than anything it is a faithfulness to love. A love that we cannot make in our image. Only in the image of Christ are we introduced to true love. A love that bears pain, and therefore, a love that allows emptiness as a prerequisite to fullness. The Gospel of Matthew puts it this way;

That is why I am telling you not to worry about your life and what you are to eat, nor about your body and what you are to wear. Surely life is more than food, and the body more than clothing! Look at the birds in the sky. They do not sow or reap or gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they are?  Mt. 6:25-26

To receive God’s gift of love we need to make room for it. To not fill ourselves with empty cravings, but long for/desire God and trust that He will give us what we need when we need it.

In falling we can be caught; in being empty we can be filled. It is a vulnerable way of living. It is a faith-filled way of living. It is about letting go in order to find oneself being led, whether you know anything of it or not (as Thomas Merton contended). We at CFDM invite you again to a renewed desire for God’s way, God’s fulfillment, God’s ever present self-communicating intimacy. Know that you are loved beyond all that you can imagine and held when all seems to have fallen away.

Macrina Wiederfehr in her book, “Seasons of Your Heart” writes beautifully this act of surrender, of vulnerability, of welcoming a new season. Her poem: “The Sacrament of Letting Go”

Slowly
she celebrated the sacrament of letting go.
First she surrendered her green,
then the orange, yellow, and red
finally she let go of her brown.
Shedding her last leaf
she stood empty and silent, stripped bare.
Leaning against the winter sky
she began her vigil of trust.

And Jesus said:
Why do you worry about clothes? Remember the flowers growing in the fields; they do not fret about what to wear; yet I assure you not even Solomon in all his royal robes was dressed like one of these.

Shedding her last leaf
she watched its journey to the ground.
She stood in silence
wearing the color of emptiness,
her branches wondering;
How do you give shade with so much gone?

And Jesus said:
Do not be troubled or needlessly concerned.

And then,
the sacrament of waiting began.
The sunrise and the sunset watched with
tenderness.
Clothing her with silhouettes
they kept her hope alive.

They helped her understand that
her vulnerability,
her dependence and need,
her emptiness,
her readiness to receive,
were giving her a new kind of beauty.
Every morning and every evening they stood
in silence
and celebrated together
the sacrament of waiting.

And Jesus said:
Now if that is how God cares for the wild flowers in the fields which are here today and gone tomorrow, will He not all the more care for you…?

by David Hicks, Spiritual Formation Faculty

“Tremble, O earth, at the PRESENCE of the Lord,
at the PRESENCE of the God of Jacob,
who turned the rock into a pool,
the hard rock into springs of water.”
Psalm 114:7-8

God often does the unexpected not only because He can (that goes without saying) but also because it usually throws us off just enough to where we actually notice He is doing something. I’m convinced that He uses the common and the likely but these are also the very places where we often miss seeing the moving of His grace. It is precisely because they are likely that we sometimes see grace as common, natural, coincidental, rather than a divine break-in from a Heavenly Intruder. To shake us out of our blind indifference sometimes God comes in unlikely places of grace.

Psalm 114 refers back to the Exodus 17 story of Moses striking the rock at Horeb which then produces water to satisfy the thirst of the Israelites. This ‘striking incident’ was preceded by the Israelites complaining to Moses about their condition and wondering if God was really with them or not. God meets their need, but in an unlikely way. The most likely solution to the Israelites problem (thirst) would have been for God to lead them to a river or stream or spring where they could drink. Those would be likely places, normal places, to get water. But God chooses an unlikely place, perhaps the most unlikely place of all, to satisfy their thirst – a rock. A rock is not something that I would have thought of. Of all the places I can think of to satisfy thirst I would have never come up with a rock. Rocks are, to say the least, unlikely places to find water.

Put this in a long list of Biblical examples of God’s grace coming from unlikely places: an ark is built far from the nearest body of water; a donkey speaks a word from God; a teenage boy kills a giant and then rules a nation; a man of God is told to marry a prostitute as a living example of God’s love; a fish becomes the vehicle to deliver a prophet; water gets turned into wine; a boy’s lunch feeds 5,000; and the most unlikely place of all for God’s grace to be found is when the finality of a cross and a tomb become the birthplace of eternal life.

Though not nearly on as grand a scale as these I can come up with my own list of unlikely places of grace. Just like the Israelites thirst, I too at times have felt a desperate need. And just like the Israelites complaint, I have sometimes said (or at least thought), “God, are you with me or not?” I have looked for answers and solutions to my deep needs in all of the most likely places. But more times than not it has been in unlikely places where God has met these needs.  In fact sometimes these unlikely places have at first appeared as hard, immovable obstacles (like rocks). I perceive them as things that are actually standing in the way of what I most need, or at least think I need. There are all kinds of apparent obstacles in our lives that God may want to turn into an unlikely spring of grace to refresh us and to bless those around us.

How does this all happen? Psalm 114 above gives us the answer twice. The “Presence” of the Lord. I capitalize the word Presence because here it almost sounds like person’s name. “Presence” is a person. God’s presence transforms the unlikely broken, hard places of our lives into springs of grace and mercy. And this really is what our heart most thirsts for: the Presence of God, filling the most unlikely places with His grace.