every single day

the key to life in Jesus

is to relentlessly make

time and space

for him to speak

and move

and act

every. single. day.

beauty and tragedy

 “The tragedy of life is not in the fact of death, but in what dies inside us while we live.” ~Norman Cousins

 

there is a dying

that is good and beautiful

that brings God joy and delight

it makes good space within us

for something new to be born

and there is a dying

that is sad and tragic

that breaks God’s heart

when we fail to pay attention

to what is good and beautiful within

and it dies from neglect

staying out of the way

If I have learned anything in my 18 years as chaplain of the Powell High football program it is how to stay out of the way.  And staying out of the way is much harder than it seems.  In fact, it is an art form.  Staying out of the way requires an active, thoughtful, intentional state of heart and mind.  It is born out of the realization that there is a much larger story going on here than just you.  In fact, you aren't the point at all.  Your job is just to show up, pay attention, be available, and listen.  Your job is to not impede or hinder that larger story, but to support and encourage it whenever and however possible.  Which is an incredibly humbling position to be in.

I don't know about you, but I am not great at staying out of the way.  In fact, sometimes my tendency to interrupt, insert, and initiate actually gets in the way of what God is up to, rather than encouraging and nurturing it.  It becomes about my agenda more than it does about his.  You see, far too often I tend to operate out of need: the need to be heard, the need to be seen, the need to be significant, the need to make an impact, the need to put my two cents in.  In fact, I tend to operate out of this weird combination of pride and insecurity far more than I'd care to admit.  And when I do this, it becomes more about my story than it does about God's story.  I can't tell you how many times through the years I have walked away from a conversation or an encounter thinking, "Oh wow, I really missed it there." (Here's a great example, if you're interested: a do-over .  It comes from a time I did that with a couple of friends who were in some really, really deep grief)

So needless to say, all of these years with the football program have been great for me.  I need as much practice as I can get learning the art of staying out of the way.  

know your yes

What’s your yes?  I know, I know, it’s a weird question, at least on the surface anyway.  But underneath it is profound.  In fact, it’s a question that forces you down to your core.  It is a question that begs you to discover who you were made to be and to define that thing, or those things, you were placed on this earth to do.  For if you don’t know your yes, how can you ever hope to become all you were dreamt to be?

One of the keys to the spiritual journey is to know your yes, and then to arrange your life around that one imperative.  To do those things that are important, rather than merely urgent.  To focus your life on what is central, rather than being constantly distracted by what is peripheral.  You must allow your yes to propel you to do only the things that help you to be all you were made to be.  And you must allow that yes to teach you what you are meant to do, as well as what you are not meant to do.  Knowing your yes is what allows you to also say no.  The problem is that most people have a hard time saying no simply because they have never really discovered their yes.

So we must stop and reflect and pray.  We must seek and listen and pay attention.  We must find our yes, so that we will not constantly be at the mercy of our circumstances.  So we can live proactive, rather than reactive lives. 

More and more, I find myself in conversations with people who feel like life is living them, rather than like they are living their lives.  Somehow, somewhere, it all spun out of control and they are having a hard time getting it back.  The truth is that so many of us tend to live at the mercy of our schedules, but I do not think this is how we were intended to live.

Let me ask you a question: Does your schedule control you, or do you control your schedule?  Are you schedule-driven, or God-led.  And no, the two do not have to be mutually exclusive, but most often they are.  It takes a good bit of thoughtful intention to achieve some sense of congruence between your daily schedule and the lives God wants you to live.  It all depends on where you start.  It all starts with knowing your yes.  It all starts by asking God who he made you to be and what he wants you to do.  That way your daily “to do” list will always flow from the more significant things in life rather than the trivial.  And you will begin to live the life that you most deeply want to live.  Or, more importantly, you will begin to live the life that God wants to live in and through you. 

Yes, Father!  Yes!  And always yes! ~Francis de Sales

the pilgrim way

“Blessed are those who find their strength is in you, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage.” Psalm 84:5)

“At the end of my trip to Canada, the United States, and England, about which I wrote in this journal, I met a young man who told me about his own spiritual journey in a way that helped me to think about this second loneliness.  He said, ‘First I was traveling on a highway with many other people.  I felt lonely in my car, but at least I was not alone.  Then Jesus told me to take an exit and follow a winding country road which was pleasant and beautiful.  People who passed by greeted me, smiled, and waved to me; I felt loved.  But then, quite unexpectedly, Jesus asked me to take a dirt road, leave the car, and walk with him.  As we were walking we did not see anyone anymore; although I knew that I was walking with Jesus, I felt very lonely and often in despair.  I was tired and felt forgotten by my friends.  Now it looked as if I was getting more lonely as I was getting closer to Jesus.  And nobody seemed to understand.’” —The Road to Daybreak by Henri J. M. Nouwen

the pilgrim way

is a lonely road

it leads away

from noise and clamor

from attention and acclaim

from impact and influence

it leads into the desert

where all we have

to hold onto

is the hand of God

go out weeping

“he who goes out weeping, 

carrying seed to sow, 

will return with songs of joy, 

carrying sheaves with him.” 

(Psalm 126:6)

go out weeping

always go out weeping

not cocky and confident

not prideful and arrogant

not critical and judgmental

not certain and sure

go out weak and vulnerable

go out humble and dependent

go out fully aware of your own brokenness

go out with questions rather than answers

go out as nobody rather than as somebody

go out as someone with much to receive

rather than one who has much to offer

go out to love and to serve

for only then will you

return with songs of joy

carrying sheaves with you

sabbatical

“What should I do on my sabbatical?” 

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked that question through the years.  And it’s such a difficult question to answer, because it’s a question that’s dripping with irony.  “What should I do on my sabbatical?”  I always want to respond, “Wait, what?  Is this a trick question?”  After all, isn’t the point of a sabbatical not to do anything?  Isn’t it about making time and space to rest and renew and recover?  And isn’t the essence of rest to stop doing and to start being?  Which means that instead of asking, “What should I do on my sabbatical?” we need to start by asking, “What should I not do on my sabbatical?”  That would make a lot more sense, for a sabbatical seems to be a lot more about undoing than it does about doing.  Undoing all of those misguided beliefs, hidden agendas, and dysfunctional patterns that got us so worn out, exhausted, and overextended in the first place.  

No matter how we try to dress it up, or rationalize it, the fact is that we are addicted to doing.  I mean, it’s a terrifying leap from doing to not doing.  Am I right?  Why else would we fill our lives so full of activity that there is no room, no margin, and no breath?  Mostly because so much of our worth and value is tied up in what we do.  Which makes not doing such a difficult, if not impossible, proposition.  Because in the deepest places of our hearts we are convinced that “If I’m not doing, then I have no value.”  We have bought into the lie, and it runs deep. 

Therefore, it is going to take a lot of time and space and silence and stillness and listening and prayer—a lot of undoing—to root it all out.  It’s going to take us turning off our phones and taking off our headphones and shutting off our computers.  It’s going to take a lot of shutting our mouths and opening our ears.  It’s going to take a lot of savoring the words of the Scriptures and giving the Spirit of God time and space to have free reign in the deepest places of our hearts and souls.  It’s going to require us to stop trying to produce, control, manufacture, achieve, and accomplish. 

A sabbatical is a time and a season where we lie fallow (Lev. 25:3-5) and allow God to renew, replenish, and restore us.  As Steve Macchia once said, “A sabbatical is to be a time of rest, not a time of redirected productivity.”  Which means that maybe the best answer to the question of “What should I do on my sabbatical?” is, “Nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  Sit.  Relax.  Breathe.  Stroll.  Savor.  Enjoy.  Rest.”  If we can do those things, then we might actually be heading in the right direction.