Captivity Liberation Shadow & Light

Passion Week, or Holy Week, continues to be a season in my life where the veil between heaven and earth exhibits an opaqueness allowing me to gaze more deeply into myself and the heart of God.

From the Triumphal entry to the empty tomb, I have learned that life is a journey of captivity, liberation, wilderness, and freedom. Learning the layered lessons embedded in the Passion of Yeshua is worthy of a lifetime of prayer, meditation, study and practice.

The story, or rather the stories, that comprise the final week of Yeshua’s life cascade out of larger story. To miss the larger story will diminish the power of the latter. In this week of cumulative passion Yeshua uses the Passover as the framework to display His compassionate redemptive mission. The Passover story itself is part of a larger narrative displaying God’s saving and intimate connection with humanity, the Exodus.

The moments and movements found in the Exodus story include Captivity, Liberation, Wilderness, and the gift of freedom.

This week I chose the spiritual practice that Jung called “shadow work.” Shadow work, or sanctificational reflection, is when I allow Holy Spirit to shine the light of Yeshua in my soul in order to reveal both light and shadow, the twin growth partners of our human journey,

I went on a slow walk. While walking, my attention was drawn to my physical shadow displayed before me on the path. Pausing, I reflected on how the light more easily helped me see my shadow. That thought is worthy of a divine pause. I took a picture of my shadow on the ground. Next I looked at the image and asked Holy Spirit to illuminate the moments and movements where I have been living more from my shadow-self than from my true self.

As I reflected on my shadow in the picture I felt the nudge of the Spirit beginning to speak. I felt drawn to reflect on how my shadow has been showing up in my life, relationships, unspoken thoughts, and subconscious interactions.

In that moment I remembered one of my favorite “shadow” or ” imposter” quotes Brennan Manning wrote years ago:

“When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and I doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. I am trusting and suspicious. I am honest and I still play games. Aristotle said I am a rational animal; I say I am an angel with an incredible capacity for beer.”

I simply love that quote. Closing my eyes I can hear Brennan intone those thoughts to me the last time he spoke at a church I pastored. Perhaps even more to the point Brennan also has said:

To live by grace means to acknowledge my whole life story, the light side and the dark. In admitting my shadow side I learn who I am and what God’s grace means.”

Why is shadow work important?

I believe there are multiple reasons, however, two that immediately come to mind are, first, that people who don’t do the deeper shadow/soul work cause great harm to others by their lack of personal awareness and stunted emotional and relational intelligence. Often, they are unaware of how their interactions cause pain.

The second reason is exactly what Brennan said: In admitting my shadow side I learn who I am and what God’s grace means.” To stand in confessed awareness before God and receive His grace helps us better know both Trinity and self.

Do you see shadow at work throughout the Passion Week as the radiant light of the Resurrection shines fully?

Pondering the liberation experienced by the people of Israel as their Exodus journey began, I quickly realize that liberation and freedom are two very different things. God moved powerfully against the hard-hearted Pharoah in a display of power and strength over the gods of Egypt. The final judgment, “Death of the firstborn” was the ultimate blow crumbling Pharaoh’s impenetrable heart. God’s people were liberated.

The “Death Angel”, however, spared the firstborn of Israel by “Passing over” every house that had the blood of an innocent lamb applied to the doorframe of their houses. The blood of the lamb was the sign for the “Death Angel” to Pass Over and spare that house.

This resulted in light for some, but darkness for others.

While liberation came for the Children of Israel that night it took forty years to experience the freedom they inherited on that “Passover night.”

Those were forty years of “shadow work.”

As the people escaped slavery, tasting the sweetness of liberation for the first time, they experienced the highest highs and the lowest lows. As a people they were:

  • Delivered, yet never satisfied…Where are we going Moses, it was better in Egypt.
  • Divinely fed yet never thankful…Really, manna again?
  • Spiritually Taught, yet slow to learn…Hey I have an idea, let’s craft a golden calf idol.
  • Continually rescued, yet never appreciative…Does Yahweh even care about us!

“The journey from liberation to freedom is long, hard, and takes as long as it takes.”

I wonder if the years of wilderness wandering might have been shorter had they spent more time embracing the wilderness rather than trying to escape the wilderness. In my life I continue to learn through doing my shadow work that trusting God in the wilderness creates a greater capacity to be satisfied with the unseen traits of the ordinariness of freedom.

God is not in a hurry, Trinity prefers the long game.
The spiritual/human journey is a marathon, not a sprint.
The movements from liberation to freedom pass through the Valley of the Shadow of Death.

In the passion week of Yeshua we see Him:

* Destroying the way of power and empire as he enters Jerusalem on a donkey and not a war stallion.
* Eating with and serving those He knew would deeply betray and deny Him.
* Wrestling with the conflict between His desire and the will of Abba in the shadows of Gethsemane.
* Longing for his followers to pray with Him rather than fight for Him.

Even in His final week Yeshua reveals that the path from liberation to freedom travels through the darker spaces and places of life. The only way to embrace the light is to journey through the dark. The beauty of life is through the wilderness of death.

Shadow work not only asks the question, “What is it that is causing me anxiety?” But it also seeks to understand “Why am I so anxious?”

Shadow work not only reveals what wounds I carry, but also helps me ask deeper questions such as, ” Why do I still carry the wound around allowing it to define me?”, or, “Why am I choosing to hold onto bitter wounds rather than allow God to transform them into sacred wounds through forgiveness and grace?”

Shadow work not only allows me to be honest about who has hurt me and how I have been betrayed, it also takes me to deeper into my heart becoming aware of and acknowledge those I have hurt and who need me to make amends. Deeper still I am able to see where I have betrayed myself and God by inflicting pain on others.

Shadow work is the journey between the triumphal entry and the resurrection. Between Liberation and freedom.

There are no shortcuts, bypasses, or alternate routes if your desire is the freedom only found in God.

Perhaps this is why the Passion Week remains a “thin space” for me where the veil between who I am and who I am becoming is more profoundly seen, and why the opaque veil between an earthly reality and a heavenly present-future hope is calling me to trust God in the journey. The result is feeling the embrace of His light.

Finally, I hold to the truth that as the Divine Light that is Yeshua bathes me in grace and mercy,, I am able to trust that His all encompassing Light is far greater than any darkness in me.

Breathe in: I am not my shadow
Breathe out: I am becoming love

Perception & Love

Perception is real. Perception is powerful.

Perception can be leaning towards truth as well as away from truth toward error.

Perception creates closeness and distance, love and hate, tenderness and toughness.

Perception defines security and threat, friend or foe, lover or litigator.

Perception is like air. There are many types of air:

  • Polluted and unhealthy air…
  • Mountain fresh air…
  • Salted sea air…
  • Damp and musty forest air…

Our perception determines what air we think we are breathing. The troubling part of this is that it makes it extremely hard to convince others that a different air exists.

Even ultimate Perception is tainted by the various forms of air we encounter in our daily life.

Those who are cultivating the growth of their soul interrogate the reality and truthfulness of the air they breathe. The soul pilgrim knows that public opinion is biased polemically stretching us apart from each other.

When the Gospel is at work it changes everything. It draws us together dispelling the brutality of perception with the unity of Love.

~Monty

Doxology in the Darkness

Meditations on Good Friday, Stanislaus Rapotec
04 Oct 1913 – 18 Nov 1997

Good Friday, which remembers the crucifixion of Jesus, has been given a number of titles over the centuries. Some construe “Good Friday” evolved from a mistranslation of the German phrase “God’s Friday” or “Guttes Freitag.” 1290 is the earliest known use of “Goude Friday” found in a South English dictionary.

It has been called Holy Friday, Great Friday, Mourning Friday, Silent Friday, and even Long Friday.

Good Friday is good because it is so bad.

On Good Friday foundations were shaken, hopes were crushed, and the inconceivable became reality. Good Friday pulls the vaporous veil of life aside and reveals things often don’t go the way we want. Incongruence is the norm. The daily bits and pieces of living have been turned upside down.

It’s called “Good” because Jesus absorbed all the bad, dark, injustice, evil and sin of the past, present, and future into His own body, nailing it all to the cross so that we could be forgiven and freed.

It’s called “Holy” because the love demonstrated by Jesus at this moment causes a holy hush to blanket the world; we remove our shoes entering holy space. “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15:13)

It’s called “Mourning” because our hearts break when confronted with the brutality that accosted Love. The emptiness we feel in the immediate aftermath of so great a tragedy bores deeper and deeper into our soul.

It’s called “Long” because Jesus’ friends didn’t know Resurrection Sunday would actually happen. They entered the silence of a long Friday night…a long Saturday…and a long Saturday night of despair and devastation. They cried out the opening word of Lamentations, “Echah” which means “How?”

How could this have happened?
How could you allow this God?
How will I ever find joy again?

But this is the journey of Good Friday. This is the journey of life. We must learn to sing songs in the night. We must learn to trust God has something better beyond the dark night. Brennan Manning said it this way:

“To be grateful for an unanswered prayer, to give thanks in a state of interior desolation, to trust in the love of God in the face of the marvels, cruel circumstances, obscenities, and commonplaces of life is to whisper a doxology in darkness.”
~Brennan Manning, Ruthless Trust

I am still learning this lesson, the lesson of whispering a doxology in darkness. In some moments I am surprisingly able, yet in other charcoal moments, the darkness overwhelms me… until I remember.

There is nothing about Good Friday that seems right, and that is the point.

On Good Friday, God dealt death, darkness, and devastation so fierce a blow that the upturned tables of life started to turn right side up.

The dominion of death was changed from a finality to a fermata.

The darkness of injustice was pierced with the Light of Love.

The dungeon of sin was given the keys to freedom.

We live in the “now and not yet” period where Love has pierced the darkness bringing about the capacity for heaven to invade earth. However, heaven and earth will not be united into the Oneness of God’s presence until Jesus returns again (Maranatha).

So, in the meantime, through faith, trust, and love, we push back the darkness as we learn to whisper doxologies in the dark.

“Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.”
~Psalms 30:5

Room 712

Thin spaces and Divine wrestling matches

Last week I was doing some work at my Planet Changer Uganda office located in Seeta, just outside the capital of Kampala. I knew it was going to be a busy week as I was picking up supplies with our Uganda director Moses and his wife Bena.

We needed bunk beds, mattresses, sheets, chairs and a handful of other supplies to get the rooms at the office ready for a team from SVA Church. They will be coming in January to help with water testing, GPS tagging of completed water systems and conduct community health and sanitation surveys.

As there was not a bed for me yet, I stayed at a nearby hotel, this would be my basecamp for accomplishing the long to-do list. While I was looking forward to some alone time with God while savoring some amazing Ugandan tea in the mornings, my experience ran on the twin rails of beauty and struggle.

Behind the door of room 712 I passed into a divine portal where I was about to wrestle everyday for a week.

While no place is truly holier than another, as God is found everywhere and within you, during my prayer, meditation and sleep time I entered into a thin space. A thin space is the Celtic way of expressing that you have experienced the presence of God in such a real and intimate way that the veil between the here-and-now and the presence of God is as thin as translucent paper. Room 712 became for me a Jabbok river of sorts confronting my greater and lesser angels.

In the morning, while I read, prayed and meditated, God’s presence was so tangible my entire body was humming with the energy of creation.

It was amazing…
A place I didn’t want to leave…
Like Peter, I said, “Let’s build three shelters and stay here!” when he experienced the transfiguration of Jesus right before his eyes.

I felt as if I might float away, I even checked once or twice to make sure I was still sitting in my chair! I wondered if I might float right into His throne room on the waves of His love and light.

However, while I slept, we wrestled for control of things I felt I might lose, things I might gain. My mind wouldn’t settle, I felt the weight of my thoughts on my chest like a cement blanket.

Was I jacob at the Jabbok river wrestling with the man who was really God? Would I cling until He blessed me? Who was I, and why did the night spaces become an MMA ring? Was I jacob or Monty or pastor or activist or or or. If I follow His lead and surrender all, who will I become? Will I like me? Will others like me?

While my mind worked to control scenario after scenario crashing through my mind, in the tumultuous silence I finally heard what my soul needed most: “I love you, You are mine.”

And that is exactly what I needed to hear.