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Powerful Prayers vol. ix: “Empty Me” Loder

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I have just returned from leading a 3 day Sacred Space retreat. My mind all abuzz with the epiphanies the retreatants were having, the God-moves that took place in the quiet corners of people's soul, and the rhythm of the Divine Hours being practiced by the monks at the Abbey that we experienced as we quietly slipped in and out of their practice… receiving something they had no idea they were giving.

This morning, as my spirit honed in on this particular prayer to breathe into my soul, it seemed to speak about all that God was doing in and through the men and women who were at Sacred Space…read and pray this slowly and ask the Spirit to illuminate the parts that your heart needs…

____________________________

Empty Me…

Gracious and Holy One,
     Creator of all things
          and of emptiness,
I come to you
     full of much that clutters and distracts,
          stifles and burdens me,
               and makes me a burden to others.
Empty me now
     of gnawing dissatisfactions,
          of anxious imaginings,
               of fretful preoccupations,
     of nagging prejudices,
          of old scores to settle,
               and of the arrogance of being right.
Empty me
     of the ways I unthinkingly think of myself as powerless,
          as a victim,
               as determined by sex, age, race,
                    as being less than I am,
                         or as other than yours.
Empty me
     of the disguises and lies
          in which I hide myself from other people
               and from my responsibility
                    for my neighbors and for the world.
Hollow out in me a space
     in which I will find myself,
          find peace and a whole heart,
               a forgiving spirit and holiness,
                    the springs of laughter,
          and the will to reach boldly
               for abundant life for myself
                    and the whole human family.

Ted Loder
_____________________________

Rumination…

This prayer is full of ruminatorial opportunities! (but I'll focus on just one)

The line that first drew me in was, "Empty me now of…the arrogance of being right."

I wondered, '

"what would happen in our lives if we took 30 days and decided that we would choose to be kind instead of fighting to prove that we are right?"

How would we handle the tension in our souls that worships the god of rightness more than the God of love.

Could I possibly see and believe that I can choose to be kind over being right without having to give up on what I believe…yes I think I could, but that would require a mind like Christ's.

He was able to be 100% right in every situation when the people around Him were so lost and wrong, yet love and kindness flowed from His soul.

I often ask myself, "even if I prove myself to be absolutely right in this moment, does it really have an eternal significance?"

Most often it does not, and my need to be right can easily take second place to my call to be kind and demonstrate love without really giving up anything that matters, and gain much that does through kindness.

Our need to always be right lurks in the shadows of most all conflict…

Our need to always be right reveals the insecurities that fill our identity…

Our need to always be right becomes a god that we fashion and dress in religiosity and truth justifications…

Our need to always be right keeps us from enjoying the people in our lives…

30 days…can you do it…will you allow yourself to enter into and feel and become aware of the tension that you are experiencing with a need to be right…

When you sense the Holy Spirit placing some Divine Duck Tape over your mouth again and again, let me encourage you to laugh and smile at yourself as you see how often you need to apply the filter. It's okay, it is all a part of the process and journey of becoming, and on the way, your kindness just might unleash the soul of someone who desperately needs it.

Dei Gratia,

Monty

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To The Secret Rose: Yeats

51Z3J68X8NL._SL500_AA300_ The sun is extremely hot today, filling the air with healing vitamin D and purging the body of all the water I have been retaining…so when I stole away a moment, I allowed my mind to find a cooler spot and absorb some words of William Butler Yeats. The poem/verse that arrested my scanning mind, wondering what to ponder over, was titled To The Secret Rose. Let me encourage you to find a quite space and read his words with your heart…

Monty

_______________

To The Secret Rose

Far-off, most secret, and inviolate Rose,
Enfold me in my hour of hours; where those
Who sought thee in the Holy Sepulchre,
Or in the wine-vat, dwell beyond the stir
And tumult of defeated dreams; and deep
Among pale eyelids, heavy with the sleep
Men have named beauty. Thy great leaves enfold
The ancient beards, the helms of ruby and gold
Of the crowned Magi; and the king whose eyes
Saw the pierced Hands and Rood of elder rise
In druid vapour and make the torches dim;
Till vain frenzy awoke and he died; and him
Who met Fand walking among flaming dew
By a grey shore where the wind never blew,
And lost the world and Emir for a kiss;
And him who drove the gods out of their liss,
And till a hundred morns had flowered red
Feasted, and wept the barrows of his dead;
And the proud dreaming king who flung the crown
And sorrow away, and calling bard and clown
Dwelt among wine-stained wanderers in deep woods:
And him who sold tillage, and house, and goods,
And sought through lands and islands numberless years,
Until he found, with laughter and with tears,
A woman of so shining loveliness
That men threshed corn at midnight by a tress,
A little stolen tress. I, too, await
The hour of thy great wind of love and hate.
When shall the stars be blown about the sky,
Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die?
Surely thine hour has come, thy great wind blows,
Far-off, most secret, and inviolate Rose?

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mirror, mirror on the wall…

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I remember those lines. They were delivered with such a drippingly powerful intensity that you actually felt sorry for the mirror!

"mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all."

The wicked queen was not gazing into the mirror for truth, but for vanity and ego appeasement. When we look into a mirror we have the choice to look inward and grow, or deflect what we see and live in the land of denial which ultimately shrivels the soul, and diminishes the truth about God.

A person who leads or teaches has the capacity to enlarge their soul in greater proportions than those she/he leads. A great leader or teacher is not one who simply regurgitates data to an audience, but one who dances in and out of the truth, sweating through the unknown in order to create an atmosphere of epiphany and understanding.

In my own world, most often as I wrestle with the things that I am to teach in the realm of spiritual formation or leadership, I am faced with my own inadequacies, brokenness, and desperate need of God.

One of my leadership life commandments has been that: "I won't be like a travel agent who sells people on a destination that he himself has never been." That means that I have had to lay my soul on the altar over and over again.

Education has a cost. It is the cost of integrity forming in us what we have learned. If we do not allow what we have be enlightened with or to, to transform us, we have chosen to leave the gift unopened.

I have found that it is easier to regurgitate information, or prepare a great and enthusiastic speech about places we have never been than it is to set the ego aside, admit our self-focus as well as our self-hatred at times, and allow God to move through us. But the results of the latter far outweigh the former.

In Parker Palmer's great book, "The Courage To Teach" he notes:

"Teaching, like any truly human activity, emerges from one's inwardness,
for
better or worse. As I teach I project the condition of my soul onto my
students,
my subject, and our way of being together. The entanglements I
experience in the
classroom are often no more or less than the convolutions of my inner
life.
Viewed from this angle, teaching holds a mirror to the soul. If I am
willing to
look in that mirror and not run from what I see, I have a chance to gain
self-knowledge–and knowing myself is as crucial to good teaching as
knowing my
students and my subject." 

When we don't like what we see in the mirror of enlightenment, we have a divine choice…we can either move toward what frightens us, and grow, or back away reducing our depth and self-understanding to information distribution.

The condition of our soul enters into everything we do as humans. The way we relate or don't relate. The way we choose to respond or thoughtlessly react. The way we communicate through a discussion or evade one altogether. The way we dialog through conflict or deny their is conflict.

Teaching/leading has created an atmosphere in my life where I have to continually look in the mirror and do something about what I see. Though it's never easy, and often painful, it is also a great blessing. The more I deal with and heal the image of myself in the mirror, the more I heal the man-made image of God I also carry in my soul.

When we look in the mirror, we often see a Pandora's box of paradox, In the book "The Ragamuffin' Gospel" Brennan Manning noted the following as he honestly assessed his heart:

"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."

Brennan has a great way with words! Often when we see the paradoxes that dwell within they scare us and we stop looking. We are afraid of being accepted by God and others due to what we see that we don't like. So we live a life of cover-up or performance hoping -that- will make up for the deficiencies we see in our lives. But this simply creates a new religion for you to live out…Christ came to free you from that trap. I like how Manning re-centers us on the Gospel of God's grace:

God's love is based on
nothing,
and the fact that it is based on nothing makes us secure. Were it based
on anything we do, and that "anything" were to collapse, then God's love
would crumble as well. But with the God of Jesus no such thing can
possibly
happen. People who realize this can live freely and to the fullest.
Remember
Atlas, who carries the whole world? We have Christian Atlases who
mistakenly
carry the burden of trying to deserve God's love. Even the mere watching
of this lifestyle is depressing. I'd like to say to Atlas: 'Put that
globe
down and dance on it. That's why God made it.' And to the weary
Christian
Atlases: "Lay down your load and build your life on God's love." We
don't
have to earn this love; neither do we have to support it. It is a free
gift. Jesus calls out: "Come to me, all you Atlases who are weary and
find
life burdensome, and I will refresh you."

If you have never stepped out in leadership, or decided to teach someone else, let me encourage you to look for an opportunity. It will cause you to look at who you truly are. It will create an awareness of who your really are. It will force you to consider some of your held beliefs about God that are more than likely false. This will bring you to a new and truer awareness of who you are and who God is…and that is where real growth happens.

Mirror, mirror on the wall…who's the fairest of them all? Now the mirror can honestly respond, "Jesus is, and do you know what? He thinks your incredible."

Dei Gratia,

Monty


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Powerful Prayers Vol. VIII: Kenneth Phifer


Powerful prayers
I Want To Stop Running


Eternal God, you are a
song amid silence,

A voice out of quietness,

A light out of darkness,

A presence in the
emptiness,

A coming out of the void.

You are all of these
things and more.

You are mystery that
encompasses meaning,

Meaning that penetrates
mystery.

 

You are God,

I am man.

I strut and brag.

I put down my fellows

And bluster out assertions
of my achievements.

 

And then something
happens:

I wonder who I am,

And if I matter.

Night falls,

I am alone in the dark and
afraid.

Someone dies,

I feel so powerless.

A child is born,

I am touched by the
miracle of new life.

At such moments I pause…

To listen for a song amid
silence,

A voice out of stillness,

To look for a light out of
darkness.

 

I want to feel a Presence
in the emptiness.

I find myself reaching for
a hand.

Oftentimes, the feeling
passes quickly,

And I am on the run again:

Success to achieve,

Money to make.

 

O Lord, you have to catch
me on the run

Most of the time.

I am too busy to stop,

Too important to pause for
contemplation.

I hold up too big a
section of the sky

to sit down and meditate.

But even on the run,

An occasional flicker of
doubt assails me,

And I suspect I may not be
as important

To the world

As I think I am.

 

Jesus said each of us is
important to you.

It is as if every hair of
our heads were numbered.

How can that be?

But in the hope that it is
so,

I would stop running,

Stop shouting,

And be myself.

Let me be still now.

Let me be calm.

Let me rest upon the faith
that you are God,

And I need not be afraid.

 

Amen

(* from
Kenneth Phifer’s book “A Book of Uncommon Prayer”)

_____________________________________

 

Monty’s Rumination…

 

There truly is not much
for me to say about this prayer. 
The deep, heartfelt words paint a very real tapestry that many will
instantly connect with.

 

When I first meditated on
this prayer, I was at a monastery with some other pastors, and one line
captured my attention more than any other:

 

“I hold up too big a section of the sky to
sit down and meditate.”

 

Even now, those words roll
over me and leave me feeling somewhat uneasy. I’m uneasy because that is very
often how I feel. My biblical theology tells me that it is God who holds up the
sky, but if that is so, why does so much of it seem to depend on me?

 

My  practical theology tells me that it is
impossible for me to hold up a big section of the sky, and that if I think I
am, I need to let it go, but if that is true, why does it seem so many people
and things really do
depend on me?

 

We are forever in the
catch-22 of monergism and synergism, how much is mine and how much is God’s.
When we think that too much depends on us, we posses weary souls, tired feet,
and frazzled emotions. When we think that too much depends on us, we create God
in our own image. When we create God in our own image, there is no one left who
is stronger than ourselves to lift us from the tangled web of living. When we
think too much depends on us, our self-importance creates an ego that fills the
universe, so of course there is no time to relate with a God who is smaller
than we are.

 

Yet, in our over inflated
bigness, Jesus still loves us, still calls us, still waits…

 

As he graciously reminds
me of His power, passion, and presence, I relax, realizing He not only holds up
all of the sky, but He made it too. Then I breathe the final words of the
prayer:

 

“I would stop running, stop shouting, and be
myself. Let me be still now. Let me be calm. Let me rest upon the faith that
you are God, and I need not be afraid.”

 

God has your corner of the
sky,

 

Dei Gratia…Monty