Learning to make space for the tension

THIS WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AT WWW.IMMERSEJOURNAL.COM

If what it means to be human is found in relationship then the ability to be mindfully present with others is really important in our spiritual journey. This is especially true for youth workers if the old adage “you can’t give away what you don’t own” has any truth to it.  In order to be mindfully present though first we have to be able to know ourselves enough to identify what our issues are and second we have to be able to hold in tension the honest reality of our own situation along with the present reality of the space we find ourselves in.  This is not easy.

Spiritual Disciplines

Spiritual disciplines really help, especially meditation and journaling.  Both meditation and journaling are ways of inviting Jesus into us in an integrated way.

Meditation is an act of becoming mindful of the things that fill us up in order to invite Jesus into the space of those things.  Jesus helps us discover, name and organize these residuals of our lives. This doesn’t happen so much in a cognitive way though, being able to describe our inner workings with descriptive language is usually the last thing available to us because of how our brains work.  I’m not convinced that we have to be able to name everything though.  Often feelings or intuitions communicate in a language that is enough to help us navigate wholeness. The more time we spend in meditation the more we making the needed space for the master to fill us up.

Journaling is also an act of becoming mindful.  Have you ever kept a dream journal? For two years I would have these dreams that involved animals, many times they were lions. Some times the lions had full mains other times they looked shorn like a sheep. Some times they would notice me and some times they wouldn’t. I felt these dreams deeply and knew that my pre-conscience was trying to tell me something but it wasn’t until I began to reflect on them consistently through journaling and meditation that I was able to connect them to places and things inside me.  Whether it’s keeping a prayer journal, a daily reflective log or a dream diary journaling can be a tool that helps us better know ourselves.

Holding the tension 

How many times have we been unable to really engage with someone because something in the immediate environment has triggered our concern for ourselves? Countless times have I been with students in a sort of  half present way.  Holding the tension is coming to grips with our own needs enough so that they don’t dictate us.  There’s a level of trust that is required there though.  It’s a trusting that we’re okay and that we’re going to be okay. Jesus is constantly whispering this blessing to us: that we’re his that we’re okay and even still we’re going to be okay but we have to listen to hear it.  When we’re okay so to speak we can make space for the other.  This is the ability to really hear and have actual empathy for the other human being I’m with.

The example of Jesus

Jesus was the archetype human.  God had become that which God wanted to save.  When Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane and his friends deserted him it must have been disheartening.  His disciples, the only ones who might have had a chance to bear with him a part of what he was going through, continually fell asleep.  Yet in that moment Jesus showed us how to be present.  He turned to God, holding in tension what must have been a painful reality along with the present task at hand.

We are called as youth workers to be places of the blessing of Jesus.  Yet there are a lot of tensions and pressures in our lives everyday that threaten to undo us. Spiritual practices like those that lend to mindfulness help us find the space needed to hear the blessing and offer it through actual, present ministry.

The Power of Story: why we go to Church

We go to church to hear the gospel from each other. The more we tell the gospel to ourselves the more we can make it available for others by bearing witness to it.

Stories help us make meaning. My son attends a Montessori school. While I love Montessori (the whole work is play and play is work is awesome) it is still hard to drop off my son when he’s crying and anxious about being there. Something that we do to help Elliott make his 3 times a week transition is tell the story of what’s going on. We say “Eli we got in the car and drove to school together today. And now we’re at school where your going to work with Ms. Natalie aren’t you? And then mommy (or daddy) is going to come back and get you isn’t she?” Elliott responds to this story and these questions with nods and sniffling yeses. We do this several times. Each time he hears this story his anxiety goes down and he becomes more available to begin his work that day.

The Gospel is the story that makes sense of this life for us. The more we hear it the more life makes sense (even though it can still hurt like hell) and the more we’re ready to engage it as a people or person of life.

The power of story: communion seriously ups our game

Communion as a culmination point in our liturgy is important every week because it is an acted out auto-biographical story of The Church that Jesus is present in.

Stories are how our brains find meaning, they integrate the left and right modes of the brain by utilizing the cause and effect drive towards explaining of the left with the non verbal autobiographical processing of the right (see Daniel Siegel’s The Developing Mind for more).

So from a biological stand point communion as a consistent story we act out after spending time in scripture becomes a mechanism for deeper Christ like transformation because it gives greater meaning to our Christian story and identity.

From a revealed knowledge stand point this identity making practice is found in scripture to be a place of profound place sharing between Christ and the believer (see The Bible and Church history for more ) And since we believe, again through scripture, that our transformation always happens in Christ this confirms even deeper that communion is a profound place of Christ like transformation.

If that is the case I come to the conclusion that in regards to discipleship the more communion the better!

Audio Divina using Tom Waits

This last weekend I was in Atlanta to be a part of The National Youth Workers Conference as a representative of Immerse.  Since I was there anyways I was asked to lead a small prayer exercise in the prayer room they have called The Sanctuary.  (My friends Micah and Erik led many things in this space during the weekend.) When asked if I would lead a lectio divina I asked if I could alter that to become an audio divina that incorporates the music of Tom Waits. They seemed excited about that possibility and so that is what I attempted to lead.  Here is what I put together for that time.  Enjoy.

Resonating Relationships

My friend, Jamie recently said to me that he feels an anxiety from life. We were at a big conference and I asked him if he was excited to be here. He said, “yeah I guess, except I get kind of overwhelmed at these things. I open up this big schedule and it’s a long list of meetings and seminars on a lot of different topics. It feels like it says to me, you need to know all these things. So I begin to feel anxiety because I’m feeling like I need to do these things.” He then enlarged the scope to say that, “life does that to us too, it’s full of messages that say we need this and this and that. And if we don’t learn these things, or do those things we are falling behind.”

This resonated with me. It made me feel mindful of what happens in my being. I too feel this anxiety and it often shows up with compulsive behavior. I wondered what it meant to feel like we’re falling behind, behind what? Perhaps it’s behind our own legitimacy. If I don’t engage then I’m failing at being human. I feel this in Church, a lot. All the programs and all the services offered cause me to feel like I’m supposed to do them, otherwise they wouldn’t be offered. Having lunch with Jamie though reminded me of what it means to be human. It is found somewhere in relationship.

After lunch I felt freer than I did before we ate together and shared our lives with each other. It was a practice of inviting someone else into my space and making room internally to receive their life. It was also a practice in vulnerability to share my life in an honest way. Which made me think, being present with The Church frees us to posture our lives like Jesus but being “at church” often does the opposite.