Author: johngregoryjr

The Wisdom of Stability, Part 2-Midday Demons (book review)

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The following chapter in Hartgrove’s book warns, “Buckle Up!”

After encouraging nurturing roots of love, he immediately offers that you can expect spiritual challenges. His first reference retells the story of the desert monastics’ “describing the ‘noonday devil’ who attacks after one commits to stay and begins to feel the heat of high noon.”

This is where the book’s subtitle, “Rooting Faith in a Mobile Culture,” gets highlighted. To stay, to root, to pursue stability “against the seas of constant change makes us susceptible to temptations we would not otherwise have occasion to know.”

The practice of stability cannot be reduced to a quick fix for the spiritual anxiety of a placeless people. It is a process. It takes time…To persevere in the process that leads to real growth, we must learn to name and resist the midday demons.

These are the three midday demons:

  • Ambition’s Whisper
  • Boredom’s Rut
  • Vainglory’s Delusion

I’m quite familiar with the first two. They often show face at high noon. Hartgrove offers several countermoves to these temptations focused on both spirit and body including physical activity, engaging community, and dying well.

This book, available on hoopla and an easy weekend read, is worthwhile. If you only read chapters four and five of this book, you will be enriched. However much you read, you’ll find yourself wiser and pondering your stability.

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The Wisdom of Stability, Part 1-Roots of Love (book review)

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Reading while traveling last weekend I gained a broader definition for stability thanks to Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove. His book, The Wisdom of Stability, affirmed and challenged me, leaving me with this evaluation-I’m decently stable, but there’s always need for growth.

It’s important to point out what Hartgrove is addressing. He’s not talking about the need for emotional regulation or mental wellness. In simple terms, he shares a message of valuing staying put, committing to less wandering, and acknowledging “there comes a time to set seeking aside,” as Kathleen Norris states in her foreword.

Example: I overheard someone this morning describing the makeup of three fantasy football leagues they’re active in. One is made up of college friends; another is made up of childhood friends. Possibly without intention, this person is practicing stability in a way that many of us aren’t.

To practice stability is to learn to love both a place and its people. -Chapter 4, “Roots of Love”

Hartgrove uses trees to explain in chapter four. His analogy rings true, especially for those living where I do. Last year’s hurricane season wreaked havoc. Ask those who live where I moved in April. The community lost over a third of its trees. Why? Their roots couldn’t withstand the winds.

The chapter title, “Roots of Love,” comes from a thought by Benedictine Anselm of Canterbury, a twelfth-century monk who compared a restless monk to a tree. “If he often moves from place to place at his own whim, or remaining in one place is frequently agitated by hatred of it, he never achieves stability with roots of love.”

One temptation in the face of agitation is to flee (more about temptations in part two). Hartgrove challenges us to accept this goes against one reason we were made-to intimately share life with our landscape and its people.

How else can we learn the attention that is needed to really know a community? How else would we ever gain the patience that is required to care for a place over time?

Friday, I chose to go inside Chick-fil-A for lunch rather than hurry through the drivethrough. Not many other customers made the same choice, so the hostess had few people to chat up. She chose me as her customer to get to know. She asked a pretty standard question for non-Floridians, “Did you grow up in Florida?” I have to honestly answer that with a no. But when I say I’ve lived in Florida since 1986 and in this area since 2002, the reply is usually something like, “Well, you might as well have.”

More than once my seeking has tempted me to move on.

More than once, I’m reminded that God is wiser than me. With his wisdom comes stability, and with that stability comes wisdom.

The King is at the Gate

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Psalms 24:7-10 CEV (A Psalm by David)
[7] Open the ancient gates, so that the glorious king may come in.

[8] Who is this glorious king? He is our Lord, a strong and mighty warrior.

[9] Open the ancient gates, so that the glorious king may come in.

[10] Who is this glorious king? He is our Lord, the All-Powerful!

Suppose the ancient gates are entries to your mind, body, and spirit.

Even though he created you, this king doesn’t do force entry.

Even though your gate would yield to his command, this king knocks and waits for your reply.

It’s a common thought for those engaging him for the first time that it has to happen in a formal setting-church, monastery, temple, retreat center, for example. The psalmist declares, “Not so.” The gate controls are yours anytime of the day no matter your location.

This king waits to receive access to you, to be with you, all of you. And maybe unbeknownst to you, you’ve been waiting for him, too.

Opening your gate to this king makes room for connection you’ve been waiting for.

Opening your gate to this king makes preparation for healing you’ve been waiting for.

Opening your gate to this king makes room for communion you’ve been waiting for.

Opening your gate to this king makes it possible you exit the gate together.

What you’ve been waiting for may just be waiting for you on the other side of your gate. But it’s not actually a what. It’s a who.

Open Your Gates!

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Seen Too Much

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You’ve seen too much to do nothing

In the beauty

In the brutal

In the church

In the margins

In friend’s lives

In families

In the loving

In the hurting

In the calling

In the yelling

In the blessing

In the cursing

In the welcoming

In the dismissing

In the running

In the crawling

In the dying

In the living

You’ve seen too much to do nothing

(For deeper understanding, view this message by Pastor Matt Cote)

Keep Looking

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Father

I looked for you today

In the drizzling rain

In the psalmist’s lyrics

In a believer’s curiosity

In a mourner’s heartbreak

Son

I looked for you today

In a partner’s forgiveness

In an artist’s healing

In a woman’s pain

In a dreamer’s frustration

Spirit

I looked for you today

In a grandpa’s tears

In a friend’s question

In a pastor’s story

In a buyer’s decision

There you were

Everywhere saying, “Keep Looking”

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Journaling For Beginners, Part 3: Three Imagining Questions

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In the last week, I heard another pre-determined set of questions that take a different approach to reflective journaling. They came from chapter three, “Hello To the Imagination,” in Padraig O Tauma’s In the Shelter.

  • How would you describe today?
  • Have you seen anything interesting on the way?
  • Is it working?

What I like about this set of questions is their openness. They create reflection that is deeper and broader, not solely focused on what happened after the alarm sounded.

Asking yourself to think about what you saw interesting is a different way of remembering. It’s not asking you to judge. Basically, what caught your attention, what made you curious. Feels like neuroplasticity in action.

Yes, the vagueness of “it” in question three is intentional. You get to decide what “it” is. You might need more than a page for that one occasionally.

Personally, I don’t see myself using this set of questions regularly. But they make a great tool, one I’ve chosen to add to the box.

Photo by Ahmet Yüksek ✪ on Unsplash

Journaling For Beginners, Part 2: 30-Day Challenge

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Another approach to journaling is answering a pre-determined set of questions. I’ve come across two this year that I’ve engaged.

The first one I started on Easter Sunday. It was a 30-Day challenge created by Alex Banayan, author of The Third Door.

Now, before you dismiss it thinking you can’t commit to something 30 days in a row, here’s your better option. Think 30 consecutive journal entries. Some missed days along the journey are to be expected and shouldn’t be viewed as failing. I took 40 days. No guilt or shame.

The focus is similar to yesterday’s post-a review of your day. But answering three questions may take a little more time and thought. Here they are:

  • What filled me with enthusiasm today?
  • What drained me of energy today?
  • What did I learn about myself today?

The balance in these questions is healthy. You give yourself an opportunity to engage what fills you, to overcome what drains you, and to grow in understanding yourself.

Banayan encourages this reflection as a final entry following the challenge: Read back over your entries to identify patterns for all three questions. That exercise will take some time. No rush. I didn’t do that in one setting, by the way. Took one question at a time over a couple of days.

What I liked about this challenge was that it led to progress. If you’re wanting more from your journaling than reflection, this challenge is for you.

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Journaling for Beginners, Part 1: Focus on Wins

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In the last month, two younger men have asked how to start journaling. Love it. Speaks to many things about their approach to life and their desire to grow.

When I said something akin to, “There’s no right way to journal; you’ll figure out what works best for you,” they both pretty much responded, “Not helpful.”

To be helpful, I shared this approach that I started in January after reading Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy‘s The Gap and The Gain: The High Achiever’s Guide to Happiness, Confidence, and Success. Bottom line: Focus on Daily Wins.

The exercise is simple. At the end of the day, within the hour before going to bed, write down three wins from the day. This effort has many possible positive outcomes: better sleep, grateful mindset, acknowledging progress, and fostering happiness.

To increase your gain more, a deeper step is to write down three wins to achieve the next day. No more than three. This focus has the potential to improve setting priorities and increasing productivity.

No matter your age or season of life, I’m guessing trying this approach to journaling for the next month could be fruitful, maybe even life changing. After 15 years of this practice, here’s how Dan Sullivan describes its impact:

I go to bed feeling excited about the next day. I wake up the next morning excited. Oftentimes, what happens is I have wins bigger than the three I had imagined the night before.

If you’re struggling in your journaling discipline, give this focus a try. You are already winning. Take note.

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Let’s Talk

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Started listening to a new audio book, In the Shelter by Padraig O Tuama. In chapter one he asked an interesting question about prayer, one I’ve not heard worded this way before. “Where is it that we are when we pray?”

It’s a different way to challenge one’s emotional and mental approach to prayer.

We are often in many places. We are saying to ourselves, “I should be somewhere else,” or, “I should be someone else,” or “I am not where I say I am.” In prayer, to begin where you are not is a poor beginning.

To begin where you are may take courage or compromise or painful truth telling; whatever it takes, it’s wise to begin there. The only place to begin is where I am.

Not where you want or feel you ought to be. This could mean rather than naming your present state-confused, frustrated, hurt, angry, lonely, unhappy, etc.-you ask for where you want to be or where you feel it is your duty to be-fulfilled, joyful, connected, healed, satisfied, understood, peaceful, etc.

Not in many places. We can often pray about what has happened, what we fear is going to happen rather than what is happening in this moment. We can be drawn to focus on the past or the future to the point that the present is ignored, maybe even avoided. The result that we aren’t even intending can be distance, even creating space for drifting to begin.

I believe what he’s encouraging is twofold. One is raw honesty. The other is naked vulnerability.

Prayer that is honest and vulnerable, not pious or fake, says to God, “I’m here. I believe you are too. Let’s talk.”

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Monks, Nuns, and Celibacy

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I listened to Kathleen Norris’s book The Cloister Walk this week. Fascinating.

A highlight was Chapter 13, an honest look at her 10 years of relationships with celibate men and women.

In them the strengths of celibacy have somehow been transformed into an openness that attracts people of all ages, all social classes. They exude a sense of freedom.

She acknowledges her own struggle to understand how this can be, yet rejects culture’s prejudice take on reasons for celibacy.

As celibacy takes hold in a person over the years, as monastic values supersede the values of the culture outside the monastery, celibates become people who can radically assess those of us out in the world, if only because they’ve learned how to listen without possessiveness, without imposing themselves. With someone who is practicing celibacy well, we may sense that we are being listened to in a refreshingly deep way. And this is the purpose of celibacy. Not to obtain an impossibly cerebral goal mistakenly conceived as holiness, but to make oneself available to others, body and soul. Celibacy, simply put, is a form of ministry.

Natural tendency is to reject what we don’t understand or aren’t willing to be open to accept as necessary.

Ministry is a choice.

Availability is a choice.

Listening is a choice.

Our obedience to God’s choices for us won’t always be understood or accepted by others. Jesus actually told us to expect this to happen, to follow calling, to be about the Father’s work.

It’s necessary for transformation, for freedom.

Be strong in your obedience. Your body and soul will thank you. So will other’s.

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