I want to get me some Hesychasm!

Last week I had this dream: I’m presenting on the theme of hesychasm to a group. I mention that I imagine not very many people know what hesychasm is, but after they hear my explanation they’ll be saying, “I want to get me some hesychasm!”

Hesychasm is the Greek word in Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition for “inner and outward peace or tranquility.” It is the “peace that passes understanding,” promised by Jesus. Don’t you want to have some hesychasm these days? In the incessant negativity of our news feeds; in the contentious political climate; in the tedious continuing pandemic; in our school board meetings; in state and national legislatures; it seems humanity is enjoying being in a state of constant anxiety and turmoil… oh, yes, and in our denominational debates on who’s in and who’s out! As William Wordsworth wrote in 1807, “The world is too much with us.”

The answer of the earliest Christians was to retreat to the desert, similar to Jesus’ time in the wilderness. Here, according to Thomas Merton, these desert fathers and mothers sought “their own true self, in Christ.”* Ah, how can I be at home in the heart of Divine Love, mindful of the turmoil of “the world,” but not buffeted by it? Their answer was to continually anchor themselves in God’s Eternal Love and Goodness, and find their inner heart of freedom, discovering moments of hesychasm. 

How marvelous that we have two months of Epiphany this year! Let’s practice hesychasm for these weeks, being the “light of Christ,” sending love, joy, peace, kindness, and generosity into the fragmented places of the world.

For myself, “I want to get me some hesychasm!” And share it with the world!

Dwight Judy

Epiphany, 2022

*Thomas Merton, The Wisdom of the Desert (New York: New Directions, 1970), p. 5.

From the Introduction: Pushing the Pause Button

 

In the midst of our many uncertainties, fall, 2020, this word is very timely for us.

From the Introduction: Pushing the Pause Button

Teaching contemplative prayer practices, which nurture per­sonal faith, presents two challenges. First of all, these practices are “nonpractices” in the sense that they call us to pause in our busy lives. These are more about listening than speaking. It takes time for people to learn the art of such a pause. Second, these practices, developed in early Christian monastic settings, only recently have returned to pub­lic awareness. We are thus seeking to learn and teach these practices largely “on our own.” Most of us in the Protestant traditions do not have the sustained daily rhythms of a Christian monastic community in which to cultivate this heart of God’s presence. We are seeking to inte­grate such practices into family life and active participation in the world.

The gentle presence that we cultivate in spiritual formation prac­tice is described well in Parker Palmer’s understanding of a “circle of trust.” He contrasts a circle of trust with the circles we ordinarily convene.

A circle of trust is a group of people who know how to sit quietly “in the woods” with each other and wait for the shy soul to show up. The relationships in such a group are not pushy but patient; they are not confrontational but compassionate; they are filled not with expectations and demands but with abiding faith in the reality of the inner teacher and in each person’s capacity to learn from it. The poet Rumi captures the essence of this way of being together: “A circle of lovely, quiet people becomes the ring on my finger.” (A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004, 59)

Does it make a difference if we learn to appreciate one another within our congregations across theological and cultural differences? Today it is essential. It is not a luxury. I’ve come to deeply appreci­ate any practice that puts some space between our quick reactivity and our actions. A few decades ago, such practices were denigrated as self-absorbed navel gazing. Quite the contrary, such practices are essential to break the imprisonment caused by naming anyone differ­ent from ourselves as “enemy.” We must examine such attitudes and break their power over us in the name of Jesus’ calling to compassion. 

How do you "push the pause button?"

Discerning Mission through Lectio Divina

DISCERNING MISSION THROUGH LECTIO DIVINA

Rev. Dr. Brenda Buckwell, contributor
http://www.livingstreamsflowingwater.com/

            I was astonished. The leadership team of the small urban congregation had just signed their death certificate. In response to the question “What is your greatest desire in ministry?” a tenderhearted gentleman in his early seventies, with head held high, stated, “To keep the doors of the church open until the oldest generation dies.” The team was not surprised by the man’s response. The church had tried various approaches over the years. With one glance at the declining community around the church building, anyone could see the marks of hopelessness and poverty. The closed stores, folks walking rather than driving from one place to another, children running in the streets on school days, drug dealers standing on the corner: all spoke of despair. There seemed to be little opportunity for church renewal and revitalization. Not surprisingly, however, God had other plans for this aging urban community of believers.

            In my astonishment, I paused a moment and then leveled the playing field of mission and ministry for this congregation. With a deep breath and the infilling of the Spirit, I replied: “You can certainly do that if you would like. I can speak to the bishop about sending someone here to your declining ministry to do just that, close the congregation. I am just not that pastor. If you would like to venture forth with me, we can discover God’s desire and mission for this congregation together.” Now it was the team’s turn to be surprised. That very night the leadership team had their first experience of lectio divina, and the journey to amazing new life began at First United Methodist Church in Zanesville, Ohio.
            Opening the Bible for a prayerful soaking in the Word, I posed questions to the leadership team based on the historical practice of lectio divina.[i] In choosing scriptures for vision planning for a church, I work from the perspective that to be vital, the congregation—any congregation—must seek the presence of God’s Holy Spirit as the first-century church did. I began with a healing story so they could picture God desiring healing for them. Later, I used the scripture of Jesus walking on water and asking Peter to step out of the boat to develop their capacity for acting on faith. The final scripture was the Pentecost story from Acts 2. After the scripture passage was read, each member responded to the question “What word or phrase catches your attention from this text?” Next, elaborating on the answer a bit more, the conversation grew as they responded to “How does this text intersect with this leadership team for the congregation?” And finally, because we believe that God’s Word is a living Word, not just a historical document, we deepened our prayer through invitation. Prior to the third reading of the scripture, I encouraged each person to be open to a third question: “From this scripture, what is God inviting this leadership team to, for the sake of the mission of this congregation?” I recorded the responses and read them back to the community for clarification and accuracy.
            After recording each response from the question of invitation, I explained the final step in this community process of praying the scriptures. Confirming that the leaders knew the name of the person on their right, I asked them to pray for one another and the invitations each had heard in the scripture. Audibly each person spoke prayers around the circle. Not just any prayer but a prayer of empowerment for the team and the congregation to live into the invitation stated by the neighbor on the right. As we audibly prayed the other’s invitation, no one could insist “my way is the best way” or “I have the perfect direction from God.” Each listened to the other’s heart’s desire and cared for the other’s invitation to bear fruit. In that instant God began binding prayer-filled hearts together. New community was born. This praying for one another’s invitation is vital to the discovery process that is discernment.
            Our discernment journey continued as we prayed the scriptures out loud and set aside personal agendas at each church council meeting for six months. Then, with a unanimous uplifting of the Spirit, a collective aha! birthed new vision and life into the fragile congregation. As we named the potential ministry, each person was certain it was a direction from God, clearly the fruit from our practice of lectio divina. Unity and excitement were the marks of the Spirit’s leading. The excitement could not be contained. The leadership team passionately spoke at the next Sunday worship and encouraged others to join in the ministry. The next week eighty-year-olds were on the floor or climbing ladders with paint or mop in hand. TheLifewell Free Store was prayed into existence.
            The congregation transformed empty rooms into possibility; an ecumenical board was formed to govern the Free Store. The connectional United Methodist Church sent supportive presence to the store’s opening. A television broadcast about the grand opening of an “unusual store” where no money changed hands brought the first throngs of people to theLifewell Free Store.
            Enthusiasm and passion for ministry grew as community mission expanded. People once hesitant to pray aloud became advocates for prayer, and they continue to kneel in awe of God’s mission and ministry explosion on the corner of Pierce and Putnam. Prayer and mission in this congregation have transformed life in the neighborhood and in the church. A gentle-spirited seventy-year-old woman sums up the miraculous power of praying the scripture for discernment and mission. Her words still ring in my heart: “Why hasn’t any pastor ever before in all my years of going here taught us to pray like this?”

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[i] See Jane Tomaine, St. Benedict’s Toolbox: The Nuts and Bolts of Everyday Benedictine Living (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 2005).

Beginning the New Year Together --

For the Peace of the Nation and the World

On election night, I was teaching in a 5-Day Upper Room Academy for Spiritual Formation in Oklahoma. The group held a beautiful candle light labyrinth walk for “the peace of the nation.” I received this vision: the map of the U.S.A. was laid over the labyrinth. This image of the U.S.A. rose to join its place in the globe, gently rotating above the labyrinth. The message was clear: the factionalism and struggles we are engaged in within our nation are mirrors of the same kind of struggles going on within the whole human family, as ancient divisions of culture and religion must give way in order for a new humanity to be birthed in our time – a new world of deeper respect, mutuality, and greater connectivity.

A similar vision inspired Glynden Bode and several women from different faith traditions in Houston to meet regularly in the challenging days after September 11, 2001. Their labyrinth walk became a pathway for prayers for peace and gaining inspiration for personal action. Glynden graciously wrote of this time in her contribution to A Quiet Pentecost.

May we each be inspired in the months ahead to pray and work for a new era of grace, justice, and peace within the human family.

We have learned in new ways how much our nation has become factionalized during the presidential election. Now we have the opportunity to speak directly to the many difficulties facing our nation, our communities, and our families. I am encouraged by the personal and collective conversations that are already taking place, as we begin to recognize that greater individual participation may be required of each of us, if we are to move toward a new common good.

Let us join together to serve the Prince of Peace in fresh ways in 2017.

Dwight Judy

Your Advent 24-7 Prayer Room

Rev. Jennie Edwards Bertrand describes an extremely simple prayer practice that she initiated in the campus ministry at Illinois State University:

In September 1999 in a village in southern England, Pete Greig and his college friends decided that if the Moravians could pull off a one-hundred-year prayer vigil, they could sustain three months of unbroken prayer. It seemed like a great way to induct the year 2000. What this group did not know was how news of their small prayer room would spread to college students and young adults all over the world by e-mail. Prayer rooms began to pop up all over the world, run mostly by young adults. [This movement is now known as 24-7 Prayer. It involves simply setting up a small room so that one person can be in prayer for one hour at a time; 24 hours per day. The campus ministry determined to hold their prayer room for one week. They had 30 active students in their first year.]
Jennie continues: While the phrase “I am not religious, I am spiritual” was quite popular as we were preparing for our first 24-7 prayer room, I don’t think many of the students were consciously concerned about their spiritual lives either. Looking back, I think the main reason that first group of thirty students was willing to try a prayer room was because it sounded crazy and undoable. They were competitive and wanted to be able to say, “We kept a human in that room for one hundred and sixty-eight hours. . . . Oh yeah, and they were praying.”
Richard Foster writes: “We all hunger for a prayer-filled life, for a richer, fuller practice of the presence of God.” The corrective I add to this is that a generation raised in a postmodern, post-Christian world doesn’t know it hungers for a prayer-filled life. One of my favorite characteristics of the 24/7 prayer movement is that the participants are not limited to those who would self-select to attend a prayer retreat, or join a prayer group.

A student leader and I collected paints and canvases, and covered the floor with cardboard and the walls with newsprint. We bought a CD player, some good meditative CDs, and a few worship CDs. We labeled the space outside the small converted office the Welcome Wall; plenty of coffee and water was provided. In the room, we labeled one wall a Wailing Wall; another wall the Worship Wall; and on a third wall we hung a map and named it the World Wall. We included a stack of Bibles, two journals, and hooks on the wall for hanging painted canvases. We went to the Catholic supply store, bought twelve seven-day candles, and ritually lit each one. For one week, hour-by-hour, students experienced the presence of God in the solitude of this room. One person would write a psalm on the Worship Wall, and others would follow suit. Names of loved ones in need of healing and R.I.P.s began to fill the Wailing Wall. Confessions and expressions of pain followed. Articulate and painfully honest conversations with God began to fill the pages of the journals. Beautiful artistic expressions of love, forgiveness, and healing covered the canvases. People highlighted countries on the map and asked for prayer, justice, and the end of poverty and war. By the end of the week, the floor and every wall was filled with an outpouring of deep cries from the soul. Right in the middle of day-to-day life, an entire (albeit small) ministry learned how to pray and experienced the power of God’s presence. (A Quiet Pentecost, pp. 71-73)

Now, ten years later, this practice continues at Illinois State University with an average of 130 students regularly in the ministry. I saw Jennie last spring and asked her about the 24-7 prayer ministry. She was so excited to share with me that now in addition to the campus ministry, she is involved in a new church start aimed toward millennials begun by former students whose spiritual life was awakening in the 24-7 prayer room.

The practice is simple. The impact is profound and very challenging. As we prepare for the feasts of Thanksgiving; and as we begin the patient waiting of Advent, I invite us to use this image of the 24-7 prayer room to refresh us to live toward the righteousness of God. In the 24-7 prayer room within your own heart: what will you name on your inner Wailing Wall? Remember how full the Psalms are of lament, of voicing our human hurts and longings? Our hearts ache for the Peace of Christ to pervade our families, our nation, and our world – we are asked by Jesus to be honest with naming our hurts, our griefs, our losses. But, we are invited to also love, praise, and sing. What will you name on your Worship Wall this week? What a wonderful season for us to give thanks, for the goodness we have each experienced in the past year, for hopes that we hold. Let us in joy, give thanks and praise to God as we gather around our family Thanksgiving and Advent meals. What will you place on your World Wall? What particular peoples and places within our nation and our world call to you for prayer and action? Where is Jesus asking you to give your special prayers, your donations, the work of your hands to live into that prayer we pray: Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.