38 yrs of Portico living

Sparkling waters reflect expectant hearts. Waiting and watching for the moment of rapture, when legs crack to the dance of hopeful questions - do you want to be well? In no other place could such a question elicit such a response, such a dare. In other parts where all things well, response is not so swift. But its ironic to say the least! A portico becomes home, a place of comfy living, sickness ones friend and marital routine. Do you really want to be well?

John 5:6 (New International Version) 6When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, "Do you want to get well?"

AA for everyone

“Recognition of the continuing crisis of alcoholism is part of the genius of AA.” This thought by M. Scott Peck is worth consideration. The perpetual recognition (confession) of ones brokenness in community is medicine for the human condition. The moment we exempt ourselves from the perpetual human lot of unmet dreams, broken promises, habitual ills we will not find our redemption. Peck points out that the success of AA is that there is never a time that you meet without confessing ones weakness. I suppose this is very similar to the Christian who is allowed to bring his/her confessions with them to Church on Sunday. It ties in with the “John the Baptist” text this time of year. We are never to stop confessing our need of help and our dependence on “Spirit and fire” to bring wholeness.

Psychotherapists don't heal!

M. Scott Peck writes some important stuff in his book “The Different Drum – The Creation of True Community, the first step to World peace.” A psychotherapist himself he says, “Experienced psychotherapists usually come to recognize this truth. As neophytes they see it as their task to heal the patient and often believe they succeed in doing so. With experience, however, they realize that they do not have the power to heal. But they also learn that it is within their power to listen to the patient, to accept him or her, to establish a “therapeutic relationship.” So they focus not so much on healing as on making their relationship a safe place where the patient is likely to heal himself.” For all of us minister/lay, young or old, male or female, we need places of safety where we can be ourselves, share our fears, weep our tears and expose our true selves and find in the safe community of others a healing anointment that tells that together we are whole.

Teacher and Student

“Healing means first of all allowing strangers to become sensitive and obedient to their own stories. Healers, therefore, become students who want to learn, and patients become teachers who want to teach. Just as teacher learn their course material best during the preparation and ordering of their ideas for presentation to students, so patients learn their own story by telling it to a healer who wants to heart it. Healers are hosts who patiently and carefully listen to the story of the suffering strangers. Patients are guests who rediscover their selves by telling their story to the one who offers them a place to stay. In the telling of their stories, strangers befriend not only their host but also their own past.” Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out.

Isn’t it great, sharing our story with others who listen? Having the freedom to weave our narrative through current consciousness that interprets the events in new and sometimes predetermined ways. How great it is to have a listener who asks us questions that places another reader in our story. A question or comment that shows the listener listened and found it interesting that we defined it so. Sometimes I am the teacher and other times the student, the secret is never to find myself as only one or the other.

Paths of Solitude

“Instead of running away from our loneliness and trying to forget or deny it, we have to protect it and turn it into a fruitful solitude. To live a spiritual life we must first find the courage to enter into the desert of our loneliness and to change it by gentle and persistent efforts into a garden of solitude.” Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out.

There is a depth of thought in Henri Nouwen’s books that resonates with the truth. You cannot deny his tug at the very fabric of ones soul. The human makeup is a complex thing and it takes the spiritual genius to simplify it and reach down with poignant precision and mark off the parts that need repair. We are keen to find the solutions for our soul from without and the impression Nouwen makes is that the answer lies buried in the desert of our loneliness. If we are able to confront the pains of our heart in solitude we will unravel the many paths we have taken to substitute loneliness with temporary solutions.

A Truth called Wonder

Prophets are without honour in their home town. This was Jesus’ experience when he returned to teach in his home town. They could not get past the fact that his father was a carpenter, his brothers and sisters were living amongst them and how could one of their own kind bring anything significantly life altering to them. The traveling preachers usually get the fame and glory whilst the faithful pastor living with his flock is soon regarded as family and found wanting. We love the unusual, expecting the ways of enlightenment to come from outside the familiar. But lets be honest, is it not our closest partner who speaks the greater truth? We love to pick the flowered words of those outside, the guest speaker, the rhetorical giants, and take from them snippets of wisdom to boost our sagging morale. They fix the headache but not the root, the truth lies deeper, the one who knows us knows the cause. The one who loves us, stays with us, covenants with us, abides with us, they are the healers, the truth tellers, the preachers, the wonder workers.

A knowledge that can heal

To know God and to be known by God. That is the cornerstone of religious society. The journey of humble self disclosure and the fervent desire to embrace another’s admissions. God’s heart is not as invincible as you may think. The story of a much loved son wasted on the hills where things become nothing, betrays the notion of a steel hearted God. Knowing God is not just an awe in higher beings, respect for cloudy mounts, and a numb delight in sunlit thrones. There is a God to be know behind the cool exterior, a God with a past, a sad story to tell. To be known is the other half. The daily banishment of pride that holds our world in dark locked cages. To unlock the deepest secrets and anguished moments that lie as cargo in dank bilged hulls. The strength to drag to light the sticky hurt and sting. To open ports and hatch for God to see the mildewed crippled pain. In this religion, in this exchange the heavens touch the sinners stain. Two stories, one in friendship bind the Universe explained. A pain shared, a knowledge won, is this religion with a holy one.