CategoriesSeasonal, Theology and Spirituality by

Lent: Prophetic and Poetic Paths—Part 1

Lent: Prophetic and Poetic Paths—Part 1

Two of our final two portraits for Lent will be presented for the diversity they bring in their understanding and practice of Lent.  Walter Brueggeman is first and foremost a professor of Old Testament studies.  Kathleen Norris is a poet and spiritual writer, both of whom we need to listen to.  I have read nearly all their published works, so, I’ll call them by name:  Walter teaches us that Lent is misunderstood as a season for giving up.  He calls us to a practice of taking on. I first used his stellar book, The Prophetic Imagination, as the text for undergrads at a college in South Dakota.

A professor’s thoughts on Lent 

Walter teaches us that Lent is not just about giving up things (like fasting or self-denial) but also about taking on—practices that align with God’s justice and renewal.  He emphasizes that Lent is a time for transformation—moving beyond personal sacrifice to actively engaging in acts of mercy, justice, and prophetic imagination.  He turns our ears to Jeremiah, the prophet, who spoke fiercely against being neutral about God and God’s ways. 

 

Jeremiah gives witness to the real presence of God who has capacity to bring newness to otherwise broken social realities marked by violence, division, animosity, ethnic hatred, and hostile political partisanship.

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Lent: A Season of Darkness

In her book Learning to Walk in the Dark, Barbara Brown Taylor challenged Christians to pause and embrace Lent as a season of “darkness.” True, Lent comes in spring, perhaps just before Daylight Savings Time, but she means something far deeper when she speaks of darkness. For her, Lent is an invitation to explore the parts of life and faith that are often overlooked, avoided, and clothed in our doubts, fears, and uncertainties.

 

Like Peterson, Taylor is a realist who understands how easy it is to hold on to easy answers when faced with the mystery of our faith.  Her practices include silence and contemplation by which we dwell in the “shadows,”  where she believes God often speaks profoundly.  For her, Lent is reframed not as a season of deprivation and letting go as much as a period of deep discovery and growth by which we face what is within.

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Lent: A Season of Reorientation

Last week I introduced Henri Nouwen and Lent as a journey of the heart; this week let’s consider Eugene Peterson and Lent as a season of reorientation.

I met Eugene Peterson at a campus ministry gathering in the early 90s.  I took classes from him and consider him my spiritual father, though we had only a handful of times together.  Lent, as an annual remembrance, was, like other practices, a time for reorienting one’s life toward God’s kingdom.  He emphasized what he might even have called the countercultural nature of Lent by which Christians learn to resist the pull and lure of consumerism and self-centered living. Read More

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Lent: A Journey of the Heart

A journey of the heart

Henri Nouwen, known for his deep insights into spiritual life, saw Lent as a time for inner transformation—a journey of the heart. He often emphasized the importance of vulnerability, inviting followers of Jesus to step away from the distractions that impede their souls and examine their hearts honestly. Nouwen described Lent as a journey of returning to God, very much in the thread of the story of the prodigal son.

He first saw a reproduction of Rembrandt’s painting entitled, “The Return of the Prodigal Son” on a colleague’s office door. It may be impossible to explain the lifelong impact that experience had on Henri’s life. The image stirred something deeply profound in his heart.  Read More

CategoriesTheology and Spirituality by

Learning to Listen

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor killed by the Nazis for his resistance to Hitler, understood Jesus’ primary message: “The first service one owes to others in a community involves listening to them. Just as our love for God begins with listening to God’s Word, the beginning of love for others is learning to listen to them, to their story, to their words…We do God’s work for our brothers and sisters when we learn to listen to them.” [1]

As our biblical grounding image, I want us to start with a text we call the Transfiguration. You know it, I am sure: Jesus standing with two icons of the Jewish faith, Moses and Elijah, and three who would become icons of the Christian faith: Peter, James, and John. As usual, Peter did a lot of unnecessary talking. Luke described it as Peter “not knowing what he said.” The contrast was another voice, a memorable word from the cloud, the voice of Abba, who thundered what may have been a rebuke to Peter but gave a word for all who hunger and thirst to go deep. Do you remember the sentence? “This is my Son, my Chosen…” and then three words to burn into our hearts, “…listen to him.”  (Luke 9:35) Read More

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Jesus’ Way with Others

I have been inspired recently by Emily P. Freeman’s words when she wrote,

“I have a vision of a generation of believers who understand that the goal of life is Jesus and all the ways he wants to offer himself both to us and through us to the world.”

Yes, yes, yes! 

Beginning with Jesus’ earliest words to the men and women who would become his disciples, “Follow me,” Read More

CategoriesFinding a Mentor, Theology and Spirituality by

Take a risk

God has ordained things that we grow in faith only through the frail instrumentality of one another.

St. John of the Cross

 

Our growth in Christ does not occur in isolation; it takes place within the company of others who provide presence and perspective along the journey.

One specific form of being “in the company of others” is called spiritual mentoring; that is, a relationship between two or more people and the Holy Spirit where we can discover who God is, who we are, and what God desires to do through us.

Finding a spiritual mentor or even being a spiritual mentor has been a proven way over the years of discovering more of what this life with God is all about.

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Craig had never thought about mentoring before. It was during his facilitator training retreat for The Journey that he first heard about walking with another person in an intentional spiritual friendship. “The more I thought about what I’ve read in the Scriptures,” Craig, 63, said, “it seemed to me that mentoring relationships have been lost in the church for decades.” Read More

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The Great Mentor

God is already up to something good…

Helping others grow up into Christ rests on an understanding and conviction that the primary shaping work in a person’s life belongs to God. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do (Ephesians 2:10, NIV). Our burden as people, and as mentors in particular, is to first be alert and receptive to God’s relentlessly creative handiwork in the world. All our best thinking and acting, listening and asking questions and praying, is secondary to and cooperative with the Spirit’s work.

This is such good news for us. Read More