From Pops' Workshop

Author: dhammerslag

  • Workshop Chapter 17: Pride

    Workshop Chapter 17: Pride

    Pride goeth before destruction,
    and an haughty spirit before a fall.

    Proverbs 16:18 (KJV)

    My experience in My Pops’ Workshop began in late February. It was now the end of May; I was three months into this mystic journey. Praying on what was the morning of Pentecost Sunday, I returned to the workshop. Jesus and Pops were both quite busy, seemingly hard at work. I thought this odd since it was the Sabbath, I would have expected them to be at rest. Looking back on it, it shouldn’t have seemed odd since Jesus often healed on the Sabbath, and I was coming to the understanding that my time in my Pops’ Workshop was a time of healing.

    Pops’ workshop was beginning to feel comfortable. I should have felt comfortable because I was in the hands of Love; that was not the case. I was becoming comfortable because I believed that I understood the workshop. Even worse, I was starting to think that I could manage what happened there. I imagined I could come and go as I pleased and encounter God when I wanted to and on my terms. Thinking that we can somehow manage God and his actions is patently absurd and is the height of vanity.

    Nonetheless, that is where I found myself that Sunday, in the Workshop with my own agenda: I was hoping to just hang out with God. I aimlessly lounged around a bit and started getting uncomfortable. As my Pops continued his work, I felt awkward and out of place, like someone who blundered into the wrong meeting. After a short while, Pops broke the awkward silence, “Don’t you have some work to do with Jesus?”

    Doing “work” with Jesus was not on my agenda; I was there to chill with the creator, redeemer, and sustainer of all that is. But my Pops’ tone of voice was firm, and his meaning was clear. I was not in charge of this situation, and I had not been given the grace to once again return to the Workshop so that I could lol around and expect to have God on my terms. He was not asking; he was telling me that I had more work to do.

    Called to my senses, I dutifully headed back to where Jesus was busy sanding. He, too, seemed too busy for idle conversation. As I watched Jesus’ careful and attentive work, I started to get a slightly giddy feeling; I was starting to sense this would not be the casual workshop encounter I had hoped for. I was there for a purpose.

    In my prayer, I asked Jesus to teach me to sand; I gave the Holy Spirit permission to have my mind, thoughts, tongue, and ears, and I thanked him for the work he was doing in me. Reviewing this encounter now, years later, I am struck by my own lack of activity. My Pops had just told me I had work to do, and yet, in my prayer, I sought to be a passive recipient of who knows what. That attitude belies a truth about spiritual formation and transformation. It isn’t something that happens to us while we sit passively doing nothing. God’s transforming grace is, in fact, all grace; we can do nothing to cause it to happen outside of God’s action, but we must be active participants. We show up, and we cooperate. We engage in practices that open us to his grace and power. Paradoxically, it is all God’s grace, and we have work to do. Our effort, puny though it be, is necessary.

    Back Down the Hole

    After my prayer for passive assistance, as I sat in the workshop, I knew why I was there. I was supposed to go back through the hole in the floor, down into the well. I resisted and, for a while, pretended I didn’t know what I was there for. Eventually, I surrendered, and down I went.

    I was surprised to see the subterranean stream. When I last saw it, it had been barely a trickle—more like a seep. Now it was flowing—it really was a stream. Not only was the water starting to flow in earnest, but much of the muck and slime that had coated everything on the floor of the “well” had been washed away. I was astonished by this improvement, but I shouldn’t have been. The water, God’s love, the water of new life, was washing away the pollutants that tainted my inner life. This was yet another depiction of the changes God was making in my inner being.

    I had resisted returning to the well, dreading the unpleasant work of confronting my brokenness. But now that I was there, I could see one of the reasons I was called back down: to receive encouragement. I had already made noticeable progress in unclogging the flow, and I may not have as much muck to clean up as I had feared. That encouragement was welcome. As I looked around a bit, I literally saw the other reason I had been summoned back down the hole and what my Pops had meant when he said, “Don’t you have some work to do with Jesus?”

    Pride Rock

    In the middle of the stream stood an enormous rock. I had not noticed it when I had been down the hole before, but much was clearer to me now. The “cave” under the workshop seemed brighter. I was certainly less ominous and oppressive. But this large rock was both ominous and oppressive. There was nothing encouraging about it. Other rocks I had encountered in the hole were about the size of a basketball or a little bigger. Big and heavy, but something I could manage to pick up and bring to Jesus. This rock was three or four feet tall. It had a broad base and came to a wicked spike at the end. I asked the Holy Spirit what this rock was, and after a short while, I heard a single word, “pride.”

    This rock, Pride, was so striking and seemed so important to me that I sketched it in my journal. Here is a reproduction of that sketch.1

    “Pride rock” was a new challenge. Unlike the other rocks I had encountered, it resisted all efforts to shift it out of the stream. I tried several times to lift it, and when that failed, I tried to push it over and out of the stream. It wouldn’t budge. This Pride, which stood blocking the flow of water, was intractable.

    I shouldn’t have been surprised that the biggest, most ominous, hardest-to-move rock would be Pride. I had previously started clearing the rocks of fear, doubt, inadequacy, and shame by bringing those parts of me to Jesus. But pride was foundational to my being. Feelings of fear, doubt, and inadequacy were potent because they threatened my Pride; Pride empowered and activated those unhealthy feelings. If you had known me, you might have guessed that I had a fragile ego. So fragile, in fact, that fear, doubt, and feelings of inadequacy could not be tolerated. A large, immovable Pride was needed to protect myself. When any of the intolerable feelings arose and were metaphorically chucked down into the well, my Pride grew and swelled, vainly hoping to protect me from the next onslaught of insecurity.

    It is hard to open the Bible without finding an admonition or warning against pride or encouragement to pride’s opposite, humility:

    • You rescue the humble, but you humiliate the proud.2
    • Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.3
    • Pride ends in humiliation, while humility brings honor.4
    • Human pride will be brought down, and human arrogance will be humbled. Only the LORD will be exalted on that day of judgment.5
    • His mighty arm has done tremendous things! He has scattered the proud and haughty ones. He has brought down princes from their thrones and exalted the humble.6
    • Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.7
    • For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.8

    This should not surprise us. Pride is at the root of most of our other sins. We lie, cheat, become angry, covet, steal, dishonor others, and even kill to protect our egos and our pride. We think we deserve whatever we want simply because we are “us” and want it.

    In his masterwork of apologetics, Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis devoted an entire chapter to “The Great Sin,” pride. He begins his treatise on pride by calling out its primacy.

    According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.

    Lewis, C. S.. Mere Christianity (C.S. Lewis Signature Classics) (pp. 121-122). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

    He calls Pride a spiritual cancer that “eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.”9 Pride is essentially competitive. We want to believe we are, in some dimension, better than our neighbor. We aren’t satisfied with just a good car that provides safe and reliable transportation. We want a car better than our neighbor’s. We want a car that will show others how rich, up-to-date, or clever we are. If cars aren’t your thing, we can just as easily substitute house, vacation, income, spouse, children, etc. We feel good about ourselves when we believe we are better than others, and they know it. We feel dissatisfied knowing that others are better than us.10

    Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others. If everyone else became equally rich, or clever, or good-looking there would be nothing to be proud about. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest.

    Lewis, Mere Christianity (p. 122).

    We see this sense of competition coming into play in the earliest instances of pride, which, not coincidentally, is also when sin entered the human condition. In the account of the fall of humankind told in Genesis,11 the enemy of our souls appeals to our pride to inspire the mother of all other sins. Adam and Eve are told that they are missing out; God is holding out on them. They are not getting what they should have. God has something you don’t have. What is it besides pride that leads us to say, “Yes, even though that is forbidden to me, I want it, and therefore, I shall have it?” Pride is at the root of our separation from God and at the root of all our sin.

    Happily, there is an antidote or counterpart to Pride: Humility. We often think of humility as “not thinking too highly of one’s self; of having a proper perspective of our place.” That is not a bad way to think of it, but Lewis offers a helpful amplification, telling us that a truly humble person “will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.”12

    If pride is the root of all sin, is its counterpart, humility, the root of all virtue? Our first thought may be: “Is it not true that Love is the most important virtue?” The answer is yes. Jesus affirms the Old Testament’s teaching that “to love God is the greatest and first commandment.”13 In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul intimates that the greatest virtue is Love.14 God is Love15, and Jesus gives his followers a new commandment, to love one another.16 How, then, could Humility be greater than Love?

    There is a Latin phrase, incurvatus in se, which means to be curved inward on oneself. That is not a bad way to think about pride. The proud man thinks only about himself, and the humble man thinks only of others. It is not just our attention and thoughts that can become distorted to curve back on ourselves. Love, too, can be bent in the wrong direction. We find ourselves loving ourselves where we should love God and our neighbors. We are made in love to love others, but in our sinful pride, our love is curved inward and we become the object of our own love.17 Pride deflects our love; humility sets it back on its proper path.

    In the workshop on that Pentecost morning, I was still faced with the enormous problem that I now knew to be my pride. I had tried to move it but failed utterly. I asked Jesus to move it for me and, unsurprisingly, saw that he was down in the well with me. I was embarrassed to have him in my muck (my pride was showing), but he didn’t mind it all. It seemed as if he had been waiting for me to ask for his help. He did not offer to take this rock away, as had done for the other, smaller and now seemingly inconsequential rocks; He offered to smash the rock of pride into tiny pieces.

    Immediately, I remembered a friend’s Holy Spirit experience. He had been completely overwhelmed by the spirit in a very public way such that he could do nothing but lay on the floor and yell “FIRE.” Is that what Jesus was offering me: what seemed like a public humiliation? It could have been the enemy trying to dissuade me, but I think this memory was a loving reminder to make sure I knew what the offer to smash my pride could entail. Jesus hadn’t offered to gently break the rock into manageable pieces. His offer was to smash my pride.

    I was not sure I was willing to have a “FIRE” experience.18 However, I was sure that I wanted Pride Rock gone and that I couldn’t shift it myself. As I closed my prayer time on that Pentecost Sunday, I gave the Holy Spirit permission to do whatever was necessary to shift the rock of my pride out of the flow of Jesus’ love. That left me feeling uneasy and more than a bit nervous. “Whatever” is a very big word.

    Another Side of Pride

    I was soon to encounter my “Pride rock” again. It was exactly two weeks later, again on a Sunday morning. I had been noticing a pattern of God speaking to me through corporate confession in church.  That is what happened that day.  As we paused for silent reflection during our corporate confession, the word “Selfish” was being impressed upon me.  This was not a gentle suggestion.  It was an insistent, almost shrill voice, ringing over and over in my mind: “Selfish.”

    This certainly got my attention. As I considered that word, I became aware of several areas of my life where I was being very selfish indeed. I had been in a funk because things were not turning out the way I wanted. I wanted what I wanted without thinking about what others might want or need, and I was sulking and feeling sorry for myself when I didn’t get my way.

    I hadn’t really thought much about my experience with Pride Rock, but now, my thoughts jumped back to it.  I was again down in that subterranean space, seeing that frightful rock. As I watched, it was lifted up, and I could see the underside of it, where the word “selfish” was written.  I hadn’t considered selfishness as another aspect of pride, but now I had to confront it.

    One aspect of pride is that of the preening peacock, caring too much about what others think of you and desiring to look good in the eyes of others. That is inherently a selfish desire. It has no value except to make you feel good about yourself.  Another aspect of pride was being brought to my attention. In my pride, I cared only for myself. My incurvatus in se, was on full display. I was turned completely inward, neglecting my obligation to love my neighbors as myself. That was a needful reminder I need to hear most days.

    During a session with my spiritual director, I remembered how I almost exhausted myself trying to move “pride rock” before I asked Jesus to help me with it, and then I was anxious about what that help might look like.  As my director and I waited in silence, Jesus made me an offer that shocked me.  He suggested that I go hang out in the meadow, just enjoying the long grass, warm sun, and cool breeze, while he goes down in the hole and takes care of “pride rock.”  There was no angst, no sense of me having to endure anything or be embarrassed.  He would simply take care of it.

    I do not know what might have happened had I given unambiguous permission for Jesus to “smash” my pride. At that stage in my journey, I did not yet trust the Lord’s goodness. Jesus is, and has been, slowly “taking care” of my pride. But my pride is still with me. If I saw Pride Rock today, I imagine it would be smaller, certainly less sharp, and perhaps pushed a bit to the side, blocking less of the flow of life-giving water. My struggle with pride is ongoing and will continue to the end of my days. However, knowing that I am prideful is the best antidote and is the beginning of humility.

    A Postscript

    This “chapter” was extraordinarily hard to write. It stopped my progress on this book for years. I often worked on it then put it back down, not really knowing what to do with it.

    It was hard for at least three reasons. The first reason is simply pragmatic. My time under the workshop was, in some ways, a pivot point. Much of what happened before was to prime me for my interior work and much of what was to come flowed out of it. That realization nearly always gave me pause.

    Second, it is a very personal account and in many ways I find it embarrassing. I do not say it is right that I should feel embarrassment about my struggle with pride; ironically, it is pride rearing back up that makes writing about my pride difficult!

    The third reason this chapter kept stopping my progress is that it is a reminder that the work begun below the workshop, nearly 10 years ago now, is still far from over. That, too, is embarrassing, to how much work I still have to do. I still stuff emotions and disappointment, finding it easier to ignore my feelings than to understand them and, when needed, sit with Jesus with them. Pride remains with me; less commanding and less prominent but still a part of who I am.

    As hard as this chapter was to write, I hope it was not so hard to read.

    1. I really like the AI-generated version used as the featured image of this post, but nonetheless, this simple drawing is closer to what was in my journal that day. ↩︎
    2. Psalms 18:27 (NLT) ↩︎
    3. Proverbs 16:18 (ESV) ↩︎
    4. Proverbs 29:23 (NLT) ↩︎
    5. Isaiah 2:11 (NLT) ↩︎
    6. Luke 1:51-52 (NLT) ↩︎
    7. Matthew 5:3 (ESV) ↩︎
    8. Luke 14:11 (NLT) ↩︎
    9. Lewis, Mere Christianity (p. 125). ↩︎
    10. It is worth noting here that there is nothing inherently wrong with having a nice car, home, income, etc. It is a problem if we value those things because they feed our pride by making us feel that we are somehow better or more deserving than others who have less (of material things). ↩︎
    11. Genesis 3:1-7 ↩︎
    12. Lewis. Mere Christianity (p. 128) ↩︎
    13. Mat 22:37 ↩︎
    14. 1 Cor. 13:13 ↩︎
    15. 1 John 4:16 ↩︎
    16. John 13:34 ↩︎
    17. Michael Reeves gives an excellent exposition of this thought in chapter 3 of his book, Delighting in the Trinity: An Introduction to the Christian Faith. ↩︎
    18. The person who had the “FIRE” experience did not, to my knowledge, ask for it or grant permission. ↩︎
  • Sunrise

    Sunrise

    One:
    It is so very dark. I know that you’ve been out in the light. Can you tell me about the light? What is it like when the sun rises?

    Two:
    We’ve talked before about the light and the breaking of dawn; I don’t think there is much I can tell you that you haven’t heard before. You really need to experience it. If you’d like to come and walk in the desert and experience the sunrise, I am happy to accompany you.

    One:
    I’m not really comfortable going out in the dark; it doesn’t seem like I would be safe. Can’t you go out and wait for the dawn, and when it is fully light, come and get me?

    Two:
    I wish I could, but one cannot jump from the dark to the light here. You have to go through the transition from darkness to light. I know the dark is frightening. Almost everyone is more or less scared of the dark. But we will go slowly, and I will be with you. I’ve walked with many as they move from darkness to light. You may be uncomfortable, but you will be okay!

    Two:
    I am glad that you have decided to brave the dark so that you can walk in the light. Now that we are here tell me: how are you doing?

    One:
    I am afraid to move. What if we step off the path?

    Two:
    We don’t need to hurry; we will go as slowly as you would like. Be still for a moment. What do you notice?

    One:
    I think I hear things out in the darkness. I am a little scared. What is it I am hearing?

    Two:
    Could it be the sound of the world waking up? It might be rabbits and squirrels venturing out for the day, or you might hear birds stirring in their nests while they wait for the light.

    One:
    Yes! Yes! That is what I am hearing!

    Two:
    That means that we are on the right track; dawn is coming. Can you hear those sounds as heralds of something coming and not something to fear? As you do that, pay attention to what your other senses tell you.

    One:
    Hmmm. I think that maybe it is starting to get a little bit lighter?

    Two:
    Is it? Can you see any further ahead than you could? How does the sky seem to you?

    One:
    Oh. Yes, I can definitely see more than I could before. The shadows are not as deep and dark as they were; I can make out the shapes of trees and bushes quite clearly now. And yes, the sky is a bit lighter. Instead of black, I see a deep blue, and at the horizon, I think I see a bit of gray.

    Two:
    It sounds like you are starting to see light. When you are ready, let me know, and we will move on.

    Two:
    We’ve been walking a bit now. Let’s rest here. What are you noticing now?

    One:
    Wow, the clouds! Before, the clouds were grey, but now they are tinged with colors.

    Two:
    Can you tell me more about the colors? How do they make you feel?

    One:
    They are soft pastels: pink, orange, and purple. I think I see blues and yellows as well. It is hard to say I they make me feel. Happy, maybe, but more than that. I think I am feeling a sense of peace.

    Two:
    Why don’t we just sit and watch for a few minutes? I wonder what happens next.

    One:
    That seems silly; I just told you what I am seeing!

    Oh…Wait! I do see something happening; the colors in the clouds are changing. Even as I am watching, they are becoming more intense and brighter. There is hardly any gray in the clouds anymore. This is amazing!

    Two:
    It is wonderful, isn’t it, how the light brings so much color and beauty. I am glad that you are noticing it. Take a minute and look around. What does the sky behind us look like? What do you see in the landscape now?

    One:
    I can’t believe this: the colors are in the sky behind us. Even where there are no clouds, the sky is purple and pink. And I am starting to see the colors of the plants around us as well. I can see yellow and red flowers and shades of green in the foliage. And the shadows are almost gone. Now I can see birds and rabbits scurrying in the underbrush. That must be what I was hearing before.

    Two:
    As we move from the dark to the light, it is important to look around ourselves frequently. You’ll see lots of unexpected things! The sun is almost up now. It may be tempting to stay here, but let’s go on up to the top of the hill, shall we?

    Two:
    Well, here we are at the top. I wonder if we are close to the sunrise.

    One:
    I’ve already seen a lot that I never expected. If I am honest, I am feeling a bit disappointed now. The beautiful colors are fading. The sky looks more blue, but the lovely colors are almost gone from the clouds.

    Two:
    I see what you mean. It can be hard to let go of something, like the parti-colored clouds; especially if we don’t know what is coming next. We can’t really hold on to what was. Let’s rest and see what is next.

    One:
    I really like the beautifully painted clouds. Why do they have to fade?

    Two:
    It is in their nature to fade. They herald the sunrise, but they are not the sunrise. The sun cannot rise without whitewashing the clouds. But if you are willing to press into what is next, I think you will be glad you did.

    One:
    I think I see something new. It looks like there is a line of bright gold on the horizon. It looks like the sky is on fire! It is getting hard to look at. Is that the sun?

    Two:
    Not yet, but soon. Look around you again. What do you see? What do you notice?

    One:
    I see so much more detail now. The colors I thought were bright before are really bright now; they are vibrant. Even the shadows are brighter. They are still there, but they don’t hide anything anymore. They are no longer shadows; now, they are shades.

    Two:
    Look to the east again.

    One:
    I see it! I see the sun rising! I can’t really look at it; it is too bright. It is incredible, each moment more of it is revealed. I am feeling its warmth, too. It feels like everything that was dark or asleep has come to life.

    Two:
    I am glad you were able to experience the sunrise. Now it is time for us to go back down the hill, back home.

    One:
    I know we are not going back into the darkness, but it will get dark again, won’t it?

    Two:
    Yes. It will get dark again. And the sun will rise again. It will be a while before it is dark again. For now, enjoy the warmth of the sun and the brightness and newness of the world around you.

    Now that you have seen the sunrise, do you think you will experience the darkness differently?

    One:
    I think so. I hope so. I want to. I will remember the sunrise.

    Will it be just like this the next time it rises?

    Two:
    No. Each sunrise is different. Sometimes, there is almost no color in the sky; other times, the sky is completely filled with impossibly vivid reds and oranges. But remember: the “show” is just the preamble, the herald of the coming sun. You may rightly delight in seeing it, but the sun is what warms us and feeds our souls.

    One:
    I like that. Knowing the sun will rise again will help me bear the darkness.

  • Thinking About Repentance

    Thinking About Repentance

    Thinking about repentance seems natural during Lent. In liturgical traditions, the Lenten season is forty days preceding Easter. It commemorates Jesus’ forty-day fast in the wilderness before he began his public. It is a time of reflection and introspection. A discipline of self-denial during Lent can drive our introspection as we learn just how weak our wills really are.

    As we come to grip with the weakness of our wills, our thoughts often turn to repentance. Jesus begins his ministry by declaring: “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.” How do you hear that declaration? We may hear it as a veiled threat: “You better shape up and fly right because God is coming. You don’t want him to be mad at you.” I heard it that way for many years. But perhaps, rather than imagining Jesus scolding us, we could hear him offering us an invitation: “God is doing something great; his kingdom is here! Pay attention so you don’t miss out!”

    Our common understanding is that repentance means being sorry for our sins and determining to “do better.” That fits the mindset of hearing “repent!” as a warning. Here our experience of repentance can be embarrassingly bad. We find ourselves repenting over and over and over again, often repenting of the same sin. Or, if we manage to get a particular sin “under control,” we find that five more have popped up to take its place.

    A perpetual struggle to make ourselves better cannot be all God has in mind for us. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus is confronted by the religious leaders about his disciple’s lack of adherence to ritual practices. In Jesus’ response, he tells us that it is what comes from inside us that defiles us (Mark 17:18-23). Our outward behavior, while it may be quite awful, flows out of an inner, corrupted heart. To stop the sinful behavior, we need to address our inner life.

    When we look at the language used in the New Testament for “repent” or “repentance,” we see that it means something much deeper. It means turning around and heading in a new direction. It means taking a higher mind or a new decision. This understanding of repentance points us back to addressing our inner life. In his book “A Long Obedience in the Same Direction,” Eugene Peterson put it like this:

    “Repentance is not an emotion. It is not feeling sorry for your sin. It is a decision. It is deciding that you have been wrong in supposing that you could manage your own life and be your own god;”

    Peterson, Eugene. A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. 2nd ed., Intervarsity, 2000. p. 23.

    This understanding aligns with Jesus’ teaching in Mark’s gospel. It also aligns with the message of scripture from Genesis to Revelation. The root of our problem is our surrender to our sinful natures (Gal. 5:19); God wants us to be cured and remade from the inside out:

    • He will write his law on our hearts. (Jer 31-33-34)
    • He delights in truth in our inward being (Ps 51:6)
    • He tells us to take up our crosses daily, denying our sinful natures so that we are not enslaved to sin. (Lk 9:23, Rom 6:6)

    Jesus does not want you to have a life that looks okay, even though it is not; he wants you to have a great life, a better life than you can imagine. He wants to give us new life, kingdom life; not our old life with the ugly parts better managed. He wants you to take up your cross and let go of your life as you have been trying to manage it.

    On Ash Wednesday, we are reminded: “From dust you came, and to dust you shall return.” We are created and sustained by God; We depend on him utterly. We really do need to get over ourselves. We are not God; our desire to be God is THE sin that leads us into all sin.

    The root of our problem is that we are rebels, and God is not looking for better-behaved rebels; We are called to surrender to the loving God who stands waiting for us, wanting to give us the best life possible.

    Now we can see the call, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand,” not as a warning of impending doom but as a grace-filled invitation to lay down our rebel arms in favor of the loving arms of the Father.

  • Swimming

    Swimming

    The Lake is immense, deep, and still. I cannot guess its size or its depth. I am drawn to it; I desire to somehow be “with” the Lake and be as close to it as possible. Initially, I get only as far as the shore; I am content with being near the Lake. I see its shimmering surface. I hear the gentle sound of waves lapping up against the shore. I smell its watery scents. My desire is not satisfied, but I am not ready to get any closer.

    I want more. I take a boat and experience the Lake, albeit indirectly. I experience buoyancy and the unsteadiness of the boat on the water. The air is different out on the Lake; it is more still yet alive with things unseen. I strain my ears, trying to hear whispers of invitation that seem to be around me. Leaning over the gunnels, I peer into the depths of the Lake. They are at once clearer and more mysterious. I am closer to the water but still apart from it. I will not lean over far, lest I fall in and am lost in it. Neither will I row out too far from shore, fearful of losing the way back. I row back to shore.

    The more time I spend near the water and on the water, the more I want to be in the water. I wade into the water, experiencing contact with it and feeling its wetness. I feel the gentle tug of eddies and currents around my legs. Not content with wading, I try my hand at swimming: I go fully into the water. The water surrounds and upholds me. I dive down, wanting to be as fully in the Lake as possible. It is exhilarating, but soon, I must come up for air. I cannot swim for very long; my limbs tire, and I must return to the shore. My time swimming leaves me wanting an even closer communion with the Lake.

    I return to the water time and time again. Then, all at once, I notice a remarkable transformation has taken place. Somehow, I have become liquid. I do not know when or how it happened, but where I was once flesh and bone, I am now liquid. I have not lost my shape; I still have arms and legs and hands and feet. My body and my face are still “mine,” but now they are liquid.

    Entering the water, I join with it; I become of the same substance. The Lake is not a place I visit; it is my home. I become one with the water, yet I am not dispersed or diffused – I do not lose my identity. In my liquid state, I am never chilled or tired; I never need a rest. I am still “me,” and I am also part of the Lake.

    I can dive below the surface and never need to come up for air. I move naturally and easily with the flows and currents in the depths of the Lake. I can exercise my “self-ness” and go against the currents, but the more I am “liquid,” the less I find that appealing. If I chose to, I could return to the land as a solid creature, to only look upon the Lake, apart from it, no matter how close I got to it, but why would I?

    This work, “Swimming,” by David Hammerslag, is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

  • The Wagon

    I journey each day on a horse-drawn wagon. It is a fine wagon, and I do all I can to ensure that I will go smoothly to my destination. I pack the wheel bearings with grease. The horses are well-shod and seem to be well-suited to their task. Their harnesses and traces are all in good order. I review my map and carefully plan my route.

    Yet, each day ends the same. I start off sure of my driving and my direction. No matter how diligently I apply myself to driving the team and following my route, I always end my day in a ditch or discovering that I am badly off my course, or both. It makes no sense. I am doing everything I can and I am getting no closer to my destination.

    One evening, as I sat in my frustration, a man appeared and offered to trade his horses for mine. I was suspicious of his offer; his horses did not appear to be at all tame or suited for harness.

    He was frank. His horses are not tame, and they will have their own heads. Yet he insists that his horses will stay on the road I must be on and take me to where I should be going.

    Unsure of this offer, I tried a mixed team: some of his horses and some of mine. Two calm, tame, if ineffectual, horses paired with two determined, not-quite-tame horses resulted in disaster. I could not drive at all and nearly lost my wagon in the chaos. I spent the next day repairing my wagon and the night considering my options.

    With the dawn came clarity of thought. The way I had been going was getting me precisely nowhere. What did I have to lose? I took the offer, giving up my horses and harnessing his to my wagon. I am still doing the driving. I am still in the same wagon. But I find that the horses seem to know the way. They do not grow more “tame.” Some days, their wildness causes me to let the reins go slack, close my eyes, and hold on to the bench for dear life. They take my driving, no matter how inattentive or timid, and translate it into the direction that draws me ever nearer to where I was meant to be going.

    Where I was meant to be going; that is the really odd thing. The further I journey with the new team, the more I realize that I am not going where I thought I should be going — I am going where I am meant to be. I do not know where that is, but with each day the countryside improves and the way becomes easier. I pass through lush green meadows and cross gentle streams easily. I do not know where, exactly, I am going, but I know it will be good.

  • In Pop’s Workshop Table of Contents

  • Workshop Chapter 16: Who Does God Love?

    “God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them. ”

    C. S. Lewis, “Four Loves” 

    Spiritual direction is vital to my spiritual formation. I do not intend this “book” to be a tribute to the practice of spiritual direction. Nonetheless, my spiritual journey was continually shaped and guided by the excellent questions asked and keen insights offered by my spiritual director. One of those observations illuminated something that would permanently shift how I think about God and how I understand his relationship with me — a hinge point of my journey. 

    If we are attentive, we may notice moments that have been called a “shock of grace.” Those shocks come when we are suddenly, unexpectedly, and, often, dramatically made aware of the superabundance of God’s love for us and the lengths he goes to shower us with grace. What happened next in my Pops’ workshop was a “shock of grace’ for me.

    Shortly after Jesus spoke to me about the need to be known, the very next day, in fact,  I was once again with my spiritual director.  As our time drew to a close, Danny suggested that perhaps, just maybe, I might eventually find myself among the pieces of wood in the workshop. I do not know if Danny’s insight was natural or God-given. In the end, it doesn’t matter. As soon he made that suggestion, my mind flashed back to that mysterious, nearly incomprehensible “trip” inside a piece of wood with Holy Spirit.  Suddenly awareness broke over me on me like a wave: I was the piece of wood Holy Spirit had been smoothing, straightening and correcting from the inside out. I had somehow, for some reason, been shown the work Holy Spirit was doing inside me as he did it. It was hard to comprehend: the vision of Holy Spirit reforming the wood was not a lesson in theology.  It was a “hands-on” demonstration of what he was doing in a real person at that time.  Even more, it was not some hypothetical “everyman” being transformed.  It was me!  I had the incomprehensible privilege of witnessing a physical representaiton Holy Spirit’s sanctifying action in my life.1

    It took me a while to recover from this revelation; I was a bit nervous about what might be coming next. Nonetheless, later that day,  I asked Jesus if it was me that he was sanding that very first time I was in Pops’ workshop.

    Once again, we were in Pops’ workshop, and once again, Jesus was at work carefully, slowly, lovingly sanding a beautiful piece of wood.  He did not answer my question, he only paused briefly, blew the fine dust from sanding off the wood, and smiled at me.  It was a smile of warmth and compassion, not mirth. I knew at once the answer to my question was “yes, that was me he was sanding.”

    As I watched Jesus sanding, a new reality began to sink in.  I remembered my first visit to Pops’ workshop and seeing Jesus sanding the block of wood that I now knew was me.  His words from that day were again in my ears: “You know, if you want something to be perfect you have to love it.” That piece of wood that had drawn my attention, captivating me with how beautiful it was in his hands, that he lavished loving attention on, that piece of wood was me.  I am the thing that Jesus loves and wants to be perfect! I was undone, sobbing as this new reality of God’s love me sank into my soul: I am formed by the father, straightened and aligned by Holy Spirit, and made beautiful by Jesus.  It really is me he cares about. 

    Having walked this journey with me, you may think I was slow to come to this awareness. And perhaps I was slow. I now understand many things about the transformation God was working that I did not know as it was happening.  I know that it was all him.  My role in his reclamation project was receiver, observer, and chronicler. This transformation was not something I was asking for or expecting. I had asked only to taste his love. I had certainly didn’t know I was volunteering for the all the rest! My only contribution was to stay in the game. I could have backed away from the process, saying in effect, “Never mind, God – you are not what I am looking for.” 

    The Lord could have dealt with me directly instead of in oblique and mysterious visions.  Why didn’t he tell me right off the bat what I had now come to know? On my first visit to Pops’ Workshop, he could have said, “David, I want you to know how much I love you. I love you enough to want to perfect you, just as I am perfecting this block of wood, which is you, by the way.”  Why make me wait weeks and weeks, blindly groping my way to this pivotal understanding? 

    One likely reason is that the God who made us understands how we work.  We learn better when we discover something, instead of having it told to us.  Our discoveries are personal and more meaningful to us.  In my case, there is another, deeper reason. To explain that reason, I’ll have to take a small detour and introduce you to the Enneagram. 

    The Enneagram

    The Enneagram is a tool that can help us better understand ourselves and each other.  I first encountered the Enneagram as a spiritual direction student.  I was immediately suspicious of it.  In my long years in corporate America, I have encountered Meyer-Briggs, DiSC®, and other personality tests or assessments. They were generally used to either pigeonhole other people or to excuse one’s shortcomings and bad behavior. “You know Mary,” people would say, “there she goes again; she is such an INTJ!” Or perhaps I would think to myself, “I can’t be expected to work with Sam.  I am such a strong D, and he just can’t deal with that.”2 

    The Enneagram of Personality, popularly understood today, has a different flavor.3  Yes, you end up with a “label,” a number from one to nine that denotes your “type,” but the emphasis is not on a static understanding of “what you are like.” The emphasis is more on understanding what motivates your behavior and how you can become spiritually and emotionally healthier. The classification is just a jumping-off point of self-awareness and opening yourself to God’s grace to heal your inner wounds and help you move forward, becoming the beautiful person you are created to be. 

    One of the points on the Enneagram where I find myself is the “five,” variously summarized as the investigator, the observer, the thinker, or the loner.  Generally speaking, people who find affinity as an Enneagram five value and pursue knowledge, the more and the deeper, the better. An average or less healthy five can have a hard time making a decision or taking an action because we know that there is more yet to learn that may be germane to the issues at hand.  We can be intensely aware of how much we don’t know. 

    If, at the beginning of this adventure, God had come right out and said, “David, I love you and want to perfect you,” I would have likely reacted in one of two ways. Most likely, I would have thought, “I already know this.  God loves everyone, and we are to be perfect as Christ is perfect. It is good to be reminded of that.” I could have let the whole thing end there, accepting a confirmation of knowledge I already possessed.  

    On the slight chance that the Lord’s declaration of his love for me had ignited a spark, it would have lit a fire of research and investigation, certainly not one of introspection. I might have dived deeply into the various Greek words for “love.”  Was it agape love Jesus felt for me?  Or perhaps it was philia? What might it mean to be made perfect? I would have perhaps set myself on a word study of “perfection” in the scriptures or I might have researched what Christian theologians and apologists has to say about perfection. 

    I would have affirmed what I already knew or I would have acquired new knowledge.  I would have remained looking outward at the world around me, not inward at the state of my soul.  Even if, somehow, the visions had continued to unfold, I would have been a detached observer, like a scientist studying some novel phenomena. I would not have ended up sobbing, overwhelmed by my experience of God’s love for me.   

    A growth path for Enneagram Fives is to get out of our heads and get more in touch with our hearts and emotions. God, the ultimate spiritual director, knew that about me and knew how to pique my curiosity, leading me step by step to where I needed to be. I believe that God approached me with intriguing visions because he knows that I am drawn to solving puzzles and working through something I don’t understand. He kept me “on the hook” with visions to wonder about and work through. 

    Growing Strong

    One nagging doubt persisted despite my growing awareness of God’s love for me.  If God wanted me the way he was now shaping me, why did he allow me to become so twisted and bent in the first place?4  The next day, with the understanding that I was the wood that Jesus was making beautiful and I was the wood Holy Spirit still running through my head, I turned again to prayer. My thoughts returned my difficult childhood and my parents. I saw an image of a tree growing in a completely calm environment with rich soil, gentle breezes, and plenty of sunshine. As I thought about that tree, growing in a “perfect” environment with no winds and no stress, I recalled something I had learned years before. 

    When my children were young, we would take camping trips in the high desert of northern Arizona. On one of those trips, we heard a talk from a naturalist who talked about the twisting growth of the Alligator Juniper, a tree common to that area.  They are often seen with twisted or spiral trunks; the twists in the tree’s structure are a response to its growth on windy mountainsides. A tree that grows with a straight grain is much more likely to break in a strong wind or under a heavy load of snow.  The twisted junipers have the internal strength to bend and flex in the wind without breaking. A tree growing in ideal conditions would grow with a straight trunk.  Such a tree would not survive should it be subjected to strong winds.  

    Alligator Juniper
    Photo by Daniel Barthelemy (cc-by-nc)

    God wasn’t saying that he caused my childhood to be the way it was so that I might be stronger, but he was showing me that in some ways, I was stronger and more resilient as a result of my upbringing and that strength and resilience was something he could use. I still had the challenge of being strong without being hard, but it comforted me to know that even though I was not yet how the Lord intended me to be, he would leverage my strengths.  

    I already knew, as a matter of fact, that he loved me.  I needed to experience it, to live in it, to let it permeate me.  Knowing about it was not going to be good enough.  This new level of understanding was soon to come in a few days.  

    1I have never understood why I was allowed this grace.  Perhaps God, knowing me better than I will ever know myself, knew that it would take a revelation like this to finally get my attention.

    2You may rightly claim that is not how these tests and profiles are meant to be used, but in more than thirty years in the corporate world, I never saw a different, healthier pattern.

    3 In the years since I first wrote this chapter, I have been introduced to a much healthier and more helpful expression of the enneagram, the Enneagram of Christlike virtues. Whether you are new to the Enneagram or have some experience with the Enneagram of Personality, I encourage you to explore the Enneagram of Christlike Virtues from Mosaic Formation. You will find a holistic, systemic approach that illuminates the nine points of the enneagram as reflections of Christ’s virtues; we are not limited to our “number” but can and should grow in Christlikeness in all aspects of our being and in all nine Christlike virtues.

    4It is instructive to note that despite the deep and loving conversations I had with the Lord in preceding months and even years (see chapter 13, for example) I persisted in a quest of answers about justice and injustice, real and perceived, in my past.  God does not tire of our questions.  Do not be dismayed if you find yourself, as part of your journey, rewalking the same ground time and time again.

    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

    Next: Chapter 17: Pride
  • Discernment, Self-Deception, and Redemption

    Discernment, Self-Deception, and Redemption

    It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out.

    C. S. Lewis, “The Screwtape Letters”

    “Should I retire?” That is a question I asked myself repeatedly over the last several years and intensely earlier this year before deciding to retire. I was well paid and enjoyed many of my co-workers, but the work was decidedly unrewarding and frustrating. My wife and I had been conservative with our money and had set aside a sufficient nest egg to allow retirement financially. By any natural measure, I could retire, but the question remained, “Should I retire.”

    While I was asking myself this question, I was also asking God the same question: Should I retire? I want to tell you that I was as intentional in listening for the Father’s will as I was in listening to financial advisors, but I wasn’t. I would love to let you know that I spent more time praying about my decision than checking (and double-checking) retirement account balances, but I wasn’t. I wasn’t cutting God entirely out of the picture; I really did want my decision to reflect God’s will. And I wanted to retire!

    Writing today, five months after I turned in my notice and set aside a lucrative career, I wonder about my discernment process. Was I aligning my choice with God’s will, or was I trying to convince myself that God wanted what I had already settled in my mind? Was I seeking guidance or an accomplice?

    Many excellent arguments pointed to retirement, but they resulted from human reasoning, not discernment. I was much more interested in enumerating justifications for the answer I wanted than hearing what the Father would say about it. Our minds and our ability to think and reason are gifts from God. It would be foolish for us not to use them. And it is a capital mistake to confound reasoning about what will be good for us (we think) with discernment. The Apostle Paul did not rely on cleverness and his powers of persuasion; he relied on the Holy Spirit. (1 Cor. 2:13)

    If discernment is not thinking our way to a conclusion based on what we know about God (for example, that he wants good for me), what is it? Let’s use this definition: “being aware of God’s activity in our daily lives and aware of his desire for us and how he may desire us to act in matters large and small.” That sounds simple. Apparently, it is not: A quick search on amazon.com yields over two thousand Christian titles on “discernment.” That is a lot of thought and writing on something that sounds simple.

    Discernment Should Not Be Hard

    Hearing God and being aware of his actions and desires in our lives should be easy and natural. Yet, for most of us, the opposite is true. Discernment, which should be a matter of course for those indwelt by the Spirit, can nonetheless be hard for us to put into practice. When I reflect on my retirement “discernment,” I am aware of four necessary things for discernment and can see where I struggled with most of them. Those four things we need are:

    1. Believing that God loves us and desires the best for us
    2. Believing that discernment is possible; that is, we can hear and understand what God may be saying
    3. Being open to hearing an answer that is not what we want to hear
    4. Waiting for clarity

    Believing That God Loves Us and Desires The Best For Us

    This one should be dead easy for us. It is hard to imagine a Christ follower who believes God does not love us and desires the best for us. However, we trip ourselves up when we confound our idea of what is best for us with God’s. We can set ourselves up to “discern” the answer we have already decided is best.

    Our capacity for self-deception is enormous. Physicist Richard Feynman said, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.” We are primed to see, hear, and believe things that align with what we already believe to be true or simply want to be true. Psychologists call this “confirmation bias.”  We tend to notice, interpret, and remember things in ways that align with our values, beliefs, and desires.

    When I did seek the Father’s heart, I operated under the confirmation bias trifecta. I desired the answer “yes.” I wasn’t happy working; God wants the best for me (I easily assume that to mean he wants me to be happy in my work); Therefore, I believed God would want me to retire. Finally, I valued kingdom work and ministry above piling up ever more wealth in my barns (Luke 12:16-21).

    Notice the trap here. Everything I desired, believed, and valued is good and right, but that doesn’t mean they should set my course. The problem is that our internal bias can leave us spiritually deaf. I would have been wise to invite trusted others into the discernment process with me, people who are unlikely to share in my confirmation bias. Ecclesiastes 4 speaks to the folly of going it on our own, and Jesus promised to be with us when two or three are gathered in his name (Matthew 18:20).

    Believing That Discernment Is Possible

     The model of God’s interactions with us, as seen in Eden, is one of regular presence and easy conversation. Genesis tells us that Adam and Eve could expect God to walk among them in the garden in the cool of the evening; they had to go out of the way and hide to avoid encountering Him! (Genesis. 3:8)

    We duly note that was before the fall. Man was banished from the garden. God no longer walks among us as he did with our first parents. But in Jesus, God became Emanual, God with us. He once again walked among us, and just before his crucifixion, he reassured his followers that we would not be left on our own; through the Holy Spirit, he will continue to be with us:

    But when the Father sends the Advocate as my representative—that is, the Holy Spirit—he will teach you everything and will remind you of everything I have told you. … When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own but will tell you what he has heard. He will tell you about the future. He will bring me glory by telling you whatever he receives from me. All that belongs to the Father is mine; this is why I said, ‘The Spirit will tell you whatever he receives from me.’

    John 14:26, 16:13-15 (NLT)

    He not only walks with us and talks with us, but he makes his home with us (John 14:23). Through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, God will continue to teach, convict, and encourage us, guiding us into all truth.

    Paul took the active presence of the Holy Spirit in and with us as natural and expected:

    • The Spirit of God dwells within us. (Romans 8:11)
    • God reveals truth and wisdom through the Spirit. (1 Corinthians 4:10)
    • Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. (1 Corinthians 6:19)
    • The Holy Spirit will help guard the truth entrusted to us. (2 Timothy 1:14)

    I find the scriptural witness to be clear. We do not have a God who keeps himself and his desires for us hidden. But the journey from head to heart is perilous. I knew God likely had a lot of interest in my decision to retire. Yet my fickle heart seemed not to believe that he cared much one way or another. My head said, “seek to know the Father’s will;” my heart said, “you are on your own here.”

    I have had rich, transcendent, even mystical experiences of God. I know God can be present to us, but I still functioned as if he wouldn’t be present in this instance or as if I already knew his heart, having reasoned my way to that conclusion. Certainly, my desires and biases came into play. I would have been well served to have spent time meditating on the scriptures noted above to help move my head-knowledge about God’s guidance down into my heart.

    Being Open To Hearing An Answer That Is Not What We Want To Hear

    When we approach discernment as an exercise in confirmation, it is much harder for us to apprehend what the Lord may be saying to us. My mind was pretty well made up; I wanted to retire and knew I could retire. If God was saying, “not now, not yet,” would I have been willing to hear that? Letting go of our desires is quite hard.  Ignatius of Loyola, in his Spiritual Exercises, begins with the First Principle and Foundation, which concludes with:

    In everyday life, then, we must hold ourselves in balance before all created gifts insofar as we have a choice and are not bound by some responsibility.   We should not fix our desires on health or sickness, wealth or poverty, success or failure, a long life or a short one.  For everything has the potential of calling forth in us a more loving response to our life forever with God.

    Our only desire and our one choice should be this: I want and I choose what better leads to God’s deepening life in me.

    David A. Fleming, S.J.: A Literal Translation & Contemporary Reading of the Spiritual Exercises

    The ability to want only what will draw us closer to God or to want only what he wants for us needs to be our table stakes in discernment.  I did not begin times of discernment by affirming my desire to choose what would deepen God’s life within me; I should have. Instead, I started with wanting God to want what I wanted.

    Waiting For Clarity

    Patience is a fruit of the spirit (Galatians 5:22).  It is a fruit that I often lack, especially in discernment. When I want an answer, I want it now. I don’t want to wait. Yet waiting is a crucial component to our discernment that enables the other three. When seeking an answer, I should seek the wisdom of others; that will take time. I must prayerfully remind myself of God’s spirit dwelling within me, offering counsel and wisdom; that will take time.  I need to reset my expectations, asking the Holy Spirit to help me want only what God wants for me; that will take time.

    Often, we seek discernment in a time of trial or when we are making a significant decision. As hard as it may be, those are exactly the times we need to slow down, invite others into our discernment, carefully examine our biases, and pray for the grace to trust God above all, especially above our own wisdom.

    Redemption

    Reflecting on my “discernment,” I can see how I hamstrung the process. What would the answer have been had I approached discernment in a healthier way?  I cannot know.  I do know that most, if not all, of the myriad kingdom activities I had planned and used as justification for my decision have not come to pass. I also know that latent anxiety has come to the fore since my retirement, so I suspect I did not move according to the Father’s heart and timing.

    But all is not lost. We serve a redemptive God who will work in and through our missteps and mistakes. He does not leave on our own. I am seeing new ministry opportunities that I would never have expected and much different than I imagined. I hope I am still learning my discernment lessons, and I am trusting that whatever God has in store for me will ultimately draw me closer to him. Will I have the retirement that I could have enjoyed had I truly discerned the Father’s heart? Probably not. But God will use even our mistakes when we turn back to him.

    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

    Featured image: by Ana Municio on Unsplash

    A note to readers: For quite a while I have restricted my posts to chapters of “In Pops’ Workshop.” There are still more chapters to come, but I am also posting general blog posts (such as this one) as well.

  • Workshop Chapter 15: Being Known

    Workshop Chapter 15: Being Known

    “Our wisdom . . . consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected together by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other.”

    John Calvin, 1530

    Just a few days after my visit to the meadow, during a quiet time with the Lord, Jesus told me: “To know me fully, you must be fully known.” This proclamation was unexpected.  I wasn’t asking, “how can I know you better?” I wasn’t asking anything at all; I was just being still with God.

    You might think that I would pay attention all the more, given the unexpectedness of the declaration. I would like to think that about myself, but that was not so. To the contrary, my immediate reaction was: “That can’t be right! Surely Jesus already knows me fully! After all, he is omniscient. By definition, there isn’t anything he doesn’t know. I must be included in his limitless knowledge. If he knows everything, he must know me. How can he then say, ‘I must be fully known?’”

    I took my doubts about his statement back to Jesus in prayer. I sensed that he can know me but will not know more of me than I chose to reveal. I doubted that interpretation, mainly because it was not what I would do. I still valued and desired knowledge. I hoarded knowledge, taking pleasure from knowing something others didn’t know; knowledge helped me feel safe and superior. Why would Jesus choose not to know something that he could know?  How and why would that prevent me from knowing him? 

    Jesus Can’t Heal Fake 

    The linkage between knowing ourselves and knowing God is far from novel; I was “discovering” a well-known truth. Jesus was telling me a truth that has been discovered and known for centuries. John Calvin, in the sixteenth century, taught that unless we truly know ourselves, we cannot truly know God. Even earlier, around 500 CE, Augustine asked, “How can you draw close to God when you are far from your own self?” and prayed, “Grant, Lord, that I may know myself that I may know Thee.” Benner’s The Gift of Knowing Yourself and Scazerro’s Emotionally Healthy Spirituality both teach extensively about the dynamics of how we can become detached from and lose our true selves. We construct “false” selves as we try to mold ourselves into the people we think others want or expect or as we try to be who we think we need to be to survive. Over time, the masks we wear become the only thing we see in the mirror. We lose the ability to see our true selves, the unique persons God created us to be. 

    In the years since I first heard the Lord say, “To know me fully, you must be fully known,” my appreciation of this truth has grown. God desires that we are healed of the hurts of this world, and that we become able to enter fully into the depth of his love for us. But before we can be healed, we must understand where we are broken. As a friend’s grandma said, “Jesus can’t heal fake.”1

    Repair or Restoration?

    Why can’t Jesus just heal us, without our active participation, without us knowing our wounded and broken places? It is helpful to look at the relational rift that keeps us distant from God as a torn piece of fabric. In God’s creation, before the fall, man’s life was seamlessly integrated with God.  Man’s fall into sin created a rift between God and us, a tear in the seamless unity present in creation.  God means for our integration into his life and love to be so complete that we are like a single piece of cloth: the threads of his life interwoven with the threads of our lives. They are independent threads, his life and ours, but they are meant to be woven together into a single piece of fabric. Sin has torn and ruptured that fabric. 

    God’s goal is not to simply repair the tear, he purposes do restore the fabric. Restoration is different than repair. If we repair a torn piece of cloth, we might simply sew the two halves together, or perhaps we would sew on a patch. But a patch or a seam is not a restoration. The repaired fabric may look better, it may even be usable, but it is not restored—it is not a single, unified piece of cloth. Anyone looking at it could easily spot the repair; it has not been restored to its original state. The Lord’s goal is restoration, putting it back the way it was: our lives woven and intertwined with his.  

    No matter how carefully, how detailed a repair we could fashion, it would still not be a restoration. Even if we could, somehow, perhaps with a strong enough magnifier and tiny tweezers, tie each broken thread to its mate, there would still be a visible seam—the line of knots. It would be a repair, not the restoration the Lord desires for us.  

    The damage that flows from our sinful rebellion goes deep. In our metaphor of fabric, each thread is itself made up of spun and twisted fibers. When the fabric is torn, each thread is broken each individual fiber of each thread is also torn apart. To truly restore the damage, putting it back to how it was, each strand of fiber must somehow be twisted back together with its other end, on the other side of the tear. As the fibers are spun back together, the threads can be twisted back together, and the fabric restored. No clever job of mending here; not an artful patch, but a restoration of the fabric, woven back together to its original state. That is what the Lord wants for us. We want to be better; he wants us whole. We want to get by; he wants us perfected. We want a patch—usually a quick and easy patch; he wants us restored. Restoration is almost always a long and challenging process; shortcuts are rarely an option. 

    Being renewed in our spirits, made new again, not simply mended or repaired, is a theme of the apostle Paul:  

    • “Our inner person is being renewed day by day”2
    • “You are being renewed in the spirit of your minds”3
    • “You have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator”4 
    • “Be transformed by the renewal of your mind”5 

    In Jesus’ discourse with Nicodemus in John 3, Jesus declares, “Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”6 We are not repaired; we are reborn, made new. We are promised new life, not just a cleaned-up version of our current lives (2 Cor 5:17).

    We cannot renew the fabric of our souls, but the Lord can—if we let him. We have to be willing participants in the process.  That is where being known comes in: we have to understand where those tears are, with their multitudinous broken threads and torn fibers, but we likely no longer see them and thus cannot seek the only real remedy. The tear causes pain and ache and yearnings in our souls. Not knowing who can restore the fabric, we seek our own remedies. We devise patches, things we can affix to the frayed ends of the tear. We have tied off the loose threads, attaching to them our own remedies—our ideas of what will stop the unraveling and ease our aching souls.  We push others down, hoping it will somehow lift us up and make us feel better.  We strive for the approval of others, expecting that will answer the yearning in our souls.  We medicate ourselves with sex, power, drugs, and alcohol, trying to numb our pain and distract ourselves.  Our patches for our wounded souls are varied but never effective in the long run.  We need to be restored, not patched. 

    We cannot un-tear the fabric, but God can—if we allow him to. We must expose the frayed ends of our “side” of the tear. We have covered, tied off, and patched them to protect ourselves from further damage (or so we think) and to ease our pain (or so we hope). We must now trust the Lord enough to re-expose those frayed ends of our lives. We must untie the knots to let go of the attachments. We must expose the pain and insecurities so that God can heal them. He will restore each broken fiber and each torn thread and re-weave the ruptured fabric. We must untie the knots binding us to things besides Jesus. We have to rip off the patches we have sewn over our hearts, tear off the binding we have put on the ragged edges of our souls. Our goal is to stop the tearing—to soothe a spiritual ache. God’s goal is to restore the rift—to have each one of us reunited with him in his perfection—to restore, not mend, the fabric of our souls. 

    It takes time. It is hard. It is almost always painful. The process of re-opening wounds so that they can heal properly is necessary, but that doesn’t make it easy or free of pain. Formation, as this restoration of our damaged souls is sometimes called, is not a once-and-done event. It is a lifetime of learning to see the tears, identify our attempts at patches, and peel those off so that God can heal us. The older the wounding, the more calcified the patch will be.  Wounds that are old and deep have been patched and re-patched many times as we attempt to mend our own pain. Working through all the protective layers is a long, hard, and likely painful process.  Ultimately, we need to do nothing except allow ourselves to be known by God and give him permission to heal us. 

    The attachments we have can be hard to identify. They have likely been in place for years. We come to think of them as “us;” they can become how we understand ourselves to be. Even when we have identified them, peeling them away can be challenging. They are there for a reason: they are our survival tools. If we tear away our patch, no matter how shabby or ill-fitting it is, surely we will unravel! But that is what we must risk – exposing our real, wounded, and frightened selves to the only one who can put everything right. The thing we cling most tightly to is the one thing we must let go of. 

    Fear or Love?

    This understanding came much later. Back in that moment, when I heard Jesus tell me that I must be fully known by him, I did not really know what he meant.  My ignorance was a blessing.  It allowed me to move forward in faith and obedience. I asked Holy Spirit to show me what I needed to reveal. What did I need to let God know about me so that I could know him better? I was fully expecting “anger” or “disappointment” but was very surprised when Holy Spirit brought “fear” to my mind instead. Disappointment and anger are just symptoms that come from holding back from God. When I hold back from him, he cannot free me and give me all he desires for me, giving rise to my disappointment and anger. It is fear that holds me back. What was I afraid of?  Mostly, it was fear of God not being there or of the whole workshop experience being an extreme case of self-delusion or, worse, a psychotic episode. I had (and have) plenty of other fears as well: fear that I would end up destitute, fear of illness, and fear of old age. But overall, I feared that my Pops was not trustworthy and reliable. I didn’t believe that when the chips were down, and I really needed him, he would be there. 

    My view of God was based on being good and following “the rules,” not on trusting in his loving-kindness. Nothing illustrates this as well as my reading of Psalm 139: 

    O LORD, you have searched me and known me! 
    You know when I sit down and when I rise up; 
    you discern my thoughts from afar. 
    You search out my path and my lying down 
    and are acquainted with all my ways. 
    Even before a word is on my tongue, 
    behold, O LORD, you know it altogether. 
    You hem me in, behind and before, 
    and lay your hand upon me. 
    Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; 
    it is high; I cannot attain it. 
    Where shall I go from your Spirit? 
    Or where shall I flee from your presence? 
    If I ascend to heaven, you are there! 
    If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! 
    If I take the wings of the morning 
    and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, 
    even there your hand shall lead me, 
    and your right hand shall hold me. 
    If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, 
    and the light about me be night,” 
    even the darkness is not dark to you; 
    the night is bright as the day, 
    for darkness is as light with you. 

    Psalm 139:1-12, ESV

    When I read these words today, I hear David, the Psalmist, delighting in God’s unceasing care for him and complete knowledge of him.  That is now, some six years after the fact. Then, I did not receive this psalm with any gratefulness or pleasure. To me, it was more like God saying, “Don’t you think you can hide from me! I know what you are doing. You can’t get away with anything!” I heard a judgemental God warning me not to step out of line. I read Psalm 139 like a divine version of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”:  

    He sees you when you’re sleepin’ 
    He knows when you’re a wake 
    He knows if you’ve been bad or good 
    So be good, for goodness sake 
    Oh! You better watch out, you better not cry 
    Better not pout, I’m telling you why …

    Such was the state of my soul then: I was afraid to let God know me, afraid because I didn’t trust his compassion and steadfast love. Mentally and emotionally, I never got to this part of the psalm: 

    How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! 
    How vast is the sum of them! 
    If I would count them, they are more than the sand. 
    I awake, and I am still with you.

    Psalm 139:17-18 ESV

    When I recall the circumstances of my childhood, with parents whose own struggles left them neither reliable nor dependable, it is not surprising that it was hard for me to trust God, to trust that his promises and his love were reliable and for me. But here, as I named and confessed my fears to the Lord, I encountered God’s grace and love. God was not surprised or angered by my confession.7 To the contrary, he was delighted that I could come to grips with my fears and bring them to him.

    At that moment, as I prayed, repenting of fearfulness and lack of trust, in the Workshop, my Pops took off his heavy leather apron, and he and Jesus embraced me. That one sentence says so little yet means so much. It is a simple thing: a hug. But it was an embrace I had needed most of my life. It was a touch that I longed for, without knowing my longing. I experienced the love of the one who is love.

    This was a foundational step in my healing. Foundational but in no way final. Our hiding from God sets up a vicious cycle.  We hide because we are ashamed (see Genesis 3:8-11).  Then, in turn, we are ashamed because we have hidden from God, which can lead us into deeper hiding. Knowing ourselves and allowing God to know us not only breaks that destructive cycle but also sets up the opposite: a virtuous cycle.

    As we are known, we experience God’s compassionate love and forgiveness.  Knowing his love and forgiveness gives us the confidence and courage to broaden and deepen the self-knowledge that we can share with the Lord.  As I write this, years after these encounters, I am still in those cycles.  Sometimes I slip back into hiding; the defensive habits that we relied on for years are pernicious. But more often, I find myself in the virtuous cycle of learning who I am and understanding that I am loved for who I am, not who I think I am supposed to be. 

    Without really knowing it, I was, in effect, back down in the hole, doing the work of clearing the rocks that blocked the flow of life-giving water. Understanding who I really am and bringing that self to Jesus was a remedy for my past habits of shame and hiding. I was “naming” the rocks of fear, doubt, inadequacy, and shame. Each time I “named” a rock and brought it to Jesus, I was slowly but surely letting God’s life flow more freely through me. Experiencing my Pops’ love for me, the real me, was liberating and exhilarating.  But God was about to turn my experience of him up – way up. 

    1Never underestimate the wisdom of grandmas.

    22 Corinthians 4:16b HCSB, emphasis added.

    3Ephesians 4:23b HCSB, emphasis added.

    4Colossians 3:9b-10 ESV, emphasis added.

    5Romans 12:2b ESV, emphasis added.

    6John 3:3b ESV.

    7Almost without exception, we think that God, who we acknowledge knows everything, will be surprised but some bit of news about ourselves we have been withholding from him.  What are you hiding from God?  He already knows it, so you might as well ‘fess up. 

    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

    Next CHapter: Who Does God Love?
  • Workshop Chapter 14: A Place of Rest

    Workshop Chapter 14: A Place of Rest

    The Lord is my shepherd;
    I have all that I need.
    He lets me rest in green meadows;
    he leads me beside peaceful streams.
    He renews my strength.

    Psalm 23:1-3(a) New Living Translation

    My experience of Pops’ Workshop, the way it unfolded in my life, was varied and often surprising. I would enter into prayer seeking an encounter in the Workshop. Sometimes those efforts were fruitful, but many times they were not. Other times I would simply be still, seeking the presence of the Lord in contemplative prayer, and would find myself unexpectedly in the Workshop. Then, there were times like this one, when I would not even be consciously praying, and the Workshop would suddenly break in on my thoughts. When and how I engaged with Pops in his Workshop was clearly all in his hands. God knew what I needed or was about to need and graciously guided the timing and nature of my “visits” according to his timing and plan. The stairs at the back of the Workshop are a prime example of this.

    Down the Stairs

    The stairs were in the center of the back wall, between where I first encountered Jesus and the hole. They led down and long seemed inviting to me. Whenever I asked the Lord about them, wanting to know where they led, all I heard was, essentially, “Don’t worry about it.” Why would there be some feature of the workshop that seemed to have no purpose?

    Looking back, I am certain that my interest in the stairs was mainly a way to avoid the rocks and muck that were down in the hole. I had a good idea that something would have to be done about the mess down in the hole, and I guessed that I wouldn’t very much enjoy it. So, I focused my attention on the stairs, which, while going down, still seemed much more inviting than going back down in the dark, dank, nasty hole and dealing with all that inner work that the hole was pointing me toward.

    Given that I used thinking about the stairs to avoid the mess down in the hole, I was surprised one Sunday when, while driving to church—not praying, not really thinking about anything at all, just driving to church—I was suddenly shown where the stairs led. They are an exit, a way down to a back door out of the Workshop to a tranquil, bucolic mountain meadow. The door at the bottom of the stairs opened out to an unpaved path that curved off gently to the right, arcing through a stand of aspen. The trail was not long, but by the time it emptied into the meadow, the workshop was completely obscured behind the trees.

    The meadow itself was not very large, no more than five or six acres. It was surrounded by aspen; look in any direction and you would see the aspen with their leaves gently quivering. Beyond the aspen, conifers marched up the side of the mountain.

    The footpath that brought me to the meadow continued, sloping gently down to a running brook, crystal clear. I don’t know if it was the same stream I was shown earlier, the place to receive healing from the wounds of the black snakes, but it certainly could be. Tall green grass filled the meadow, sharing space with clusters of white, yellow, and purple flowers. The sun was warm, but I was not hot; the breeze was refreshing. It seemed to be a place of perpetual springtime. It was the kind of place that made you want to kick off your shoes, lay back in the grass, and have a nap while you are warmed by the sun and sung to by the rustling grasses, the stream, and the birds.

    Despite the delightful nature of the meadow, it puzzled me a bit. Clearly, it was behind the workshop, but why the stairs? Why not just go out the front door and walk around to the back to get to the meadow; the workshop was not that big! But I learned that this was not possible. In a way that doesn’t make any sense in the natural world, there is no way around the workshop. The only way to get to the meadow is to go through the workshop. Whatever the meadow was for, it was intimately tied to the workshop and what happened there.

    As I lingered in the meadow[1], I slowly understood its purpose. The meadow was a place that I would need for rest: a place to be still in the presence of God and recharge. Of course, it came at just the right time. The timing was right regarding where I was in my spiritual journey. It came just as I was encountering the rocks and muck that were fouling the life-giving water, water that should have been flowing and available in the Workshop. Understanding that I was responsible for the sorry state of affairs had left me feeling discouraged and overwhelmed. I knew I would have to clean up the mess, but I was still learning to stop making the mess. I had no idea how to clean up the debris and muck that I had accumulated over the last fifty years. Yet here I was, trying to avoid the hard work that I knew was coming – the work of cleaning up the mess. In his compassion, the Lord provides both the means to rest and recover and a promise that those means would always be available. I could go down the stairs, and out into the meadow anytime I needed to. I soon learned that I would often need the refreshment of the meadow.

    Hard Work at the “Wall”

    In Chapter 2, I introduced the “Wall,” as described by authors Hagberg and Guelich. They identify six stages in spiritual development or growth. In the first three stages, we are largely focused outwardly, defining ourselves by what we believe, who we follow, and what we do. Stages four, five, and six describe a shift that has us looking inward. That shift culminates in an inner spiritual and psychological transformation. Here again is their description of the Wall, which we run into as we begin to turn inward:

    Our wrestling with the Wall plays a vital role in the process of our spiritual healing. The Wall represents the place where another layer of transformation occurs and a renewed life of faith begins . . . [it] represents our will meeting God’s will face to face. We decide anew whether we are willing to surrender and let God direct our lives.[2]

    The Wall is where we toil and struggle to come to grips with who we are and who God is.

    The process of meeting the Wall requires going through the Wall, not underneath it, over it, around it, or blasting it. We must go through it brick by brick, feeling and healing each element of our wills as we surrender to God’s will. Our ego and will are transformed and made new. They are not transcended or risen above. We do not learn to get rid of them but to submit them. Along with spiritual healing comes psychological healing. We believe these transformations occur simultaneously at the Wall. We move toward wholeness and holiness. We do not get rid of ego or will. We release them. We let them be turned inside out so that unconditional love can emerge.[3]

    The journey through the wall is usually very long and very difficult. If I were to make it through the Wall, I would need the meadow, a place to rest and be refreshed. I know this only in hindsight. I had never heard of the Wall and wouldn’t read The Critical Journey until a year after I first came to the meadow. I didn’t know what I was in the middle of nor what was coming, but God knew and graciously provided for my need before I was even aware of it.

    Burnout

    The timing of the appearance of the meadow would turn out to be providential, but it was also timed to coincide with events in the natural world. My experience of the meadow unfolded in a matter of a few minutes as I drove to church on a Sunday morning. At church that day, I learned the sad news about Dan, the pastor of a church thousands of miles from my home in Arizona.[4] I had prayed with and for Dan. He encouraged me in my Christian walk, and I had ministered in his church. I greatly admired Dan and counted him as a friend.

    That morning, not twenty minutes after my trip down the stairs, out the back door and to the meadow, I learned that Dan, burned out, had resigned his pastorate. He was burned out; he had not availed himself of rest and now had nothing left to give. The Lord was letting me know that there is rest in him, even in the midst of hard work. Dan’s story was a bitter reminder and a timely reminder of the need to take that rest.

    All Christians are called to lives of service; we each have ministry assignments. It makes no practical difference whether we are professional clergy or serve as laypeople. It doesn’t matter if we are appointed to leadership positions in a local body or serve in another way; we each have a ministry call and a role to play. As we grow and mature, we often press more and more into our ministry. If we are not careful, we can easily empty ourselves.

    Bernard of Clairvaux, a 12th-century abbot, invites us to think about streams and reservoirs:

    The man who is wise, therefore, will see his life as more like a reservoir than a canal. The canal simultaneously pours out what it receives; the reservoir retains the water till it is filled, then discharges the overflow without loss to itself… Today there are many in the Church who act like canals, the reservoirs are far too rare. So urgent is the charity of those through whom the streams of heavenly doctrine flow to us, that they want to pour it forth before they have been filled; they are more ready to speak than to listen, impatient to teach what they have not grasped, and full of presumption to govern others while they know not how to govern themselves

    Bernard of Clairvaux

    That metaphor applies to our time with God. If our relationship with our Lord is not full, we are likely not in a good position to help others be filled. We can find ourselves “out of gas” when we need it most.

    The same is true as we press on with the hard work of spiritual formation and transformation. God has already done the work of saving us; none of us could ever save ourselves. But that truth does not minimize the toll that spiritual transformation can take on us. Digging up and facing old injuries done to us and, even worse, facing the injuries we have inflicted on others is emotionally exhausting.

    We are on a journey. The fact that God propels us on our way does not obviate the trip’s difficulty. There will still be treks through dry and dusty wastelands. We will still find ourselves climbing impossibly steep mountains and suffering biting cold. We cannot go it alone. We can and should draw strength from others with whom we can share our journey: a pastor, a spiritual director, or trusted friends who are mature in their faith.

    Those sustaining relationships are necessary, but they are not sufficient. To survive, we must hide ourselves in God: “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory” (Col 3:2-4, NRSV). We must turn to Christ, who knows and cares for us at the soul-level. He is “one of us” and showed us the pattern of getting away to rest in God. See, for example, Mark 1:35, 1:45, 3:13, 6:30-32, and 14:32-36. We must submit ourselves to his rest. We must find our meadows where we can be renewed and sustained for the journey.

    For me, the only way to the meadow is through the workshop. There are no shortcuts to the peace and refreshment of being in the presence of God. I was learning that the only way to really experience the peace of knowing God was through some hard work. The meadow comes after the knowledge of the work that needs to be done, in my case, the hard work of cleaning up the rocks and muck to restore the flow of water below the workshop.

    [1]To say I lingered in the meadow is confusing, even to me. The entire vision could not have lasted more than a few moments. I was driving, after all. Nonetheless, I experienced the passage of significant time in the meadow.

    [2]Janet O. Hagberg and Robert A. Guelich, The Critical Journey: Stages in the Life of Faith, (Salem, WI: Sheffield Publishing Company, 1989), p. 114, Kindle edition.

    [3]Ibid., p. 119.

    [4]“Dan” is a pseudonym. The person and the experience are real.

    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

    Next CHapter: Being Known