In recent months, I have noticed that myself and a number of friends and acquaintances have taken a strong liking to the adjective “intense,” to describe all manner of experiences. What tends to happen when a word is over-used is that it slowly begins to lose meaning as it acquires the status of lingo. I have made a personal determination to excise the use of the word “intense” from my vocabulary. At the least, however, I have assigned the word to the “use sparingly” category of the food pyramid. We all know what over-use of other “use sparingly” items such as fats and sugars do to one’s health. Likewise, overuse of lingo terms makes one either over-weight or sugar-highed, linguistically speaking. Instead, I am making an effort to be more specific in what I actually mean. If an experience was high-energy I will say that rather than “intense.” If an experience was emotionally impacting, I will say that, and so on. I consider it an exercise in being able to share more openly and honestly with people pertaining to what I actually experience and feel rather than resorting to stock phrases which reveal little to nothing about me.

I am hoping others will join me on this linguistic, and more-so relational, adventure. As a matter of public service, I will here list various synonyms for “intense” from which to broaden your horizons.

If by intense you mean “a condition, quality, feeling, etc. existing in a high degree; forceful or extreme” than synonyms would include:

extreme

great

acute

fierce

severe

high

exceptional

extraordinary

harsh

strong

powerful

potent

overpowering

vigorous

serious

If by intense you mean “feeling or apt to feel, strong emotion; extremely earnest or serious” than synonyms could be:

passionate

impassioned

ardent

fervent

zealous

vehement

fiery

emotional

earnest

eager

animated

spirited

vigorous

energetic

committed

If you mean “high-energy” you could say:

volatile

explosive

aggressive

determined

fervid

energetic

vital

zestful

spirited

animated

lively

vigorous

dynamic

high-powered

all-out

hard-hitting

exuberant

wild

If you mean “emotional,” you could say:

poignant

moving

touching

affecting

powerful

stirring

emotive

heart-rending

heartwarming

impassioned

dramatic

inspiring

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The CD is entitled “Alina” and is a five track disc with two of Pärt’s works, repeated interlocking each other (Spiegel im Spiegel three times, Fur Alina twice). Each time a piece is repeated it is an entirely different performance played with different nuances. The end result is work of exquisite beauty and simplicity. As I’ve listened to it at home, I feel such a stillness in my soul, an ability to dial down and connect with God. To me it is by far and away, the best CD for prayer/meditation/soaking I’ve ever heard.

The album cover below is linked to its respective page on Amazon.com for more info.

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I am personally not a fan of new-years resolutions, because most never get accomplished. However, I’ve decided to take some time to reflect on what it might mean to “sanctify” the coming year to God. My thoughts here are following Jurgen Moltmann’s book Spirit of Life.

Moltmann takes issue with popularized conceptions of “spirituality.” Sometimes spirituality means nothing more than “religiousness” or “devotionalism.” Such equations can cut off spirituality from everyday life. It can also establish a schism between the “religious,” that is, the clergy and the cloistered, and the laity, the common person. One group is “spiritual” and the other, the overwhelming majority, is unable to access such a place. It can also drive a wedge between the “spiritual” and the sensory, assigning greater value to the “spiritual” and a diminished or even negative value to the sensory and bodily experiences of life. Furthermore, life can be neatly separated into its superior “vertical” (Godward or heavenly) and ancillary “horizontal” (relational, human or earthly) dimensions. This dichotomization disintegrates what God made a coherent whole, and in effect “splits life in two, quenching its vitality.” (Jurgen Moltmann, Spirit of Life: a Universal Affirmation, p. 84)

However, it is of fundamental concern that the concept of “spirituality” be vitally connected to the Biblical understanding of the Holy Spirit. Spirituality is, after all, “life in God’s Spirit.” In the Old Testament, the ruach (Spirit) is the power that created all things and interpenetrates the life of all the living (Ps. 104.29ff., Gen. 1). In the New Testament, the Spirit is the power that raises Jesus bodily from the dead, inaugurating the “final springtime of creation (Rom 1.4; 8.11; 1 Tim 3.16),” the definitive restoration of life on earth (Moltmann, p. 84). This gives us an understanding of the Spirit that is immanently connected, rather than opposed, to physical, material, bodily, sensory and relational life.

Overcoming dualistic tendencies with regards to the Spirit and spirituality, Moltmann wants to understand “spirituality” as vitality, as a love for life. This expresses itself in an affirmed social and bodily existence. “In the experience of the Spirit, the spring of life begins to flow in us again. We begin to flower and become fruitful. An undreamt-of love for life awakens in us, driving out the infection of resignation, and healing painful remembrances. We go to meet life expecting the rebirth of everything that lives, and with this expectation, we experience our own rebirth, and the rebirth we share with everything else.” (p. 95)

We can then reach out to the world with the eagerness, innocence and expectation of a child (Matt. 18.1-5). A jaded attitude towards ourselves and the world melts with the rising of a vibrant love for life. The release of the body from the fears of “age-aquired wisdom,” which cynically expects the triumph of death, frees the arms to extend and embrace. The love of life empowered by the hope of resurrection looses the shackles of the soul with a penchant for retreating into the refuge of isolation. Open to the world, faith, hope and love once again flow in the risky endeavor of whole-hearted living (p. 97).

Life in the Spirit is not life against the body, it is life against death. It is everything that stands against the maniacal death drives of modern culture. It is awakening from the slumber of apathy and mechanistic living. “In this world, with its modern ‘sickness unto death,’ true spirituality will be the restoration of the love for life – that is to say, vitality. The full and unreserved ‘yes’ to life, and the full and unreserved love for the living are the first experiences of God’s Spirit, which is not for nothing called fons vitae, ‘the well of life’” (p. 97).

Moltmann wants to recast the concept of sanctification in light of the theology of the Spirit he has already been developing.  He begins by discussing John Wesley’s “methodisitic” holiness. John Wesley’s “societies” arose at the time of the burgeoning industrial revolution. “The Christian discipline to which they submitted themselves and their bodies corresponded precisely to the discipline of their work in the factories” (p. 166). Wesley’s methods had a healing effect on isolated people who had been forced to leave home to search for work in the factories. It gave them community, stability and self-confidence in a time when there was much uncertainty and instability. However, because we are leaving the industrial age and moving into the post-industrial age, we need a renewed vision of the Christian life that is “related to the sickness of the given society in a healing way” (p. 171). The discipline of the industrial revolution has produced a society where production and efficiency have become the highest virtues. When such happens, the human body is reduced to a machine and the mind to a computer. No time remains for full-blooded feeling. The integrity of human being is sorely violated. The simultaneous growth of production and consumption that have flourished under the myth of progress have shown their debilitating effects on the psychological, relational and ecological condition of life on earth. As our production and consumption increases, we find ourselves unable to engage in living-giving relationships that God created the human race to enjoy mirroring His triune fellowship of love: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

A renewed concept of sanctification begins, for Moltmann, with the concept of spirituality as vitality and is embodied in the rediscovery of the sanctity of all life. Recognizing the holiness of all life effectuates the ethic Albert Schweitzer termed ‘reverence for life’: “Anyone who loves ‘the living God’ loves the life of all living things” (p. 172). This has communal (loving brothers and sisters), social (loving the poor and weak), and ecological (loving creation) dimensions. Reverence for life also “requires the renunciation of violence towards life,” including violence towards creation and violence towards one’s own life.  The “violent regimentation” of one’s own life and body produces physical and psychological infertility, an inability to grow. The life oriented toward self-mastery, which by nature blocks off “whole sectors of life” must be loosed to allow for the “spontaneity of faith” (p. 173). This requires a greater trust in God than the discipline that breeds deeper mistrust. While this may seem contrary to Wesley’s methods, it is not contrary to Wesley’s intention “to heal soul and body” (p. 173). Wesley understood sin as a sickness that required healing (p. 164). The faithlessness, fear, anger and violence that lie hidden beneath ruthless discipline and regimentation must today be recognized as part of the sickness of sin the soul needs to be healed from. In such, specific actions are not sanctified, but entire lives are sanctified in the presence of the God of life. The word “holy” is again recognized in terms of its semantic origin: to be holy is to be made whole, to have integrity of being and life restored to a fragmented and divided existence, for the brutal violence of self-domination and other-manipulation to be relinquished in the trusting spontaneity of faith and sanctifying affirmation of life (pp. 175-6).

With this said, it might seem an attempt to cast off restraint and discipline, that any related “New Year’s Resolutions” would be about loosing the shackles of a regimented, scheduled existence. Such would be a superficial reading. I still plan on having and keeping a schedule. I have a passion to be a faithful steward of everything God has given me, especially time. However, it is true and essential to maintain there is nothing inherently Christian about discipline and it can be remarkably unchristian when it functions to destroy the goodness of what God loves. My New Years resolutions mostly relate to resisting the freneticism that schedules out the breathing space which enables the heart to live and delight in love. I am also keen to resist the constant encroaching of technology which seeks to mechanize life and dull the affections. God calls us to live a quiet and peaceful life, for in this stillness alone can the heart truly be present to God and there discover the “broad and open space” of love for live within which it can flourish and thrive.

My 2010 New Years Resolutions:

1) to never for any reason tell someone else that I am busy and thus imply that my “busy-ness” is more important than them or is an excuse to treat them poorly (thanks to my undergrad spirituality professor Mike Walters for this gem).

2) to leave my phone on silent and not check or send text messages while in the prayer room or when having a conversation with someone. Both when in prayer and in conversation I want to be fully present to the persons involved and not constantly detaching by frenetic digital communication.

3) to check my e-mail no more than twice a day. This is related to the previous one as far as frenetic digital communication goes. I am not so important that I need to be constantly accessible. I will also not upgrade my cell phone to be able to get email or internet. I’ll sacrifice having “the world at my finger tips” in order to maintain my sanity and quietness of being.

4) to regularly give people my undivided attention when talking with them, to interrupt less, speak less and listen more.

5) to periodically (though not frequently) allow significant relationships to disrupt my schedule.

6) to regularly remind myself that the people “under” me as a leader are not cogs in a wheel but people with precious and vulnerable hearts, abounding with love, hope, hurt, fear and God-inspired dreams.

7) to breathe deeply and be more fully present to God.

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This is the third part in a series on the practical side of prayer. Much can be said about the theoretical side of prayer – what is prayer exactly, what does it do, etc. Also, the subject of how God feels and responds to our prayers is a VASTLY significant subject. Many people have difficulty praying because they imagine God is scowling at them or shrugging in disinterest the entire time. This couldn’t be further from the truth of God’s actual emotions!

For as much as could be said concerning the theoretical and theological aspects of prayer – I have been discussing for two posts, what is in my opinion the primary practical hurdle in developing a consistent life of prayer. In the first post, I discussed the underlying assumption that many believers bring into the prayer time, which often ends up crippling them – that every word they say has to come out of the fresh creative spontaneity of their inner-most self expression. I then went on to describe the inherent limitations that an exclusive use of this type of prayer brings. In the second post, I attempted to show how this assumption in prayer is neither logical nor in accord with biblical or historical tradition. Instead, it comes from the Spirit of the Age, specifically Romanticism and Existentialism.

Today I want to simply describe how I personally implement the notions I’ve laid out in the previous two posts in my “Personal Prayer Action Plan.” As of late, I find myself frequently urging many people to develop a “Prayer Action Plan.” This simply means having a somewhat concrete idea about what you’re going to do in your prayer time before you get there. Making it up as you go occasionally works great, but is often disappointing. There is no use crippling 95% of your prayer times for the 5% when something incredible happens completely unplanned. I often tell people that I know exactly what I will be doing for my entire 4-6 hour prayer time each night. This is slightly misleading – I just have an easy enough system set up that it takes no thought to execute an extensive prayer action plan (I’ll explain this more later).

I recommend that a personal prayer action plan should have at least the following characteristics: (the three-point alliteration is purely accidental!!)

simple to execute – it cannot be laborious or painstaking. It cannot require a lot of careful thought simply to execute. I will never do it. I have to be able to do it easily.

substantial – Most of us will need more than “I will pray for Africa from 1-2 and pray-read the Bible from 2-3, etc.” Your plan generally will need more substance than that or it may frequently drift in aimless directions. An improvement on the former might be “I will pray [specific scripture verses] for [specific topics] for [specific countries] in Africa from 1-2 [which vary on different days of the week] and from 2-3 I will pray-read [a specific schedule of passages from] the Bible [using a specific method] from 2-3.

scaleable – since most of us pray for a set period of time, having a substantial plan runs into the difficulty of being too rigid. What happens if the amount of time you have to pray this day is either shorter or longer than usual? What if you get through your planned material, still have more time left over and don’t want to quit early? Or what if you get touched by the Lord at one point, and so one part of your plan took longer than usual? There has to be means by which even a structured prayer time can be shortened or lengthened with relative ease.

Now these three characteristics of a Prayer Action Plan are in addition to the eleven criteria for my prayer life I outlined previously (easy, consistent, diverse, deep, rich in content, broadly-biblical, non-idiosyncratic, Christ-centered, historically-rooted, manageable and profoundly moving). It might seem incredibly daunting to develop a Prayer Action Plan satisfying these criteria. I don’t imagine they would simply fall into place on their own accord. I mentioned that for me the “secret” was using written prayers. Of course, just any assortment written prayers would not suffice and certainly not ones that I primarily wrote myself.

What is surprising, is I found a Prayer Action Plan, meeting all my criteria, which for the most part was fully in place and operational apart from my ingenuity. Granted, I tweaked it and customized it, but the overall structure and much of the smaller details I took directly from a long standing tradition. This was not simply a collection of written prayers, but entire extended structures of prayer based on the orders used in monastic communities from the days of St. Benedict and earlier. This tradition is the daily prayer services from Book of Common Prayer of the Anglican tradition. These prayer services are collectively called the “Daily Office.” It is called the “Office” because the word derives from Latin officium, meaning “performance of a task” (which comes from opus “work” + facere “do”). The church understood daily prayer to be the central “work” of the believing community, so to speak, and so called them “Offices.”

Because I’ve found this way of praying so helpful and gloriously fulfilling everything I was looking for in prayer, I am going to take the next number of posts to explain in detail how to use the Book of Common Prayer to structure your prayer life. It may seem complicated and cumbersome at first, and that is because it is quite a complex system. However, once you start rolling, with a few practical tips, it is remarkably easy to use this incredibly rich model of prayer. The time it takes to learn to pray in this way is miniscule in comparison to the rewards it offers.

To summarize – this model essentially consists of:

-Praying the entire book of Psalms in sequence once or twice a month (or weekly for the really ambitious)

-A series of short passages from Scripture (10-20 verses) for prayer-reading arranged on a two year calendar so that a portion from the Old Testament, Epistle and Gospel are read every day and all of the NT and most of the OT is covered each year.

-A number of Canticles (songs in the Bible outside of the Psalms) which are used as prayer-responses to the readings

-A plethora of written prayers for a wide diversity of subjects

-All of this is structured around the Christian Year, which roots the spirituality in the unfolding narrative of salvation as manifested in God’s salvific acts in and through the Messiah (more on this shortly).

There are two general ways to pray the Daily Office  - the standard, simple way – and one with a few means of adding a little more complexity that add a lot more diversity and depth. I’ll start by discussing the standard method. Its good to learn the Office and get used to it simply. Then in due time, I’ll discuss the “Office on Steroids,” so to speak.

To get started you will need to get a Book of Common Prayer. I use the 1979 edition and will base the subsequent comments on it.

The most basic form is a simple 5.5″ x 7.5″ hardcover which comes in red or black. You can get used copies for only a few dollars (click on links to go to Amazon.com).

There are numerous other editions in all shapes, colors and bindings (softcover, hardcover, leather). Just search on Amazon.

Alternately – you can download these files and print them double-sided along the short edge, staple them down the middle and fold, and you have your own booklets.

Daily Office from the BCP – the portions from the BCP that cover the main prayer services

Daily Office Lectionary – schedule of all of the Scripture readings for the two-year schedule

Schemes for Praying the Entire Psalter

If you are a local – just ask me, and I might have an extra on hand!

A Third option is several websites that take all the aspects of the Daily Office and put them together for you. Granted, this confines you to your computer to pray (unless you print it out daily), which I don’t personally prefer, but it does make it a lot easier at first. Some of them have options for smartphones, which make it readily portable.

Daily Office – this is the American Anglican version

Morning Prayer Evening Prayer – these are daily feeds from the British version (somewhat different than the American)

Universalis – Roman Catholic version (similar overall structure but with various nuances)

Starting with the next post, I will begin to explain practically how to use the BCP to establish an easy, consistent, diverse, deep, rich in content, broadly-biblical, non-idiosyncratic, Christ-centered, historically-rooted, manageable and profoundly moving** prayer life in almost no time at all (**although the deeply moving part may take a little more time).

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• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 6) – The Prayers (0)
• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 3) – The Opening (0)
• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 1) – Christian Year Overview (8)
• Opposition to Pre-Written Prayers Comes From the Spirit of the Age (Developing a Consistent Prayer Life Part 2) (3)
• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 8) – Morning Prayer (0)

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In the course of this now lengthy “autobiographical rumination,” I have traced bits of my personal history and it seems to me that several patterns have emerged:

Observation 1 — A progression of immersion and incorporation of the major streams of Christian tradition, beginning with the evangelical tradition (the Word-centered life) I grew up in, to the charismatic (the Spirit-empowered life), holiness (the virtuous life), contemplative (the prayer-filled life) and finally a rediscovery of the my native evangelical heritage.

Observation 2 — An initial period of excessive myopia and unrighteous judgment towards others on the basis of my new-found discoveries (i.e., judgment towards people who did not “move in the gifts of the Spirit,” or people who didn’t define holiness the way I did).

Observation 3 — An increasing sense of freedom and wholeness and a deepened experience of God and maturity in God as I synthesized the traditions in my life and practice.

I find it ironic that each new phase, though bringing new depth to my life, was also accompanied by new (re-awakened) struggles with insecurity and its cohort pride, fear and judgment. It seems as though each time I launched into something that was both new to me and uncommon amidst my peers it both produced in me a personal feeling of precariousness and isolation and also a ground of uniqueness upon which to stabilize feelings of superiority and the authority to judge others.

It is with excitement over observation number three and sobriety over observation number two that I will begin to share my most recent progression related to observation number one. I have stated earlier that I have been desiring to share some of my experiences over the past year related to “discovering” the richness of the Church’s liturgical traditions. The autobiographical preface was divulged in order to give you a sense of the excitement I am feeling as my life unfolds. My enjoyment in experiencing some of the Church’s historical worship does not of course come in a vacuum, but is for my a logical step in the progression I have been describing, as follows:

(tradition)   Evangelical   Charismatic   Holiness   Contemplative   Evangelical   Sacramental

(age)              [0-15]         [16-18]         [18-19]         [19-20]               [20-25]          [26…]

(year)       1981-1996       1997-1999     1999-2000   2000-2001       2001-2006     2007…

[Of course, I did not formulate these names or concepts myself. Stumbling across Richard Foster’s book Streams of Living Water, in which he describes the six major streams of Christian tradition, has been the interpretive lens I have been utilizing.]

None of this progressive unfolding was planned, but as I have been reflecting on it in the past few weeks my anticipation is budding. Learning about this process has given a unique sense of history to my life so that in this way (amongst other ways as well) I feel like my life is moving somewhere. Additionally, and mysteriously, I feel as though the goal is unknown to me. When I was sixteen and enthusiastically reveling in new experiences of gifts of the Holy Spirit and spontaneous worship I had no idea that at twenty-six years old I would be enthusiastically reveling in new experiences of the Holy Spirit through the sacraments and liturgical worship. Some might immediately point at this as a regression, from being “spirit-filled,” to acquiescing to the “traditions of men [sic].” What is thoroughly hilarious to me is that I do not perceive any of the traditions I’ve experienced in this journey to be contradictory. Neither do I understand myself reaching a higher level of spiritual experience by participating in each new tradition. Rather, the excitement for me comes in the synthetic integration of the traditions in an entire life lived before and out of God. Furthermore, because right now I mostly see merely the components of this synthesis, I do not know what the final result, the synthesized whole, will look like. To me this is thrilling and I am looking forward to the fresh and startling newness that God will ironically work in my life through what is remarkably old.

This raps up my “Prefatory Autobiographical Rumination” in which I hoped to contextualize my liturgical reveling. At this point I’ll just trace out some of the ways I’d like to do this over the comings months. Know that this is of course an outline and by no means represents a comprehensive list, an specific sequence of treatment, or even a fixed plan. Expect changes on the way. With that said I plan to:

1) Give some introductory comments regarding the concept of the Christian Year and the way it sanctifies time by punctuating and defining the rhythms of our lives by the major redemptive works of God in the Messiah: Incarnation, Life, Death, Resurrection, Ascension, Outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
2) Address significant days and seasons of the church year as they come along
3) Provide prayers that correspond to the time of the year. Some of these will be written by others, but I would also like to try my hand at writing some of my own.
4) A discussion of the Great Thanksgiving – a prayer that dates to the second century which is still in essence prayed at the high point of a liturgical service – the Holy Communion.
5) Reflections on praying the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer
6) Reflections on the weekly recitation of the entire book of Psalms, a practice which has long been practiced in monastic communities, (Martin Luther being one who did it for decades) and I’ve taken up for the past few months.

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       About a year later, ( the most startling thing happened. Through some well meaning but misguided teaching from a few friends at school, I had grown in a somewhat anti-intellectual mindset. I learned to not trust the “wisdom of the world” (understood by me as anything intellectual). Though required to take Bible classes at school I loathed them. I could not find any redemptive value in text-critical study, the Documentary-hypothesis theory, historical-grammatical exegesis, etc. I desperately desired a more pietistic approach to Scripture in which we used it devotionally. At that time, I listened to a lot of sermons-on-tape by a certain preacher. I was mystified by statements he would make about how much he loves to read commentaries for fun, in airplanes, on vacation, etc. It seemed impossible to me that someone “on fire for God” would study the Word in the manner that He did. As puzzled as I was, I decided to do a little experiment. I bought some commentaries, read them and journaled phrases directly from the commentaries into my notebook. I then took those phrases into my quiet time and began to sing, pray and worship God using the Scriptures and the little phrases I had “stolen.”

To my surprise, the more I took ideas from the commentaries and from theology classes into my prayer time, the more my experience of intimacy with God increased and intensified. Phrases that I would have labeled “stale” or “stuffy” wound up moving my heart. Themes I perceived to be “unnecessary” or “distracting,” over time began to tenderize my heart in affection for God. After not very long, I was sold. I changed my major from a Bachelor of Music in Music Composition to a Bachelor of Arts with two majors, one in music (since I already had the credits) and one in Bible. Since then, I have given myself to the diligent study of the Scripture, line-by-line, phrase-by-phrase– not divorced from a heart-felt piety, but right in the fiery center of it. Here I recaptured the passion of my youth and as if for the first time discovered the Evangelical tradition, with its emphasis on the centrality of the Word of God. As peculiar as it seems, though having my origins in Evangelical churches, it took me passage through the Charismatic, Holiness and Contemplative traditions before I unearthed the treasures of that in which I grew up.

One more installment coming…

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(continuing from the last entry…)

Several years later, I enrolled at Houghton College, a Christian (Wesleyan) college in Western New York. During the first week of classes, we had nightly services which were a vestigial form of revival services. On the first evening, the preacher gave a strong call for repentance and total commitment to Christ. I had always loved God and perceived myself to be more committed to God than most of my friends and the people in my youth group, but that night comparing myself to others was woefully insufficient. I wanted to give myself entirely, exhaustively and exclusively to God. When I went forward for the altar call, the Spirit of God gripped me as I knelt there weeping. Through that entire year, I thrust myself into the passages of Scripture that call for repentance, complete abandonment and radical discipleship (e.g., Gospel of Luke, Galatians, minor prophets) as well as the writings of Charles Finney and Leonard Ravenhill. This was my first exposure to the Holiness tradition. Here I learned the thrill of offering myself fully to God. I began to discover a dimension of freedom, from sin and compromise, to love God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength. I cannot claim to have fully attained it then, but it became a burning vision for me. It was something I refused to live without fighting for.

Unfortunately, I fell into some of the snares that lurk around Holiness tradition as well (NB: The terminology “lurk around” is very specific. These snares attempt to capture people zealous for holiness, but are not inherent to the Holiness tradition. They can, however, be a danger if one does not have maturity, balance or wise counsel. I had none of them). I acquired a form of legalism where I gauged holiness by a list of do’s and don’ts and my emotional well-being rode on how well I measured up to it. I lived in constant shame and regret, never believing that I was ever good enough or doing enough for God. I also began to see my form of commitment to Jesus as the standard for everyone else, regardless of their calling and the season of their life. I was again empowered by unrighteous judgment, not over worship styles, but concerning whether I perceived people to be fully devoted to God.

A positive lesson I learned however was the priority of prayer in a believer’s life. I started to hold prayer meetings, for better or for worse, modeled as closely as I could to Charles Finney’s “formula for revival.” Finney taught that one must focus prayer meetings on sin, repentance and judgment. People ought to center their hearts on the horrible state of the church and arouse corresponding deep feelings. Oddly enough, (said tongue-in-cheek) I found very few people interested in attending such meetings. It grieved me even more that people would rather watch TV or play card games than come to my “groaning prayer meetings.” In retrospect, it was probably the grace of God saving them from my goofy distortions of holiness teaching in the Bible.

That summer, while I was home on school break, I devoted the entire three months to learn everything I could about prayer. Charles Finney taught that revival (which I defined as people turning to God out of compromise and into holiness) only happens when people pray. However, in my experience people did not go to prayer meetings. Therefore, I gave myself to learning everything possible, so I would be able to get people to come to prayer meetings and see revival come, specifically to Houghton College, but also to America as a whole. Being a college student with limited financial means, I searched on the Internet for any free resources on prayer I could find. I stumbled upon a website with streaming videos from a prayer conference. The preacher spoke of enjoying prayer rooted in knowing God as the one who loves us even as we work through all our issues of struggle, sin, weakness and immaturity. This was definitely a new idea for me, and one that I did not like. Prayer had to be serious, weighty and cranky (as I perceived Finney to be teaching). It couldn’t be joyful. Furthermore, I thought the speaker was overdoing the “love thing.” “What about sin?” I kept wondering, “Isn’t that important?”

Consequently, the message rather bugged me, but it was free of charge and there were a bunch more on the same website, so I kept listening. After a couple of messages on loosely the same subject, I just broke down crying in front of the computer screen as two shocking realizations hit me: first, that I was called to prayer as my primary occupation and ministry for my entire life; second, that God actually loved me; not the ideal me, not the super-sanctified-image me, but He actually loved actual me. Years of pressure to be more holy than I was and shame for not measuring up to the ultra-high standards I placed on myself (which cannot solely attributed to the teachings of Finney but surely were aided by the perfectionistic mores of my community of origin) came crashing out from a place within me I did not know existed. This all took me as quite a surprise and my heart quickly transitioned from being annoyed and offended to being overwhelmed by the love of God. I was reasonably bewildered by the whole experience and wasn’t sure what had happened. All I knew was that it was God, I really liked it and I wanted more of it.

This was a somewhat shocking introduction to the Contemplative tradition, with its emphasis on deep heart-felt intimacy with the Lord and devotional prayer. Over the course of the next couple of years, I gave myself to studying and meditating on the attributes of God, specifically the relational ones: his love, gladness, mercy, kindness, etc. I spent more time in solitude and quietness not seeking as much to get something from God, but simply to know Him more. In this place, I discovered a dimension of freedom in that I found liberation from a defiled conscience when I came before God through understanding his heart towards me and the person ramifications of the atonement. Holiness was still a vital part of my life, but I began to learn that God’s heart towards me and the atonement, not my personal performance were the basis of my position before God and my relationship with Him. Understanding the love and forgiveness of God just a little bit, lifted enough weight off my heart so that I actually began to enjoy being with God again, similar to my high school days, but now it was deeper, more grounded and more God-centered.

To be continued…

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      I have already asserted my desirous intention to share an aspect of my life in God that is quite current, that is, my recent experiential investigations into the rich liturgical tradition of the Church. To begin this ongoing series of accounting and reflection, the contextual situation of my present experience is quite in order. Though I certainly did not plan my current near obsession with the Church’s liturgical tradition, it does come as a logical step in what will soon seem like an apparent progression. To explicate the context and logic of this phase in my life it will be fitting to embark on some autobiographical rumination (albeit, vastly filtered and condensed).

Recently, I have become fond of saying that I have always been “saved.” By that, I am referring to the entire lack in my consciousness of any time I was not a Christian. Although I had repeated experiences in which I “asked Jesus into my heart” from a very young age, in retrospect, they hardly seem like conversion experiences. What was I being converted from? Youthful ignorance? The “selfishness” of a three year old who has no other means of survival than to draw from those around them? The condemnation of an infant with little to no capacity for moral reasoning? While I certainly value and recognize the need for complete allegiance to the lordship of Jesus, I also truly believe that people can be raised Christian. At each expansion of my ability for moral reasoning I was taught and lead by my parents and church leaders to give my heart to God. Of course, this is not excluding the misfortunes of teen years (which I term the Dark Night of Life), nor the ongoing engagement of sanctification. Nevertheless, I maintain that from my earliest memory, I had a conscious, voluntary, heart-felt and growing faith in God. Having set the conception of my spiritual life over twenty-six years ago, I will share portions of my pilgrimage that bear relevance to where I would like to lead this discussion. In doing so, I hope to highlight distinct phases of my life where I discovered and began to value and incorporate aspects of the major streams of Christian tradition.

I was always an odd child, in more ways than one, and in such I remember having an odd fascination with the Bible. My favorite book during childhood was the “Picture Bible,” which essentially was an abridged form of the Bible set as a five hundred page comic-book. When I matured slightly my favorite book became a Bible handbook my parents gave me as a Christmas present. It went through the Bible summarizing each section, explaining the history and background with pictures, timelines, diagrams, etc. I would often get captivated by certain topics, like the Tabernacle, or the Horsemen of the Apocalypse and make “books” about them on construction paper, writing about them, making charts and pictures, much like my Bible handbook. During trips to the library during grade school, my best friend (he being Jewish) and I would find the only few books on the Bible in the school library and check them out. I remember at that time, my grandfather calling me the family’s “young Bible scholar.”

Alas, my youthful zeal for the Word of God dwindled over time. Growing up, schoolwork came rather easily for me and likewise, repeating memorized Bible information was never difficult. As I entered high school, the combination of being both intellectually astute for my age and sincere in my love for God garnered me a reputation of being one of the “more spiritual” members of my youth group, despite unspoken inconsistencies and struggles in my walk with God. It was at this point in my life when I became a serious classical musician and devoted most of my time to musical pursuits, whether that be practicing my instruments, writing music, singing, participating and/or directing ensembles, etc. I grew increasingly bitter and judgmental, as I perceived that the traditional forms of music were the best and only way one should worship. It is amazing that I had such carnal confidence to judge others despite the fact that my own personal life was entirely devoid of vitality in the Scriptures and prayer. My overall boredom with God and spirituality (except for when there was the style of music I liked), lack of private religion and growing struggles with sin only added to the weight of shame and condemnation that energized my judgmentalism in the first place.

Sometime during the tenth grade, on Sunday nights, my parents introduced me to a Methodist church that was experiencing a renewal/revival of sorts, of which they had already been attending intermittently. The church’s style was markedly more expressive and passionate than the variety of staid spirituality with which I had grown up. The music was neither classical nor traditional in genre. I can honestly say I hated it. I thought everyone was crazy and could not understand what was going on. I never really wanted to go, but my parents kept taking me every other week or so. What I remember next is that a couple of months later I completely loved it. I wish I could have retain some of the intervening memories for that would have made this narrative more engaging. I discovered a dimension of freedom in worship that I had not known before. I found it liberating to express my heart to God with all the multifarious emotions it possesses. This was my first exposure to the Charismatic tradition, one of the great streams within the Christian faith. I learned much in those days about the importance of worship and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. We are not as the popular adage goes, “to seek the giver, not the gifts.” Paul exhorts us to “earnestly desire spiritual gives” (1 Cor 14:1), to zealously yearn for them. In addition, the passion and excitement from the worship services and preaching gave me the impetus to begin personal Bible study and prayer (though not always consistently). None of these points were emphasized in my churches growing up and I thank God for what I have learned from the Charismatic tradition.

To be continued…

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After a unduly long hiatus from blogging (nearly five months) I figured that it is best time for me to resume writing publicly. Make no mistake, I have not taken a break from writing but have heretofore been occupied with a plethora of private writing endeavors which burgeoned beyond my initial expectations. I am now endeavoring to resume my public course of writing. Beyond the expected raving crusade against gnosticism, the pursuit of integrated personal wholeness and my fanatical obsessions with the Trinity and the resurrection, in the months to come you can expect some of the following (at least this is what is on my heart to be thinking/writing/conversing about):

• Reflections on the book of Job – what does this book (yea, God) have to say to the person (world) enmeshed in real and profound suffering?
• Reports from my recent experiences in exploring the liturgical tradition of the Church, including celebrating the Christian year (all of it, not just Christmas and Easter), participating in liturgical worship, praying the daily office from the Book of Common Prayer, reciting the Psalms weekly and following a course of daily Bible readings structured around the Christian year.
• Thoughts on developing a more robust emotional life (from a Biblical, psychological and practical perspective)
• Consideration of what the “Gospel” is, in light of Jesus and Paul’s Jewish background, especially the books of Isaiah and the Psalms.
• A Continuation of the series of thoughts I began related to the “Person and History of the Holy Spirit.”

Then again…who knows what I’ll be thinking-pondering-meditating-praying-crying about in the ensuing days. If in the next six months I can cover all those topics I will be quite impressed with myself…

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