"Follow me" is deeply personal. It means fundamentally taking on someone else’s character. That’s what we’re shooting for as we gently pay attention to where we are in relationship to God. Our goal is something like this: We’re coming, best we can, to a single-minded and joyous devotion to God and what he wants for us, and to service to him and to others through him and because of him.
We seek this formation in Christ through the process of a constant immersing ourselves, whatever it would take, in the will, the power and the presence of God. We are moving ourselves and being moved by him from self-worship to Christ-centered self-denial. Slowly, through the grace and power of God, this becomes our character.
Little by little, the spiritual disciplines help unbend our heart. They help untwist our motivations. They reorganize our loves. They fundamentally begin to reconstruct our desires. Spiritual disciplines are doing the little things day by day, moment by moment, that help us live into followership of Jesus Christ. We don’t do this because we’re earning anything from God, because we’re trying to get God to like us, or for any other religious reasons.
No, we’re doing it for practical reasons. That is, we came to Christ with habits of the heart. The truth of it is, some of those habits of the heart we had at 19 are still with us. Our only hope for being decent friends, parents, spouses, and leaders is to engage in the spiritual disciplines that help us live into followership of Christ. This is not rhetoric for us. This is the foundation of our lives.
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation
More than ever I find myself in the hands of God.
This is what I have wanted all my life from my youth.
But now there is a difference;
the initiative is entirely with God.
It is indeed a profound spiritual experience
to know and feel myself so totally in God’s hands.
— Pedro Arrupe, SJ
In considering all of the prayer requests this week and praying through them at staff meeting, I was struck by the multiple difficult, even desperate, places many of our community find themselves in. They are totally in God’s hands.
For many, it wasn't their choice to surrender this. For the last couple of days I've been thinking about this prayer above by Pedro Arrupe, SJ, written after his stroke in 1981, and these additional words: "I give it all back to you, I surrender it wholly to be governed by Your will." There is a difference between choosing to give up a little luxury, and having something so essential stripped from you that you are completely at the mercy and faithfulness of God. It pushes you into the depths, forces you to look at what it means to commend yourself entirely into God's hands. We have many in our church who are in this place of acute dependence and need.
This is what we profess to desire, to want God like air. Theory is one thing, the practice, it turns out, is something else again. Let us all pray for one another to have faith to surrender ourselves to the hands of our faithful God.
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation
A contemplative friend shared this prayer recently as an example of how to practice ‘holy indifference’, to not be invested in each day of life having to have a particular outcome, but rather being accepting and open to whatever God chooses to bring each day. It speaks to a posture of radical openness, readiness to set ego aside and any conflicting motivations that might interfere with the Spirit’s movement.
It’s a powerful prayer of surrender and trust.
The Welcoming Prayer (by Father Thomas Keating)
Welcome, welcome, welcome.
I welcome everything that comes to me today
because I know it's for my healing.
I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions, persons,
situations, and conditions.
I let go of my desire for power and control.
I let go of my desire for affection, esteem,
approval and pleasure.
I let go of my desire for survival and security.
I let go of my desire to change any situation,
condition, person or myself.
I open to the love and presence of God and
God's action within.
Amen.
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation
Several years ago, at the invitation of a friend, I joined her in an unusual texting correspondence: every day, we would exchange short lists of particular things in our lives for which we were grateful. “Particular” was mandatory; no vague generalizations were allowed. They might be small, but they had to be specific (the first David Austin rose bud of spring, unexpected spring rainfall after a delicious lunch, a cancellation that freed up an hour of spaciousness in the day). We learned fairly quickly that gratitude can be a challenging discipline, with far-reaching implications for the way we see the world.
We interpret reality. We make choices all the time about what our eyes perceive, what we focus on, and we can learn to see in new ways. By the same token, we can learn to see grace in all things, changing our perspective, bringing us not just a more positive outlook on life but also drawing us into worship, our ‘sacrifice’ of thanks and praise to God (Hebrews 13:15). Appreciation of the gift of any good thing can lead us to love of the Giver. And as we realize that there is nothing outside the realm of God’s mercy, that everything is grace, that “there is faithfulness at the heart of things” (Benedictine monk and writer David Steindl-Rast), we can also practice seeing that God also gives meaning and hope even in the darkest and most difficult times. “Counting our blessings”, the simple accounting of the mercies in our lives, has changed our hearts, our attitudes, our perceptions.
The sheer gratuitousness of God is transformative!
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation
How do you care for your soul? In a conversation with someone last week, we talked about first steps in a more intentional life with God. What kind of practice might be helpful for her to offer herself more regularly to God, for intimacy and transformation by the Spirit? What about remembering God? Bringing him to mind, acknowledging and attending to the God who is here? Noticing when she is not aware of or mindful of the reality of God and his love? All of these are good opportunities to become more attentive to our faithful and available God.
The first and most basic thing we can and must do is to keep God before our minds... This is the fundamental secret of caring for our souls. Our part in this practicing the presence of God is to direct and redirect our minds constantly to Him. In the early time of our 'practicing' we may well be challenged by our burdensome habits of dwelling on things less than God. But these are habits—not the law of gravity—and can be broken. A new, grace-filled habit will replace the former ones as we take intentional steps toward keeping God before us. Soon our minds will return to God as the needle of a compass constantly returns to the north. If God is the great longing of our souls, He will become the pole star of our inward beings.
—Dallas Willard
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation
I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
and in his word I put my hope.
My soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen wait for the morning,
more than watchmen wait for the morning.
Psalm 130: 5-6 from a Song of Ascents
Waiting is essential to the spiritual life. But waiting as a disciple of Jesus is not an empty waiting. It is a waiting with a promise in our hearts that makes already present what we are waiting for. We wait during Advent for the birth of Jesus. We wait after Easter for the coming of the Spirit, and after the ascension of Jesus we wait for his coming again in glory. We are always waiting, but it is a waiting in the conviction that we have already seen God’s footsteps.
— Henri Nouwen from Bread for the Journey: A Daybook of Wisdom and Faith
To wait is a hard, sweet paradox in the Christian life. It is hard not yet having what we know will be coming. But it is sweet to have certainty it is coming because of the footprints we have seen: He has been here among us.
Like the labor of childbirth, we groan knowing what it will take to get there, and we are full to brimming already.
The waiting won’t be easy; it will often be painful to be patient, staying alert to possibility and hope when we are exhausted, barely able to function. Others won’t understand why we wait, nor do they comprehend what we could possibly be waiting for.
We persevere together, with patience, watching and hoping; we are a community groaning together in sweet expectation of the morning.
For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. Romans 8:24-25
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation
We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito. And the incognito is not always easy to penetrate. The real labor is to remember to attend, in fact to come awake. Still more to remain awake.
C S Lewis
There is no event so commonplace but that God is present within it, always hiddenly, always leaving you room to recognize him or not to recognize him, but all the more fascinatingly because of all that, all the more compellingly and hauntingly… Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.
Amen. Frederick Buechner
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation
I learned something new this week. Eagles return to the same nest year after year–a steadfast marriage of life long partners and domicile that is both touching and practical. Generations of offspring are raised in the same tree, hatched upon the same branches lined with the same dirt and down and moss and foliage, then the soiled lining is removed by the parents after the fledglings fly. After being washed clean in the winter rains, the parents return in the spring to replace the soft bedding for the next crop of eggs. It is a cycle of comfort, of familiarity, and of commitment.
Churches sort of function like eagles nests also. Our home nest is Pasadena Covenant and these days it feels like our nest has been emptied a bit, as multiple staff members have moved on to follow the voice of the Spirit. We are experiencing their absence, feel the emptiness in the nest, yet also have begun to anticipate the next season that is to come. Search teams will do their discerning work, those who remain will hold the space until our ranks are filled out and we have a full leadership team. This rhythm of filling and emptying the nest is a familiar cycle in churches, at the staff level and in the congregation. As we ‘ready our bedding’ and prepare for the new life to come, our call is to stay committed and take good care of each other. There is a lot of work involved in sustaining ministry and caring well for those in our church family. All hands on deck! Listen for the Spirit who may be prompting you to say yes to leaning in to tend to our nest.
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation