"Quiet! I'm on-line..."

I'm halfway through a fascinating book by Susan Cain: Quiet. The power of introverts in a world that can't stop talking. I was number 47 on 147 requests for it at the local library! That says something about the number of people who relate to the title.

I have known for a long time that I am high on the introvert side of the Myers Briggs scale. I have trained in MBTI and read a lot about personality type. I find it helpful personally and in my work with people. However, Susan Cain's book goes much deeper than anything I've read before in researching the roots and fruits of introversion.  I highly recommend it!

Synchronistically I am currently experiencing one of the things she talks about. I am immersed in an online retreat with Cynthia Bourgeault on The Gospel of Thomas. (I may say more about that in a subsequent post).
What I'm finding - somewhat to my surprise - is that I am very much enjoying the online forum where participants share their reflections on the sayings of Jesus we meditate on each day. I thought I wouldn't participate in that side of the retreat much. In true introvert style I expected to prefer to "do my own thing" quietly and anonymously at my own desk and at my own pace! But, as Susan Cain alludes to, online communication is perfect for introverts. I'm discovering that I can take my own quiet reflection time before I post my thoughts - much better than being in a group where we are going round the circle "sharing" on the spot. It is also possible to remain as anonymous as one wishes. Some participants post their photos in their profile - others (like me) choose a logo or picture, not their own face! In reading the responses of others I'm aware that we are "hearing" many more people and at much greater depth than is usually possible in group - especially one this big. (I don't know how many people are participating but it is a lot more than you would normally get at a face to face workshop. And of course it is an international group.)

So many thanks to those who run the website Spirituality and Practice. A variety of retreats are available here and at a very low cost. That's another advantage of online retreats!

Wabi Sabi - The Magnificence of Imperfection

Here's a 14 minute TED talk that is truly inspiring.

If you don't know about TED talks at all I recommend exploring the site. Click here.

"TED is a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with two annual conferences -- the TED Conference on the West Coast each spring, and the TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh UK each summer -- TED includes the award-winning TED Talks video site, the Open Translation Project and TED Conversations, the inspiring TED Fellows and TEDx programs, and the annual TED Prize." From About TED

A flag for the future

My recent blog posts seem to be mainly about passing on inspiring things I've read or heard about. As I reflect on that I've come to the conclusion that that's just fine! Spreading the word about things that are "truly worthwhile and worthy of praise" (see Philippians 4:8 CEV) is something I can do - even if I'm not up to polar expeditions! This is from GreenPeace (pictures added by me). I take my hat off to the courageous young people. Do watch the 2 minute You Tube clip and you'll see what I mean! :

Right now, a small group of young people from around the world are preparing to head north in a historic expedition to the North Pole. They will ski for up to 8 hours a day in temperatures that could drop below -31°F in order to plant a ‘flag for the future’ and tell world leaders and future generations that when the time came to save the Arctic, we were here.

Watch this beautiful trailer for the North Pole expedition to meet the team and find out more! 

An oil spill in freezing Arctic waters would be even worse than the Deepwater Horizon disaster because it is one of the most extreme, fragile, and isolated regions on the planet. Oil companies have publicly admitted they cannot prevent a spill, meaning they’re putting the amazing Arctic landscape and its wonderful creatures like polar bears and Arctic foxes at risk.

Don't lose hope. With hope you can always go on.

The following piece is from the monthly newsletter of Spiritual Directors' International. I think it applies to all of us, not only spiritual directors:

"Teenage feet. Female feet. Muslim feet. Atheist feet. Dark feet. Light feet. The tattooed feet of a prisoner. These are the feet the newly elected Pope Francis chose to wash on Maundy Thursday.

It takes courage and humility to ignore liturgical laws and break with tradition to wash and kiss the feet of twelve juvenile offenders in a detention center instead of washing the feet of twelve priests in the basilica. It’s the kind of courage grounded in love that Jesus modeled throughout his ministry. By turning upside down our staid assumptions about how the world works, we are freed to imagine new ways of being in relationship.

Washing someone’s feet is a tender act. Kissing a stranger’s feet is an intimate act. Seeing photos of Pope Francis compassionately tending to the young prisoners’ feet brought tears for me. Rather than preaching in a basilica about scripture, the poor, and the marginalized, Francis demonstrated with his actions the love and hope that Jesus exhibited.

Francis explained to the young people at the detention center on Maundy Thursday, "This is a symbol, it is a sign; washing your feet means I am at your service. Help one another. This is what Jesus teaches us. This is what I do. And I do it with my heart. I do this with my heart because it is my duty, as a priest and bishop I must be at your service."

Can you imagine being in the shoes of one of those teenagers? Here comes a seventy-something, gray-haired guy—a religious leader which doesn’t mean much to you as an atheist—who offers to wash your feet. You’ve agreed to participate because it might help your probation. The old man kneels on the stone floor in a vulnerable position beneath you. You are comfortably seated on a bench overlooking him.

As you take off your sneakers, it dawns on you that your feet don’t smell very good. No matter. You are perhaps a tough, street-smart, hard-hearted dude. Yet when the old man touches your feet ever so gently and pours warm water over your calloused heals, you notice that it feels good to be cared for. After drying your toes tenderly with a soft clean towel, he bends to kiss your feet. Then searchingly, he looks you in the eye, saying, "Don't lose hope. Understand? With hope you can always go on." He hands you an Easter egg as a gift.

What a beautiful inspiration for April, for Passover, and for Easter season. Every day, opportunities arise for us to be courageously hopeful. As spiritual directors, we are called to be of service in our world, to stand with and for our loving and compassionate God. May we cultivate compassion by companioning seekers with the courage to say, “Don’t lose hope. With hope you can always go on.”"

Resurrection - Cosmic Hope

"Christ crucified is all of the hidden, private, tragic pain of history made public and given over to God.
Christ resurrected is all of that private, un-grieved, un-noted suffering received, loved and transformed by an All-Caring God. How else could we have any kind of cosmic hope? How else would we not die of sadness for what humanity has done to itself and to one another?

Jesus is the blueprint, the plan, the pattern revealed in one body and moment in history to reveal the meaning of all history and each of our lives.

The cross is the banner of what we do to one another and to God.

The resurrection is the banner of what God does to us in return."  

Richard Rohr

Give joy to one person...

Reading this morning's newsletter from the Charter for Compassion (begun after Karen Armstrong's TED talk on Compassion) I saw this quote from their Facebook page which is worth passing on - and acting on!

Last month's most popular quote on the Charter Facebook page?

“Sometimes I feel overwhelmed. But I try to work one day at a time. If we just worry about the big picture, we are powerless. So my secret is to start right away doing whatever little work I can do. I try to give joy to one person in the morning, and remove the suffering of one person in the afternoon. That’s enough. When you see you can do that, you continue, and you give two little joys, and you remove two little sufferings, then three, and then four. If you and your friends do not despise the small work, a million people will remove a lot of suffering. That is the secret. Start right now.”
~Sister Chân Không (born 1938), Vietnamese pioneer of socially engaged Buddhism

Did you know?

Thanks to Paul and the Prodigal Kiwi blog here's a 4 minute You Tube link that is really "mind blowing". I don't have an answer for the question at the end: "What does it all mean?"

More from Rollins...

As a Postscript to yesterday's post I include here a link given in the back of the book Insurrection to a video interview between Rob Bell and Peter Rollins. It is an hour long - and well worth making the time to watch! Rollins is an excellent - and hilarious - speaker. For me this interview clarified some of the points I was wondering about after reading the book. So even if I don't get to have a Rohr and Rollins  interview,  Bell and Rollins is an excellent combination - even if Rob Bell doesn't get many words in!

Insurrection and The Immortal Diamond!

I've just read two books which, while very different, are essentially making the same point - at least some of the time! That converging point is that living in light of the Resurrection is not about debating an historical event but participating as co-creators of resurrection in every area of life now.

Pete Rollins does this in a deliberately "incendiary" way. Listen to his own short introduction to his book Insurrection: to believe is human; to doubt, divine.

I found this book very challenging - and thought provoking. I'm still mulling over whether I'd go as far as he did on some points but I plan to read more of his writing.


Richard Rohr's book Immortal Diamond: the search for our true self  is written for a different purpose but returns many times to the theme that resurrection life (life lived from the "true self") is a life of participation. "Some of the most exciting and fruitful theology today is being described as the turn towards participation. ...It constantly recognizes that we are part of something more than we are observing something. The turn towards participation now sees that most of religious and church history has been largely preoccupied with religious ideas, about which you could be wrong or right. When it is all about ideas, you did not have to be part of 'it'; you just needed to talk correctly about 'it'. You never had to dive in and illustrate that spiritual proof is only in the pudding. You never had to go to Russia; you just needed a correct map of Russia and the willingness to say, "My map is better than your map," or more commonly, "Mine is the only true map," without offering any corroborating evidence that your map has in fact gotten you there." p108f (italics in original)

Rohr takes the reader more gently on a journey from familiar territory to challenging places that in many ways are similar to where Rollins arrives. With Rohr's book it may feel more like being coaxed out of an old confining chrysalis than Rollins' radical burning of the bridges you've just walked over! I'd love to hear an interview between Rohr and Rollins. I think they would agree on a great deal - but I'm not sure it would be everything.

Both books are well worth reading - but there's a "right time" for everything!

Walking backwards off the edge!

(I'm doing a bit of an archaeological dig into articles and poetry written years ago. Somehow this article seemed to fit with the White Water Rafting of the previous post!)

Walking backwards off the edge!

I must be very careful of the illustrations I use when leading a retreat! Recently I talked about abseiling as an picture of trust and surrender. I was quoting from Parker Palmer whose own experience of abseiling had been a salutary lesson in faith. It was a great illustration - written with humour, yet taking seriously the spiritual challenge embedded in the physical experience.

I suppose I should have guessed that someone would ask me if I'd ever tried it myself! "Well, no actually, I haven't. I watch other people abseiling quite often though - almost every day I walk past a recreation centre where they teach outdoor pusuits. So I can see how safe it is and it looks like fun!" Having put it like that I could hardly back out when my friend admitted it hadn't felt like fun the one time she'd tried it and asked me to go with her to have another try - this time as a conscious expression of trust. So with a slightly sinking feeling I agreed.

Part of me hoped she would just forget about it. After all learning vicariously from someone else's experience is good enough isn't it? Alas, she was serious! A few weeks later we were booked in to actually do it!

Our instructor was great. He found out about us and our past experience - one with a bad experience and one with none! He talked us through every detail of the harness, the ropes, the helmet, the safety rope he would hold and the way to walk backwards off the edge! The only thing left was to do it. His final word was: "Trust the equipment. It will hold you. If you slip, or even just want to pause on the way down I will hold you steady with the safety rope. Trust me!"  We assured him that trust was exactly the name of the game!

And so I walked backwards off the edge  (yes, that is me in the photo!) - leaning out into the harness, letting out the rope at my own pace and looking up at the instructor calling out encouraging words! It was a challenge - especially that first step over the edge. But the equipment and the intsructor were trustworthy and once I knew that from experience it was fun! We had two descents each and left feeling both exhilarated and thoughtful.

Walking backwards off the edge is a crazy thing to do without the right equipment and a competent instructor. When both are there, however, it may be the best way down to a new level of faith. The Christian pathway isn't always through green pastures and beside still waters. Often enough it  leads to apparently insurmountable cliffs and crevasses that seem to disappear into an abyss. We are used to walking forwards seeing the next step and choosing it carefully. Walking backwards goes against our strong desire to stay in control. What's more we are used to walking on the horizontal plane. "I'm not designed for vertical descent," we gasp, as life tips us totally out of our comfort zone. Walking backwards off the edge disorients us. It gives us a stark choice: Trust and descend safely to a new level of being or stay in control  on the familiar flat land.

The faith equipment that will hold us needs to be carefully put on piece by piece before we reach the top of the cliff so that at that "first step over the edge" moment we have confidence in what we are leaning into. Walking backwards means our eyes are free to watch the Instructor who encourages every trusting step and promises to hold us steady even if we slip. Faith is a challenge - and the exhilaration of surrendering to it cannot be felt vicariously. 

While we were abseiling on one part of the wall a group of young children were going down alongside us and we were told that earlier in the day people in wheelchairs had been enabled to abseil too!  Trusting, like abseiling, is not reserved for the mature or the strong. Trusting is about leaning back and knowing you will be held. Sometimes children and the disabled  know more about this than most of us!

(PS In case you are wondering: no I haven't been bungy jumping and I have definitely decided never to use it as an illustration!)