Archive for the 'spiritual formation' Category

Stranded in DC

Published
by
Mike
on March 19, 2007
in spiritual formation
. 15 Comments

Poor eighth graders, you might think.

They went to Washington D.C. for a four-day spring break trip, but their flight home Friday was cancelled, and they can’t get out until tomorrow. So the four-day-trip became an eight-day trip.

Best we can tell from our son on the few times he’s borrowed someone’s cell phone, your sympathy would be misplaced. They’re having a blast. I feel sorry for the sponsors!

But those eighth graders aren’t the only ones who’ve had a great time. The past week makes me think that Diane and I will survive the empty nest in a few years.

- - - -

Still no grandbaby. We do have a growing list, however, of people who do NOT want to find out about it through the blog. I hadn’t really thought about how frustrating it must be to close friends and family members to have to find out about our lives through a blog.

- - - -

Most spiritual formation takes place inch by inch, day by day. Sometimes it isn’t even noticeable until a friend helps you look back over a period of years.

But, there are those rare occasions when your life takes a sudden turn. It’s a gift of God that jolts you, surprises you, and changes you. Your vision becomes — at least during this time of transformation — 20/20. Your understanding of what’s important in life is clear.

It’s unlikely that you’ll get to stay in a zone like that. But when they it happens, you know that life can never be the same again.

Does Every Moment Have to Be Productive?

Published
by
Mike
on December 1, 2006
in family and spiritual formation
. 34 Comments

In moments of quiet honesty, I sometimes realize how difficult it is for me to spend time that doesn’t feel productive. That is a serious defect.

At times there have been authors who’ve helped me — Gordon MacDonald, Eugene Peterson, and (often) Henri Nouwen — but this morning it wasn’t an author. I was stretching very early this morning after working out, and I was listening to Chris Rice’s “The Untitled Hymn.”

Come to Jesus
Come to Jesus
Come to Jesus
And live.

Why is it so hard just to rest — just to enjoy the presence of Christ? Productivity is so deeply engrained in me that even “rest time” often seems like a perfect time to produce.

- - - -

From my favorite columnist in the Abilene Reporter-News, Garrison Keillor:

“The little girl singing in the next room is blissfully happy at this moment, but the life of a little girl is very dramatic — it revolves around (1) jumping up and down and squealing, (2) collapsing in tears, (3) collapsing in laughter, (4) rapt adoration, and (5) hopeless frustration. Sometimes in rapid succession.

“So it is with Christmas. You can go straight from pure bliss to desperate remorse in less than a minute. There are dead friends that one does not ever quite forget, and there is the great wound of divorce which, even though 30 years in the past, can come open and bleed and almost break your heart. You walk to church and she’s waiting for you in the shadows, asking, ‘Why did you do that?’

“Christmas is an artistic performance, and art, by and large, is not made by contented people. It is made by wounded recluses, freaks, the absurdly self-conscious, the haunted and guilty, the humiliated, the outcasts, and we create this, first and foremost, for our children. To rise up out of confusion and dismay, with ghosts whispering to us, and bake cookies and light a candle and sing ‘Silent Night’ — I can do that for my child, and if your children want to join us, they are most welcome.”

- - - -

I’ve added a temporary link in the right column to the Classics video. Thanks for your comments yesterday. Of course, any singer can look good when he has Randy Harris on rhythm and back-up vocals. (Funny note: someone pointed out to me that it got a “YouTube” honor for being one of the most watched entertainment videos yesterday — ranking right next to a clip of Paris Hilton. Does that go on a resume?)

Putt-Putt Christians

Published
by
Mike
on September 8, 2006
in Books, faith and spiritual formation
. 44 Comments

From Dallas Willard’s The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus’s Essential Teachings on Discipleship:

“For at least several decades the churches of the Western world have not made discipleship a condition of being a Christian. One is not required to be, or to intend to be, a disciple in order to become a Christian, and one may remain a Christian without any signs of progress toward or in discipleship. Contemporary American churches in particular do not require following Christ in his example, spirit, and teachings as a condition of membership — either of entering into or continuing in fellowship of a denominationn or local church. I would be glad to learn of any exception to this claim, but it would only serve to highlight its general validity and make the general rule more glaring. So far as the visible Christian institutions of our day are concerned, discipleship clearly is optional.”

Cornelius Plantinga has an insightful piece in the latest CT entitled “Dr. Willard’s Diagnosis: Why We Need to Really Die Before We Can Really Live.” It’s about Dallas Willard’s “mighty project” to encourage the church to take transformation seriously, to read the Sermon on the Mount as the way he really expects us to live (modern circumstances not withstanding).

Plantinga writes:

“According to Willard, the problem is that a lot of us nod amiably at these instructions for a big Christian life in God’s kingdom. Then we ignore them . . . .

“Dr. Willard’s diagnosis: A lot of us are doing Christianity at a putt-putt level. We want to be forgiven without following Jesus.

“We’re afraid to follow Jesus, because then we’d have to die and rise with him. . . . The truth is, we’re mildly attracted to his virtues, but we’re strongly attracted to our vices. We wouldn’t like to lose them because they please us, and the prospect of a significant life with Jesus doesn’t so much. Do we expect a new Christian life will just happen without our having to make inconvenient changes in how we live Monday to Sunday? If so, we are like people who want to be solvent and who also max out their credit cards. Or people who want to be sexually pure and who also bookmark porn sites. Or people who want to speak Japanese without all the tiresome study that’s normally required. . . .

“Willard shows us how to get this life — eloquently and enduringly. He tells us that learning to enjoy God forever and to particiipate in his big project is entirely like learning competitive baseball or the violin or Italian. God has put joy inside sports, music-making, and cross-cultural conversation, but the only way to get joy out of them is to work at them. You’ve got to listen to your teacher, imitate him or her, and then practice a lot. The disciple is not greater than his master. If Jesus needed to learn obedience, so will Jesus’ disciples. We will need to train our brain, heart, hand, eye, and tongue to get us in shape for robust Christian living. Eyebrows, too, when they still have a haughty spirit. Fortunately, says Willard, the essential disciplines for Jesus’ disciples have been taught and learned for centuries, including by our Lord himself.”

Training for Professionalism

Published
by
Mike
on June 14, 2006
in missional and spiritual formation
. 45 Comments

This is from my 9/28/04 blog entry (slightly adapted):

I’m not blaming anyone for what I’m blogging about this morning. Really good people were doing the best they knew how to do. The fault is largely mine.

But I was trained to be a professional.

It was great training for a Constantinian world in which the church is the center of all life. But it doesn’t fit our current situation of living in a post-Christian, post-modern world.

One of my graduate school professors insisted that a preacher should spend one hour in study for every minute he preaches. That’s great advice — if the goal is to preach sermons. For much of my preaching life, I’ve preached two sermons a week. That would be 50 hours of study. While in Searcy, I preached three sermons a week. That would be 75 hours of study.

I was trained to do just that. With seven years of Greek and a couple years of Hebrew along with class after class of textual studies, I was prepared to do one thing: study. I had (for the most part) incredible profs. I don’t regret most of the classes.

But I was never taught other things: like how to be missional, how to help form a missional church, how to pray, how to disciple people in the way of Christ, etc.

Again, good people were teaching me what they knew. It wasn’t them–it was more a whole system that didn’t understand what we’re facing. We majored in information transfer. We hardly even minored in formation and transformation.

There was never any training and mentoring in how to connect with lost people, how to move Christians from consumer-demands to kingdom-service, how to start justice-based ministries, or how to plan worship that forms people and prepares to send them out in Jesus’ name.

It’s easier to train professionals. People who know how to caretake the organization. They know how to bring about slow change. How to do studies. How to organize. Basically, how to do all the things really good businesses do.

So churches have learned to rely on people who know very little about Christian mission and formation but know a LOT about professional matters.

I remember taking a class on evangelism. The whole class was, of course, a study of evangelism. We spent the whole semester getting ready to perform a skit from GO YE MEANS GO ME. And there was a class on “the work of a preacher” that was basically a study of the pastoral epistles–in other words, another textual class. My class on worship studied the issues of worship and worked toward the big project: of each group preparing a devotional for one class period.

I’m thinking we don’t need any more professionalism. (That isn’t to say, of course, that we want to give up serious study of scripture, including languages!) We need missionaries. Missionaries right here: people who can learn the language, teach the language, learn the culture, teach the culture, mentor, equip, train, reach out.

Here are some realities we’ll have to face:

1. Some don’t want to be missional. They want the organization to work smoothly. We need to love them as they struggle, helping them to mature beyond consumer complaints. Jesus didn’t leave the church so everyone could be comfortable and happy; he left it as an outpost of the in-breaking kingdom. It is not safe!

2. There will be conflict as this happens. But this conflict is best resolved by people staying focused on what the mission of Christ is.

3. The day of megachurches as the center of attention is probably coming to an end. Megachurches are great at offering services. But they haven’t historically been great at forming people into the image of Christ. I’m thrilled when I hear about students (of various majors) eager to go out and start a house church. This isn’t either/or. I’m committed to helping a large church. But I think the future will be smaller.

4. I hope our theological training stays rigorous: in languages, history, theology, etc. But along with all the information we must find a way to form lives. We need to keep raising up teachers who are actively involved in the mission of Christ. (And I’m discovering more and more of them!)

One final word of grace here: God has used all our stumbling efforts–including my own pitiful ones–to his glory. This doesn’t discount any of the sacrifices that others have made. But it’s just a chance to think ahead and dream.

Pilgrim Heart

Published
by
Mike
on May 12, 2006
in Books and spiritual formation
. 29 Comments

I told you earlier when I was reading the manuscript that it was going to be a must-read in Christian spirituality.

Now it’s out. Darryl Tippens, former English prof at ACU and Highland elder and now Provost of Pepperdine University, has written Pilgrim Heart: The Way of Jesus in Everyday Life.

Maybe I’m a bit prejudiced here. Full disclosure: Darryl is a close buddy and has been a spiritual guide in my life for fifteen years.

But this is one incredible book. As my little blurb on the book says, it belongs on the shelf right next to Richard Foster and Dallas Willard.

After chapters on “The Call to a ‘Worldly’ Spirituality” and “The Blessing of Body and Soul,” the book explores these spiritual disciplines (called “practices of the pilgrim heart”):

Emptying: A Fresh Breeze as We Let Go
Welcoming: Opening Doors to Strangers
Resting: The day Sabbath Becomes Joy
Resting: More Sabbath Blessings
Befriending: The Mutual Regard and Care for Souls
Confessing: I Swear to Tell the Whole Truth
Forgiving: The Love That Travels Farther
Listening: Within the Deep Stream of Silence
Discerning: The Gift of Wisdom
Singing: The Way to Heaven’s Door
Creating: The Truth of Beauty
Feasting: Memory and Mealtimes
Reading and Storytelling: How Narrative Builds Faith
Suffering: The Fire That Purifies
Seeking: The End of the Journey

Here’s a taste from the chapter on feasting — a section with the heading “Strawberries, Bread, and Jesus”:

While in college, our older son, Kyle, made a prospective mission trip to Romania. When he arrived at the Bucharest train station, he was unable to locate the missionary who was to meet him. Hours passed, and Kyle did not know what to do. He had no way to reach the missionary. As the afternoon turned to evening, he stood under a streetlight, reading a book, hoping the man would arrive. As night fell, an old woman approached our son. Though she could speak no English, and Kyle knew no Romanian, she gestured to him to come to her house. Lonely, hungry, and a little desperate, he didn’t know what else to do, so he went home with her. In her rather spartan apartment, she prepared him a simple meal that included a few strawberries with a dusting of sugar. Clearly she was offering her best. Later, the woman’s English-speaking daughter came home and learned our son’s problem. Eventually Kyle found his way. I have often thought about that nameless woman who extended such unexpected courtesy to this foreigner, my son, who did not speak her language; and I have been chastened to consider whether I would have done the same had I been in her situation. The one I proclaim to be my Lord said, “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me . . .” (Matthew 25:35).

It is remarkable how simple, material objects can occasion the holiest of moments. A cup of cold water, a slice of bread, strawberries with just a little sugar — through such small things the God of the universe sometimes reveals himself to us.

The theme of journey develops through the book as Darryl keeps exploring the importance of the pilgrim people. Then at the end, these words:

Bob Keeshan, known to millions as Captain Kangaroo, was for decades the beloved host of a morning television show for children. When he began his role as the grandfatherly Captain in 1955, Keeshan was only twenty-eight years old; and so, to look the part, he had to wear a great deal of make-up, fake whiskers, and a wig. But as he played the role through the years, his hair turned white and wrinkles appeared. Keeshan found that he needed less and less make-up. Near the end of his career he could say: “I have grown into the part.” Exactly.

The pilgrim heart will, in time, be shaped in the image of Christ. Initially, the likeness will be faint, hardly plausible at all. But if we walk the road with him, loving as he taught, then we become what we perform in due time. “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). At first we speak these words as a hopeful prayer; one day they will be true. . . . We are changed (Paul employs a Greek word which is the root of the English word metamorphosis) into the divine image incrementally, step by step, “from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18). Furthermore, it occurs through the Holy Spirit’s powerful work in our lives, not through our effort or ingenuity. These two facts lead to patience (for the transformation requires much time, trial, error, pain, and failure) and humility (since it is never our doing; we are recipients of a holy gift).

Get this book. Digest it. Share it.

The Problem of Marketing Easter

Published
by
Mike
on April 11, 2006
in faith and spiritual formation
. 34 Comments

The Taize service at Highland on Palm Sunday evening was such a meaningful way to launch this week. The services have always been moving when I’ve attended; but somehow they really resonate during Passion Week.

Growing up I always heard that Easter Sunday is no different than every other Sunday because we always celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. I appreciate much of that insight.

And yet . . . the church has also known for 2000 years the power of the calendar — of remembering that there was a Sunday in the spring (tied to the Jewish Passover) when the actual, historical event took place.

He has killed and buried. Then God raised him from the dead. So we believe by faith.

From Eugene Peterson:

“We live the Christian life out of a rich tradition of formation-by-resurrection. Jesus’ resurrection provides the energy and conditions by which we ‘walk before the LORD in the land of the living’ — the great psalm phrase (116:9). The resurrection of Jesus creates and then makes available the reality in which we are formed as new creatures in Christ by the Holy Spirit. The do-it-yourself, self-help culture of North America has so thoroughly permeated our imaginations that we ordinarily don’t give attention to the biggest thing of all — resurrection. And the reason we don’t is because resurrection is not something we can use or control or manipulate or improve on. It’s interesting, isn’t it, that the world has had very little success in commercializing Easter — turning it into a commodity — as it has Christmas? If we can’t, in our phrase, ‘get a handle on it’ or use it, we soon lose interest. But resurrection is not available for our use. It’s exclusively God’s operation.”

The Elephant in the Church

Published
by
Mike
on April 7, 2006
in faith and spiritual formation
. 35 Comments

From Dallas Willard:

“Nondiscipleship is the elephant in the church. It is not the much discussed moral failures, financial abuses, or the amazing general similarity between Christians and non-Christians. These are only effects of the underlying problem. The fundamental negative reality among Christian believers now is their failure to be constantly learning how to live their lives in The Kingdom Among Us. And it is an accepted reality. The division of Christians into those from whom it is a matter of whole-life devotion to God and those who maintain a consumer, or client, relationship to the church has now been an accepted reality for over fifteen hundred years.”

And then this:

“Consumer Christianity is now normative. The consumer Christian is one who utilizes the grace of God for forgiveness and the services of the church for special occasions, but does not give his or her life and innermost thoughts, feelings, and intentions over to the kingdom of the heavens. Such Christians are not inwardly transformed and not committed to it.”

(From The Divine Conspiracy, pp. 301, 342)

The B-I-B-L-E #8

Published
by
Mike
on March 29, 2006
in Books, scripture and spiritual formation
. 25 Comments

(This is the last in a series on scripture. Earlier posts can be found here: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7.)

For this final post in the series, let me point out the obvious: Bible knowledge doesn’t always translate into Christlike thinking and living. I’ve known some brilliant Bible scholars whose lives were anything but godly.

We can read scripture for a lot of different reasons. Some read trying to prove their preconceived dogmas. Others read just to gain knowledge (as if “knowledge of God” in scripture referred to info on a hard drive rather than personal relationship). And still others read to serve what Eugene Peterson calls the replacement trinity: Holy Needs, Holy Wants, and Holy Feelings. (”The new Trinity doesn’t get rid of God or the Bible, it merely puts them to the service of needs, wants, and feelings.”)

So for this last piece, I want to underscore the image of Peterson’s new work, Eat This Book. He skillfully plays with the image of John — and before him Jeremiah and Ezekiel - being asked to eat the scroll.

“The voice then tells John to take the book from the angel. He takes it and the angel tells him, ‘Eat this book’: Get this book into your gut; get the words of this book moving through your bloodstream; chew on these words and swallow them so they can be turned into muscle and gristle an bone. And he did it; he ate the book.”

He’s pleading for a way with scripture that is more than just packing in the knowledge (as important as that is). We are to read scripture in a way that lets the words dissolve, digest, and distribute to our very nerve endings. These words — as they point us to the life-giving God — will offer health, vitality, holiness, and wholeness.

“The act of eating the book means that reading is not a merely objective act, looking at the words and ascertaining their meaning. Eating the book is in contrast with how most of us are trained to read books — develop a cool objectivity that attempts to preserve scientific or theological truth by eliminating as far as possible any personal participation that might contaminate the meaning. . . . The reading that John is experiencing is not of the kind that equips us to pass an examination. Eating a book takes it all in, assimilating it into the tissues of our lives. Readers become what they eat.”

We read the words of scripture not as curiosity seekers who have an hour to zip through the Louvre (”Quick! Where’s the Mona Lisa . . . Venus de Milo . . . The Winged Victory?”) Rather, we come as disciples of Jesus who live in a story. We absorb the words, reading them carefully and slowly.

Because this story comes sentence by sentence, we enter carefully into our reading as a community. “The more ’spiritual’ we become, the more care we must give to exegesis. The more mature we become in the Christian faith, the more exegetically rigorous we must become. This is not a task from which we graduate. These words given to us in our Scriptures are constantly getting overlaid with personal preferences, cultural assumptions, sin distortions, and ignorant guesses that pollute the text. The pollutants are always in the air, gathering dust on our Bibles, corroding our use of the language, especially the language of faith. Exegesis is a dust cloth, a scrub brush, or even a Q-tip for keeping the words clean.”

Our goal is not to master the text, but to be mastered by it as we are drawn by God the Father, Son, and Spirit into the world of the kingdom. We read humbly and obedient. We pause prayerfully over words and phrases. We memorize sentences. We reflect on paragraphs. We marvel at the overarching story.

I often hear today that our people don’t know scripture like we used to. Why is that?

Maybe it’s our distaste for the kind of arrogance that knowledge often produced. Perhaps it’s also business, laziness, and a general cultural shift from reading to watching.

But I want to close this series by urging us all to enter again eagerly into the world of scripture. Eat the book. Taste the words of the Torah, remembering that they come from a rescuing, life-giving God. Chew on the words of Isaiah 56-66 as you seek to imagine what life after the exile lived before God might look like. Digest the gospeled words of Matthew as he walks you through the story from Abraham to David to Jesus. Be nourished by the encouragement of the writer of Hebrews as you’re called to keep your eyes on Jesus, our high priest who sat down at the right hand of God.

A meal awaits. Feast on it!

Interview With David Wray

Published
by
Mike
on February 6, 2006
in Highland and spiritual formation
. 21 Comments

Today, I am interviewing one of my elders, David Wray, for the blog.

There’s so much I could tell you about David. First, the obvious. The guy is tall. Real tall (6′9″). Have you seen “Glory Road”? The year after they won the national title, David played against them when he was ACU’s center.

He’s a godly husband, father, and granddad. As an elder, he is a constant source of wisdom. He has more administrative gifts in his pinkie than I have in my whole body. And he’s been a guiding force of spirituality in my life.

I’ve talked to lots of ACU students who describe his spiritual formation class as one of the most significant times of their lives. So today, I’m asking him a few questions about spiritual formation.

1. What do we mean by “spiritual formation”?

In a sentence, spiritual formation is the process of maturing (some add “yielding one’s self to being conformed”) into the image of Jesus Christ for the sake of others. The objective is integrating the virtues and practices of Jesus into the daily life of every disciple of Jesus. Growing in the Christlife includes spiritual information, spiritual formation and spiritual transformation. Spiritual information requires being people of scripture. Christlikeness requires that Christians live in the gospels and there discover the heart, thoughts, and behaviors of Jesus. If we are to imitate him, we must rationally think through the principles by which he taught, related to people, and practiced disciplines that we refer to as “spiritual disciplines.” Sermons, daily reading and reflecting on scripture, Bible classes, small group Bible studies, and many other forums enhance one’s maturing in spiritual information. Spiritual formation places high value on relationships and spiritual community. In addition to information about Jesus, all disciples need brothers and sisters who provide mentoring, spiritual direction, encouragement, accountability, equipping for ministry, and shepherding. Authentic spiritual community is required in the formation process. No one is able to make the journey of life without brothers and sisters in the Lord. Small groups, shepherding groups, parenting, mission trips, and many other venues provide ideal opportunities for spiritual formation. Spiritual disciplines encourage Christians in contemplative spirituality (listening to God, “wasting time” with God) Spiritual transformation often occurs through losses and times of struggle. Almost all disciples experience times of the “dark night of the soul” as they move through life. These times require that Christians draw on scripture (spiritual information) and spiritual community (spiritual formation) to regain mental, emotional, and spiritual equilibrium.

2. Why has this become such a passion of your heart in your teaching at ACU, at Highland, and around the country?

Historically those associated with the Stone/Campbell movement relied heavily on rational spiritually. Convinced that biblical knowledge leads to holy living, we emphasized sermons and Bible classes. Campbell was fond of saying “come let us reason together.” When problems arose in our congregations, church leaders admonished the preacher to develop a sermon series on the subject or asked educational leadership to develop classes to solve the issue. Convinced that information primarily made disciples of Jesus, we eagerly embraced teaching/learning innovations to insure biblical literacy. We now realize that our sermons and worship assemblies engaged left brained (linear and sequential) people while often ignoring right brained (spontaneous and relational) people. Since Bible study provided our organizational principle we invested billions of dollars on “auditoriums” (our language betrays us–others call their assembly space “worship centers” or “sanctuaries”) and classrooms. Spiritual formation provides a path that appreciates spiritual information, but encourages us to drink from other streams of holiness, social justice, authentic spiritual community, and the inner life (solitude, silence, prayer). Thankfully many Christians currently live more holistically as they grow spiritually through their intellects, emotions, and relationships. This emphasis on holistic spirituality draws disciples out of the fortress church buildings and into the marketplace to live for the sake of others. This natural result of the spiritual formation process requires congregations to transition toward missional principles. Instead of congregations existing mostly to educate themselves and provide members with “goods” and “services,” church leaders are encouraging disciples to welcome, receive, and embrace the reign of God, the kingdom of God, everywhere they find it, inside and outside the church building.

3. How would you help people get started exploring “spiritual formation”? Are there a couple books you could recommend or conferences that you might point people to?

I argue that spiritual formation is more than reading and thinking, although both are a part of the process, but not the whole. Maturing Christians need time for reading, meditating, and contemplating, but they also need immersion experience where they walk along side people trapped in poverty and oppression, where they engage in short term (and longer term) mission experiences, and where they engage in spiritual formation groups. I also recommend ministries such as “Walk To Emmaus,” “retreats for solitude, silence, and prayer,” and seeking spiritual direction (ancient practice of gaining spiritual wisdom and discernment for seasoned disciple of Jesus).

Having provided this disclaimer, Richard Foster provides disciples desiring to grow in Christlikeness with helpful literature. Recommended books by Foster include: Celebration of Disciplines, and Streams of Living Water. A second contemporary author of spiritual formation literature is Dallas Willard. Christians desiring to continue growing in the image of Christ benefit from his writings which include: The Spirit of the Disciplines, Divine Conspiracy, and Renovation of the Heart. Most of the thirty plus books by Henri Nouwen provide encouragement for disciples to grow deeper into Christlikeness.

Parish Hermitage

Published
by
Mike
on December 8, 2005
in friends and spiritual formation
. 24 Comments

All signals in my life have been pointing to one thing: that I need to go deeper. Deeper in prayer, deeper in scripture, deeper in heart, deeper in insights about my emotions (and why I do certain things), etc.

In response to this, I just spent the last couple days at the Parish Hermitage. Eddie Parish is a dear friend and has been a trusted spiritual guide through the years. A Ph. D. in psychology from Florida State and a former faculty member in ACU’s marriage and family program, he and Judy now run this retreat center between New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

I couldn’t have spent a couple better days. The hermitage is located on 24 wooded acres, nestled against a classic Louisiana bayou. The idea is to combine reflection and prayer with nature and relationship. People who go are invited into the Parishes’ home each evening for dinner with them and their children.

Though Eddie is a therapist, it doesn’t feel like therapy. He and I sat a couple hours each day, visiting and praying while we looked out at the woods and the water. We just talked, tried to pay attention to clues, and sought to envision a future that is deeper. I had plenty of time to read, pray, think, and walk alone.

I don’t need to write here about all that came out. That’s personal and it’s still in process. But I’m very thankful for the experience. If you have any interest, you can read more here.

Getting home yesterday was a bit of a challenge. All flights on AA out of New Orleans were cancelled, so I went standby on Continental to Houston and then snagged a flight home last night.