Spiritual Formation

Review: Word Made Fresh

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Cover image for "Word Made Fresh" by Abram Van Engen

Word Made Fresh, Abram Van Engen, foreword by Shane McCrae. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing (ISBN: 9780802883605) 2024.

Summary: An invitation to delight in poetry while discovering how form and language help make meaning that may enrich our lives.

A recent survey found only twelve percent of Americans had read poetry in the past year. I wonder if many are like friends of my who are put off by one or both of two things. Firstly, they find poetry confusing or obscure. Secondly, they don’t know where to start. By contrast, Abram Van Engen believes poetry is for all of us, an invitation to pay attention, to delight, and reflect. For Christians, he goes further. Poetry may be found in much of scripture, most notably in the Psalms. They both disclose God to us and give us language to disclose ourselves to God at all the turns of life. Van Engen believes poetry is for you and he sets out in this book to show how you may enjoy it and find your life enriched by it.

He keeps it uncomplicated. He invites us to just pick up a book of poetry and begin reading until something catches us. Don’t worry about meaning to start with, just notice what caught our attention, and why, in our lives, that might be. Initially, he invites us to read for pleasure, and at the beginning of the book, shares a number of poems. If we like them, he invites us to pay more attention, and if not, to move on.

For example, in one chapter, he considers poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins (sonnet), William Carlos Williams (three four line verses), Gwendolyn Brooks, Denise Levertov (free verse), Lucille Clifton, Luci Shaw, Scott Cairns, Mary Karr, Richard Wilbur, James Weldon Johnson, John Donne (sonnet), Countee Cullen (also sonnet), and Robert Hadyn. By doing so, Van Engen offers us his own curated anthology, offering us the change to discover what we like, while offering very introductory comments.

While he discourages starting by asking what a poem means, he does encourage us to ask questions of the poems that catch our attention, For example, “Why was I struck by this poem?” What about this poem made us stop? “What gave us pause or pleasure? Was it the sound of the poem? Was it a certain memory the poem invoked or revived?” He then takes us through a very short poem (“This Is Just to Say”) by William Carlos Williams, considered previously and notices how each stanza is a literal room, adding to what has come before about eating plums another has set aside in the icebox. He asks questions about the structure, the line breaks, and the repeated “so.”

Before going further into technical matters, he invites us to think of poetry like a friendship. Like a friendship, poems travel with us through life. Along they way, they show us different things as we change and grow. Then Van Engen turns to form. He considers different forms and how form, rhyme schemes, and content interact. Another practice he encourages is erasing. For example, we erase all but the verbs. Or we isolate the requests in a prayer.

Then Van Engen explores how poets use words to name, the oblique ways they express truth. And he devotes two chapters on how poetry helps us rejoice with the rejoicing, and weep with the weeping. Poetry offers us language to express how glorious our life in the world can be, and how wretched. Finally, returning to Hopkins, “As Kingfishers Catch Fire,” he shows how poems enact life. Van Engen contends that as “the just man justices” so poems poem as we read and experience them.

In recent years, I’ve been on a journey of discovery poetry. Van Engen makes this so approachable, so enjoyable. He introduces us to forms and uses of words and more. Mostly, he invites us to read a lot of poetry, guiding us lightly, asking us questions to help us discover for ourselves the wonder of poetry. And for Christians, he tips us off to a rich vein of devotional material many of us may have neglected. He show us how poetry and the poetry of scripture may enhance and enlarge one another. Read this book if you are in the place of feeling both drawn and daunted by the call of poetry. Read this book with a group, using the group guide provided. I believe you will find that which pleases and enriches you and your friends for the journey.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Discipleship: Living for Christ in the Daily Grind

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Cover image of "Discipleship: Living for Christ in the Daily Grind" by J. Heinrich Arnold

Discipleship: Living for Christ in the Daily Grind, J. Heinrich Arnold (Foreword by Henri J.M. Nouwen. Plough (ISBN: 9780874868760) 1994.

Summary: Discipleship: Living for Christ in the Daily Grind is a collection of forthright counsel on various aspects of following Christ.

One of the questions I wrestled with as a young follower of Christ was “now that I’ve begun following Jesus, how do I practically live this life?” Often, it seems that the answer was “read your Bible and God will show you.” I longed for a more mature believer who might walk alongside and offer practical counsel for questions like, “How do I know I am fully converted?” “And if so, why do I sin and what do I do about that?” “How do I remain pure in thought and action as a healthy young man?” “How do I discern and walk in God’s will?” “What is my place in God’s mission?” “What are my gifts and how should I use them?” “How do I cultivate a relationship with God and what is that really like?”

For over forty years J. Heinrich Arnold served as a leader in the Bruderhof movement until his death in 1982. Over that time he counselled many on various aspects of living for Christ “in the daily grind.” Plough Publishing, the publishing arm of the Bruderhof movement has collected the instruction of Arnold on various aspects of discipleship, organizing it by topics. The editors drew much of the material from letters to individuals. And in it, Arnold addresses all the questions I mentioned and many more.

First of all, Arnold has a clear and penetrating vision of the gospel. He writes:

“Anyone who has not been troubled by the scandal of Christ’s sufffering and his complete humilistion is ignorant of the meaning of belief in him.”

Second, I notice how forthright, to the point of bluntness, many of his statements are. He explains why in a letter quoted in a section on Sincerity:

“It is important to be straightforward and honest about your true feelings. Rather be too rude than too smooth, to blunt than too kind. Rather say an unkind word that is true than one that is ‘nice’ but untrue. You can always be sorry for an unkind word, but hypocrisy causes permanent harm unless special grace is given.”

For instance, his writing about sex exemplifies that forthrightness:

“Sex has no purpose apart from marriage. Outside of marriage it is sinful. The Bible demands chastity before it and outside of it; that is very clear. So if you have not always followed the chaste and pure way, then you must find forgiveness in order to stand upright before God. But Jesus wants to give you that forgiveness.“

Throughout, he points people to Christ’s provision and God’s care. To a young person, he concludes his letter thus:

I wish you the protection of God in all you may go through. May the pierced hands of Jesus hold you firmly as you hold firmly to him.”

No sugarcoating. Rather, the promise that God will meet one in trying times and hold one firmly.

The readings fall under three main headings: the disciple, the church, and the kingdom of God. We move from the personal life of the disciple to the community in which the disciple lives to the big picture of God’s bracing vision for the world. His words equally challenge young disciples and leaders. He tells leaders their authority is not over people for whom they humbly care. Their authority is over the spirits! Connected with that, he reminds leaders that their battle is not with people but with evil spirits, a word that seems important for our time.

The call to discipleship is for life. While I wish I had this book as a young man (or Arnold in person!), I’m glad I have it now. Arnold’s writing challenges and encourages young and old alike, beginners and leaders. Sometimes his incisive words are the faithful wounds of a friend that heal. At other times, his word offer spiritual and moral clarity needed in our murky times. And always he keeps central the main thing of Christ, his cross, his kingdom, and our future hope.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: The Spacious Path

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The Spacious Path, Tamara Hill Murphy. Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2023.

Summary: In our fragmented world, discusses how the idea of a rule of life, not as an ill-fitting structure but an intimate walk of listening and love with Jesus, may bring wholeness into our lives.

Imagine exiting a frenetic Texas freeway for the quiet of a retreat center. In the middle of it is a prayer labyrinth, a circular maze in which one follows a path with turns until one reaches a center, having prayerfully relinquished prayers and concerns along the way, trusting that the path is not a dead end, quieting oneself to listen to Jesus pace by pace, perhaps meditating on promises from God. At the center are benches where one may sit in quiet. Then one exits, reversing one’s path, praying to hold onto whatever the Lord has given as you walked and rested.

Tamara Hill Murphy offers this as an image of a life of practicing the restful way of Jesus through a rule of life. While we want to escape fragmented and frenetic lives, the idea of rule often seems confining, rigid, restricting. Drawing on the teachings of Benedict and the invitation of Jesus in Matthew 11:28-30, Hill proposes the idea of a rule of life as a spacious path, one in which we come to Jesus, learning from him the unforced rhythms of grace, the unforced life of obedience as we take his yoke, walking and working with him. It is a way of listening and safeguarding love for God and neighbor against both license and legalism. It is a way that is both contemplative and communal

Having established this spacious path of listening and love with Jesus and his people, she writes of how we center ourselves and our rule on that spacious path. She explores how we hold both spacious stability and change together within such a rule. We learn that what unites us as a spacious community is that we are the baptized beloved, drawn in all our diversity into relationship with the Triune God through our shared baptism and shared eucharistic table. As we center in Jesus, we learn to relinquish our religious false self–all the pretenses we keep up with each other. At the same time, she writes about discerning safe spiritual leaders, offering valuable principles.

Only then does she focus on settling into a rule. She explores ideas of spacious work with room for prayer and rhythms of work, rest, and sabbath including seven rhythms of sabbath time: sabbath as a day, daily rhythms of work, prayer, rest, scripture, and self care, and similar weekly. monthly, seasonal, annual, and sabbatical rhythms. She then explores how we may walk the path of the church year, and in Tish Harrison Warren’s words, the liturgy of our ordinary days with their routines. All these may be woven into the rhythm of a rule of life.

The final part recognizes that life can upend our routines, our rules of life when unexpected guests call out the practice of hospitality, when we are confronted with injustice in which we are all implicated, and when tragedies like a global pandemic strike. She explores how lament, repentance, and examen help us know the blessing of God in such times. In an epilogue, she proposes five best practices for beginning and beginning again on the spacious path. I love her first: begin and begin again with a rule for rest and prayer.

I found this a book that was “spacious” toward the reader. Murphy shows rather than tells, describing what for her and others life on the path is like, and how we might take our first steps to begin (and begin again) with Jesus. While offering both principles and practices, the sense in this book was of describing what life on the spacious path is like. This seemed to me a winsome and right way to invite people into the practice of a rule of life.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Finding Freedom in Constraint

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Finding Freedom in Constraint, Jared Patrick Boyd. Downers Grove: IVP Formatio, 2023.

Summary: Proposes that constraints in terms of spiritual practices in the context of community, expose our inner desires, allowing them to be healed and formed by Christ.

You might do a double-take on the title of this book. Shouldn’t it read “Finding Freedom From Constraint”? There is no mistake here. It gets at the core idea (as many good titles do) that the author is proposing. As the founder of a missional monastic order, the Order of the Common Life, Boyd proposes that constraints, in the form of a rule of life of spiritual practices, is crucial in Christ’s transforming work in our lives. What he observes is that a crucial element to that transformation is communal practice. Our call to love God and one another cannot be practiced alone. We cannot love, and dies to our self-centeredness, without others. Nor can we die to pride and take on humility alone.

A crucial aspect of how constraint works to free is that spiritual constraints, like fasting, the constraint of food, lays bare our compulsions around food and what lies beneath (pain, trauma, grief) that we try to address with food. As we practice the constraint in community, we can offer these, with the support of others, to Christ for healing and transformation as we discover how deeply we our loved amid our disordered desires. The healing, ordering and purifying of desire allows us to burn more brightly, to “become all flame” for Christ.

The remainder of the book discusses six constraints that form a kind of rule of life–three that we choose and three to which we consent. The three we choose are silence and solitude, simplicity, and marriage or celibacy. In silence and solitude, we submit to the present, to simply attend to what comes, sifting and sorting our distractions, offering them to God, waiting for God, and coming to the place where we know and participate and rest in God. Simplicity is the constraint of our attention, through fasting as we pay attention to the meaning of food and eating, through clothing as we pay attention to what we wear and any attachments we have to clothing, and to our possessions and wealth. Marriage and celibacy have in common the giving away of one’s life for the sake of others. Boyd has some of the most original material on the constraint and practice of love in each state that I have seen and writes with special sensitivity to both gay and straight individuals who choose celibacy, guarding this as a choice rather than something imposed.

The three constraints to which we consent are formational healing, faults and affirmations, and discernment in community. Formational healing means allowing God access to all areas of our lives, open to God’s invitations, accepting the constraints of our stories and experiencing healing of disordered attachments that push God out of the center of our lives. “Faults and affirmations” is a communal practice in families and small groups in which we each confess our own faults and affirm others in their gifts and gracious acts. We practice discernment in community when we bring both personal decisions and those of a community to the community for their prayerful input, listening together for God’s invitation.

This is a book written for small groups and leadership communities to work through together. Each chapter concludes with practical ideas for pastors and church leaders, for small groups, and for parents. The author shares a number of ways he has practiced this in his own family with his wife and four children and vulnerably shares his own transformational journey. For those dissatisfied with the use of spiritual practices on an individual basis, Boyd offers a model of communal practice. And for those who wrestle with the tyranny of a life without constraints, Boyd offers a vision in which constraints free rather than bind.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: Catching Fire, Becoming Flame

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Catching Fire, Becoming Flame (Revised and Expanded Tenth Anniversary Edition), Albert Haase, OFM. Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2023.

Summary: If God is the fire and spark who sets our lives aflame, how do we prepare the kindling for the transforming and empowering work of God?

The premise of this rich study in spiritual transformation is that “it starts with God throwing a divine spark on the tinder of the heart.” The rest of book explores the nature of that spark from God, how we may prepare the kindling, how through prayer we catch fire, the practices of discernment that fan the flames in our lives, and the ongoing commitments that over the course of our lives cause the flame to burn even brighter until we become “all flame.”

Albert Haase, OFM has been a guide to many along the path of spiritual transformation, even as he has traveled this road himself. In a work with short chapters, simply written, Haase offers brief lessons describing the process by which God sets our lives aflame with his love.

The work is divided into five parts. It begins with the initiative of God, his spark in our lives, working through his Spirit, forming us in the image of Christ, a lifetime process. It starts as God awakens desire in us. We go through three stages: purgation, in which the CPR of community, prayer, and repentance orients our lives toward God, arranging the kindling; illumination, in which we realize God is closer than we ever imagined and surrender to the presence of God; and union, in which God’s desires become ours. We recognize our weaknesses and sins and bring them to God. Likewise, we grow in awareness of bad habits, understand their triggers, and learn to short circuit those triggers. We see the evidence of progress not merely in obeying commands but in the kindling in our lives of growing love for God and others.

In the second part, Haase discusses the spiritual concepts that provide excellent kindling for God’s spark. He begins with our images of God and how they may hinder or help his spark to catch. We consider the nature of prayer and praying as we can and from where we are, and progressing from words to silence. We learn the importance of a grateful heart and obstacles to gratitude. He explores the divine milieu in which we encounter God in word and sacrament, in creation and “thin” places. The false self and its energy centers are distinguished from the true self that rests in Christ. Haase concludes this section with the experience of suffering and our responses of crying out and surrender.

Part three explores with greater focus how we are set afire through various practices of prayer including the examen, meditation and contemplation, the Jesus prayer, lectio divina, imaginative prayer, wonder-ing with creation, praying the stations of the cross, and praying the Lord’s prayer. He offers very practical instructions for each, a discussion of the heart issues involved in the practice, and with the Lord’s prayer, explications of each phrase.

Discerning the desires of God to further fan the flames is the focus of part four. He begins with the discernment of good and evil spirits in our experiences of consolation and desolation (although I wonder if one can always make this correlation). He speaks of the place of our past, present, potential and our passions in discerning God’s will. He discusses the experiences of dryness, darkness, and depression and what we might make of these. He describes spiritual direction and the qualities of good directees and directors, including the idea that a director may be helpful for a season and then someone else may better serve. He encourages self-care of mind, body, heart, and spirit saying “blessed are the balanced.” He urges the value of a rule of life, offering an example.

The final part of this work speaks of the dynamic commitments by which we “become all flame.” He commends the self-reflective work of the examination of conscience–different from the daily examen. He speaks of the practice of forgiving ourselves and others. He discusses how we might experience inner healing from past hurtful events in our lives in the presence of Christ. Haase explores how we go about resisting various types of temptation, eight of which he identifies from scripture. He teaches us about surrender and abandonment to God and revealing all to God through journalling. Another chapter encourages the regular practice of retreats and the different types of retreats one might take. There are chapters on sabbath, hospitality, living in the present moment, and soul training.

Following his metaphor of fire and flame, he concludes with an encouragement:

“Catching fire and becoming flame require more than the spark of the Spirit and our well-chosen kindling. They also demand an ongoing perseverance and a long-term patience forged from the awareness that God fervently desires to see us blaze with godly enthusiasm. That enthusiasm flares up as we willingly surrender to the communal process of being transformed by the Spirit of God sent to lovingly respond to the unmet need or required duty of the present moment.”

Albert Haase, OFM has described for us the process by which God set our lives aflame with his holy love. He’s encouraged us the wonderful news that God is present and wants to do this in our lives, the God takes the initiative. He offers the wonderful analogy of our spiritual practices as “arranging the kindlng” as one does in preparing to set a fire and instructed us how we may keep on burning, ever brighter and more purely. This is a book to carry with one for a lifetime. Have it handy in times of review and reflection for the questions it poses. Take it on retreat. Discuss it in community and with a director. While not scripture, it is founded in the initiative of God, soaked with biblical reflection, and reflects centuries of wisdom. I’m glad to have this companion on the journey.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: Spiritual Formation for the Global Church

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Spiritual Formation for the Global Church, Ryan A Brandt and John Frederick, editors. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2021.

Summary: A collection of contributions reflecting the global and catholic conversation around spiritual formation including theological study, elements of worship, and mission in contemporary cultures as formation.

In many areas of faith and practice, we are seeing increased representation of global voices bringing the wealth of their gifts, insights, and unique expressions to the conversation. This volume represents just such a project in an area that has largely been a Western conversation: spiritual formation. This edited collection introduces us to Australian, Asian, African, and Latino perspectives on spiritual formation, and in the process both recovering and revealing spiritually formative thought and practice often neglected in the West.

After an introduction by the editors discussing the awakening movement of spiritual formation as well as the three foci of the volumes, the contributions are presented under three parts.

Part One: Biblical and Theological Study as Spiritual Formation

Michael J. Gorman argues in the opening essay in this part that biblical and theological study in itself can be formative, destroying the lines between “academic” and spiritual. In “Theological Education and Spiritual Formation” by Sammy Alfaro, the author offers an inspiring account of how the Bible Institute approach to theological training of pastors, usually in the church context, weds academic work and spiritual formation. Alfred Olwa. in the African context, discusses how a biblically faithful approach to scripture is spiritually formative. Finally, in “Spiritual Theology and Spiritual Formation: An Integrative Methodology for a Global Approach,” John H. Coe explores how the interdisciplinary work of spiritual theology, drawing upon scripture, the Holy Spirit, and human experience, lends itself to contextualization in various global contexts.

Part Two: Acts and Elements of Worship as Spiritual Formation

“Liturgy and Spiritual Formation: Engaging with Evelyn Underhill’s Prayer Book” by Robyn Wrigley-Carr recounts her use of the prayers collected by Underhill for both retreats and worship. I found this so fascinating that I bought Wrigley-Carr’s book! Markus Nikkanen exegetes the Corinthian texts on the Eucharist, showing that participation is a form of covenantal transformative remembrance that is spiritually formative. “Sacrifice and Surrender as Spiritual Formation,” by John Frederick and Jonathan K. Sharpe, is a study in Ephesians of how works of love in the church context, including confession, constitute surrender to Christ. The section closes out with an essay by Ryan A. Brandt calling for our recovery of an understanding of the beatific vision, drawing upon Augustine.

Part Three: Christ, Contemporary Culture, and Spiritual Formation

In “Old Testament Ethics and Spiritual Formation,” S. Min Chun, a Korean scholar, outlines from Leviticus 19 a holistic vision of holiness in its theological, economic, and social aspects. Le Chih Hsieh, a Taiwanese scholar, diagnoses the Epicurean elements in the “little happiness” focus of postmodern Taiwan culture and contrasts it with 2 Peter’s focus on the grand vision of life in the kingdom. “The Holy Spirit, Supernatural Interventionism, and Spiritual Formation,” by J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, argues for the place of supernatural manifestations, often in the context of spiritual warfare, as a neglected aspect in the West of life in dependence upon the Holy Spirit, a commonplace in the author’s West Africa context.
HaYoung Son closes out this section with a wonderful meditation on two instances of failure in the life of the apostle Peter, on the sea, and in the threefold denial and how these are reframed by the faithfulness of Jesus.

This is not only spiritual formation for the global church but also from the global church that will enrich the spiritually seeking reader of any culture. I particularly welcomed the focus on theological study as spiritually formative. We far too often bifurcate these to the loss of both. I noted how many of these essays begin with a text or texts, carefully handled, culturally appropriated, and then generalized for the wider church. I appreciated the inclusion of practices that were in my spiritual “blind spot,” particularly contemplation of the beatific vision, and communal confession. Le Chih Hsieh’s focus on Epicureanism makes me wonder how widespread this is in the American context. I sense it present in many “prosperity gospels” that lack for a kingdom-sized vision of the work of Christ. Read this to gain an appreciation of the rich work of God beyond North American shores!

Review: Learning Humility

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Learning Humility, Richard J. Foster. Downers Grove: IVP/Formatio, 2022.

Summary: A journal of a year-long journey of learning humility including notes from readings, reflections, prayers, organized around the Lakota calendar.

Richard J. Foster was pondering at the turn of a year whether to set any resolutions for the new year. He sensed he was hearing from God the words “learn humility.”

Over the next year, he read a number of spiritual writers to glean their insights into humility and recorded his insights, quotes, and personal experiences in a journal organized according to the Lakota calendar. He thought a calendar rooted in nature and one from a Native American heritage similar to his own might be helpful.

The Lakota influence extended beyond the thirteen colorfully named moons of the Lakota calendar (for example “The Moon When Trees Crack from the Cold”). Each moon after the first opens with one of twelve Lakota virtues. During the course of the year, Foster also reads a number of works on Lakota history and culture. In addition to the connection of these virtues to humility, Foster’s study is a journey in humility in a couple other ways. He learns from Lakota spirituality while recognizing the ways it diverges from Christianity. One example is the vision quest involving solitude, nature, and fasting, practices also found in Christian tradition. He also grieves the broken promises and atrocities committed by the United States against the Lakota, culminating in the massacre at Wounded Knee. Perhaps this calls us into corporate humility, repenting our corporate sins and broken promises toward the First Nations who occupied the land before us.

He also shares insights from writers throughout church history from Augustine to Benedict to C. S. Lewis. He records personal experiences from momentary anger to impatience while on hold for a phone call to an insight into humility from a walk with his son. Often a subheading will consist of one or a few paragraphs with a few subheadings for each week. Rich fare but not heavy going. In many instances, his reflections end in questions or matters on which Foster wants to reflect further–not neatly packaged conclusions.

Early on, Foster reflects on the starting place in our journey being meditation on the life of Jesus, our supreme example of humility. He writes a simple prayer to which he recurs though the year:

Loving Lord Jesus, I humbly ask that you would...
Purify my heart,
Renew my mind,
Sanctify my imagination,
Enlarge my soul.
Amen

At various points he focuses on the various ways we learn humility, often in the everyday life of our homes, and often in the instances that expose our propensities to pride, vanity, self-importance, and selfishness, as we recognize the opportunities to renounce these and to prefer others interests to our own. Foster asserts that progress in humility comes from God. The most we can do is orient our will toward God. God often, then, takes us into situations in which we may choose the way of humility.

Toward the end, he proposes several questions I found challenging that help us discern our own progress in humility:

  • Am I genuinely happy when someone else succeeds?
  • Do I have less need to talk about my own accomplishments?
  • Is the inner urge to control or manage others growing less and less in me?
  • Can I genuinely enjoy a conversation without any need or even any desire to dominate what is being said? (p. 163)

The reflections in this work come out of a year of journaling (and a longer writing process). This is worth a slow reading, reflecting on the quotes and observations and questions Foster raises. Instead of a treatise on humility offering a merely academic understanding, Foster invites us to walk with him and learn humility with him as a fellow traveler. He points us less to answers and more to the one who will teach us and wants us to become more like him. Foster believes God is eager to grow the grace of humility in each one of us. The question is, are we willing to learn? Settling into this book is a good place to begin.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: The Intentional Year

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The Intentional Year, Holly Packiam and Glenn Packiam. Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2022.

Summary: An invitation to stop, assess, and plan around five clusters of practices that enable us to live purposeful lives.

It’s the time of the year we make resolutions out of a sense that our lives are not all they could be. It’s a good impulse as far as it goes. The problem is that, for most of us, it doesn’t go very far.

What we often lack is intention. The co-authors of this book, sharing out of their own yearly practice, suggest that we intentionally “stop for the purpose of moving forward.” They encourage us to take time, perhaps at the beginning of a new year, to assess our lives, looking back at our recent past, reviewing five spheres of life to think about what live giving practices or rhythms may help us flourish, and then establishing plans in each of these areas that reflect God’s word for us as we’ve assessed.

The book commends a three-fold process:

Reflection: First, we are encouraged to look back over the year, its highs and lows using the prayer of examen. Then they suggest considering what our review of our year suggests about what season we are in. Are there recurring themes? And through all this, are we hearing a “word” from the Lord. What do our trusted friends think of this word–do they hear the Lord in it?

Inventory: This involves taking a look at five spheres of our lives and the spiritual practices that undergird them. Are they life-giving for us, and if this is not the case, what practices might help us develop healthier rhythms? The five areas are:

  1. Prayer. The authors share several practices including psalm praying, silence, and lectio divina as new practices.
  2. Rest. Here, ideas for practicing sabbath are discussed and how this may cultivate a life of freedom.
  3. Renewal. Physical, mental, and emotional renewal are discussed, including setting aside time for reading and for gratitude.
  4. Circles of Relationship. We’re helped here to identify the concentric circles of relationships we have and how we might set priorities for these circles.
  5. Habits of Work. Vocation is briefly touched on, reflecting the intersection of God’s glory, the world’s good, and our joy, and then thinking about the shape of good work well done.

Action: The idea here is “making it stick. The authors walk us through the five spheres again in light of God’s word to us and challenge us to get specific with ONE practice for each sphere and what we will do daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly to implement and review our progress. Then the last thing is to get these plans into our calendar.

The book is set up so that it may be used over a weekend retreat or a series of day. The aim of developing rhythms of intentionality is to position ourselves under God’s grace to be fruitful. The co-authors conclude:

“That means the intentional year–your intentional life!–is not really about you. It’ s about how your life becomes good news for the world. The rhythms of prayer, rest, renewal, relationships, and work that you cultivate in your life are meant to produce fruit for the sake of others, gifts for the good of the church and the world. When you’re healthy, intentional, and living in freedom, peace, and purpose, others benefit. Yes, Irenaeus was right: The glory of God is the human fully alive” (p. 195).

Tired of failed resolutions yet want this to be a year of living well in Christ? This book offers a simple process, lots of practical guidance and examples, and reflection prompts and questions that can help you to be more intentional about your life.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: Spirituality According to John

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Spirituality According to John, Rodney Reeves. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2022.

Summary: Through an imaginative study of the gospel, letters, and Revelation of John, considers what it means to abide in Christ, coming to faith, living communally in Christ, and facing the tribulations of the end of the world.

In my observation, it seems that much of our instruction in Christian discipleship, if there is such instruction, centers around the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) and the letters of Paul and maybe James, if we are up for the challenge. Of the writings attributed to John, we sometimes commend (or at least used to) the Gospel of John as reading for those considering Christ. Revelation we either shy away from altogether or use it to springboard into end times speculations. And John’s letters? Mostly, it seems we use a few verses like 1 John 1:9 as memory verses but give them little attention.

In this work, Rodney Reeves reclaims the canonical writings attributed to John as valuable in the shaping of our spiritual life. For Reeves, it centers around the world “abide”–what it means to make our home in Christ both individually and communally, and in his Word, which abides in us, enabling us to incarnate the person and work of Christ in the world. For the Gospel, the Letters, and Revelation, Reeves follows a fourfold pattern as he considers how we abide in Christ and his Word abides in us involving hearing the Word, confessing the Word, incarnating the Word, and abiding in the Word.

The Gospel of John is the invitation to follow the Word home. We hear this in Jesus response to the disciples question, “where are you staying?” with his invitation to “come and see.” Come and see gives way to “See and believe” as Jesus invites Martha to confess the power of Jesus to raise Lazarus and as Jesus invites Thomas to see and believe and Thomas confesses him Lord and God and worships. “Believe and see” flips the previous words, inviting the nobleman to return home with only the word of Jesus that his son would be well and the blind man to wash the mud out of his eyes, believing that he would see. They incarnate the word of Jesus, taking it in and living it out and discover its truth. Two women, filled with the word of Jesus abide in it. The Samaritan woman tells her townspeople to see a man who told her everything she had ever done and come to him, becoming the first evangelist in the gospels. Mary at Bethany proclaims Jesus as the anointed king who will die, also saying “see and come.”

The Letters of John, written to communities, speak of how we may commune with the Word together. Hearing the Word together moves the community from self-justification to confession of sin, recognizing that we cannot hate and say we love Christ. In turn, we confess that Jesus alone is the Christ, the anointed one, denying the worldly competitors that vie for our allegiance, recognizing them for what they are “anti-Christ.” The Word is incarnated in our communities by our love for each other and our hospitality to strangers, in contrast with Diotrephes. We abide together in the Word by loving without fear and protecting ourselves from idols, the worship of heroes or anything that supplants our love for Jesus, the source of our love for each other.

John’s Revelation instructs us in how we might remain in the Word until the end of the world–especially when that world is a counterwitness to the Word. The Word we hear in Revelation is a call to worship the Lion who is the worthy Lamb who was slain. Our confession of the Word is a declaration of war. Worship is warfare against the systemic evil of the world, joining, if need be, the two prophets slain and raised, in refusing complicity in the worship of idols. Incarnating the Word, is following the Lamb, including being slain rather than seeking the power of the evil one that promises success and power. We abide in the Lamb by looking for the new heaven and the new earth rather than placing hope in Babylon, which in our day, the author argues, is hopes in American greatness.

There is a strong challenge in the latter part of this book to the political idolatries of both left and right with the invitation to “come out from her, my people.” I’ve been asked whether we are living in the time of the Apocalypse, something any perceptive person might wonder with a global pandemic, rapidly warming and less habitable planet, insurrections, war, discord, economic collapse, and rampant inflation. Reeves concludes with posing for us the question that is most vital, and in line with his theme:

“The Apocalypse is not only a revelation at the end of the world; it is a revelation of the church at the end of the world. God knew that, as we watched the world fall apart around us, we would need to see our place in a crumbling world. When the earth quakes at the weight of glory, when heaven shakes earth to its core, when idols are destroyed and the kingdoms of men fall, when pandemics threaten humanity, when all creation is purified of evil and all that is left is what God has made, where will the church abide?” (p. 257).

Will we abide in the Word of Jesus, in Jesus himself, alone? That is both the question and the invitation posed by this book.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: The Way of Perfection

/ rtrube54 / 2 Comments

The Way of Perfection (Christian Classics), Teresa of Avila, edited and mildly modernized by Henry L. Carrigan Jr. Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2000 (originally published in 1583). [This edition is out of print. Link is to a newer edition from the same publisher.]

Summary: Teresa’s instructions to nuns on the spiritual life of prayer and meditations on the Lord’s Prayer as a way to contemplative prayer.

I have yet to find the Christian who describes prayer as easy. Yet I know many who have persisted, wrestled with distractions, struggled with doubt, and broken through to times of intimacy with God, a sense of being greatly loved by the Father, and have witnessed the work of God in answer to one’s prayers.

In the late sixteenth century, the mystic, Teresa of Avila, gave a series of instructive meditations for the nuns in her order that have been collected in The Way of Perfection, a spiritual classic that has been read to the profit of many others wishing to deepen their own lives of prayer. This edition, sadly no longer in print, has been mildly edited and updated in language, to introduce Teresa’s instructions to a new generation.

Teresa begins by pointing to the role the Church plays in their formation and encourages their prayer for its theologians and priests. She urges them in love for each other, detachment from both family and the world, and humility, whether in quietly continuing in one’s prayers amid minor illness and accepting false accusations. Moments of transcendence in contemplative prayer are transitory, but the call to a life of self-sacrifice is ongoing.

She uses images from every day life to illuminate her ideas. For example, she likens prayer to water that cools, cleanses, and quenches thirst. She speaks of vocal, mental, and contemplative prayer, the latter a wordless resting in God’s presence. Her counsel is to be attentive in praying as we are able. Like many spiritual teachers, she invites us to pray the Our Father. She believes the Lord’s Prayer may take us into God’s presence:

“In case you think there isn’t much to gain by practicing vocal prayer perfectly, I must tell you that while you are repeating the Paternoster or some other vocal prayer, the Lord might possibly grant you perfect contemplation. In this way our Lord shows He is listening to the persons speaking to Him. He is speaking to her, suspending her understanding, and taking the words out of her mouth so she cannot speak even if she wants to.”

Thus, she emphasizes that contemplation is a gift of the Lord. The focus is on Jesus, his indwelling of us and presence walking with us, rather than in seeking an experience.

The latter half of the book is a series of talks focusing on the phrases of the Our Father. C. S. Lewis has written of how we may use the prayer as a structure that we “festoon” with our prayers and petitions. Her meditations are something like this, a reflection, I suspect, of how this has been so in her own prayer life. For many of us, the petition “forgive us our sins as we forgive the sins of others” is perhaps the most difficult. Her reflections on this are particularly rich and challenging, emphasizing that our forgiveness of others precedes, at least in intention, the request for forgiveness.

There is a bit of “stream of consciousness” in her writing, probably reflecting the turns of her mind. This warrants the re-reading meditatively of what she has written. I wonder whether perfection, even of contemplation can be attained in this life. There is a strain of that here, but Teresa tempers this with encouragements to practical self-sacrifice, and faithfulness in praying as we are able.

My own experience is that I have learned more about prayer by being in the presence of those who have lived lives of prayer, as I have listened to them pray and talk about their prayer life than by books. While we cannot pray with Teresa, we overhear her prayers and her instruction as one who prays. Little wonder this book has stood the test of time and speaks to us over four centuries later.