Spiritual Formation

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

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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.

Review: Centering Prayer

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Centering Prayer, Brian D. Russell. Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2021.

Summary: An introduction to the practice of centering prayer with practical helps and theological basis, by a practitioner who found the practice transformative.

Brian Russell was an “all in” Christian–a pastor and seminary professor. Then after a twenty year marriage, he found himself divorced. All the things that had worked suddenly didn’t. It was at this point that he discovered the ancient practice of centering prayer, and in that discovered in new ways the love of God, inward healing, and what it means to love and be present to other people. In this book, he offers a practical guide for others to enter into this practice and how it may change them.

He begins with an explanation of what centering prayer is, describing it as entering into “objectless awareness.” He offers this description:

“Entering into ‘objectless awareness’ is not about dissolving into the Divine or losing our identity as an individual created being. It is about embracing the silence as a new way of perceiving or experiencing consciousness. We are no longer ‘seeing’ through the lens of a subject pondering some object. Instead, we exist in these moments in a space of silence in which we may experience our truest self being fully known by God” (p. 17).

He offers practical steps for beginning addressing time, duration (it’s OK to begin with 1-2 minutes), atmosphere, setting our intention and choosing a prayer word to deal with our thoughts. It turns out that stray thoughts are both the challenge and opportunity of centering prayer. They draw us away from silence but our non-judging awareness and use of a prayer word like “Jesus” to return to being present to God is the opportunity. He shares four “r’s” that serve as classic advice:

  • Resist no thought.
  • Retain no thought.
  • React to no thought.
  • Return ever so gently to the sacred word.

In the following seven chapters comprising the first part of this work he addresses other aspects of centering prayer. He articulates why our souls need solitude. He talks about our feeling of failure as we deal with distractions and how important the step of gently returning to our sacred word again and again may be. He offers that centering prayer is a journey into the depths of God’s love as we say “yes” to the invitation to be present to God. He differentiates it from Eastern forms of meditation or mindfulness training in that our silence is consent for God to commune with us at a heart level. We grow in surrender through the practices of the four “r’s”. He cautions against our desire for the spectacular, for some “result,” and learning to appreciate that silence with God is enough.

The second part of the book turns to the theology behind the idea of a journey into the depths of God’s holy love. He unpacks Bernard of Clairvaux’s four loves: the love of self for the sake of self, the love of God for the sake of God, the love of God for the sake of God, and finally, the love of self for the sake of God. Finally he discusses fear and love and that our only fear is of the God who loves us utterly and liberates us of all fears.

Part three of the work returns to what he so aptly calls our “hamster-wheel minds.” He offers a discussion of Evagrius’s eight distracting thoughts to help us discern the kinds of thoughts that distract us and how the surrender of these allows God’s deep transformative work on our unconscious drives. Then in part four he turns to how this process brings to surface our “false self” and using a Star Wars image, takes us into the cave where we confront ourselves, where our deep wounds and our stratagems to bolster ourselves are laid bare to the overwhelming love of God for us that frees us to break through to our true selves and embark on the upward spiral of God’s love.

The book concludes with the fruits of centering prayer. Centering prayer propels us back into the world. Being present to God enables us to be more fully present to people, to create spaces where they know they are loved by God, and by us. And sometimes that will involve forgiveness.

I found this book both remarkably practical and inspiring in its vision of transformation that reflects the experience of the author. While Russell cautions that our process of growing into intimacy with God is a lifelong process, I was a bit concerned with the presentation of centering prayer as the “silver bullet” to breakthrough. No doubt, there was an aspect in which this was so for the author and he is careful to caution against seeking the spectacular. But in reading the acknowledgements, there is evidence of spiritual counsel and Christian community that played an important role in going deeper in this practice, as did rich practices of spiritual reading. No mention of spiritual direction is made, yet for many, the companionship of spiritual friends who attend and discern may also be very important.

Yet there is this to be said. Russell has given us one of the most helpful guides to centering prayer I’ve read, combining practicalities and spiritual groundwork with a clarity that offers steps for the beginner and rich fare for those more experienced in these practices. He inspired me to renew a practice of centering prayer I’d allowed to lapse. I won’t make any claims other than it has been good to sit quietly in God’s presence. I sense Brian would say, that is good enough.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: The Journey Toward Wholeness

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The Journey Toward Wholeness, Suzanne Stabile. Downers Grove: IVP/Formatio, 2021.

Summary: Draws on the wisdom of the Enneagram to help focus on our responses to stress, both as they reflect our dominant and repressed centers of intelligence intelligence.

Suzanne has written a couple very popular books on the Enneagram, The Road Back to You (review) and The Path Between Us (review). The first is an introduction to the Enneagram and how it contributes to self-understanding. The second discusses how persons who are different Enneagram types interact with each other. This book focuses in on how different Enneagram types respond under stress, and how one might grow into health.

The book focuses on two aspects of the Enneagram. The first has to do with what Enneagram Triad our type is within. There are three triads. The Feeling Triad includes those who are 2s, 3s, and 4s, the Thinking Triad includes those who 5s, 6s, and 7s, and the Doing Triad, those who are 8s, 9s, and 1s. For each type in the Triad, our response to stress will reflect our dominant intelligence–feeling, doing, thinking. We are inclined to ask, “what am I feeling?” or “what am I thinking?” or “what is to be done?” depending on our type. Of course, none of these responses alone are always enough, and healthy responses to stress draw upon the best of all three. This comes by understanding the numbers we move toward in stress and security for our particular type, and moving to the healthy sides of these numbers. Stabile offers introductions to each Triad and then a chapter for each type in the Triad. She begins with an illustrative story, how a particular type sees the world, the type’s response to stress, including the Enneagram type we move toward in stress, a key to healthy response, practices to try and the type we move toward in security.

The second part of the book focuses on our number’s “Stance” which has to do with which particular center we tend to repress in our stress responses. The stances are the Withdrawing Stance (represses doing), including those who are 4s, 5s, and 9s, the Aggressive Stance (represses feeling), including those who are 3s, 7s, and 8s, and the Dependent Stance (represses thinking), including the 1s, 2s, and 6s. What this means is that without work, we draw on only two of the three intelligences when we respond to stress. Again, Stabile offers an introduction to each stance, and a chapter for each type within a stance and resources for incorporating the repressed intelligence. Particularly helpful for each type are the Transformative Possibilities, a list of suggestions for one’s type.

I found that the material for my type made sense, as well as making sense of how colleagues and friends who are different types respond. I am one of those Withdrawing Types, and the encouragement to wade into discussions and to share my observations and thinking is especially helpful. Obviously, knowing one’s Enneagram type helps, so I would encourage reading The Road Back to You or another introduction to the Enneagram before, or along with, this book. What was uniquely helpful in this book was to understand my default responses to stress and to discover that I have options and am not stuck with the default.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: Stability

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Stability, Nathan Oates. Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2021.

Summary: An exploration of the Benedictine commitment to stability, and what it can meet to sink our roots deeply, first into Christ, and then into the people and places to which he invites us.

We are a society on the move. I’m thinking just now of our church community. We have been a part of that community for 31 years and I can only think of eight people who were there when we came. Some of the departures were for very good reasons, to launch ministry elsewhere or to take a job that made sense for their calling. Some moved to nicer homes further away, and soon after found another church. Some just moved on for various reasons of dissatisfaction. At one point, during a difficult season when a number left, I described this as having pieces ripped out of my favorite shirt. Those departures hurt the most, and like other losses, I may not think of it as much, but the grief never goes away.

When Nathan Oates writes about stability, he is not insisting that we all stay put but rather that the stability that puts down deep roots, with Christ and with people in a place, is what births meaningful movement. It is different from the kind of restless movement of the gyrovague, that keeps thinking that the next new thing will satisfy our longings. (I should mention that the author does believe leaving abusive situations warranted.)

Oates turned to studying the life and rule of St. Benedict, the father of Western monasticism. Benedict gathered communities of those who wanted to set themselves apart from the world and created a Rule to govern their communal life. One of the problems he encountered was those who would never settle down in one place and it was he who coined the term gyrovague. His answer? He asked those who would join his communities to take a vow of stability: “to seek God in this place with this community under the guidelines established by this rule.” It was a commitment to a place, a people, and a purpose. Oates roots this call to stability in the omnipresence of God. We don’t have to go somewhere else to find God. Why then is there so much going in scripture? It is not in order to find God or whatever we are looking for, but rather that we have found what we are looking for.

Oates took his study of Benedict to another level, spending three weeks at the monastery at Norsia where the movement began. One of his first discoveries is to discover his days (and nights) being organized around prayer, seven times a day, where people scheduled meeting up “after Lauds.” You prayed more than you ate–two meals a day. Oates found himself constantly hungry. Instead of taking a break to pray, they took breaks from prayers, which Oates discovered is the monks’ real work. He learns that the formative work of stability comes as one goes deeper when things get hard, much like the choice every married couple faces. In turn, the stability of the monks becomes “the footing” for others around them. He describes the security the monks of Tibhirine provided their village–even when they suffered the death of a number of community members in a raid.

Oates sought to apply all this in his own church community, which led to four practices. First was to regularly celebrate the root of stability that bore fruit in the lives of people–birthdays, anniversaries, and even departures. Second, they valued the permanency of people. In this congregation it meant “raising our kids together.” Earlier, he speaks of a group of men who participated in his son’s “rite of passage” into adulthood. Third, they developed practices of placement, various traditions of community shared year after year–common meals and prayers, rites of passage, celebrations, and benedictions. Finally, he contends that families remain the primary formational communities (I wish he would have said more here about those who are not in families, where the church is family).

He concludes with an interesting question: where do we stay from here? The real issue is not just staying in a place or going. It is about radical stability–going deeper in Christ, growing closer to God. It has to do with prayer. The monks prayed a lot, and the point was deepening intimacy with God. He makes me wonder if so much of our present instability attests to how distant God is for us, and how so much of our grasping and contending is really an exercise in “looking for love in all the wrong places.” Oates believes the monastic practice of stability is something that God can use to renew our relationships, churches, and communities. So, where will you stay from here?

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: Aging Faithfully

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Aging Faithfully, Alice Fryling. Colorado Springs, NavPress, 2021.

Summary: An exploration of the questions that come with the changes of growing older and the invitations of God in those changes.

It seems that the mantra among those of my age group is “growing old ain’t for sissies.” You might think that those of us who have been at this game of life for awhile might have it figured out. What some may not realize is this is a new game, and we are rank beginners at it. Our bodies are changing, we are retiring from work, and maybe other pursuits of earlier years, our relationships with family, church, and others may be changing, and even our relationship with God may be changing as we let go of old patterns and open up to new ones. There are fears: about finances, about our relationship with our children, about losses of mental and physical abilities, and what the process of dying will be like for us.

Alice Fryling has written a beautiful book that engages all of these matters, some of which may even be hard to talk about and yet they may not be far from our thoughts. She writes as one in the midst of this process, seeing changes in her life situation, her body, and even in the things she wants to do and believes are God’s invitations. She shares her own journey even as she helps us to explore the contours of ours.

She begins by acknowledging that we are on a journey into the unknown, but that like the ancient explorers, it may lead to new places we did not know were there. She discusses retirement, not only from work but also some of the former activities that came with our working lives. Successive images of blossoms blooming and fallen, sap running, fruitfulness, and the best wine and new wineskins offer hope for what is fermenting, growing anew in our lives. She explores aging as a time of new birth, shedding the lies of the false self, even good, spiritual lies that no longer have a hold on us as we embrace what Christ is forming in us.

She acknowledges the losses of past work, of body, the importance of listening to the body’s messages and not denying the losses, but bringing them to God and opening ourselves to how we might be renewed inwardly when our bodies begin failing us. She talks about how we may struggle with the loss of control that sleep represents, and observes that insomnia, an accompaniment of aging, is also a loss of control, and another opportunity to surrender to the care of God. She considers letting go and our resistance to it. She observes how letting go may be a gift, as we acknowledge the changing desires in our hearts. We give up on “shoulding” and give ourselves to the “discipline of irresponsibility” that may be the first steps to responding to the Spirit’s invitations.

She confronts our fears and where we find peace as God leads us a step at a time. She deals with feelings of uselessness, loneliness, brokenness, and the concerns of the last season of our lives. Then in the epilogue, there is a wonderful summary by the decades of the sixties, seventies, and eighties of the questions that we may ask ourselves, and the sound counsel at any age that what we need are people who listen, not to solve us, but to draw us out. Appendices offer help with relevant scripture passages, an interview with her husband Bob, and a discussion what different groups–parents and children–would have the others know.

Alice Fryling’s honesty about questions, losses, letting go, and how she has found hope and peace is helpful. If you’ve reached our age, you are asking the questions and it helps to know one isn’t alone. Reflection questions and spiritual practices concluding the chapters offer opportunities to begin to listen for the invitations of God of which she speaks. As she proposes, the coming years are undiscovered country for all of us. I long not so much to know what they hold as to be found faithful in Christ to the end. Fryling offers the encouragement that the Lord desires this for us even more than we do, and will guide us safe home.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.