Tag Archives: life

Sabbath and the False Self

Henri Nouwen writes in The Way of the Heart that “solitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we remain victims of society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self.” He explores how we can fashion our own desert where we can withdraw (since we are not in a monastery), shake off our compulsions, and cultivate a life in the presence of the Jesus. “Solitude,” he writes, “is not simply a means to an end. Solitude is its own end. It is the place where Christ remodels us in his own image and frees us.” Nouwen notes that since our secular culture does not offer us spiritual disciplines, we have to cultivate our own. “We are responsible for our own solitude,” he argues. I believe the baby step to begin the pathway to this kind of transforming solitude is Sabbath-keeping. I have yet to find a detour around this. Read more.

Staying Grounded

Last year, a large psychiatric hospital in Queens opened up a small bookstore a few blocks from my house. The employees are “severely mentally ill adult patients.” I initially began going to buy cheap, second-hand books for $2.00 or less. But I have found myself returning more and more. Why? I finally got it. I return for my soul. I love being with the staff. They are kind, unassuming, and unpretentious. I finally understood why Henri Nouwen became a chaplain for mentally and physically challenged adults at L’Arche. His words below are worth reading slowly. “The first thing that struck me when I came to live in a house for mentally handicapped people was their liking or disliking me had absolutely nothing to do with any of the many useful things I had done until then. Since nobody could read my books, they could not impress anyone, and since most of them never went to. Read more.

Am I Growing as a Leader?

There are few things the world needs more than leaders who know themselves and know God, who are able to differentiate from the countless voices around them and do the Father’s will. The following are a few makers of a life with a growing, differentiated self: Life becomes easier. More ability to choose between thinking and feeling. More ability to choose one’s emotions. Less worry about what other’s think. People in one’s family are doing better. Goals become clearer. An ability to “stay out” of others’ emotions. More curiosity. Clearer thinking. Thinking systems more often. Better health, fewer symptoms of all kinds. Able to take a well, thought-out position. More goals become realities. Better, cleaner relationships Are you progressing on this difficult journey of leading others? Let me encourage you to read, or re-read, chapter four in Emotionally Healthy Spirituality (“Know Yourself that You May Know God”) and The Emotionally Healthy Woman (This is. Read more.

A Theology of Play

Like most leaders I tend to work too much. My family didn’t do play. We worked hard. I naturally bought this into my leadership for Christ over the last 25 years at New Life. Jurgen Moltmann’s, A Theology of Play (out of print of course), has the best theology I have read on this topic. The following are his few nuggets of gold from his book as described in Ben Witherton III ‘s, The Rest of Life: 1. Play foreshadows the joy of the eschaton where all manner of drudgery and disease and decay and death will be left behind. It is not useless activity. 2. Play is a celebration of life lived to its fullest. 3. In play we emulate God’s actions who did not create the universe because it was a necessity. God is playful. He enjoys creating and playing. 4. “Play relativizes our ‘over-seriousness’ toward life, filling us with a spirit of joy. Read more.

Only Silent Leaders Hear

Rosa Parks was an African-American woman living in the segregated South in the 1950s. On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks did something she was not supposed to do: she sat down at the front of a bus in one of the seats reserved for whites — a dangerous, daring, and provocative act in a racist society. [When asked,] “Why did you sit down at the front of the bus that day?” Rosa Parks did not say that she sat down to launch a movement . . . She said, “I sat down because I was tired.” She meant that her soul was tired, her heart was tired, her whole being was tired (quoted in The Emotionally Healthy Woman, by Geri Scazzero). Rosa Parks made a decision that day to live divided no more. Rosa Parks said to herself: “I cannot not do this.” She changed history. Leadership requires we ask the difficult question: “Is the life. Read more.

Leadership: Keeping our Role and Soul Connected

One of the most important tasks for us as leaders is to keep our roles and souls connected. How much of your life is divided or involves pretending? How much of your life is wearing other people’s faces? Ananias and Sapphira were disconnected internally and, for all intents and purposes, stopped the great move of God in the book of Acts (see Acts 5:1-11). How do we live faithfully to our God-given, true selves when enormous pressure comes at us to put on a “pretend” self? In this message on “The Holy Spirit and Your Integrity,” I unpack this theme. At the end of this message I talk about our need for 3 things: 1. Space. We need times of letting go of our roles and our work life in order to listen deeply to our true selves in God. Nobody can do that inner work for us. 2. Suffering. Richard Rohr reminds us that. Read more.

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