Category: Random Thoughts

As a child I remember going on long car rides to visit out of town relatives. These car rides seemed like they lasted for ever but in reality they were only a couple of hours long. On these rides the car radio would be tuned to WCCO and we would listen to what ever was on. On program that I remember listening to on these rides was a brief program by Paul Harvey. Paul Harvey was a news caster who would give news updates at the top of the hour. As a child these news casts weren’t all that interesting to me but in the late afternoon he did a 5 minute broadcast called The Rest of the Story. He would start out the segment with an interesting tidbit about someone, giving you just enough information to peak your interest before cutting away for a commercial break. Harvey would then come back with an interesting twist to the story and would end the segment with the tag line “and now you know the rest of the story, good day.” I can still remember how he would say “good day.”

We just finished Holy Week and I invited you to spend time with a few different scripture passages leading up to Easter morning and the empty tomb. As we head into this post-Easter week I want to invite you again to spend some time pondering some passages that begin to explore “the rest of the story.” We are currently living in “the rest of the story” so you have the opportunity to help shape what that story might look like in your life and lives of those around you.

There are two spiritual practices I invite you to use as you spend time with the scriptures. One is the Prayer of Imagination which I invited you to use last week as we explored scriptures from Holy Week. In this practice you immerse yourself into the passages imagining yourself as one of the characters in the passage. What might you see, smell, hear, or feel as you become that character?

A second way to read through these scripture is a practice known as Lectio Divina or “Divine Reading.” Lectio is a practice about noticing what is grabbing your attention as you read through the passage. This noticing could be a word or phrase that invites you to spend a little time thinking about it. At the end of your Lectio time you ask the question “What is God inviting me to do with what I have been noticing?” Here is a brief step by step guide to Lectio Divina. First, find a quiet place to get comfortable and ask God to help you notice what He wants you to see in the passage. Second, read through the passage a couple of time to simply become familiar with it. You will want to spend a couple of minutes just sitting with the passage. Third, read the passage again this time noticing if there is a word or phase that grabs your attention. Again, spend a couple of minutes sitting with this word or phrase. Fourth, read the passage again paying attention to your word or phrase. This time as you sit with your word or phase notice how this word or phrase makes you feel. Is there an image or memory that your word or phrase evokes in you? Finally, read the passage one more time and as you sit with it ask God what he is inviting you to do with what you have discovered.

The key to both these practices is to allow the Holy Spirit to guide you through the process. These practices are not meant to be studies of the passage. You shouldn’t be jumping around to other passages or books to figure out what the passage means. There is a time and place for this type of work but this is not what either of these practices is about. Here is a link to a guided Lectio Divina for Proverbs 3:5-6 if you think that might be helpful to you.

These are the passages I am inviting you to explore so you may be see “the rest of the story, good day”:

Monday – Matthew 28:11-20
Tuesday – John 21
Wednesday – Acts 2:1-13
Thursday – Ephesians 4:17-32
Friday – 1 Peter 3:8-17
Saturday – 1 John 4:7-21
Sunday – Revelation 21:1-8

What is God inviting you to? This was the question posed to me recently at a three day Ignatian retreat. Durning the first full day of the retreat I keep coming back to this question durning our times of reflection. I couldn’t find an answer. As I worked through day two I still wasn’t sure how I would answer. During my free time at the retreat I was reading the book Befriending our Desires for a class I was taking. It is a great book and its content fit in very nicely to the materials being discussed during our conferences.

For the class I needed to write out five things I learned from the book. I didn’t have a hard time coming up with things I learned but I was having a terrible time trying to write them out. I haven’t written an academic paper in quite some time and felt very frustrated. In the vernacular of Ignatius I had entered a state of desolation. There I was, half way through my first course after re-entering a doctoral program and I was ready to quit. It was as though I finally realized that I actually wasn’t all that smart. But the words of Ignatius reminded me that one does not change course in times of desolation for those things started in consolation. I set aside my writing and decided I needed some rest so I went to bed.

In the morning I was up about 4am (this is actually my normal time to get up). I spent some time with God and the took another shot at writing. This time I was able to get my thoughts down and was ok with what I said. Do you recall the question I started with? What is God inviting me to? Well it appeared that the answer came was I was reflecting on the idea of eros-love and God. The invitation from God was how do you love me? God that is a great question let me thing about that. As a matter of fact I’ll make that one of my action points for the book. This question really does intrigue me. As I was to discover this was only the prelude to the real question.

In our morning prayer the topic was, you guessed it, loving God. We talked about three different Greek words for love eros, philios, and agape. Each of these describes a different kind of love. The priest then turned to the story in John 21 where Jesus is asking Peter is he loves him. Jesus was asking Peter to you agape (divine love) me? [Apologies to my fellow seminarians who actually took Greek and are laughing at my pathetic attempt as talking about it]. Peter’s response was this agape love but rather it was philios (brotherly love). Suddenly the question was Scott do you love (agape) me? I didn’t know how to answer. I was not sure of how I loved God. This question was not the invitation I am leaving retreat with. The thing that God is inviting me to is to deepen my love of God. To do this I need to nurture a deeper understanding of my true self which will then help me to know God deeper and then in turn help me to love God deeper.

Random thoughts have been rambling around in my head for the last couple of days. A three day silent Ignatian retreat will do that to a person. One has a lot of time to simply be still and listen. I can do this at home for shorter periods of time but if I try and take an extended period of quiet things around home just begin to creep in. This is neither good or bad it just happens.

So when I get a chance to get away I do what I can to take advantage of it.

So what does someone do with 72 hours of silence? Listen at the conferences (the retreat leader shares some thoughts with us), pray, sleep, wander, ponder, and eat. The whole retreat is set up so you don’t have to think about anything but God. You sit in the same chair in the chapel, you eat at the same table and chair, and the schedule is the same for all three days so you don’t have to spend time wondering about these things. And it is all done in silence, except for the words of the retreat leader. It is about focusing on the still small voice of God. It’s about a sacred conversation between you and the Creator of all. It’s about being present with God and God alone. He is the true creator of the retreat.

Much of what I am hearing is still a work in progress. I have a lot more pondering to do before I know what exactly it all means. I have created a colorful mind map to try and help me make sense of it all. Some ideas are new, some I have been ruminating on for a short time, and a couple of themes keep coming back. I’ll be sharing about most of this in future postings.

There are two things I want to share here that need little pondering to being to practice but will take a lifetime to perfect. Micah 6:8 says:

He has told you, O man what is good;
And what does the Lord require of you
But to do justice, and to love kindness,
And to walk humbly with your God.

As I look at these words of the prophet Micah I know that I need to do a better job of:

• Doing Justice (as God would deal with people)
• Loving Kindness (as God would love people)
• Walking humble with my God (God’s way, not my way)

What would our cities and nation look like if we (if I) practices these principles from Micah? I can’t tell you what this may look like in your life, I still need to fully understand what it will look like in my life. The key is understanding what God’s want from you not what you want God to be for you.

The second thing I need to do a better job at is simply noticing God. Where is it I encounter God during the day. In my Soul Care class I have my students do a God Hunt. An exercise where the spend some time each day reflecting on when and where they noticed God. It could be an encounter with another person, it could be in scripture, or it could be in a couple beautiful Arizona sunset. We can encounter God in so many different ways that sometimes I think we (I) take God’s gifts to us for granted. There is a practice that goes by many different names The Examen of Consciousness, The Daily Examen, or Praying Backwards Through The Day that is designed to get one reflecting on the day one just lived. By noticing God we can better understand who God is and how He is choosing you use us in His work here on planet earth.

My parting words of action to you from what I have been pondering while sitting with God: do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with God, and notice what God is doing around you; then as Henry Blackaby would say, “join him.”