On Becoming a Human Being Fully Alive - Makoto Fujimura No. 96

Josh talks with painter, author, arts advocate Makoto Fujimura about the connections between creativity and prayer. To introduce Makoto Josh offers a reflection on Makoto as a 'worldly mystic,' how he offers for us in his paintings and writings ways to rediscover our own sacred yet earthly existence.

The video referenced "Mako Fujimura's Golden Sea": youtu.be/2B7_8w_FzPw

makotofujimura.com

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theinvitationcenter.org/school-of-prayer

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theinvitationcenter.org/socl

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Getting Honest with God & Belonging to Myself w/ Kristi Hepp No. 95

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Josh talks with Kristi Hepp about her new record "In Between the Gardens." This is the third episode that maps Josh's history with Oklahoma City where Kristi originally hails from. The focus question of this episode is the focus question of Kristi's record, what is a human being fully alive? In this episode, we discuss whether we could make a record that Kristi would want to listen to. Can she belong to herself? Can she even enjoy the sound of her own voice singing her own songs? We discuss the necessary fear and pain that the Holy Spirit invites us to name, and how loving ourselves requires us to receive God's love. And how this means getting honest with God about our deepest questions, doubts, and even anger.

Please support and share Kristi's music: kristihepp.bandcamp.com/album/in-betw…n-the-gardens

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To learn about the Invitation School of Prayer:
theinvitationcenter.org/school-of-prayer

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theinvitationcenter.org/socl

Be sure to purchase this new record!

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Suffering & The Mystical Body of Christ w/ Charlie Hall No. 94

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What do we do with suffering? Why would we want to cooperate with the pain? How can suffering be helpful?

There are many reasons to be concerned with the way organized religion handles these very vulnerable questions. In this episode, I talk with worship leader Charlie Hall, an old friend about these things. That we can engage such vulnerabilities after so much time--this bears witness to the mystical body of Christ that exists beyond time and space.

The prayer for this episode: that we might recover a deeper trust in God and other people, to be honest about our suffering, and not alone.

I visited Oklahoma City in December of 2017 to gain support during the launch of the Invitation as a not-for-profit. OKC had been a spiritual home for much of my early adulthood. This conversation with worship leader, Charlie Hall is the second of two conversations I recorded during that trip. As I review the previous conversation with Brock Bingaman (episode #94) and this one with Charlie, my heart is full of gratitude for the spiritual reality of the church.

All music by Josh Banner except the closing track, Mystery is by Charlie Hall from his album, 2008 record The Bright Sadness, Six Steps Records.

Subscribe to the Invitation podcast:
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To learn about the Invitation School of Prayer:
theinvitationcenter.org/school-of-prayer

To learn about the School of Contemplative Listening:
theinvitationcenter.org/socl

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The Jesus Prayer & the Philokalia w/ Brock Bingaman No. 93

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Maybe breath prayer could be helpful for your Lenten journey this year?

This is a conversation I had with Brock Bingaman, pastor of All Saints Community Church in Oklahoma City, about the Jesus Prayer and a book he co-edited on the Philokalia. Brock is an old friend I was glad to reconnect with for this conversation.

Books recommended in this episode:

The Philokalia: A Classic Text of Orthodox Spirituality ed. Brock Bingaman and Bradley Nassif;

The Orthodox Way, Kalistos Ware;

Desert Fathers and Mothers: Early Christian Wisdom Sayings—Annotated & Explained, Christine Valters Paintner

Subscribe to the Invitation podcast:
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To learn about the Invitation School of Prayer:
theinvitationcenter.org/school-of-prayer

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theinvitationcenter.org/socl

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Screwing Around With Our Dependencies in Lent No. 92

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This episode is a meditation on screwing with our dependencies in Lent.

In the language of the Twelve Steps of addiction recovery: we are powerless over our drug of choice, and our lives as we know them are unmanageable.

The purpose of Lent is to subvert our addictions that we might become more dependent upon the love of God. But we cannot do this easily. We cannot force our way toward healing and holiness. When we over-function and strive toward God, we set ourselves up for regression.

In this episode we turn to the wisdom of Thomas a’Kempis, that we “uproot just one vice per year.” This is to say we must make a plan for Lent that is gracefully approachable.

I encourage you to use the 40 Ways to Spend Five Minutes with God prayer guide for your Lenten practice.

Download a digital copy of the prayer guide
Download a’Kempis The Imitation of Christ chapter 11

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Advent Meditations Pt VI Before God We Are Always Beginners No. 91

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This is the conclusion of the six-part series of a six-part series of Advent meditations using the Invitation prayer guide, 40 Ways to Spend 5 Minutes with God. In this meditation, Josh reads from the end of the prayer guide a meditation on how before God we are always beginners.

This prayer guide, first written in 2015 has been substantially re-written with new prayer practices and Biblical rationale.



Download a digital copy of the prayer guide

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Advent Meditations Pt V Longing & Expectation in the SOUL No. 90

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Let's return to prayer, to longing and expectation in and through the soul during Advent.

In this meditation, Josh offers a short meditation of praying with the soul. We attended to our bodies in the previous episode. We are bodies. We are also souls. This is the fifth of a six-part series of Advent meditations using the Invitation prayer guide, 40 Ways to Spend 5 Minutes with God.

This prayer guide, first written in 2015 has been substantially re-written with new prayer practices and Biblical rationale.



Download a digital copy of the prayer guide

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Advent Meditations Pt IV Longing & Expectation in our STRENGTH No. 89

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Let's return to prayer, to longing and expectation in and through our bodies during Advent.

In this meditation, Josh offers a short meditation of praying with our strength, in and through our bodies. This is the second of a six-part series of Advent meditations using the Invitation prayer guide, 40 Ways to Spend 5 Minutes with God.

This prayer guide, first written in 2015 has been substantially re-written with new prayer practices and Biblical rationale.



Download a digital copy of the prayer guide

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Advent Meditations Pt III Longing & Expectation in our Minds No. 88

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Let's return to prayer, to longing and expectation in our minds during Advent.

In this meditation, Josh offers a short meditation of praying with the mind. This is the second of a six-part series of Advent meditations using the Invitation prayer guide, 40 Ways to Spend 5 Minutes with God.

This prayer guide, first written in 2015 has been substantially re-written with new prayer practices and Biblical rationale.



Download a digital copy of the prayer guide

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Advent Meditations Pt II Longing & Expectation in our Hearts No. 87

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Let's return to prayer, to longing and expectation in our hearts during Advent.

In this meditation, Josh offers a short meditation of praying with the heart. This is the second of a six-part series of Advent meditations using the Invitation prayer guide, 40 Ways to Spend 5 Minutes with God.

This prayer guide, first written in 2015 has been substantially re-written with new prayer practices and Biblical rationale.



Download a digital copy of the prayer guide

Advent 2023 Meditations with New Prayer Guide! No. 86

Let's return to prayer, to longing and expectation during Advent.

There are many reasons why we need to be saved. Some days it feels like we'll never be saved. Then I realize, Oh...I've forgotten my prayer, of course the world seems dark. 
Advent prayer is about turning to the light. In this meditation, I offer the first of a six-part series of Advent meditations using the Invitation prayer guide, 40 Ways to Spend 5 Minutes with God.

This prayer guide, first written in 2015 has been substantially re-written with new prayer practices and Biblical rationale.

Download a digital copy of the prayer guide

From Repentance to Reparations to Reconciliation to Repast w/ Greg Thompson Pt II No. 85

This is part II of a conversation that is very important to me, a conversation that I hope might become important to you too. Notice the last three episodes are with friends who are dear. Notice how vulnerability courses through these conversations. Below I’ve written a bit more about the connections between spiritual friendship, weakness and vulnerability.

It is good to have you on this journey. May you find deeper love and connection in and through your own weaknesses.

Josh

No. 85 Show Notes:

Josh and Greg explore Greg's discernment to divest his ordination, leave local church ministry to explore different creative approaches to healing racism. Previously Greg had described his mission in the three elements of the political, the contemplative, and the convivial. Here in part two Greg casts the vision of moving from repentance to reparations to reconciliation to repast.

Start at @17:00 to skip past the introduction directly to the conversation with Greg.

Please visit: www.vuproject.org

For more information on the Invitation School of Prayer: theinvitationcenter.org/school-of-prayer

Subscribe to Invitation updates: theinvitationcenter.org/subscribe

“A Brief Review of Why Anyone Should Engage Vulnerability in Public”

A line in a sermon I preached a few times in 2015: “Come on inside for a nice hot cup of die to yourself.” I had asked the congregation to imagine if we placed such a phrase on the roadside marquee. I barely knew what I was talking about in that sermon. At least I knew enough to want to suggest the primary paradigm of following Jesus is cruciformity, our capacity to continue dying to ourselves.

I didn’t understand how much more suffering I was personally opening myself to. I think often about how one of my spiritual mothers described our journey in Christ as “holy agony.” The further I move into my awareness of God’s active presence in my life, the weaker I seem to become. Greater love and patience combined with earnest frailty.

One tangible feature of how I’m drinking the cup of “die to myself” is expressed in my inability to talk about much of anything without bearing witness to my weaknesses and failures. We live in a fraught, polarized world. How do I avoid contributing to the noise? By appealing to the one thing we all have in common: we are all poor and needy. The noise of vitriol oppresses and squeezes us into alienated confinement. We are all in desperate need of the merciful spaciousness of God. The only way into this space is through the doorway of weakness. And no one opens that door or drinks this cup if they aren’t able to be honest and vulnerable about their weaknesses.

I’m not saying that everyone needs to get vulnerable on a podcast. I’m saying that I do not know how to develop a public conversation about God without actively de-centering my ego so that you can especially find space for yourself. Inviting you to consider the relationship between contemplative spirituality and justice is to invite you into a posture of need. These are practiced, lived, conscious realities not mere abstract ideas. As we come to a more particular, immediate sense of our need, we will more freely open ourselves to moments of repast, to delight in being present to each other around the table.

Getting Vulnerable w/ Greg Thompson No. 84

In this episode Josh opens up a conversation with Greg Thompson about his book co-authored with Duke Kwon, Reparations: A Christian Call to Repentance & Repair. Yet in the process of attempting to create a conversation about healing the ravages of white supremacy, Josh is confronted with his own personal instability. Does he belong to himself enough to be able to steward for others conversations about healing toward reconciliation? How is it that sharing our weaknesses with each other allows us to belong to each other?

This episode is an introduction to Greg and his movement out of pastoral leadership into Voices Underground, an organization committed to erecting a national monument to the Underground Railroad. Greg describes how his mission that lies at the intersection of the political, contemplative, and convivial led him to go to culinary school open a restaurant and a cocktail bar.

In part II of this conversation, Josh and Greg go more deeply into the meaning and practice of reparations.

Start at @15:00 to skip past the introduction directly to the conversation with Greg.

Please visit: www.vuproject.org
For more information on the Invitation School of Prayer: theinvitationcenter.org/school-of-prayer

Subscribe to Invitation updates: theinvitationcenter.org/subscribe

Forum on Spiritual Direction Third Conversation w/ Cami Beercroft Mann Part II

Spiritual Direction Can Solve (almost) All of the World's Problems.

Can it?

This is the sedon part of our third conversation as Cami and I continue to unpack this question of spiritual direction. What is it? What’s it for? Is it really so vital? Why?

Cami and I engage in an extended contemplative conversation to discern and tease out the dignifying nature of spiritual direction. This is to say we talk about the practice of spiritual direction by practicing spiritual direction. While our society is one of oppression, pressing down upon and minimizing us, the contemplative space of spiritual direction provides a way for us to rediscover the enormity of each other, the profound dignity of each other.

Other avenues of engaging us in this practice:

We are currently registering for new cohorts of SOP & SOCL to begin at the end of the summer and early fall.
The School of Prayer, a nine-month study and practice of the rule of life.
The School of Contemplative Listening, a two-year certification in spiritual direction.

We are also registering for the August 9-10 Invitation Family Camp, a 24 hour, overnight experience for participants in the Invitation formation schools and friends of the Invitation.

TBA: The Failure Lab, a three-month study and and practice of confession and lamentation.

Partner with us: how can the Invitation serve you, your staff, organization, or community? We value your friendship, prayer, and financial support. One-time or recurring donations can be set up HERE at this link.

Peace of Christ to you!

Josh

Forum on Spiritual Direction Third Conversation w/ Cami Beercroft Mann Part I

Spiritual Direction Can Solve (almost) All of the World's Problems.

Can it?

This is the first part of our third conversation as Cami and I continue to unpack this question of spiritual direction. What is it? What’s it for? Is it really so vital? Why?

Cami and I engage in an extended contemplative conversation to discern and tease out the dignifying nature of spiritual direction. This is to say we talk about the practice of spiritual direction by practicing spiritual direction. While our society is one of oppression, pressing down upon and minimizing us, the contemplative space of spiritual direction provides a way for us to rediscover the enormity of each other, the profound dignity of each other.

Other avenues of engaging us in this practice:

We are currently registering for new cohorts of SOP & SOCL to begin at the end of the summer and early fall.
The School of Prayer, a nine-month study and practice of the rule of life.
The School of Contemplative Listening, a two-year certification in spiritual direction.

We are also registering for the August 9-10 Invitation Family Camp, a 24 hour, overnight experience for participants in the Invitation formation schools and friends of the Invitation.

TBA: The Failure Lab, a three-month study and and practice of confession and lamentation.

Partner with us: how can the Invitation serve you, your staff, organization, or community? We value your friendship, prayer, and financial support. One-time or recurring donations can be set up HERE at this link.

Peace of Christ to you!

Josh

"Humans Are Like Carrots" - Forum on Spiritual Direction w/ Cami Beercroft Mann No. 80

Spiritual Direction Can Solve (almost) All of the World's Problems.

Can it?

This is our second full conversation of the Forum on Spiritual Direction where we continue to discern the focus question for discernment, "Can Spiritual Direction Solve (Almost) All of Our Problems?"

Cami and I engage in an extended contemplative conversation to discern and tease out the dignifying nature of spiritual direction. This is to say we talk about the practice of spiritual direction by practicing spiritual direction. While our society is one of oppression, pressing down upon and minimizing us, the contemplative space of spiritual direction provides a way for us to rediscover the enormity of each other, the profound dignity of each other.

Carrots grow best in a loose, fluffy, well-draining soil. Gardeners call this “fertile sandy loam.” If planted in tightly compacted, rocky soil with clods and debris, carrots growth will not only be stunted. They will become twisted, distorted knots.

Human beings also need ample space, the comfort of love, patience, and kindness to flourish. Our society and sadly even the church at times are oppressive in ways that define our individual and collective experience of trauma, the arrested development of of spiritual, mental, and even physical health.

We believe that spiritual direction, careful, contemplative listening is the most effective way for humans to help each other discover and rediscover this kind of flourishing.

For those interested in an in-person retreat to further engage this question of spiritual direction, we are gathering people for a March 16-18 retreat here in West Michigan. Email Josh with your interest.

Other avenues of engaging us in this practice:

The School of Prayer, a nine-month study and practice of the rule of life.

The School of Contemplative Listening, a two-year certification in spiritual direction.

TBA: The Failure Lab, a three-month study and and practice of confession and lamentation.

Partner with us: how can the Invitation serve you, your staff, organization, or community? We value your friendship, prayer, and financial support. One-time or recurring donations can be set up HERE at this link.

Peace of Christ to you!

Josh

"Composting Failure" - Forum on Spiritual Direction No. 79

Spiritual Direction Can Solve (almost) All of the World's Problems.

Can it?

This episode something of an experiment for the Forum on Spiritual Direction. As I have struggled to accept my own failures, I offer some of my weaknesses and questions with you as an opportunity to explore the focus question of this series: can spiritual direction solve (almost) all of the world's problems? This episode turns out to be a kind of audio essay with no specific final point, no definite idea. Mostly I am looking to share myself and to welcome you deeper into this conversation I’m having with Cami.

Over the holiday while home, I was prompted by the previous Forum discussion with Cami about the spirituality of our origins. So I take you on an audio walk around the Illinois farm where I was raised. I then share some further reflections while on retreat at St. Gregory's Abbey in Three Rivers Michigan.

I’m considering how deep listening to our failures is a necessary, essential a gift for the sake of our healing and growth. Failures can become compost!

Much Love to you!

Josh

**The picture I’ve used for this episode is from our family farm, taken the morning of January 3, 2023

Spiritual Direction Can Solve (almost) All of the World's Problems - A Forum on SD Intro No. 78

Spiritual Direction Can Solve (almost) All of the World's Problems.

Can it?

This is the second half of our new series with Cami Mann, "The Forum on Spiritual Direction.’ In this session Cami beautifully invites us into her journey in and out and back into her Catholic faith practice. She shares some of her own trauma, and begins to map out the unique charism of her trauma informed practice of spiritual direction.

In the scope of this series, you are invited to engage at least two zoom conversations and to even attend an in-person retreat. Details on these events along with a working outline of the Forum can be found HERE.

Josh and Cami serve as the co-directors of the Invitation School of Contemplative Listening, a study and practice of spiritual direction at the vital intersection of contemplation and justice.

‘Yes’ to Frailty

The Invitation Podcast has always consisted of guided prayers, meditations, and spiritual conversations. My interest has not been in teaching the ideas of formation but to invite listeners into the experiential, transformative reality of God.

This Forum series with Cami is proving to be the most substantial documentation I’ve offered to date of this sacred, contemplative space. I eagerly offer these things to you with an evangelical zeal that I thought I had forgotten. I’m jealous for you to get your heart and mind into this transformative reality too. Yet, I’m attempting to invite you to this space with patience and generosity. Genuine, thoughtful exchange is at a premium today. To engage you in these things in any way is precious and holy. The question is how to be enthusiastic, eager, even zealous to connect with you and yet, and yet….to not wear out my welcome, to not scare you away, to not impose myself upon you, to not create another set of “shoulds” for you to attain, another stage for you to perform on.

As I mention in this episode, I’m thinking about the podcast, this Forum especially, as a message in a bottle. If you are the one who has found my bottle, you will find scraps of paper stuffed inside that read:

Please, don’t “should” on yourself.

Please, notice my affection is for you to be you as you are, messy, disregulated, riddled with doubt.

Please, we are only as gentle with others as we are with ourselves.

I've been thinking about the intimate relationship between madness and genius. This spectrum is well researched in terms of our greatest artists and thinkers. To dream dreams, to hope with vision that is beyond our current conceptual realities requires one to be relatively unstable, flexible, even crazy. I immediately think of St Francis stripping naked and giving away all his earthly possessions. Do you recall any holy fools? Do you hold them at arms length with indifference? I have. Today, they are making more and more sense, a different kind of sense. Sixth grader Kadisha Hamed said, Mr. Banner, that doesn’t make sense” after I had read Robert Frost to her class. I replied so many years ago, “it doesn’t have to make sense in order to make sense.” Foolishness. Instability. Madness.

C.S. Lewis famously taught us that Jesus must either be Lord, liar, or lunatic. He cannot be all of those things. Last night in our School of Prayer cohort, one participant quoted Shane Claiborne that those following Jesus should like him “comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” More madness, yet genius.

I definitely do not want here to recognize my own genius. I’m suggesting that being formed in Christ, to become like him, this requires of us a level of instability to see what he sees, to love what he loves, and to love how he loves. It’s the chicken and the egg. We need a particular kind of instability, a familiarity with our abundant weaknesses and failures, to live as confessional beings. The ancients called this “compunction,” when the ego is punctured, when all my modes of self-determination have been frayed, when I can no longer pull myself together and function as a socially acceptable, productive, consuming member of society. When my ego is punctured, when my self-determination is flattened and emptied, I have created more space for the Spirit to fill and move in and through me.

The cruciform irony is that my weakness is the greatest gift I have to offer you. In our nothingness we can find more ready access to everything of God. This will always come off as foolishness even to the religious establishment. I will say that the arena of spiritual direction, to spend an hour listening for the movements of the Holy Spirit in another person, to not teach, instruct, or fix that person, this madness is a wager on the genius of Christ revealed in others as they are without explanation or qualification.

I pray you will find a way to be uncouth today, to fall off your rocker. Oh that you will become unmoored and even dizzy in your freedom to love God, others, and even yourself in unnecessary, extravagant ways.

Spiritual Direction Can Solve (almost) All of the World's Problems - A Forum on SD Intro No. 77

Spiritual Direction Can Solve (almost) All of the World's Problems.

Can it?

  1. This is the first part of two episodes introducing our new series, the Invitation "Forum on Spiritual Direction' where Cami Mann and Josh Banner invite you into a long conversation to consider the vital, healing need of contemplative listening especially today. In this forum Josh and Cami attempt to talk about spiritual direction through a practice of spiritual direction. That is to say, these are vulnerable, self-disclosive contemplative conversations where Josh and Cami attempt to listen and respond to the movements of the Holy Spirit in each other. They share their enthusiasm and insight, yet they also share their struggles, doubts, and fears.

You are invited to engage at least two zoom conversations and to even attend an in-person retreat. Details on these events along with a working outline of the Forum can be found HERE.

This part of the conversation is an honest, confessional exploration into the nature of what has become the Invitation Center in and through Josh, the founder and lead of the Invitation. In part two of this introduction, the focus turns to Cami's trauma-informed practice of direction and the story of how she came to her practice.

Josh and Cami serve as the co-directors of the Invitation School of Contemplative Listening, a study and practice of spiritual direction at the vital intersection of contemplation and justice.

I stayed off the news and social media last week and hope to remain off through Thanksgiving at least. But I peeked today and saw that on the day after mid-term elections, the world continues under the heavy, oppressive weight of strife, infighting, polarization.

The only solution, the best solution is contemplative listening.

The warden of my facility still has not allowed volunteers back into the prison. It’s been almost three years since I’ve been able to practice contemplative listening with my incarcerated brothers. That intimate community and our shared practices had been my grounding space. Ironically, two days a month in the prison helped me stay sane. Without access to that holy communion, the School of Prayer and the School of Contemplative Listening have emerged to offer other spaces of sanity, grounding, healing, hope. Both the SOP and the SOCL are expressions of what I learned from my six years in the prison.

With this Forum on Spiritual Direction, I’m attempting to extend that holy, sacred space that began in the prison to you. I truly do believe that spiritual direction can solve (almost) all the world’s problems. I will dare to say that what Cami Mann and I are learning to see, what we are tasting, touching, practicing, and inviting you into—this is the most valuable, precious, healing, and therefore vital “meaning of life” conversation I can offer you.

Please understand there is nothing new here. It’s just taken me a long time, suffering, extensive successes and failures to better see the extent of Jesus’ life and teaching. The prison conversations had served as an incubator, ironically the prison as a greenhouse to nurture what has been emerging in me and the Invitation. Without access to the prison the SOP, SOCL, and especially Cami have served in lieu of the prison in this capacity. Cami is especially gifted as a midwife to help me and indeed all of us involved in the Invitation with this work of integration and discovery.

We are not claiming our own genius or to be unique messengers either. What we can offer you is a glimpse into how we are today, at this current time in our current place are learning to respond to the Holy Spirit in and through what we’ve learned from St Ignatius and Thomas Merton, Theresa of Avila and Howard Thurman, St John of the Cross and Fr Martin Laird, St Francis and James Cone, The desert Abbas and Ammas as well as Willie James Jennings (and more).

I encourage you to spend time with Ephesians 5:16 today: “Make most of your time for the days are evil.”

Eugene Peterson gives this passage more breadth in his Message translation:

I believe something like spiritual direction, contemplative, deep listening, a sharing of my depths with your depths, to linger in careful God conversation—this is how we make most of our time. This is what we were created for. This is how we heal and grow together.

I hope and pray you will not only pursue your own healing, but that you will become a wounded healer!

Love & Peace,

Josh