Reparations Introduction w/ Dr Jesse N Curtis - Part II No. 69

Dr Jesse N Curtis, Valparaiso University

Josh and Dr Jesse Curtis touch on some of the big ideas in the introduction to Reparations, but mainly they admire the careful yet bold while also pastoral tone of the book we’ve chosen for our summer read and discussion. Jesse Curts begins his contribution by sharing from his own journey, how he learned from his early mistakes and learned the goodness of experiencing God in and through his steep learning curve on racial injustice.

To go directly to the conversation with Jesse Curtis, skip to 18:40.

If we want to experience the depths of God's love, we need to find ways to be involved with the things of God. Responding to racism and participating in the necessary repentance and repair of racism is of course seemingly heavy, yet it is a profound opportunity for transformation and hope! We understand the light of Gospel to the extent that we've seen the darkness.

White Supremacy is that darkness.

We invite you to participate in the life of God deeply this summer for yourself and for the healing of our country.The wonderful simplicity of the Gospel is that Jesus came to set the captives free. Isaiah 61 has been described as Jesus' mission statement: "to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners."

We are not pitying black people in America by acknowledging that they are, in the vocabulary of Howard Thurman, the "disinherited." In fact, it would be dishonest, undignifying, and un-loving to pretend that they have not been abused and that they are not still being abused in ways that are more broad and deep than the police brutality gets our attention in the news. The insight of Reparations, our text for this summer is that,

"White supremacy’s most enduring effect, indeed its very essence, is theft. We believe White supremacy to be a multigenerational campaign of cultural theft, in which the identities, agency, and prosperity of African Americans are systematically stolen and given to others. As we will show, we believe that while this theft took many forms, its most significant and enduring forms are the theft of truth, the theft of power, and the theft of wealth."

Here is a link for more information about this summer series, “White People Talking to White People About Racism”.

Please visit Jesse’s website: The Myth of Colorblind Christians

We are asking participants to buy the book from a black owned bookstore. In West Michigan, consider the store, We Are Lit! For a list of more black owned stores visit Literary Hub.

Our call to worship prayer for this summer from Howard Thurman:

Lord, Lord, Open Unto Me

Open unto me, light for my darkness

Open unto me, courage for my fear

Open unto me, hope for my despair

Open unto me, peace for my turmoil

Open unto me, joy for my sorrow

Open unto me, strength for my weakness

Open unto me, wisdom for my confusion

Open unto me, forgiveness for my sins

Open unto me, tenderness for my toughness

Open unto me, love for my hates

Open unto me, Thy Self for myself


Lord, Lord, open unto me!

Reparations Orientation With Rev Dr Denise Kingdom Grier - Part I No. 68

The Rev. Dr. Denise Kingdom Grier offers a bold, honest, and frank discernment of the racism in America and the white church. Her courageous testimony provides the necessary and essential orientation as we invite white people to talk with white people about racism this summer 2021 in our reading of Reparations: A Christian Call For Repentance and Repair by Duke Kwon and Gregory Thompson.

Josh offers some orientation to Denise’s orientation by walking through the details about how this summer series will work, and then he offers some context about why the Invitation is handling this book and the vocabulary of reparations. Finally, Josh offers a few meditative readings from Ephesians 3 to allow you time to take this very difficult conversation into contemplative practice.

To go directly to the conversation with Denise, skip to 23:20.

We are asking participants to buy the book from a black owned bookstore. In West Michigan, consider the store, We Are Lit! For a list of more black owned stores visit Literary Hub.

The March 4, 2021, “#LeaveLoud” episode of the Pass the Mic podcast mentioned can be found HERE.

Lenten Liturgy & Conversation w/ AJ Westendorp No. 43

We had intended to release an episode on chanting the Psalms next with Lacy Finn Borgo, but this liturgy led by Maple Avenue Ministries member, AJ Westendorp was too good not to sneak in and share with you.

AJ is a former college football player, a Guatemala missionary and is now on staff with Escape Ministries in Holland, MI as well as employed at a local juvenile detention center. Finally, AJ also is a volunteer who joins Josh in the prison prayer practices on Saturdays in Muskegon, MI. Before offering the Lenten liturgy, Josh shares some of his conversation with AJ to help you get to know AJ and to explore the reason why spending time with and befriending “the least of these” is at the core of the Gospel and why it’s a practice we would recommend to you for you journey through Lent.

"Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?” (Isaiah 58:6)

We also encourage you to go back and listen to episode 39, Josh’s conversation with the Rev. Dr. Denise Kingdom Grier, Josh and AJ’s pastor. By listening to bother episodes you will discover the similarities between Advent and Lent as a time of preparation with an emphasis on God’s love of the poor.

The opening reading of this liturgy is from Roddy Hamilton of the Church of Scotland.

The liturgy begins at 12 mins into the episode.

Please consider subscribing to the invitationpodcast.org

Your financial contributions help us create this spiritual formation resource for you. Please consider making a donation today at invitationpodcast.org/donations 

Thanks for listening!

Josh

Awakening Series #1: What Can a Sixteen-Year-Old Teach Us? No. 34

The only other space besides the prison where I have regularly been excited to discover the Holy Spirit is a summer camp. 

I didn't think I'd last long as the director of discipleship for the Awakening. It's a worship arts week in the for high school students. I've been going deeper into contemplative prayer in a prison. I thought maybe I'd offer a few years at the Awakening and then focus more on the prison and the Invitation, but I've been surprised and humbled.

In fact, these teenagers have something to teach me, and to teach you.

I don't go into the prison to bring Jesus to the men there. I go to the prison as a spiritual director to join with the men to discover Jesus who is already among them. Likewise, with these high school students of the Awakening. Jesus is already vibrant within them.

This is the introductory episode in a new collaboration with The Awakening. In this episode I practice something like group spiritual direction to discern with the students how Jesus is with them by asking: what is the unique gift you have to offer us as a teenager right now, today?

The word we focused on was vulnerability.

Here in this introductory episode to a new series of collaborations with the Invitation I offer you a chance to join into our discernment and to see what the Spirit might show you.

More information about the Awakening can be found HERE.

Don’t forget our public, spiritual conversation with Ruth Haley Barton at the Dominican Center, January 23. LINK HERE.   

And if you are a church leader of any kind, you are invited to join the Invitation's 3rd Annual Contemplative Prayer Retreat Feb 11 & 12 here in Holland, MI.

Be sure to subscribe to the Invitation at www.invitationpodcast.org 

Love & Peace,

Josh

Update: A Hasidic Tale & Giving Tuesday! No. 32

In this update episode, a Hasidic tale from Abraham Joshua Heschel helps us understand the Spirit's invitation to find the treasure right here in front of ourselves, right at home.

We are on the eve of #GivingTuesday. If you haven't had a chance to watch our Kickstarter video, please do.

Here's a link: tinyurl.com/y9gqmnhaA 

We hope you can catch onto the larger vision of what the Invitation is up to as a nonprofit connecting the prison to the local church parish through spiritual direction and this podcast. If you have means, please support the Kickstarter campaign as it raises money to fund our capital budget, money that will help us efficiently and creatively offer you spiritual formation resources on a more consistent basis.

Share the Invitation with your people, and pray for us on this crazy journey of trusting God. Peace & Love of Jesus to you!

The picture of this episode is the home of what we are calling 'Cloudstreet' as it is under snowy construction. Cloudstreet will be the hub of our practice of spiritual direction, a retreat space, and a production space!!!

Big hugs and LOVE!

Josh

Conversation #10 Jonathan Wilson Hartgrove No. 31

Who wants to talk politics & prayer?

This conversation with Jonathan Wilson Hartgrove will lead you into a Spirit-filled wilderness of hope in the midst of our political wasteland.

Yes, trusting Jesus with our politics will be difficult and intimidating. We should offer more than any party-line assent. Opening ourselves to engage in this kind of learning curve and conversation will require courage and patience. This wilderness journey will bring us to exhaustion and then likely to our knees, to repentance, and then finally to Hope.

Here in this wilderness we must especially learn to wait on the Lord in quietness and trust. He alone is our salvation and help.

However, there are several voices in our country pushing back on this call to prayer. "No thanks," they say. "We don't need your thoughts and prayers. We need new legislation and we need your action!"

““It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.””

— C.S. Lewis

This response is fair if its in response to small prayers. C.S. Lewis famously argues in his sermon, “The Weight of Glory” that our desires are not too strong but too weak. We are far too easily pleased.

In a similar way our politics are not too strong but too weak. Our neighbors do need our thoughts and prayers if we are engaging God’s love in a transformative way. They need us to be so thoroughly changed by our thoughts and prayers that we might become agents of justice and righteousness in our neighborhoods and cities.

In this episode I offer you a hearty introduction to this conversation by encouraging you to enter into this wilderness desert for the sake of loving God with your strength for the sake of righteousness, which is justice. This episode is a challenging invitation for you to bring your politics under the Lordship of Jesus no matter your political leanings and affiliations.

Can we trust the Spirit to lead us into the wilderness, to brave this political storm growing our faith to believe yes, everything is going to be alright?

Truly truly! Verily verily! Amen amen!

Let it be so!

Love,

Josh

---

Jonathan Wilson Hartgrove and Shane Claiborne edited the prayerbook Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals. Each day’s prayer is concluded with this:

“May the peace of the Lord Christ go with you,
wherever He may send you.
May He guide you through the wilderness,
protect you through the storm.
May He bring you home rejoicing
at the wonders He has shown you.
May He bring you home rejoicing
once again into our doors.”

— originally from the Celtic book of Prayer

"Jonathan is a moral prophet and spiritual physician for our time. In this timely book, with the precision of a heart surgeon, he exposes the sickness that has long-plagued American Christianity and infected our society and politics, revealing that none of us is untouched by the disease. With the credibility of his life lived in solidarity with systemically oppressed people, he resounds a clarion call to reform the way in which we live the gospel. This is a must-read for all Christians in America. You will be humbled, enlightened, and motivated to heal the ailing heart of our country and recover its soul." 

-Philenna Heuertz

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5-ish Minute Prayer #7 "Autumn Prayer feat. Jordan Bruxvoort" no. 30

Have you taken a moment to breathe today? Have you noticed up close the changing colors? Have you stood still long enough to enjoy the wind on your face?

How is your sleep? How about your peace of mind?

There is much working against our mental, emotional, and spiritual health. The local, national and world-wide news continues to waylay us with death. Death by tsunami (Indonesia). Death by suicide (my community). Death by body failure and age (my church and my great aunt).

And of course there is strife. We seem addicted to indignation and rage in America (pick any of today’s political news bites).

In this 5ish Minute Meditation, Jordan Bruxvort invites us to consider how the movements of Autumn teach us how to let go and trust. As the weather splinters, leaning towards winter, we are reminded that all things in creation disintegrate. All things eventually go to sleep. Yet beyond sleep and death, we yearn for and we trust in a greater hope of new life, of resurrection and spiritual help.

In this five-ish-minute meditation Jordan and I invite you to join Autumn in a season of letting go.

Peace & Love of Christ to you!

Josh

---

Jordan Bruxvoort was the first to help me identify the Jesuit vocabulary of “contemplatives in action” as he sought Ignatian spirituality to sustain his activism on behalf of immigrants. Jordan and I got to know each other in the first year of our practicum in spiritual direction with the Dominican Sisters of Grand Rapids. He approaches his vision for social change through the lens of spiritual direction in a wise, generous way. A big thanks to him for being involved in the Invitation—for his encouragement, insight, and collaboration! I encourage you to take a look at his website and bio below.

And please don’t be shy. Email me if you also have something to offer the Invitation:
* a response to a guided prayer or conversation
* a creative insight into what the Invitation can offer
* if you’d like to write or even record a 5-minute meditation

Jordan Bruxvort Bio

For the last ten years, Jordan Bruxvoort has worked as a community organizer, primarily in the struggle for immigrants' rights.  Jordan, his wife Sarah, and their two children Amos and Abigail live in Sioux Falls, South Dakota where Jordan directs the Naomi Project, a workers' and immigrants' rights project (www.projectofnaomi.org).

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Conversation #9 Trevor Hudson No. 29

“Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.”

So said Mr. Beaver to Lucy in C.S. Lewis' classic, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.

I have the joy of practicing group spiritual direction twice a month in a prison. This practice is teaching me many things about following Jesus and about sharing Jesus with others.
 
This past Saturday, Jesse, a prisoner new to our prayer practices, shared that his experience of Jesus is still so new. He confessed he is just beginning to open himself to God, trying to determine if it’s safe to approach God further. I chuckled some about this and decided to be honest with him. “No, Jesse,” I said, “Approaching God is not safe. It’ll wreck your life.”

Jesus asks us, “Can you drink the cup I am going to drink?”  As I mentioned last month, Jesus offers us a nice, hot cup of die-to-yourself. Why would anyone ever want to imbibe such a drink?

The cup Jesus offers us is the living water of transformation, of death and resurrection. It’s a drink of our baptismal waters. This strong drink is an acquired taste for most of us. It takes us time to learn how to regularly drink deeply of Jesus, the living water who is severe yet also liberating, sacrificial while healing, dangerous yet good. 

If you are given grace to desire this drink at all, the question then remains: how do I acquire more of a taste for God? If I’m honest, I’m scared of taking more of God into myself. I don’t know what he wants from me. How do I learn to want to surrender more of myself to God?

——————-

I do most of the cooking in our home. I prefer strongly flavored foods, the heat of peppers, the intensity of garlic and onion. The trouble is remembering that my family naturally enjoys milder flavors. Unwittingly, I’m changing their palate—slowly, meal by meal. Without working hard at it, I’m re-defining their tastes. My oldest son has recently taken to spicy mustard on his bratwurst. He’s also enjoying little dabs of the jalapeño jelly I canned a few years ago. My younger son now eats the salads I prepare, and my wife prefers her coffee black—if it’s from the fancy beans I buy.

Just by being myself, by being a person interested in certain foods, films, and books, someone who delights in the camping and canoeing we did this past summer—just by a kind of osmosis I am shaping the interests and desires of my children and spouse.

This is also the gist of what I offer as a spiritual director, a kind of Spirit-led osmosis. What matters more than the words I say to someone in spiritual direction is my internal contemplative posture. The greatest gift I can offer someone in direction is the way I sit in the presence of God with that person, how I share time and space with that person in and through the Holy Spirit.

It’s vital to unpack that word “share” here. I do not arrive at a session of spiritual direction to share God with someone as a performance or monologue. Sharing is two-way. It’s reciprocal. I can only be effective as a facilitator of a spiritual conversation if the directee has arrived open and willing to share the God that is already inside of herself. And that is the point: we join together to prayerfully discover the God who is already moving, breathing, and loving in and through us. Jesus has always been near. It’s just that we have yet to acknowledge him.

No doubt over the years some have left a session of direction with me unimpressed and sad to have wasted an hour. Perhaps I wasn’t the right fit for that person as a director, or perhaps she was not ready for direction anyway. Perhaps she didn’t know how to be weak.

The only pre-requisite for spiritual direction and growth is some experience of humiliation, even a minor sense of failure. I first sought direction in the middle of a very public position as the worship leader for a small Christian college. I was supposed to be the conduit of God for 1200 voluntarily assembled students. I sought spiritual direction when I finally accepted my inner emptiness. I had grown so tired of naming Jesus for everyone but myself. I had become a wreck. I was spiritually poor and needed help.

The group of men who choose to meet with us in the prison come broken, open, humble, and willing. One winter when we had trouble getting to the prison due to a massive snow dump, G, one of the most thoughtful and well-spoken human beings I’ve ever met, said, “You guys would come here on a sleigh. I don’t understand why you all are working so hard to get in here when we are working so hard to get out.” We told G, and we continue to remind all the men that we keep coming to the prison because of their holy openness to God. Their vulnerability means that we see Jesus in the lives of these men in ways we don’t see him anywhere else. These men have been drinking Jesus’ cup of die-to-yourself. They have been pushed to rock-bottom, yet in their humility they are each being transformed into something stunning.

My service as a spiritual director has led me to a focus on prisoners and also pastors. I am attempting to make connections between the two. I want pastors to come into the prison to pray with us. But this is not traditional prison ministry where we arrive to offer the men access to God. Instead, we go to the prison to see Jesus as he already is in the prison. It’s the witness of the Spirit moving among the prisoners that I’m so excited to share with the pastors. In the prison, practicing group spiritual direction together, we share in the eating and drinking deeply of Jesus. How will an experience of sharing God with the prisoners, the least of these, the moral lepers of our society—how might these pastors be changed in ways that transform the scope of their parish work?

As you listen and pray through my conversation with Trevor Hudson, you will hear us sharing deeply of God with each other, deep crying unto deep. I invite you to join us in drinking this cup of Christ to remember your baptism, to know him, the power of resurrection, the fellowship of his sufferings, that you and I might be conformed unto his death.

Josh

Loving God With Your 'Muchness' - Summer Retreat Part 6 No. 28

How ‘bout a Nice Hot Cup of Die to Yourself?

The essence of following Jesus is an idea that offends our minds: to Love God with all of our Strength, you must become weak. This is an other-worldly, a Kingdom of Jesus-the God-Who-Became-Weak concept.

What if our church marquee’s read “Come on in to worship with us and have a nice hot cup of die to yourself?”

Many of us have become so accustomed to the Gospel that we haven’t taken the deeply offensive nature of what he is asking us: we must die to ourselves, to this world, to our best ideas and deepest passions. The Gospel is no longer “offensive” to us. It is not moving in on us and invading our hearts and minds. To follow Jesus, we must confess with John the Baptist, “that I may decrease so that he can increase” in me and in the world around me.

In this final movement of the Summer Retreat 2018, we offer out bodies as living sacrifices to God. This episode uses a lectio divina format using the Message translation of Romans 12:1-2. The focus question is how does love for God in the heart, mind and soul become tangible and concrete through action. How can love become active in my daily life?

With the end of this summer experiment and now that we are officially a not for profit, the Invitation is moving into a season of fundraising with a kickstarter campaign launched later in the Fall while also searching for long-term, sustaining supporters. If the Invitation has been of help to you and if you believe it will be of help to others, please subscribe to the podcast, help spread the word about the Invitation and about the crowd-funding with kickstarter, join us in spiritual friendship, and become a sustaining supporter!

The Love & Peace of Jesus Christ to you,

Josh

Exploring the Depths of the Soul - Summer Retreat Part Five no. 27

Can Your Soul Become a BS-free Zone?

I have the joy of offering group spiritual direction in a prison. So I don’t mean to offend you by being crass here, but early on in the prison I learned to describe the prayerful conversations of spiritual direction as a “bullsh*t free zone.” This definition translates quickly for the inmates. The prison is riddled with many layers of bullsh*t, an absence of freeing and reciprocal honesty. The men who have chosen to return to our prayer practices over the past four years are self-selected. They return for our group practice of spiritual direction to enjoy a time and a space to be frank, raw, and honest with themselves, with each other, and with God.

New participants discover this freeing and reciprocal honesty quickly, too. Mike, on his second visit to our bi-monthly practice, looked at me with wide-eyed awe as he and I spoke intimately with each other. He leaned over and whispered, “I have never been so vulnerable with anyone since I got here.”

The shock of describing a prayerful conversation as a “bullsh*t free zone” requires those of us outside the prison to stop and consider the deeper implication here: the Holy Spirit reveals the holy love of God through the profane? Our lives are smothered in layers of information and misinformation, layers of false, empty desires that compete with each other, layers of pain and exhaustion, resentment and anger, layers of bullsh*t.    The Holy Spirit enters this gross confusion. The Spirit cuts through it. The Spirit shines light into it. The Spirit lifts us out of that pit.

In this episode, I meet with the small group to consider the deeper regions of our souls. We consider the many layers of resistance to moving into the depths of soul-spirituality. The intention here is that as we sink into God through contemplative prayer practices, we will each identify our own resistance to God, confess and surrender to His love, and be ever-more transformed.

Apologies for the delayed release on this episode. A few of the contributors got sick at the end of July, and then I got pretty sick too! A virus in the summer is not good. I hope you and yours have had a better second half of the summer than I.

We will soon be sending out our final episode of the summer retreat on ‘Strength.’ Thank you for allowing me to serve you in spiritual direction this summer. Despite the illness, it is a wonderful gift to share with you!

Peace of Christ,

Josh

The Mind is for Love: Beyond Academics - Summer Retreat Part FOUR no. 26

A spirituality of the mind is vitally more important than Christian academics and intellectualism.

There. I said it. This is my confession, the confession of a recovering theology student and teacher. I love theology. It's helped me so, yet I've come to love prayer more. It's taken another christian tradition to reveal to me that the two are not at odds. Evagrius Ponticus, most actively remembered by Eastern Orthodox christians said, "If you are a theologian, you will pray truly. And if you pray truly, you are a theologian."

The mind often gets short shrift in spiritual formation circles. Yet then in theological circles, the mind often gets placed in such a lofty, unattainable position. I'm saying that spiritualists tend to under-appreciate the mind while theologians tend to over-idealize the mind.

Again, on one hand, rich, abundant, Christo-centric, orthodox Christianity is about more than intellectual assent to our celebrated doctrines. In fact, it's fair to say that our minds often get in the way of our capacity to spiritually perceive Jesus as the Holy Spirit would have us deeply know Jesus. Deep, loving knowledge of God is not academic or intellectual, yet on the other hand it's a knowledge of God that so fully engages our minds in ways that are beyond anything we could ask or imagine that our minds become so full of love and truth that we don't need to be smart about our God-knowledge. We find instead that sitting lovingly in the presence of God with our minds open with our hearts to Jesus--this is all we end up being capable of.

The mind is intended to serve love.

I remember sitting with Carol on the front steps of her house. I was maybe 15 or 16. Carol was a spiritual mother, one of many people who have given much to me. Carol taught me through her presence. It was her manner, poise, the tone of her voice, her smile, the glint in her eye. It was the graceful, deep way about her that spoke to the deep inside of me. I sat on her steps yet again misunderstanding the things of God, trying to sort these things out when words were not very helpful.

"I wish I could just destroy my mind," I told her. It was so long ago. I assume that I had been inspired to make such a statement because I was gaining a sense that Jesus is more than my mind could easily accept. I look back today and understand that my mind had been offended by God. Carol assured me that this was a good thing. She explained that the point is not to destroy the mind but rather to redeem the mind, to put the mind in its right place, to use the mind for its correct purposes.

This is the context of holiness or wholeness. This is self-care: to put the mind in its right place alongside the heart, soul, and strength in service of worship and prayer of a God who generously reveals himself to us yet who is beyond our reasoning.
 
I invite you to the summer retreat, part four, a spiritual conversation with friends as we consider prayers of the mind. 

Happy summer-time!
Peace & Love,

Josh

 

Summer Retreat 2018 - Prayers of the Heart no. 25

Much has already been said about the heart.

How many volumes upon volumes have been written to express the many movements of the heart? How many songs have been written to celebrate the goodness of the heart? And how many songs and poems lament the grief of the heart’s weaknesses, darknesses, and failures?
 
Yet with all that has been documented about the heart, why are most of us still relatively clueless about our own hearts and the hearts of those we are closest to? Why are we afraid of opening our hearts to each other, to God, or even to look closely at our own hearts? Why does the heart remain shrouded in mystery?
 
We can consider each story, poem, or song is a kind of map that offers us a vantage point to see the landscape of the heart. One map describes how the heart can move here over this mountain. Another shows the heart’s descent over there into a dangerous valley. The difficulty is that these are maps of someone else’s heart, someone else’s interior regions. Here is a terrifying consideration: there is no map available for the unique terrain of your heart. The only way for you to learn your heart is to practice it, to traverse it, to dwell within it.  
 
In Wendell Berry’s novel Hannah Coulter, the grandmother says that Thad Coulter “was not a bad man…I believed then, and I believe now, that he was not a bad man. But we are all as little children. Some know it and some don’t.”
 
When it comes to entering the terrain of our hearts, we are beginners; we are children. Yet few of us are willing to assume the assume a posture of child-likeness, so we feign and hide behind presumption, sophistication, and ego.  And why hide? To enter our hearts is to veer into close proximity of the regions where our deepest desires lie.  Here we can again celebrate a child who is immediately familiar with her desires. Children are vulnerable, often naked, and are by nature silly and even foolish. The most naïve have not learned to look over their shoulders and worry about who is watching.
 
Summertime offers some of us a hope of rest and play, a break from the seamlessly never-ending grind, the conveyor belt of daily humdrum we go through in fall and winter. I invite you to join four me and four friends in a conversation about the advantages of spiritual formation in the rhythms of the summer. In this episode, the third movement of the Summer Retreat 2018, we focus on prayers of the heart.  This episode can be approached on its own, but you’ll appreciate it more by listening and praying through the first two introductory episodes. We continue through the summer with the prayers of the mind, soul, and strength.
 
You can find prayer resources at the download page of the Invitation website, an overview of the prayer of examination and a worksheet, as well as the prayer guide, "40-Ways to Spend Five-Minutes with God." And you can also find some of the music used in the summer retreats for free on the music page.

Happy summer-time!
Peace & Love,

Josh

Summer Retreat 2018 Part Two - Conversation #8 Chuck DeGroat no. 24

He's not safe, but he's good.

This episode is a follow up and an addition to the Introduction to the Summer Retreat 2018. I am so very excited to present to you my recent conversation with Chuck DeGroat, Professor of Pastoral Counseling and Christian Spirituality at Western Theological Seminary. This conversation opens our spiritual dialogue for the summer. Chuck wonderfully and generously helps me set a tone for the kinds of conversations we will continue to have on the mic with small groups of pastors and friends for each of the subsequent episodes on heart, mind, soul, and strength. We come to prayer with ponderings, hopes, desires, questions, loves and confusions. It's vital that we make this journey together. Chuck is a very capable companion for the journey because of his insight yes, but also because of his honesty. I invite you to come along on this journey with your own vulnerability, enthusiasm, and even fears.

In Mark 12 Jesus recounts the Great Commandment to love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. Notice the introduction there: to love with ALL. This means we are to bring everything to God, to be whole in our worship. The Spirit is given to us to search through every arena of our selves because God wants to consume us with his love.

His love is comprehensive to consume us...to devour us whole. It's hard not to think of Aslan from the Chronicles of Narnia. As Mr. Tumnus tells Lucy, "He's not safe, but he's good." Why is he not safe? It's because he wants all. 1 Peter 5:8 says the enemy prowls around like a roaring lion seeking who he may devour. 

There are two lions seeking to devour us. One devours us with love. The other to steal, kill, and destroy. (John 10:10). I invite you to flee...to retreat from the lion who seeks only to destroy. Let's flee into a consuming, devouring love instead.

Summer Retreat 2018 Part One no. 23

Can you fall in love this summer?

Our winters are long here in West Michigan. Even when we are not buried in several feet of snow with a layer of ice, there's still the "lake effect" cloud cover which means our days of annual sunlight are only slightly better than Seattle. Now that the sun has finally come out, it has taken me a few weeks to get used to it. I wanted the sun desperately, but my winter-sick body didn't know how to take in the goodness of the light.

In the 63rd Psalm the author pines,

My soul thirsts for you in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

Here in West Michigan we might say,

My soul yearns for you in a dark and cold land where there is no sunlight.

So, for us, summer ends up being an especially dreamy, fantastical set of months in which we put a lot of hope. If it's not travel, it's long weekends, patios and grills, trips to the beach, lingering with friends and family, sunsets after 9pm, and then fireflies. Summers are a good time to fall in love.

The question is how. The intent of the Summer Retreat 2018 is to create time and space for us to consider the advantages of summer for falling in love with God.

It seems that every year Protestants engage Advent and Lent with more and more intentionality. But what about Ordinary Time, the other 34 of our 52 weeks of each year? In American culture, summer, a long stretch of Ordinary Time, it's something of a holy season. I recently recorded a conversation with Chuck DeGroat, professor of pastoral care, counseling, and Christian spirituality at Western Theological Seminary.

Chuck and I discussed how much of spiritual practice is about learning to be aware and present to yourself, to others, and God. Isn't this what we long for in a good summer, to be present, alive, awake? As we continued to talk, the parameters of a "spirituality of summer" began to emerge. In summer we tend to be more present. We seek rest and opportunities to be playful. We find ways to disrupt our habits of busyness, to slow ourselves and to enjoy the good life.

How then can we gracefully add intentionality to our summer practices to make ourselves especially available to the Holy Spirit that we might fall in love with God, to rest in the transformative love of Jesus? This Summer Retreat 2018 will offer you time and space as well as some helpful vocabulary to further consider the advantages of summer for spiritual formation.

I invite you to the Summer Retreat 2018. In this Introduction Part One, we prepare for the retreat by praying through a section of C.S. Lewis' great sermon, "The Weight of Glory." 

My conversation with Chuck DeGroat, Introduction Part Two will be available in a week. The subsequent four episodes moving through August will be spiritual conversations with small groups of pastors and friends to discuss prayers of the heart, mind, soul, and strength. As we fall in love, we learn more about our personal, unique mode of love but then we will also want to stretch beyond ourselves and learn new ways to love. As we learn new ways to love, our hearts will be expanded and we will become, in the language of Chuck's book, Wholehearted  (which is a highly recommended summer read)!

Update! Your Guide to Going Deeper With the Invitation no. 22

This is an update episode to invite you to go deeper with the Invitation Podcast by: 1. joining a summer-long, multi-episode retreat through the shema (Deut 6; Mark 12)of loving God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength; and 2. to become a sustaining member of the Invitation as it seeks to become a non-profit. Here Josh shares the story of how he got into spiritual direction, started this podcast, became involved in the prison prayer practices...and how all these pieces fit together into a non-profit! Please subscribe to make sure you can download a free song, "Silence" that Josh and his wife, Susanna Childress (aka Ordinary Neighbors) recorded for the podcast.

5 Minute Prayer #13 'Meditation on Isaiah 9' no. 18

"Drop the mirror and let it shatter.
Crush the hourglass and stop the clock's ticking.
Stand still.
Hold your breath."

Immanuel, God Incarnate with us. The manifestation of God in human form is a first principle, absolute salt, the truest Reality, terra firma, the fabric of the cosmos. Words fail. How can we say anything well about Advent? No, we must immerse our consciousness in the presence of the Incarnate One, whom one theologian described as an "ontological revolution." Our minds will never wrap around Advent, yet it helps to proceed how St. Anselm and others encouraged have taught: to believe in order that we might come into understanding. We begin with Him, present in his Kingdom, and then everything else becomes clearer and true.

We had wandered in a darkness and then the Light of lights dawns upon us.

A few weeks ago I offered you a  long-form retreat, a mediation on lamentation. I humbly offer it for your advent prayer and worship if you haven't already spent time with it. It is perplexing that a few days after sending that your way, I enter into a new experience of confusion and hurt. This isn't the space to elaborate on my personal trouble, but its safe to say that I have new reason to understand Advent as a time of longing and ache. 

When we lament and ache, we have access to Jesus, our terra firma. He is ground zero. He is base camp, our safe harbor of love and healing.

I invite you to join me in this short-format, 5-Minute Prayer where I pivot off #13 from the prayer guide, "40 Ways to Spend 5 Minutes With God."In approaching this prayer method I recite a Meditation on Isaiah 9, a creative piece I wrote for a worship service back in 1999. Both the prayer guide and the reading can be found on the 'resources' page on at invitationpodcast.org.

Words will fail me in expressing how helpful it is to return to this writing on Isaiah 9 after all these years right here in the midst of personal hurt--to "drop the mirror" and rehearse Immanuel. I've been attentive to the swelling #metoo movement that has overtaken our country in the wake of the revelations about film producer Harvey Wienstien. These days I have to limit my daily intake of news and politics. I even deleted my facebook account to better find solace from the many heavy things pressing upon us. I assume you are also experiencing your own difficulties. Great or small, whatever our hindrance to faith, we bring every part of ourselves, every experience to Him especially during Advent. This year my gift box is full of questions instead of gold. Let's rehearse Immanuel and drawn near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings us, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water (Heb 10:22).

Peace of Christ to you!

Josh

5 Minute Prayer #41 'Our Father Is Younger Than We' No. 15

G.K. Chesterton says that children are strong because they can enjoy monotony.

I've watched Casper, my seven-year-old, sit with markers, paper, scotch tape, and scissors for hours. He has a powerful internal strength that keeps him so focused on making things that it is difficult to get his attention. He gets thoroughly lost inside his rich internal world. Nothing seems boring to him as long as he is free to experiment with colors, textures, shapes, and the stories he tells about each drawing or cut out. Imagination and creativity are strong with this one.

God asks us to love him with strength, to be squarely focused on him. He desires that we might lose ourselves in abandonment to his love and presence, that we might be so consumed by him that it will be difficult to distract us from that love. 

How can we become so focused, so consumed by God's love? "Focus" shares the same latin root as the word "hearth," that space around a fireplace. We stay focused on that which warms us. Fire is mesmerizing. It attracts our gaze like almost nothing else. If you watch Casper at play with his art projects, you'll see a little boy lit by an inner fire. When he brings me his finished crafts, a shining light of excitement glows in his eyes. He is in love with his art. Art gives him a kind of strength that compels him to do strange things. He often wakes up early before school to have some alone time so he can piece together something new. When we have favorite guests over, he will go to the other room to make them special gifts of his art. He wants to share his fire. He does so easily.

How is the fire inside of you? What are you focused on these days?
What fire is consuming you?
Do you want to be aflame with God's love? 

I invite you to stoke the fire of your own strong love for God in this newest 5 Minute Meditation, "Our Father is Younger Than We" based on prayer exercise #41 from the prayer guide, "40 Ways to Spend Five Minutes With God."

Peace of Christ to you!

Josh

5 Minute Prayer #26 'Patient Trust' No. 13

In the Gospels Jesus asks, "how can I help you?" and also, "what do you want?"

Do you know how to answer these questions? Do you actively talk with Jesus about these questions, or are you leading a life, in the words of Thoreau, a life of "quiet desperation"?

Essentially Jesus is asking us, "how is it with your soul? Is it well? If not, what can be done?" We may sing the words of the great hymn, peace is like a river attending our ways in the midst of troubled, stormy seas. We learn to declare those words by faith. Yet, is it possible for you to carry yourself through each day in love, joy, hope and patient trust? 

Another way to consider this is, if Jesus' death and resurrection were necessary to save our souls, what is the experience of a 'saved soul' today, right now, in this moment, in this breath? Is the goodness of salvation reserved only for our a soul in heaven, or is there not some abundant life of the soul, of the mind, heart and body for today? Does the presence of Jesus not break into our practiced existence right now into our presence?

Most of us do not have a working understanding of our own souls. We do not have a practical and personal engagement with our soul, and so the soul is misunderstood and shrouded in mystery. Without a working understanding of the soul, how can we practice soul engaging prayer that will transform us into the likeness of Jesus? 

Many shrug their shoulders in bewilderment and move on. The soul? Who can know it? They assume the soul, that Jesus' presence through the power of the Holy Spirit in the deepest parts of our being is a mystery never to be understood or practiced. Thus many Christians end up living lives that Thoreau described so well, "lives of quiet desperation," lives of resignation distracted by the "games and amusements of mankind."

If you are returning to the Invitation Podcast, something is stirring in your soul. An ache is becoming more defined inside of you, a holy desire for God. You are answering the invitation, hearing Jesus' words, "what can I do for you? How can I help? What do you want?" The next step is to wait patiently for his help. We wait patiently in trust through prayer.

Another reason why we avoid the soul is because soul-work is slow. Soul-work requires honesty and humility. Soul-work depends on our ability to trust. Ultimately soul-work involves our bodies, our actions. Soul-work invokes our emotions and engages the way our minds work. What we think about...what we hope for...how we wait patiently.

Susanna and I welcomed Merritt Terese Banner into the world on July 14, at 6:40pm in the evening. The waiting for her was a kind of soul-work. Over three years we lost three previous babies, excruciating pain that is difficult to describe. Then there was the nine months with Merritt of course, nine months when time slowed down. Each week we wondered if she would make it, if she would be healthy. The actual birthing was of course incredibly physical, messy with the primal elements of life. Susanna likes to recall that when Merritt emerged, I let out a full, deep, belt of laughter. I also treasure that joy-filled memory. The laughter was a deep response of my soul that resounded out through my body. When it was all done and our hospital room became silent, our bodies were exhausted but our souls refreshed and renewed. And so we couldn't stop touching our baby girl, smelling her, kissing and codling, reveling in the new gift of life.

The gift of soul-work is like the slow, precarious work of birthing. Prayer can be both easy and hard. Time never seems like its on your side. Time moves either too fast or too slow. Prayer can be excruciating. It requires patient trust, hours and years of waiting. Then suddenly new life sneaks up on you in a way that is completely out of your control. The Spirit gives you gifts of faith in his timing and on his terms because he knows what is best for you. Then we return again to prayer faithfully waiting in patient trust for the new life to arrive.

The Invitation Podcast can serve as a 'birthing coach' for you. Each of us need some help, some coaxing into solitude. As a friend said just yesterday, "most of the time I need someone to give me permission to be quiet and rest." I invite you to use this short meditation to give yourself permission to eagerly await the help of the Spirit in 'patient trust.'

"Patient Trust" is a prayer by the Jesuit paleontologist, Teilhard de Chardin. Chardin was part of the the expedition that discovered the "Peking Man," homo erectus, a prehistoric human who Chardin was surprised to discover used primitive tools. This prayer has helped Susanna and me for several years of suffering and big questions. Its a prayer that can excavate and preserve your soul!

Peace and help of Christ to you!

Josh

Conversation #5 Nathan Foster no. 12

When was the last time you were surprised by your life?

There are many reasons for us to despair today. Jesus anticipated this struggle when he spoke about "wars and rumors of war." In the face of catastrophe, he tells us to not be alarmed because all "these things must come to pass." How do we keep our heads above the water? If not the struggle of politics, terrorism, and racism, just looking at your bank account might cause your chest to tighten and keep you up at night. Or your trouble may be with relationships--confusion with family, friends, neighbors, or co-workers.

The couple who offered Susanna and me marital counseling asked us early on a penetrating question: When you consider the future, is it a gift wrapped in a bow full of surprise and goodness? Or is the future a bomb, a tragedy yet to unfold? 

If not either of these extremes, perhaps your future seems mediocre like the persistent banality of refrigerator buzz (for Radiohead enthusiasts, fridge buzz is a theme throughout Ok Computer). Perhaps the the future is merely the passing of time and events; its perfunctory, with little to no vitality.

What then do you make of Jesus' words? "I came to give you life, life abundantly."  (John 10:10)

Or what about this prayer from the apostle Paul in Ephesians 3:20: Unto him who is able to accomplish more than anything we can ask or imagine? 

How seriously, how deep can this hope penetrate into our mind, heart, our soul?

If you sense a desire deep inside your soul for more, for more help, more friendship, love, clarity, hope, depth, rich goodness, then you are hearing the Invitation of Jesus. That is what the Invitation Podcast is for, a time and a space for us to journey together toward the Desire above and beyond all desires.

In this episode no. 12, Nathan Foster and I sit down to talk about various ways to pursue God through spiritual discipline. We talk about ecumenicism, mysticism, and parenting. Nathan is someone who has struggled and yet continues to hope in the abundant life with Jesus, to believe that God can and will continue to transform his life beyond anything he could ask or imagine.

5 Minute Prayer #14 'Lion or the Dove' No. 11

A lion or a dove? How do you meditate?

The awkward truth about prayer is that you can only learn it by practice. This can be a very discouraging realization. This truth can cause many to avoid prayer altogether. We don't like being beginners. We don't want God to be difficult, and we don't know how to be alone and quiet. We assume that if Jesus is really about love, then a relationship with him should be convenient and simple.

I know how to confess the difficulties of prayer because I've been discouraged most of my life in regard to prayer. Even while serving as a ministry leader, I held God at arm's length and struggled to sit still and give myself to his presence and truth through prayer and meditating on the Scriptures. 

While we can't learn how to pray from books or from someone else, it is possible to gain some inspiration and even some practical coaching on what to look and wait for as we approach God. This is the gift of spiritual direction and what I hope is the gift of this podcast outreach: that you can find some inspiration and practical help to get started or to try again to know and be known by God.

Prayer is simple. It is accessible and even convenient, but not in the way we think of any other simple, accessible, or convenient thing in our lives. Once you enter in you will understand in your own way what I mean. Talking to God is unlike talking to anyone else. Being in his presence is different than the personal presence of any other being. This is God. No one is like him. When you go to prayer on your own, you will learn your own way. There are various ways! You might pray like a lion or a dove, or in some completely other way. 

To understand what I'm getting on about, I invite you to listen to episode no. 11 based on prayer exercise #14 from the prayer guide, "40 Ways to Spend 5 Minutes With God."