Why You Should Read (or Re-Read) Tozer’s The Pursuit of God
This week, I (Bryan) thought it'd be fun to do a deep dive into one of my favorite and most influential reads: A.W. Tozer's The Purusit of God. Tozer wrote this classic work to stir believers toward an ever deepening intimacy and life with God. His words not only resonated when he wrote them nearly 70 years ago, but feel more and more prophetic for our day and age.
A Simple Practice to Orient Your Life in Christ (Especially in Lent)
A few years ago, Rachel and I participated in a 12-week version of the Ignatian Exercises as part of our spiritual direction training. The exercises, called "A Retreat in Everyday Life," is a series of scriptural meditations, prayer, the examen, and processing with a spiritual director. The creation and significance of the Ignatian Exercises is a post for a different time (although we have highlighted the prayer of Examen in previous posts).
As part of this experience, each day we would pray and reflect on what was called "The grace I ask for." These were short, one-sentence requests that were connected with the themes. "The grace that I ask for" stayed the same for a full week.
A rule of Life for 2021
"Where is the Life we have lost in Living?"
-T.S. Elliot
Last week, we invited you to reflect on the previous year, noting how you saw God move in your life, and how you saw his faithfulness in the midst of everything that happened in 2020. As we begin this new year (which has certainly been off to a disorienting start in its first week), we want to invite you to craft a Rule of Life.
The Annual Examen: A Practice for Reflecting on 2020
Perhaps more than previous years, we need to look back and reflect on 2020. This year has changed us so profoundly, and it's worth looking back to see just how we've changed.
My personal temptation is to just say "Whew, good thing 2020 is over," and move on. Reflecting back on everything that happened this year doesn't necessarily sound like a joyous prospect right now, and it's all too easy to shove 2020 aside and try to move forward. Surely 2021 couldn't be worse, right? But reflecting back on times of pain, sorrow, and suffering can be healing and transforming. It also allows us to see how God was present and at work.
How to Celebrate Advent
We know you’ve all got Thanksgiving and turkey and adjusting of plans and holding this holiday loosely on the mind and heart right now. (We can relate.) Celebrating the holiday season feels so different this year. It feels necessary, important, and so needed, and at the same time, I know we’ve all had to face the possibility of loved ones missing from our tables. There’s a very real, collective loss and longing we’re experiencing.
For us, we’re excited to spend the actual holiday of Thanksgiving with some family (which we’ve only been able to do once in the last five years! Usually, Bryan and I would celebrate on our own in California, either or alone or with some friends who extended a kind invitation). Now that we’ve moved back to Colorado, we’re so grateful to be home and among family! However, we still haven’t been able to see family on my side yet, even though they’re only a few hours away. My mom still hasn’t gotten to see me pregnant in person yet. We’re hoping that will change soon, but like many of you, we’re waiting.
A Henri Nouwen Reading List
Today is the anniversary of the passing of Henri Nouwen. Like many others, Nouwen’s writings have touched me deeply and have played a significant role in my own formation.
I first stumbled upon Henri when I was in college. My roommate had gone to a summer prayer internship and had come back on fire for God, bringing with him a stack of books—and I enjoyed snagging books off of his shelf. In that stack was an odd-sounding book titled Clowning in Rome by a guy I’d never heard of. I decided I would give it a try, and it quickly became apparent to me that more than reading it, it was a book that was reading me. It resonated deeply and opened up new ways of thinking about prayer, solitude, and community. After that I was hooked and have enjoyed pretty much everything I've read by Nouwen.
Practicing Hope
A few weeks ago I was in a session with my own spiritual director, and we talked about hope. I’ve had quite the back-and-forth with hope over the last few years, as Bryan and I walked through more than three years of infertility. I’ve described hope as stubborn, something that just won’t quit or let go of me, even when despair was lurking nearby. And there were certainly moments of despair. Somehow though, even when it felt impossible, I held onto the stubborn hope that someday we’d have children of our own.
After my spiritual direction session ended, I walked away with this question: How exactly do I actually practice hope? What does it look like to live out hope in daily moments? I’ve been pondering these questions for a few weeks, and I thought I’d share some ways that the Lord has helped me to put hope to practice. Clinging to and living out our hope feels like something we all could use right now.
Spiritual Friendship
If ever there has been a time to be grateful for friendships, it’s been in the last five months.
I’ve appreciated all the humorous memes and posts about how 2020 has been one giant dumpster fire of a year, but in all seriousness, these few months have placed our souls, emotions, and closest relationships into a giant pressure cooker.
Still, with so much pressing in and trying to divide us and tear us apart from one another, I’ve found so much gratitude for the deep friendships in my life. Even as we’ve been separated and isolated during lockdowns and quarantines, we've found creative ways to spend time together and maintain connection, and that’s been so beautiful to me. These friends have been messengers of hope, celebrators in our joy as we expect our first child, fellow mourners and lamenters as we all adjust and struggle through so much change and loss. Oh, how we’ve needed them!
So today, I want to invite you to consider how spiritual friendships breathe life into our journeys with Jesus, and how to develop these friendships in your own life.
Lament as Praise
Grief has been a topic gaining significant traction this year, and for good reason. We’ve faced constant change in every sphere of our lives, and we’ve been hit with a tidal wave of things to grieve, be they big or small, concrete or more difficult to define and articulate. When the world takes a much different--and in many ways a traumatic, tragic, disrupting--direction than we expected, how are we to respond? How do we cry out to God when we feel powerless?
I have found myself grieving the loss of normalcy and a sense of certainty, and there’s a heavy feeling of powerlessness that follows. I may not have actually possessed any more control before, but it’s all the more apparent how very little control I actually do have. And while it’s a good thing to recognize that only God is in control, there is still a grieving process in shedding the false notion of my own sense of control.
And then, things that we have already been grieving may be intensified in this season.
Praying the Words of Others
Even as a spiritual director and leader of a spiritual formation ministry, I’ve struggled to find a rhythm of prayer and time with God these last couple of months. Not only that, but I’ve struggled to find my own words in prayer. As a writer and a lover of words, it’s been an odd experience.
I shared a few weeks ago about the practice of breath prayer, which I’ve held onto throughout our season of being sheltered in place. Another prayer practice I’ve found helpful in recent weeks has been praying the prayers of others.
I’ve been amazed at the beautiful prayers penned by friends and shared via social media. They’ve brought comfort, peace, and articulation to my experience that I didn’t even know I needed. (Thank you, Sarah Bourns, for your poem “We’ve All Been Exposed,” and all the other prayers you’ve shared!)
Breath Prayer: For When You Don’t Have Many Words
As we continue to journey through varying degrees of social distancing, sheltering in place, quarantining, and hunkering down at home, I wanted to offer a prayer practice that may be helpful.
I have to admit that prayer has been a bit off for me the last few weeks. I just haven’t quite been able to find the words, and there have been some moments when God has felt very far away. Aside from intercession and praying for others, the easiest forms of prayer lately have been the Lord’s Prayer, those written by others (there are some beautiful prayers being shared via social media right now, aren’t there?), and breath prayer.
10 Daily Practices That Are Helping Me to Stay Grounded
As I’ve talked with friends, family, and those we are caring for in this season, I’ve realized that we’re all making some unique discoveries about ourselves, our faith, and our priorities in these uncertain times.
Working from home or being laid off, trying to give our kids structure and at-home education, making more meals at home and getting creative with what we have available, college kids having to come home to finish their semester online, sanitizing and hand-washing, working essential jobs that place us in harm’s way, new grocery store protocol, stressing about loved ones getting sick or fears about our national and global economy have forced us to redefine our day-to-day.
But we’ve also had to confront grief, anxiety, trauma, fear, loneliness, and lack of resources. Our sense of security and control (most of which has been false all along…) has been shaken, shattered, and scattered.
That’s a lot to process, adjust to, and hold, friends.
Prayers for Anxious Yet Hopeful Hearts
Hey, friends.
What a week the world has been through. As we wrestle with feelings of overwhelm and cling to hope, we wanted to share a few prayers that have brought us comfort and peace over the last few days. Pray them when you feel anxious, pray them when you're moved to intercede, pray them alone or with those closest to you--and all the while, know that we are praying that the peace of the Lord Jesus will guard your hearts and minds (and bodies, too!).
Resources for This Lenten Season
Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, which marks the start of Lent. Ash Wednesday reminds us of our sinfulness and our frailty, but more than that, Ash Wednesday and Lent remind us of God’s goodness and faithfulness. Only when we reflect on our full humanity, do we fully realize who God is and who God made us to be through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It’s through this season of reflection that we recognize the magnitude and magnificence of God’s great love for us.
This season serves as a disorienting rhythm. Lent invites us into something different from the rest of the year.
Defining Spiritual Formation, Spiritual Disciplines, and Spiritual Direction
Spiritual formation. Spiritual direction. Spiritual disciplines.
These are terms we often use at CURATE, because we are, after all, a spiritual formation and soul care ministry. But we’ve been asked some version of these questions fairly often:
“So....what exactly is spiritual formation? And what’s spiritual direction? And what to you mean by spiritual practices and spiritual disciplines?”
Not only are we asked these questions, but we’ve also noticed that some folks use these terms interchangeably, because they are so very similar and are intertwined with one another when it comes to who we are becoming as people of faith. While related to one another, these three terms are distinct.
Retreat, Part 1: Why Getting Away is So Good for Your Soul
I love retreats.
As a former Young Life staffer, some of my favorite memories are from staff or leader retreats at Crooked Creek or Frontier Ranch, women’s retreats at Trail West Lodge, or from church women’s retreats I’ve been a part of over many years. Most of these retreats, though, are packed full of content, meetings, listening to speakers, lots of conversation, playing games, and squeezing in a nap in the afternoon, if I’m lucky.
What I really long for on retreat, though, is what Jesus invites his disciples into in Mark 6:30-32, right after they’d been sent out to do ministry (and just before the feeding of the 5,000):
“The apostles returned to Jesus from their ministry tour and told him all they had done and taught. Then Jesus said, ‘Let’s go off by ourselves to a quiet place and rest awhile.’ He said this because there were so many people coming and going that Jesus and his apostles didn’t even have time to eat. So they left by boat to a quiet place, where they could be alone.”
Right in the middle of their busy lives and work and to-do’s, Jesus invites them to come away and rest awhile, even as crowds are following them. He gives them permission to step away, to retreat from the soul-weary battles of ministry, and rest with him.
Silence and Solitude: A Practice to Try in the New Year
Truthfully, I used to think of silence and solitude as practices for refreshment, renewal, and getting away from people and set aside responsibilities. But they are not designed to make me feel rested. They’re designed to strip away all the distractions, let me see myself clearly, and allow me to hear the voice of God. Nouwen calls silence and solitude “the furnace of transformation” (The Way of the Heart, p. 13). Deliberately placing myself into a furnace sounds like the very opposite of restful.
But friends, I am in need of practicing silence and solitude myself right now. Desperately. (I think that’s the real reason why I’ve procrastinated writing this post…) I can feel in my soul a deep, deep longing to get away from noise, words, instagram posts, unsettling news stories, the world telling me what I should want and have and do. To instead be so satisfied with the quiet presence of God that words are unnecessary. There’s a quote from Spurgeon that has been playing in my head the last few days, in which he says that “contemplation, still worship, unuttered rapture, these are mine when my best jewels are before me. Brethren, rob not your heart of the deep sea joys; miss not the far-down life.”
Rob not our hearts of the deep sea joys.
Miss not the far-down life.
So, let’s plumb the depths and learn this far-down life together, shall we?
Praying Scripture: The Time-Tested Practice of Lectio Divina
The Psalmist declared to have hidden the word in his heart, and that it was “sweeter than honey” (Ps. 119:11, 103), and Paul encouraged us in Colossians 3:16 to “let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.” I’ve never found a practice of reading scripture that invites me to do the same quite like lectio divina!
I was first introduced to this ancient practice while on staff with Young Life, when Bob and Claudia Mitchell led us through it at a staff retreat a decade ago. Their love for the words of Scripture were only unmatched for their love for the God these words revealed, and I was captivated. I wanted to know the heart of Jesus the way that they did, and so began my journey with lectio divina.
How to Pray the Psalms
For some people, the Psalms are a part of scripture that have always felt like home, but for others, it takes a while to get into them. I was in the latter camp. The pathway to spiritual growth in the Psalms isn’t as clear-cut or pragmatic as places of didactic teaching, encouragement, or commands in other parts of scripture.
Donald Miller opened Blue Like Jazz with, “Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way” (pg. ix). This was my experience.