Bringing Faith to Life
Posts tagged SOULfeast
Stretch to strengthen: pain of a healing sort
01 year
by wlebolt
in Body, Call to Action, church, Deeper Sensation, faith, In Action, Made to Move, prayer, witness, writing
No one really wants to be stretched. At least not too far, and definitely not when the stretching goes beyond what feels comfortable.
There’s just a certain out-of-control-feeling when someone is pulling you and you don’t know how far they will go, or even if they will stop. If you have ever had physical therapy after an injury or surgery, you know exactly what I’m describing. It’s painful but it’s pain of a healing sort. It helps recover your range of motion, and once you have that, the strengthening can begin. Then you’re on the road to return to action.
While there lots of ways to strengthen — exercise machines, dumbbells, pulleys, weights — it’s likely that when you earn your discharge from the PT gym you’ll be sent home with a lovely parting gift called a resistance band. It’s meant to be your home exercise companion. And it comes with a wonderful secret: When you stretch it, it strengthens you.
I know that sounds a bit counterintuitive, but it’s true. When you pull, it resists, gently. As you pull harder, it stretches, slowly. The harder you pull, the more it stretches and the more that strengthens you. This feels very much like life these days and, to me, very much like the life of faith. Body and soul engaged in a give-and-take which feels very much like exercise.
Apparently, my approach is a bit atypical. While most faith-folk tend to start with the soul and then invite the body along, when I begin with body, my soul always comes along for the joy ride. *
Try for yourself. Here’s a simple prayer routine using the “exercise” band and the words to the praise song, Spirit of the Living God. My daughter Stephanie’s lovely voice accompanies me.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mse98SpD1v4]
The movement is prayer. The words are prayer. The music is prayer.
But even better, even after the prayer-exercise is done, the sensation of prayer remains… in the body! The muscles that moved the band — the effort, the stretch, the exertion of prayer — reverberate and reiterate: melt me, mold me, fill me, use me. Literally, the prayer is still there.
This is too good to be true, right? Try it again. Become aware of the energy, the symbiosis, the connection of stretch to strengthen. Let your body prayer become fluid, flowing one motion into the next. Body and soul, together. Who could conceive of something so powerful and yet so simple?
*My thanks to the folks at the Upper Room for honoring my unusual approach and inviting me to join them to lead worship at SOULfeast 2013.
Guardrails for the Christian Life
111 years
Early on, the life of faith looks beautiful in the distance, but very confining up close. So many rules. So many prohibitions. So many boundaries. But the guardrails prevent us from experiencing the consequences of the natural laws during our early learning.
But our persistence pays off. Maturity is unconcerned with guardrails, only the beauty in the distance. We have one who guards before and behind, to the right and to the left.
“I have come, not to abolish the Law or the Prophets, but to fulfill them.” ~ Matthew 5:17
The Lake and I played today
011 years
The Lake and I played today.
We played peek-a-boo.
We played hide and seek.
We played with crayons, mostly orange.
We played red light, green light.
We played follow the leader.
Which started me singing. Step by step, you lead me. I will follow you all of my days. So touched, was I by this Mom who peeked out from the bushes and, seeing only me, thought it safe to cross. She shuttled the brood – mostly grown – out ahead of her, and then sidled past to lead them down the grassy hill to the stream below.
I am that mother.
Across the planks of that wooden walkway I jogged and sang in her honor until entering the path through the wrought-iron gate marked, “Asbury Trail.” I slowed, and stepped, and looked to the Lake.
There it was, playing. 
Reflecting the arch of a blackened branch. How lovely, but really not remarkable, but for its moment. It became the still waters of psalmists, long gone and modern day. This moment.
A graying man walking toward me, his little furry friend on a leash, smiled in my direction. I, feeling sheepish because he had first looked to where I was aimed and snapping a photo. Nothing remarkable about that spot or that shot his eyes said. I know, I wanted to say. Just illustrating a psalm here. Having a private conversation in this amphitheater filled with years and tears spent in weathered times, hope and peace, gathered in all times.
I’ve written a book, can you illustrate it for me? the Lake had begged. I obliged. But it was not the Lake who asked. It was the lake’s Keeper.
I’ve written a book, can you illustrate it for me? whispered the Keeper. Not with camera or crayons, simpler still. I want you to illustrate my book. You be the artist for my clay.
I rounded the bend and traversed the goose-poop-laden asphalt of the parking lot. I hurdled and jumped, hopped and cut right and left, till I stood face to face with the Lake. That psalm still churning.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies, You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.
Cup overflows…cup overflows… I’m stuck on cup overflows.
The Lake and I played today.
Are there layers to listening?
011 years
Folks today listen fast. We have to. We have information coming at us from all directions at rapid fire pace. Young people are unfazed by this. They’ve grown up with it and seem to have perfected the technique.
The young woman at the register was completely amazing. I approached her to exchange a pair of shoes. In the next 90 seconds she:
- scanned in my receipt
- checked her computer for stock availability
- found it in the size in another color
- pulled up that color and described it to me
Then:
- responded to the caller on her headset
- asked if she’d like them to hold those for her
- wrote up a slip
Then:
- responded to the woman bringing 2 large boxes about where to put them
- put the slip with these boxes
Then, she looked back at me.
Nearly, speechless, I asked if she’d hold my shoes while I went to look at what they had available. I had no doubt that my shoes would be waiting when I returned. This woman was astounding.
And I tell her story this way, in bullet points, because I must. It’s how we read and how we hear — these days. Our lives are filled with distraction and diversion, but we manage to take it all in. Just enough of it to get the idea, because that’s all we have time for. Funny, diversion used to be such a good thing. It was something that rescued us from our monotony and lifted us to the sublime, the humorous or at least the entertaining. Now, it’s standard. Comes on the basic model.
What, then, of us “contemplatives?” And I don’t mean monks or hermits or cloistered religious folk, but people who tend to cogitate and reflect by nature. Are we being shallowed, too? Perhaps, we, like the Universe, are slowly moving away from our center. Not exploded by the force of the Big Bang but drawn outward by a magnetic force.
I was struck by this definition of contemplative prayer offered by the Shalem Institute:
“Deep listening in the silence.”
If I am always operating at the surface, what is in the deep?
I drew 3 concentric circles in my journal and stood by to see what emerged. The surface was very easy to populate with words: shallow, listen up, easy to wake, distraction, diverge, snapshot, wander. Surprised myself with: productive and superconcious.
But these words did not emerge alone. They came in 3’s, partnered with under words and yet deeper words. Underneath were: dig, delve, order, explain, reason, data, apply, converge. Surprises: wonder and hypothesis. Perhaps those are borderline to the deeper words like: discover, uncover, naked, appreciate, adept, perspective, see, tiptoe. That was the place of deep listening.
How’d a kinesthetic get there? By one smooth, clear, baptismal stone. It was a gift from the folks at SOULfeast during one of their worship services. I like it because it’s surface feels right to my fingers. Somehow it clarifies my thoughts.
When I was finished writing words, I set it down on a word. I was surprised to see that it acted as a magnifier. The word it magnified was “subconcious.” Near it I had written, “How do you know that?”
Amazing the power of one smooth, clear stone.Up close. That’s what it said. From a distance, this small stone looked like a drop of water, beaded up from the page.
How can I magnify my listening from a distance? I can’t, but God can. No matter how far I pull away, I am still in connection with the center that holds me.
How do I know that? I have seen it.
Even when I can’t see it, I can feel it.
It spells itself out for me. Imagine that… just for me. Magnificent!
Run the lake but walk the bridges
1I’ve just returned from time away at a place that is full of beauty. I’ve been there before, but it was not full of last year’s beauty. It was newly lovely. In fact, daily lovely. Each day, it was filled with a new beautiful. A new personality.
It felt effortless to run around this lake. Perhaps because I took my camera, ready to stop for a photo. Beauty does that. It stops you. Gets your attention. Insists you tarry for a while. I even let that guy with the knee brace on one knee pass me (several times). He was going places. I was meandering.
And so it was. I ambled along the path, jogging, stopping, walking, looking. I even threw in a bit of note-taking in my phone’s notebook app. Because beauty does that. It inspires ideas and notions. It puts them together in a way that is new and lovely and clear. And worth sharing. Perhaps blogging.
One notion said, “Run the lake, but walk the bridges.”
So I ran. And as I approached the bridge over the dam, two walkers noticed my approach and moved to the right to let me pass.
“I don’t usually think of myself as a fast lane kind of person,” I called on the way by.
“Today is your day! Revel in the glory!”
And for a moment it was okay to do just that. Perhaps even for a whole day. Tomorrow will be new. And newly beautiful.
Funny how people tell you to “just be still.” My mind is never more stilled on God than when I am moving. Perhaps God runs along or within. Revs up the Him in me.
Traditional stillness is way too distracting for me.
Motion activated
012 years
How can you prepare to be surprised by God?
My way, truthfully, is to pack every possible option. To bring every book I might need, every piece of equipment I might demonstrate, and more. I prepare and work out the details, sketching and outlining and scratching in more notes in the margin. I prepare out of my fear of failing those who have come expectantly for help, or healing, or direction.
No one can prepare to offer those. There is only One I know who offers those. But still, I prepare. And then I come to Junaluska and I’m bowled over by the change in plan. God says, “Wendy, thank you for your preparations. Now let me just add these few things.” Which change the whole game.
God knows I am not the kind to come empty-handed. He expects me to prepare my heart and my mind. But then to pray, “Lord, help me love these as you love them.” And in rushes surprise. You can’t help but smile at the joy that comes with it.
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us,
I have been surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. People on a journey of faith, come to dive deeper. What do I have to offer them?
…fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
I am not naturally caring and serving by nature. I know this. I wake before 5am, according to the illuminated digital display across the room. All else is dark, the fog out my window so dense that nothing but the cross glowing high on the hillside appears through the sliver in my drapes.
Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. ~ Hebrews 12:1-3
“Just keep looking to the center,” it seems to say. “To your center. I am in the midst of this.”
Our core must be strong. That’s what I teach and show my athletes. And around that strength your joints may move, smoothly, through their full range of motion. The motion they were designed for. I show this to my friends who have come for the workshop:
“Hold yourself, just so. And pull, just so. But keep your core strong, as you strengthen your triceps,” I say. And I am grateful they have “stretchy bands” and are trying it for themselves. My words are completely inept. But they try it. They move it. Then one observes, “Ah, you’ve said something very important: your core must be strong so you can move.” That’s a very familiar message.
A cloud of witnesses. They start with faith and land in fitness. I start with fitness and land in faith. We have taken many roads to get here but have landed in the same place. What a surprise.
Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. Make level paths for your feet, so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed. ~ Hebrews 12: 12-13
I think God may have been trying to get my attention in the ladies restroom before the session. When I stood with dripping hands in search of a paper towel. The dispenser had printed directions: “motion activated.”
Surprising the places God will speak a word to you.
A Working Retreat?
0Oxymorons…you gotta love them. Verbally puzzling expressions that stop and make you think, because they just don’t go together.
- Great Depression
- Jumbo shrimp
- Act naturally
- Deafening silence
- Definite maybe
- Virtual reality
- Random order
Today, I am headed 8 hours south into the mountains of North Carolina to a retreat center at Lake Junaluska. There may be more beautiful and restful places than this, but I don’t know them.
Alas, as I prepare to depart many things clamber for my attention: things from home, things from work, things with a deadline. As I load up the car I ponder the oxymoron I am currently embarking upon: a working retreat.
I heft the last bag of provisions for the week onto the floor of the back seat. In it are my bottle of wine, two cups, and the old bread I have been saving to feed the ducks who are sure to greet us upon our arrival.
“Bread and wine?” my daughter says smugly from the passenger seat.
All I need.
Stretch to Strengthen
412 years
No one really wants to be stretched. Especially, not when it goes beyond what feels comfortable. There’s a certain out of control feeling when someone is pulling me and I don’t have any say-so in the how-far-they-go-until-they-stop. If you have ever suffered an injury or undergone surgery and then rehabbed in physical therapy, you know what I’m describing. Pain of a healing sort.
But once you get your range of motion back, you get to start on the strengthening. There are lots of ways to do this. Machines. Dumbbells. Steps. But when you’ve served your sentence you get sent home, often with a lovely parting gift. A resistance band. This band is meant to be your home exercise companion. And it comes with a wonderful secret:
When you stretch it, it strengthens you. A kind of reverse mentality. A give and take sort of relationship, gentle, safe and responsive. It pulls back on you with the force you apply.
Recently, I have been engaged by the folks at Upper Room ministries to address the relationship between body and soul, a connection I find inseparable. I’m a bit unusual in this realm. Religious folk tend to start with the soul and add the body. I tend to start with body and somehow the soul always speaks up for me. I thought the resistance band would be an easy way to make this connection.
So, I designed a simple prayer routine using the band and the words to the praise song, Spirit of the Living God. My daughter Stephanie’s lovely voice accompanies me.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mse98SpD1v4]
My movement is prayer. The words are prayer. The music is prayer. But it gets better. At the end of this prayer/exercise routine, as the music ended and I rested the band down, I discovered the most amazing thing. I could feel the muscles that had moved the band. The effort, the stretch, the exertion of prayer was still with me. I literally could feel the prayer.
Of course, I had to try it again. Now I was aware of the energy, the symbiosis, the connection of stretch and strengthen, relax and feel stronger. It became fluid, flowing, moving. One motion into the next. Body and soul, together. Who in the world would think of something so simple? I think I know.
My thanks to the folks at the Upper Room for honoring my idea (and unusual approach) and inviting me to join them at SOULfeast 2013.
Strengthened in Prayer: multi-tasking is Biblical
212 years
by wlebolt
in Body, Call to Action, Deeper Sensation, faith, imagination, In Action, Life, Made to Move
First Thessalonians (5:17) says it clearly: “Pray continually.”
I assume that means 24-7, 365. So, if I understand that correctly, that means my life should be one continuous prayer. Praising. Confessing. Thanking. Asking. But, wait, God wants me to be going about His business here on earth, too. So, if God expects me to pray without ceasing, He must have designed me to be both doing life and praying at the same time. Multi-tasking must be Biblical!
That’s good news because we’re good at multi-tasking these days. Texting while driving. Shopping while chatting. Pretending to listen while we’re thinking of 100 other things. Actually I don’t think any of those are truly multi-tasking, that is, doing both at the same time. I think we ping between things to accomplish both: Text, then check traffic, then text. Peruse shelves, then “say that again?” then select our salad dressing. Hmm, uh-huh, when our mind scans our mental to-do list, then uh-huh… Yes?
So I guess it’s natural to approach prayer in the same way. Pray, then do. Pray, then go. Pray, then speak. (or the other way around as may be more often the case) But if God actually intends for us to pray continuously — without stopping — that means we must have been made for this. In fact, it may be the one thing that can truly be multi-tasked with live. And is meant to be.
Except we don’t. We treat it as we do all the things we’ve been assigned. We add it to the list and then, if we’re dutiful, we check it off. Or, perhaps we’re a bit better about it and weave it throughout our days’ doings. But let’s not kid ourselves; that’s not praying continually.
Just for the sake of argument, if I could pray AND do at the same time, what would that look like?
- The prayer form would have to keep changing along with whatever I was doing.
- If I was talking, prayer would be in the words.
- If I was listening, prayer would be in the listening.
- If I was moving, prayer would be in the motion.
- If I was writing, prayer would be in the lettering.
That would be life lived completely God’s way.
What about if I exercising? Just to see, I pulled out my resistance band yesterday (a stretchy band that I use for exercise and in fitness activities) and choreographed motions to the hymn, Spirit of the Living God. I pull it. It resists. I pull harder. It moves. The give and take of exert and respond is the rhythm and movement of words and song. The song ends…”Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me” and I bring the band, taut between my hands, down to rest. In that moment I can feel the residual effects of the resistance and the stretch I’ve just performed. I can literally feel the prayer I have just prayed and I am stronger.
I have been strengthened in prayer. That is multi-tasking, and I think God is okay with it.
**Thank you to the folks at the Upper Room and the Global Board of Ministries who invited me to participate among them at SOULfeast 2013 this year. This inspiration is the fruit of that invitation.
I Will Give You Rest
112 years
Rest is essential to recovery and rebuilding. You’ll get no debate from me; though, many of us treat it as a luxury rather than the necessity it is. Still, it always feels a bit self-serving when I’m resting, knowing the hard work that others are putting in. And I think that probably shines a flashlight into the dark of my problem. When I see another person kicking back and putting his feet up when I am busting my butt to get something done, I feel a bit perturbed. Perhaps, I grumble under my breath. More likely, I shout a few “Why don’t you DO something!”‘s to them. My children can tell you just how this sounds.
I’m thinking there are different kinds of rests. No, not half rests, whole rests and quarter rests. You band geeks are all alike. I mean different intentions of rest. Different ways to enter rest. I am indebted to Rob Fuquay, a pastor in NC and teacher at SOULfeast this year, for his suggestion of a new way to look at rest. He said the root of the word rest comes from “putting your weight on” something. Sit a spell and rest. Pull up a stool.
Abraham Verghese, in the Covenant of Water, brilliantly portrays the something as the “burdenstone.”
Rest, yes, but what I settle myself upon and where I choose to rest what has become heavy to me is key. Rob suggests we take the really weighty stuff and rest it on the claims of God. To trust God with it. It gives you kind of a picture of that “bearing one another’s burdens” and “lean on me.”
The… “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” ~ Matthew 11:28-30
That certainly sounds like an invitation we should accept, doesn’t it? So why the guilt? Probably because we are trying to prove to others in our world that we are pulling our own weight — to avoid their judgment and to avoid self-judgment.
Rest is something Christ offers, after we take His yoke. And, then it’s up to Him whether we ‘sit a spell’ or ‘don’t get too comfortable.’ Funny, when I force myself to rest, I feel restless; rarely do I feel rested. When I put the weight on Him, it all feels lighter.
Oh, the work doesn’t go away. It’s more like the heavy hand that had been holding me down has been lifted.