Introduction:
She describes becoming aware of a feeling of longing. She questions whether she should trust it (is it selfishness, sinful dissatisfaction?) but Jesus' words promising "life more abundantly" pose a valid invitation. It seems that seeking this path involves not more busyness and obligations, but "spiritual transformation [is]. . . a mystery: something outside the range of normal human activity and understanding that can be grasped only through divine revelation and brought about by divine activity" (12). "I cannot transform myself, or anyone else for that matter. What I can do is create the conditions in which spiritual formation can take place, by developing and maintaining a rhythm of spiritual practices that keep me open and available to God" (12).
"When we are in touch with our deepest longings (instead of being completely distracted by their surface manifestations), a whole different set of choices opens up. Rather than being motivated by guilt or obligation--as in 'I really ought to have a quiet time" or "I really should pray more"--we are compelled to seek out ways of living that are congruent with our deepest desires" (13). Taking time to figure out what you really want, will help you get what you really want. Okay.
"The journey begins as we learn to pay attention to our desire in God's presence, allowing our desire to become the impetus for deepening our spiritual journey. This is the substance of the first chapter, and it is not to be taken lightly or skimmed over as a precursor to the disciplines themselves. If we skip this process, our work with the disciplines will be nothing more than another program entered into on the basis of external prodding or superficial motivators" (13).
"In Christian tradition, this structured arrangement of spiritual practices is referred to as 'a rule of life.' A rule of life is a way of ordering our life around the values, practices, and relationships that keep us open and available to God for the work of spiritual transformation that only God can bring about. Simply put, a rule of life provides structure and space for our growing" (14).
THE IMPORTANCE OF SPIRITUAL COMMUNITY--this quote which I will put in my prayer journal--"Our commitment to community and to spiritual friendship within that community is in itself a spiritual discipline that is of great significance to the spiritual life. Spiritual friendship is not primarily a social relationship that exists for the purpose of catching up over lunch or an occasional lunch or a golf outing. It is not primarily a collegial relationship focused on work matters or service projects. It is not a self-help relationship focused primarily on problem solving or accountability. It is not even primarily a Bible study group. Rather it is a relationship that is focused intentionally on our relationship with God as viewed through the lens of desire. With such a friend we share the deepest desires of our heart, so that we can support one another in arranging our lives in ways that are congruent with what our hearts want most. Together we reverence the ways God is meeting us in the context of the spiritual practices that help us to seek him" (16).
Chapter 1--Longing for More: An Invitation to Spiritual Transformation
That longing is a difficult thing to define, I grant that. But her descriptions seem a little self-helpy, Milennial-seeking-fulfillment-flavored to me. "'This is my best self This is who I want to be more and more, by God's grace. These are the moments I will remember on my deathbed and say, 'That was what I was meant for.' Then it ambushed me--my longing, that is. A prayer welled up from the depths of my being, a prayer so full of desire that it was barely articulate: 'O God, give me more moments like this--moments when I am fully present to you and to others in love. Moments when I am connected with what is purest and most authentic within me and able to respond to your presence in that place. I want to live my life in such a way that there is more of this!'" (21). All those things are good, and I'm long from them. But maybe I aspire to long for even more than that?
"When was the last time you felt it--your own longing, that is? Your longing for love, your longing for God, your longing to live your life as it is meant to be lived in God?" (22). She speaks of the fear of arousing longing, because "How will i live with desire that is awake and alive rather than asleep and repressed?" (23). Ah, the question this Enneagram 9 would rather not even ask. Like she says, "giving attention to desire feels like opening up Pandora's box. But it is even riskier to refuse to acknowledge what's real within us, because whether we acknowledge them or not, these dynamics are at work wielding a subterranean power over us. Their power only gets stronger the longer we repress them. How much safer it is for ourselves and everyone around us if we open our desires in Jesus' presence and allow him to help us sift through them" (25). Amen. Safer, but not easier at the start.
"Your desire for more of God than you have right now, your longing for love, your need for deeper levels of spiritual transformation than you have experienced so far is the truest thing about you...There is a place within each one of us that is spiritual in nature, the place where God's Spirit witnesses with our spirit about our truest identity. Here God's Spirit dwells with our spirit, and here our truest desires make themselves known. From this place we cry out to God for deeper union with him and with others" (24). I don't know that I disagree with this, necessarily. Maybe I just rebel against the deep, mythical- seeming language? Truly, I guess my biggest issue is that it doesn't seem to have a Biblical basis, it just seems like her reasoning that got her here. But if I'm going to be diving into the depths and dredging up all this longing, and using it as the basis for my spiritual transformation, and doing it all based on who I truly am and who God truly is and the relationship between us, I'd rather base it on Scripture. I'd rather think of it as my New Self in Christ's righteousness being the truest thing about me, and that New Self is being empowered by the Spirit to be obedient, and Jesus said that obedience means loving God and loving others. I want all my longings and stuff to be centered on that.
"We long for God because he first longed for us. We reach for God because he first reached for us. Nothing in spiritual life originates with us. It all originates with God" (25).
"Jesus' interactions with the people he came into contact with during his life on earth make it clear that desire, and the willingness to name that desire in Christ's presence, is a catalytic element of the spiritual life" (27). Hmmm.
Chapter 2-- Solitude: A Place for Desire
Most of us are not very good at sitting with longing and desire--our own or someone else's. It feels tender. It feels vulnerable. It feels out of control (30).
"The longing for solitude is also the longing to find ourselves, to be in touch with what is most real within us, that which is more solid and enduring than what defines us externally. This is our soul, that place at the very center of our being that is known by God, that is grounded with God and is one with God.
"But it's tricky to get the soul to come out, as Parker Palmer so eloquently acknowledges [when she said earlier that the soul is like a wild animal--tough and resilient, but also shy and only able to be seen if one is silent]. We are not very safe for ourselves, because our internal experience involves continual critique and judgment, and the tender soul does not want to risk it" (32).
"One of the new challenges of our generation is the impact of technology on our spirituality. This warrants serious consideration. If we are not careful, technology has a way of compromising our ability to be present to ourselves, to God and to each other--all of which are fundamental elements of the spiritual life (34).
"No wonder we feel disconnected from God: we are rarely able to give him our full attention in solitude and silence" (35). "The other disciplines described in this book and elsewhere are a wonderful smorgasbord of spiritual sustenance, but we really can't engage any of them until solitude becomes a place of rest for us rather than another place for human striving and hard work" (37).
"One of the most important lessons I have learned over the past few years is how important it is to have time and space for what's real in my life--to celebrate the joys, grieve the losses, shed my tears, sit with the questions, feel my anger, attend to my loneliness. This 'being with what is' is not the same thing as problem solving or fixing, because not everything can be fixed or solved. Rather, it means allowing God to be with me in that place and waiting for him to do what is needed. In silence my soul waits for you and you alone, O God. From you alone comes my salvation.
"When we don't attend to our vulnerabilities and instead try to repress it all and keep soldiering on, we get weary from holding it in. Eventually it leaks out in ways that are damaging to us and to others.
"Another reason we are so tired is that we are always working hard to figure things out rather than learning how to cease striving, how to be with what is true in God's presence and let God be God in the most intimate places of our life--which is, in the end, the only thing that will change anything. We're busy trying to make stuff happen rather than waiting on God to make stuff happen" (41).
"What can you say now that represents the truth of your current experience with this most significant Christian discipline [of solitude]?
...The only time when I am not lonely and my longing for union is satisfied is when I am in solitude. In the world of people and things, I do sometimes experience moments that have a sense of completeness--moments of union with God and others and the world beyond--but most times these moments are fleeting and give only a taste of what my heart is longing for. The truth is, they often seem to exacerbate the longings that I now know will never be completely satisfied here on this earth. No matter how beautiful such moments are, they are often fraught with a painful awareness of human separateness even from those we love the most, and I am left trying to manage my unruly tendencies to cling and grasp, control and manipulate, fix and fill in order to numb the pain of that separateness....When I reengage my life in community with others and live from that place of union with God, there is indeed a peace that passes understanding and transcends the longing (43).
Chapter 3-- Scripture: Encountering God Through Lecto Divina
Reading for information vs transformation and the assertion that we should read the Bible like a love letter: "The study of Scripture is important, but if we stop there, we will eventually hit a wall spiritually. Information gathering may be exhilarating and even useful at times, bu in the end our soul know that there must be something more" (50).
Moving from head to heart: Allowing ourselves to pay attention at this level may feel a bit threatening at first, depending on how suspicious or out of touch we are with our feelings and internal dynamics. Robert Mulholland points out that in our culture there is generally little danger of neglecting the cognitive, rational, and analytic dynamics of our being, for these:
'are so hyper-developed in our culture and in our normal modes of learning...we must remember...loving God with all our heart and all of our soul precedes loving God with all of our mind'" (52).
She then goes on to laud the practice of reading short sections of Scripture and meditating on them, seeing how it resonates within, and avoiding reading huge chunks for information. I deny her seeming assertion that this is the only manner of approaching the Bible of value, but I do appreciate her point. She describes attentively noting her reaction to a command. "It's pretty subtle at first, but I stop and give myself a little space to notice that feeling and wonder about it" (53). She ends up getting to the heart of her resistance to the command to "love your enemies" and framing it in a context of wanting to be more like Christ, and "Now God and I are having a conversation that has some substance to it!" (53).
Yes and No
1. Yes
--applying Scripture is important
--applying requires
*focused time
*a self-knowledge that many today are desperately lacking
2. No
--no appreciation of reading all the larger portions for context guiding applications, and indeed guiding what the goal is. She mentions the goal of Christ-likeness, being transformed into a more loving person. Whatever the goal is, I want it to be dictated by Scripture, not a mix of Church tradition/cliche, and modern feel-goodness
--no mention of sin. Therefore, no mention of Christ as our atoning sacrifice who gives us his righteousness. Jesus was indeed a great example, but if only that, we are powerless to emulate the example.
To me, the problem in following commands is idolatry. I count myself fortunate that right now at church I'm re-learning that the basis for all sin is idolatry. To the point that I agree with Barton, I appreciate the reminder to read Scripture mindfully, and as Alan Kraft says, look for "the sin beneath this sin." To Barton's example, realizing that we are resistant to loving our enemies is a crucial first step. Sitting or dealing with that in God's presence is another important step that we often neglect. But I believe Scripture would guide us even beyond that-- to naming it the sin, identifying how it is idolatrous, confessing, and asking God for help!
As for lecto divina, I have very mixed opinions. I do appreciate Barton's statement, "Although Bible study is not a part of the lectio process itself, Bible study is an important supplement" (55).
Chapter 4-- Prayer: Deepening Our Intimacy with God
As one grows in maturity, they will enter "the experience of having our prayers go cold" (64), which "signals an invitation to deeper levels of intimacy that will move beyond communication, which primarily involves words and concepts, into communion, which is primarily beyond words" (65).
"In Christian tradition, there are several signs that indicate you are transitioning to a new phase int he life of prayer:
1. What you are doing isn't working, no matter how much effort you put into it. You find yourself asking, Is this all there is?
2. Your desire for God continues to be strong even though you have no desire for anything external--words, images, previous structures for prayer, including the Scriptures. While these things may still be present to some extent, you are not attracted to them anymore. Words fail. The hunger for intimacy--to just hang out with God--is all there is.
3. You find yourself enjoying being along, aware of God's presence without structured activity. In the deepest part of your being, you know that God alone can satisfy the longings of the human heart, and other things fade in importance. There is not attraction to thought, meditation or any other human activity or achievement. This last condition is most important, for it justifies the other two and indicates a readiness to leave words behind and remain with God alone in an act of love."
"In most cases, the reason we prefer to talk about prayer and read about prayer but don't actually pray has more to do with our ambivalence about intimacy than with anything else" (66).
Prayer Beyond Words: "the movement beyond words to an intimacy that requires no words"... like lovers making love, a mother nursing a baby, John leaning against Jesus at the last supper. "The Old Testament also refers repeatedly to a kind of knowing that comes in the absence of words or in the stillness of waiting. Be still before the Lord and wait. Be still and know that I am God. In silence my soul waits for you alone, oh God" (68).
"The soul returns to its most natural state in God. In returning and rest you will be saved" (69).
The Intimacy of Breathing:
"In the stillness we make yet another discovery: the Holy Spirit is the One who really knows how to pray. We discover that prayer is truest when it has passed beyond words into the realm where the Holy Spirit groans for us with utterances that are too deep for words (see Romans 8:26-27). The silence becomes a time when we listen for the prayer that the Holy Spirit is praying deep within us as he moves between the depths of our human experience and the divine will, interceding for us beyond words" (70).
"Words, when they do find their way to the surface from these depths carry with them a whole new power and meaning because they are forged in the caldron of our deepest longings for God" (70). And thus the "breath prayer" is born. "Usually our breath prayer will remain with us for quite some time, and we get to the point where is prays itself without our even having to think about it" (70).
Discovering Your Breath Prayer:
"You don't think your way into your breath prayer; you discover it by listening to your deepest longings and desires in God's presence" (71).
Prayer in Community:
"One of the most natural results of developing a vibrant personal prayer life is that we begin to notice a deep desire to enter meaningfully into prayer in community with others" (73).
One example is the Daily Office.
"Intercessory prayer is not primarily about believing we know what someone else needs and then trying to tell God what the answer is. It is not about wrestling some result from God. Intercessory prayer is more about recognizing that we do not know how to pray for others--or ourselves for that matter--but the Holy Spirit knows. Since we understand that the Holy Spirit is already interceding for us before the throne of grace, we can bring a name or a need, express it simply and in the silence experience our own groaning and Holy Spirit's groaning for that person. We can listen for the prayer that is already being prayed for that person before the throne of grace, and without struggling hard to put things into words, we can enter into God's caring love for that person and wait with them and for them in God's presence" (74).
All of Life As Prayer:
"Any approach to the spiritual life that sets up false or awkward distinctions between prayer and life, or prayer and the other disciplines, seems to unnaturally rip apart elements of life that belong together or to unneccesarily complicate something that is in its essence quite simple" (75).
Chapter 5-- Honoring the Body: Flesh-and-Blood Spirituality
Main Scripture example: Elijah in 1 Kings 19. "The angel even pointed out that if he did not care for his body, the journey into the presence of God would be too much for him" (79).
"Up to this point, I had been quite out of touch with any sense that my life in a body had anything to do with my spirituality. Intent on trying to be 'spiritual,' I had somehow relegated life in the body to some lesser category that warranted very little of my attention" (79). "I was becoming more aware that I am not merely a soul and spirit; I am an embodied human being, and my body is the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19)....the Scriptures indicate that it is possible to glorify God in our bodies rather than merely glorifying the body, which seemed to be the focus of the surrounding culture" (80).
"All the great themes of Scripture affirm the significance of the body as a place where the presence of God can be known and experienced. The incarnation itself--Christ's choice to take on flesh and inhabit a human body--forever elevates the experience of embodiment to the heights of spiritual significance" (81). Other examples: the sacrament of communion, the fact that our bodies will resurrect on the last day and we will dwell forever with God as embodied people.
Application: "The appreciation of life in the body includes embracing our maleness or our femaleness, and thus our sexuality, as a gift from God that helps reveal his true nature" (82).
Application: "For years now I have used a daily bike ride to a nearby retreat center as a way of connecting physical exercise with time for silence and prayer. This is as much a spiritual practice for me as sitting at home with my Bible open, because it connects every part of me with the One who created me" (84). "There are many creative ways to forge a life-giving connection between the spiritual life and our body; the key is our intent an our attention to the way in which God makes himself known in this most basic aspect of our existence" (85).
Listening to the Body:
"Our bodies have much to tell us if we could only figure out how to listen. In fact, oftentimes God speaks to us through our body. Most times, our body is the first to know if we are overcommitted, stressed, uneasy, or joyful, and when we need to attend to something that is causing us pain or disease" (85). "One area of my life where this has really proved to be true is my work and vocation. As I have worked to clarify my calling, I have learned to pay attention to my energy levels in response to different activities. If I experience a particular activity as being inordinately draining, I begin to consider very carefully how much of myself God wants me to give to that. On the other hand, if I feel particularly energized by a certain person or activity, I can pay attention to how God may be leading me to incorporate more of that into my life" (86).
Praying in the Body:
"As I sat on a tree trunk that had fallen across a stream, I prayed and felt myself rejuvenated by the beauty and the silence. I saw hundreds of tadpoles swimming around in a puddle that had formed in a rut--of all things!--and it reminded me that life can spring up anywhere, even in the dry and rutted places of my own life. I paid attention to how good it felt to be in my body, climbed a hill until my heart beat fast, got sweaty and lay down exhausted when I got back--full or a sense of the immensity and yet the nearness of God.
"If that's not prayer, I don't know what is!" (88).
Chapter 6-- Self-Examination: Bringing my Whole Self Before God
"There comes a time in the spiritual life when one of the major things God is up to is to lovingly help us see ourselves more clearly...one of the deepest longings of the human heart is to be known and loved unconditionally....The problem is that most of us aren't willing to take the risk of being seen so completely [as to truly be loved unconditionally]... All of us would prefer to have the experience of unconditional love without having to take the risk of letting someone know us that well!" (92).
"We need a practice that offers us a way of opening to the love of God in the places of our brokenness and sin--which is the only way true spiritual transformation ever takes place" (93).
(Of Psalm 139): "There is a paradox, of course, in the truth that I am inviting God to search me and know me when in fact he already has searched me and known me. This may point to the fact that the real issue in self-examination is not that I am inviting God to know me (since he already does) but that I am inviting God to help me know me" (94).
examen of consciousness-- a way to develop our capacities to recognize the presence of God, also called a daily review. A simple discipline that helps us to become more God conscious, it involves taking a few minutes at the end of each day to go back over the events of the day and invite God to show us where he was present with us and how we responded to his presence (95).
"How many people do you know who are effective at being themselves and letting God use that?" (98).
(Of Psalm 139): David's certainty that the person God created him to be is deeply good has become the bedrock of his identity; he is able to let the parts that are confusing even to himself come into the light of God's presence so that God can show him what is good and what is evil" (100).
"When we have come to a place of certainty in the steadfastness of God's love and are anchored by a sense of the basic goodness of our created self, there is nothing to lose and everything to gain by inviting God to search us and know us to our very depths" (101).
examen of conscience--a way to see ourselves more clearly in light of God's presence. Involves 3 steps: seeing something that went wrong in behavior or action, which may provide us a glimpse of how the action has fallen short of Christ-lineness and/or how it has wounded others; being willing to name our failure for what is is and also to name what was going on inside us, seeking some understanding of the inner dynamics that caused the behavior, with God's guidance because often our sin patterns are unknown to us without God's revelation; and confession. (102)
purgation--the process by which God gradually strips us of more and more layers of our own sinfulness; obvious sins which even our culture eschews; other deliberate sins that may still be "normal" in our culture; then unconscious sins and omissions; and finally deep-seated attitudes and inner orientations out of which our behavior patterns flow (102-103).
"Confession is the endgame in the self-examination process" (103).
"Our culture promotes a profound sense of denial about the presence of sin in our lives and the ways our sins and negative patterns wound others. In our litigious milieu, even when something is our fault, we are encouraged not to admit it unless we can derive some benefit from that" (104).
Chapter 7-- Discernment: Recognizing and Responding to the Presence of God
"Discernment is first of all a habit, a way of seeing that eventually permeates our whole life" (111).
"Scripture also speaks of 'discernment of spirits' and encourages us to 'test the spirits to see whether they are from God' (1 Corinthians 12:10; 1 John 4:1). This aspect of discernment helps us to distinguish...the true from false, in the world 'out there' but also in the interior world of our thoughts and motives" (112).
"God's will for is is generally for us to pursue that which gives us life (John 10:10) and to turn us away from things that drain life from us and leave us debilitated" (113).
"'I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live.' He says that the wisdom that enables us to choose life is not something that we will find 'out there' in heaven or across the ocean somewhere but that this knowledge is very near to us--in our mouths and in our hearts for us to notice and observe (Deuteronomy 30:19-20). In other words, it is a visceral, in-the-body experience" (114).
"The Scriptures are clear that discernment, when it is given, is always a gift" (116).
1--"To really open myself to knowing and doing the will of God requires trust that God's intentions toward me are deeply good. Discernment requires interior freedom, a state of wide-openness to God and the capacity to relinquish whatever might keep us from choosing God" (117).
2--"The second fundamental building block of the discernment process is the belief that love is our primary calling" (117).
3--"The third foundational building block is the belief that God does communicate with us through the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is given to help us know the demands of love in our situation" (118).
"The practice of discernment begins with a prayer for indifference. We generally think of indifference as a negative attitude characterized by apathy and not caring; in the realm of discernment, however, indifference is a very positive term that is rich in meaning. Here it means, 'I am indifferent to anything but God's will.'....Mary the mother of Jesus is one of the most compelling examples of utter indifference or 'given-overness' to the will of God...'Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word'....Until we have come to a place of indifference, any prayer for wisdom may well be something akin to a rigged election" (119-120).
"... our deepest orientation and desire, some essence of ourselves that God knew before we were even created in physical form. There are desires that are deep, true and fundamental to our being in Christ; these are the 'desire of your heart' that God promises to fulfill (Psalm 37:4), although often differently from how we might have envisioned. A profound life orientation is revealed in these deepest desires, and when we come in touch with them, we have found God's direction for our life. This usually also has something to do with our calling, the purpose for which God created us. This is that part of ourselves--a passion or burden that we carry that is uniquely ours--and it cannot be set aside lightly" (122).
"'Wants are mine; shoulds are somebody else's'" (123).
In the list of things used to aid in discernment, I note that:
--Asking the question "How does this fit into overall life calling?" doesn't help me discern my overall life calling.
--"Consolation and desolation" is a great catchphrase for that which brings freedom, wholeness, growth.
--Scripture is third on the list. Hmmm. I would hope that the best way for a Christian to decide on their overall life calling would be to follow the commands of Scripture. But that's not the point. This list is good. Others on the list: life of Christ, character and growth development, eternal perspective, and community.
Chapter 8-- Sabbath: Establishing Rhythms of Work and Rest
"'If we do not allow for a rhythm of rest in our overly busy lives, illness becomes our Sabbath--our pneumonia, our cancer, our heart attack, our accidents create Sabbaths for us'" (Wayne Muller, quoted on page 131).
"I know what it is like to rest for hours until I have energy to delight in something--good food, a good book, a leisurely walk, a long-awaited conversation with someone I love" (137).
"And the first order of things is that we are creatures and God is the Creator. God is the only one who is infinite. I am finite, which means that I live within the physical limits of time and space and bodily limits of strength and energy. There are limits to my capacities relationally, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually" (137).
"First, the heart of Sabbath is that we cease our work so that we can rest and delight in God and God's good gifts...Second, it is important to establish a regular rhythm if at all possible....The third principle that has become foundational for me as I have lived this discipline is that Sabbath-keeping is not primarily a private, self-indulgent discipline" (139).
"[If we engage with Sabbath primarily as a private discipline] Our children will then not have the opportunity to experience sabbath time with the guidance of their parents, they will not learn how to rest and delight in God (and they so desperately need it)...The other thing that's lost to the next generation is experiencing the quality of our presence on the sabbath. I am different on the sabbath"(140).
"There have to be times that you let yourself feel what you feel, when you let the tears come rather than blinking them back because you don't have time to cry" (144).
Chapter 9-- A Rule of Life: Cultivating Rhythms for Spiritual Transformation
"Many of us try to shove spiritual transformation into the nooks and crannies of a life that is already unmanageable, rather than being willing to arrange our life for what our heart most wants. We think that somehow we will fall into transformation by accident" (147).
"A rule of life seeks to respond to two questions: Who do I want to be? How do I want to live? Actually, it might be more accurate to say that a rule of life seeks to address the interplay between these two questions: How do I want to live so I can be who I want to be?" (147).
"One of the great temptations of the spiritual life is to believe that if I were in another season of life, I would be more spiritual. The truth is that spiritual transformation takes place as we embrace challenges and opportunities associated with each season of our life" (149).
"For those who are extroverted, the disciplines of solitude and silence will be more of a stretch, but it is a stretch toward wholeness. Introverts may feel that they don't need relationships in community, but nothing could be further from the truth. Without a balanced approach to spiritual disciplines, we run the risk of cultivating a one-sided spirituality that will disintegrate under pressure from the part of us we have left undeveloped" (149).
"The process of beginning to cultivate our own rhythm of spiritual practices begins with attending to our desire, noticing what words, phrases, and prayers seem to most consistently capture our sense of longing for God and for spiritual transformation we are experiencing in these days" (151).
"Early morning is a special time of day, when we are in a more rested and undefended state than we are at any other time" (154).
"It is impossible to overstate the importance of community in the spiritual transformation process. This is not the same thing as the Christian busyness that often accompanies church life; it is about quietly sharing the journey with others who are also drawn to deeper levels of spiritual transformation that enable them to discern and do God's will" (160).
Appendix A
"The purpose of journeying together in spiritual friendship and spiritual community...is to listen to one another's desire for God, to nurture that desire in each other and to support one another in seeking a way of life that is consistent with that desire" (169).
Appendix C
Spiritual Disciplines Handbook by Adele Calhoun "for a more exhaustive list of spiritual disciplines"
How spiritual disciplines "are the main way we offer our bodies to God as a living sacrifice"
Sin and Negative Pattern---Corresponding Discipline
Gossip/sins of speech--Silence, self-examination
Anxiety and worry--breath prayer, Scripture reflection
Envy and competitiveness--solitude, self-examination
Discontent--attending to desire
Self-reliance--Silence, prayer, community
Avoidance patterns--Community, spiritual friendship
Over-busyness--Solitude, discernment, sabbath, rule of life
Anger and bitterness--Silence, self-examination, confession
Feelings of inadequacy--Examen of consciousness, self-knowledge and celebration
Guilt, shame--Solitude, confession, forgiveness
Lust--Attending to desire in God's presence
Restlessness and stress--Solitude, silence, breath prayer
Lethargy and/or laziness--Caring for the body, exercise
Lack of faith--Prayer, Scripture
Feelings of isolation--Examen of consciousness, community
Selfishness and self-centeredness--Prayer and worship in community
Lack of direction--Discernment, listening to the body
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