Meditation Moment- The St. Francis Prayer

One way to increase our spiritual practice if we are rusty or just plain or reluctant is to rely on the words of others. Here is a prayer option to begin your day:

The St. Francis Prayer

Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace -

that where there is hatred, I may bring love -

that where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness -

where there is discord, I may bring harmony -

where there is error, I may bring truth -

where there is doubt, I may bring faith -

where there is despair, I may bring hope -

where there are shadows, I may bring light -

where there is sadness, I may bring joy.

Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted -

to understand than to be understood -

to love, than to be loved.

For it is by self-forgetting that one finds.

It is by forgiving that one is forgiven.

It is by dying that one awakens to Eternal Life.

Want to add a bit of weight to your prayer? Spend a couple minutes breathing. Then re-read the prayer.

Open My Eyes

When I stumbled across the Second Step and actually wrestled with it, my eyes opened to the possibility that maybe I was confused about what it means to believe in God. Maybe I had been sold a bill of goods or maybe I just wanted to find a club to be “in” and misunderstood what I was taught. Maybe all this joining and sorting and being in versus out of the “Jesus Club” was a man thing, not a God thing.

In recovery I read “We came to believe…” and that got me curious. Could it be that coming to believe is a process? Is it possible that I can “come to believe” in a way that does not require my certainty or my membership?

Is anyone crying for help? God is listening,ready to rescue you. If your heart is broken, you’ll find God right there; if you’re kicked in the gut, he’ll help you catch your breath. Disciples so often get into trouble; still, God is there every time. He’s your bodyguard, shielding every bone; not even a finger gets broken. The wicked commit slow suicide; they waste their lives hating the good. God pays for each slave’s freedom; no one who runs to him loses out.

~ Psalm 34:17-22 The Message

Sorting and Certainty? Not for Me!

Belief is tricky. In the faith of my youth, it was presented as an either/or, in or out proposition. We either believe and are “in” or we are unbelievers and are “out”. The price of admission was confession and acceptance of who God is and what Jesus did for us. If we were unwilling to do that we were labelled “those people”. I clearly got the message that to be “those people” is a very bad thing.

I was never comfortable with this sorting and certainty. I grew up watching pastors say one thing and do another. I observed Christians who behaved badly; I met some of “those people” who had no expressed belief in God yet as far as I could tell lived a Christlike life. How confusing! (Of course, I also met some awesome authentic Christians - but that is not the point of this blog!)

I confused myself too. I believed that God was trustworthy, but could not find a way to trust him with me. I could acknowledge that God was a wonderful Creator, gracious and loving, but did not believe that he had much interest in me one way or another. I felt unworthy but willing to try to earn his approval. Despite my efforts, God remained at best distant. On my worst days, he was frightening and I feared his judgment.

Have you ever felt that way? I no longer feel this way - most days. So what happened? How did I move through these confusing experiences?

To be continued….

Meditation Moment- The Serenity Prayer

One of the absolutely best ways to foster belief and transformation is establishing a daily practice that includes: silence, solitude, and stillness. Not great at any of those? Let’s practice! The Serenity Prayer is a common prayer in Twelve-Step programs and a useful a daily practice. Start today with this prayer. Sit with these words for a few minutes.

God grant me the serenity

to accept the things I cannot change,

the courage to change the things I can,

and the wisdom to know the difference.

All you need to practice the three S’s is to repeat this prayer, breathe in and out, and be still. Try it!

Skipping Over the Big Stuff

Step 2 of the Twelve Steps of AA says, “We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” Christians in recovery often report that the second step is one they can skip; after all, they are believers. It is risky business for folks in need of recovery to assume that their faith absolves them of the responsibility for working a thorough second step. But I also think it is risky for Christians who have not had a collapse in their life to assume that they have their faith thing all together if their measure of their faith is merely church attendance. A collapse brought us to this place if we are in recovery. That is actually a gift!

Whatever else contributed to our crash, our power dynamic with God is off in some profound way if we are missing the mark in terms of living by what we profess we believe. This is not unusual; every believer wrestles with such things. Crises are the gift that teaches us that we have a condition that brings this to our attention and provides us the opportunity to address it.

I do not know what you believe about yourself or what others have told you about yourself. But what God actually said about mankind (including you and me) was that he was pleased with what he saw when he finished his work of creation. I have struggled with what I believe about God and myself; it turns out that my beliefs in these areas really matter in recovery.

When we wrestle with issues like sin, shame and our intrinsic value in step two, this is actually a privilege and worthy work. “Coming to believe” asks us to wrestle with God’s view of us versus our view of us. Despite everything we have been told or thought, there is this one true thing that we must wrestle with: God sees humanity as very good. We may not have always lived up to his vision for us but perhaps that is because we have never known that he saw us in this benevolent and loving way.

“Christian spirituality involves a transformation of the self that occurs only when God and self are both deeply known. Both, therefore, have an important place in Christian spirituality. There is no deep knowing of God without a deep knowing of self, and no deep knowing of self without a deep knowing of God. John Calvin wrote, “Nearly the whole of sacred doctrine consists in these two parts: knowledge of God and of ourselves.”

~ David G. Benner, The Gift of Being Yourself: The Sacred Call to Self-Discovery

When we start showing up in a healthier space, it is a beautiful thing to see how the character of God is represented in us, through us and between us. If all of us show up and bring our small, beautiful image-bearing selves into our community, TOGETHER we make a lovely representation of God’s image.