Spiritual Needs?

Some people I'm around have been talking in terms of people's spiritual needs.  I have been uncomfortable about these words - for some reasons that I have been able to touch into and some that I haven't.  The ones I have been able to touch into have mostly been personality driven but I knew that there was more to it than that.  So I've sat with it.

Today, while thinking about a tweet that I read the other day which I was also uncomfortable with about "God help us for the fact that people go to different churches or ministries according to what they need", some of my thoughts clarified.

I am very comfortable with people being involved in the process of giving and receiving in various contexts - I don't think the Bible in any way indicates something about "you must be part of one spiritual community".  I do think that it's important that we live in true spiritual community - but that can be in many contexts.  We are as likely to not be living in ways that allow others in as part of one community as we are living in relationships of authenticity, honesty, openness and growth in whatever contexts we find ourselves - Christian and otherwise.  It's much more about our attitude than it is about whether we have "a" spiritual community.  We are not an island, others do have a right and responsibility in the context of relationship to speak into our lives and we have a responsibility to hear and evaluate their words and their wisdom before God with openness, humility and critique and make changes based on those evaluations.  We need to live with others in such relationships as to make that possible (now there's the challenge!).

So, given that, how do we choose what contexts we are in?  This is where I agree with the tweet - I don't think it's based on our "needs", if our "needs" is simply "wants going to give me the connection with God I need" or something like that.  That's what I am uncomfortable with in the wording in the first situation I outlined.  Firstly, I think the question is "what context/s is God inviting me to be in - right now, today, for this season?"  Sometimes we have a clear sense of that - and in our own discernment aided by those around us, we need to go with it even if it doesn't make "sense".  Sometimes, to help us answer that question we need to ask some other questions.  I think the real questions are not what are my "needs" but rather something along the lines of "what context/s would it be helpful for me to be in to empower my being in the world in ways where I 'live freely animated and motivated by God's spirit'?"  Here the focus is not on me and my needs (which I think is dangerous in a consumer culture) but rather on God and God's world and our place in it.

To be honest, I think some of the issues that I'm uncomfortable with are somewhat ones of semantics in this case (ie. I think the people using the words would be on somewhat of the same page as me).  However, they are semantics which matter to me.  In a culture which all the time teaches me to consume, I don't want to be reinforced in this consumer mentality which puts me at the centre in my engagement with spirituality.  I want the way I think about all the contexts in my life - spiritual community and otherwise - to keep reinforcing a perspective which places God and God's agenda and ways at the centre and it being from that place that I make decisions about the contexts in which I engage in.  I want to form others in ways that reinforce those things.

I guess the words matter to me because they form me and others deeply.

Great Saints, Great Sinners

Great Saints, Great Sinners


Richard Rohr

Sin and grace are related. In a certain sense the only way we really understand salvation, grace, and freedom, is by understanding their opposites. That's why the great saints are, invariably, converted sinners. When you finally have to eat and taste your own hard-heartedness, your own emptiness, selfishness and all the rest, then you open up to grace. That is the pattern in all our lives. That's why it was such a grace in my hermitage year when I was able, at last---even as a male and a German---to weep over my sins and to feel tremendous sadness at my own silliness and stupidity. I think all of us have to confront ourselves as poor people in that way. And that's why many of our greatest moments of grace follow upon, sometimes, our greatest sins. We are hard-hearted and closed-minded for years, then comes the moment of vulnerability and mercy. We break down and break through. Source: Letting Go: A Spirituality of Subtraction via inward/outward.

Being Busy

"Being busy is a form of laziness : lazy thinking and indiscriminate action. Being overwhelmed is as unproductive as doing nothing, and far more unpleasant. Being selective - doing less - is the path of the productive. Focus on the important few, and ...ignore the rest. Lack of time is actually a lack of priorities." From Derek Sivers' website, notes on Tim Ferris' book

Enneagram Twos

Twos learned two things growing up: to put other people's needs ahead of their own, and that they must give in order to get. Twos feel that if they take care of others, others will take care of them. (The Power of the Enneagram audio tapes)

Poverty in the West

Love this quote :

“The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty — it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There’s a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God.”

-Mother Teresa

Megalong Valley

The creek where we scattered Phil's ashes ...

Voices: The Carrical Project

The other night I went to a performance of Voice: The Carrical Project
as part of the Fringe Festival. It's a performance put on by Scotch
College, along with Servants in Hawthorn and supported by the City of
Booroondara. Carrical is a rooming house that is run by Servants in
Hawthorn, which has close connections with Hawthorn West Baptist
Church. The director of Voices has been connected with Hawthorn West
and Carrical for many, many years. This performance came about
through a coffee conversation between the person who ended up
directing Voices and the CEO of Servants in Hawthorn/Carrical. What
came about through that conversation was connection and conversations
between students of Scotch College and a performance telling the
stories of the residents of the rooming house. It was a great and
truthful honouring of their lives - including the life of someone who
recently died - and a project that achieved so much on so many levels.

A great dream becoming a great reality, coming out of the faithfulness
of a community to this work over many years.