Armstrong: God in a Box

Armstrong: Truth

“...there is something wrong with any spirituality that does not inspire selfless concern for others.” Karen Armstrong

Armstrong writes that some people become so excited when they experience the love of God that they put the God of their understanding into a box where  they believe only they and their group of similar believers have this true religion and relationship. They have  found the answers! Karen Armstrong suggests in The Battle for God, A History of Fundamentalism that especially fundamental groups may confuse mythos (study of the meaning of an event more than the facts) with logus (the rational that relates to facts of the event). When they see or hear other views, they may become more extreme, bitter, and excessive for fear of losing what they have found. 

This situation can be dangerous to their health and to others. They disavow the concept that God can speak in more than one voice, that God can speak to each of us a little differently. They have put God in a box that cannot connect or relate to any other containers. Their box is it, the true belief. They do not see the Christ in their neighbor unless their neighbor believes as they do, has the same experience that they do. They have found the truth, and only they know the word of God. Questioning belief is not an option.

 Sometimes someone from such a  background may come seeking spiritual direction in desperation when this relationship with God and their peers begins no longer to work. Be gentle with them. Go slowly. Keep remembering you are caring for a soul whose expansion and growth has been impeded, a soul which neonatologist might call “small for gestational age.”  We also have so much to learn from them, especially how there is not a box or any container big enough for our God.  

Keep looking for the Christ in them whose light can shine so beautifully and keep praying they will at some time begin to see the Christ in you and others who may be so different from them.

Carol Howard Merritt has written a very practical book, Healing Spiritual Wounds, Reconnecting with a Loving God after Experiencing a Hurtful Church, which may be helpful in dealing with a spiritual recovery and connecting to a loving God when people come for spiritual direction after being hurt or abandoned by their church.

Joanna   joannaseibert.com

Bill W, Dr. Bob: 12 steps, Eucharist

Big Book of AA
“Half measures availed us nothing. We stood at the turning point. we asked His protection and care with complete abandon.
Here are the steps we took, which are suggested as a program of recovery:
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol-that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.” 

Chapter 5 “How It Works” (pg 59 &60) Big Book of AA

These are the principles of any 12-step program. On the first Wednesday of the month St. Mark’s Episcopal Church has begun a 12-step Eucharist at our mid-week 5:30 pm service  where the steps are read at certain parts in the liturgy of the word and table. It is a reminder to those not in 12-step recovery that these programs are based on very spiritual principles and that recovery involves a spiritual program. It also can send a message to those in 12-step programs that the principles they live by are also in and supported by the church, their religious community. Note that this is a “we” program. Recovery comes about in community.  These are principles that can change people’s lives.  As any of us live these principles in “all our affairs” we see miracles happen. If we attend a 12-step meeting, we are sitting in a room full of miracles.

 The first miracle happened with a New York stockbroker, Bill Wilson, who had been a hopeless alcoholic. After multiple hospitalizations in 1935 he cried from his most recent hospital room out to a God he had heard about from his friend Ebby Thacher in the Oxford Group, “I’ll do anything!  Anything at all! If there be a God, let Him show Himself!” Suddenly he felt a feeling of ecstasy and experienced the feeling of a bright white light and a feeling of peace. He never drank again. On a later trip to Akron, Ohio, he believed the answer was “we” and that he could stay sober by talking to another alcoholic. The next day, the day after Mother’s Day in 1935, he visited in the upstairs bedroom for six hours with Dr. Bob Smith, a physician whose practice was almost destroyed by his alcoholism.  Together they began a spiritual “we” program of recovery that has saved millions of lives all over the world.

Bill Wilson died on this date January 24, 1971, years before many of those today have been born to save our lives.    (Pass It On)

Joanna    joannaseibert.com

Buechner: Spiritual Gifts, Ministry

 Buechner: Spiritual Gifts

The “place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” Frederick Buechner

As usual, Frederick Buechner gives us the best advice about how to find our ministry in perhaps his most quoted phrase.  We are given gifts  from the Spirit for our ministry for the doing of God’s work. As with “the varieties of our gifts” mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12, there are a varieties of spiritual gifts inventories. I was reminded at a recent presentation by The Rev Dr. Kate Alexander  that we must not just limit what we think  our spiritual gifts might be  to those gifts  described in biblical times and not just  think that every spiritual gift may seem “spiritual.” She gave the example of proofing the Sunday bulletin as a means of furthering the work of God and being an important ministry that is performed by people with a very detailed unique ministry.

We are to remember that the gifts are to further the work of God, not necessarily our work or our agenda or our goals.

Besides several inventories, material from the Stephen Ministry by Stephen Haugk, leads us through other clues to our spiritual gifts. The gifts we see in our most admired person may be ours. The gift we use to bring about our most fulfilling life event may be our gift. The action of Jesus we most admire may be our gift. I also learned from Lloyd Edwards in his book, Discerning Your Spiritual Gifts, that significant gifts may come  out of our woundedness. For example those in recovery stay in recovery by helping others recover from addiction.  Those who have experienced the death of a significant person are often the ones who can later help heal others who are grieving.

Parker Palmer’s, Let Your Life Speak,  is another classic about where and how God leads us into  the servant  ministry we have been created to participate in.

My experience is I think I am using my gift when I am energized by the ministry in which  I am involved. I put energy in and more comes out. The tried and true  biblical fruit of the spirit  can also be an indicator of when we are using our spiritual gifts. Galatians 5 tells us we will feel and know  “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control”  when we are connected to, guided by the Spirit.

Joanna  joannaseibert.com