Week #27: Learn to say 'No'.

Our lives can be filled up with a multiplicity of demands.  We are continually bombarded with calls for more - more action, more time, more effort.  Whether these calls come from home, work, school or church, these asks on our lives seem never ending.   Sometimes this multiplicity of demands are rooted in things we feel passionate about.  We choose to continually give our selves to that which is demanded in the moment.  And because our interests and passions are often varied and complex, the calls upon us are also varied and complex.

Sometimes we create busyness, believing that jammed schedules and pressing demands are tally marks equalling our own importance.  To be busy is to blessed, we believe.  We tell ourselves, and others, "It's better to be busy that not busy!"  Thus, we never refuse an offer or an ask.  Yet what inevitably happens is that we begin to resent those demands upon us.  The tasks that used to be interesting are now only taxing.   That which promised interest now seem dry and lifeless.

Living in such frenzied manner leaves us feeling overwhelmed and drained of energy.  It is to live from a place of duty not devotion.  God becomes viewed as nothing more than a boss demanding results rather than a Saviour inviting us into abundant life. The activity of our life become that which drain our faith rather than that which fuels it.  This is not the life that God calls us to.  

We must learn how to say no to the those things that take us out devotional living.  The inability to say no keeps us from the life rooted in Christ's presence.  We remain in state of perpetual distraction, pulled in a thousand different directions. Our heart, mind, soul and strength is continually directed to the demand we have to face in this and the next moment, and this keeps us from truly dwelling in the deep well of God's love. The truth of our spiritual lives is that the richness of an internal life with God is rarely found as we run true and fro. A single-hearted focus upon God and his kingdom cannot survive in the constant oscillation between this demand and that task.

A simplified life is a life that is lived out of the centre of faith.  Our desire to follow God's will, expressed in and through our lives, becomes that which governs all of life. In the book, "A Testament of Devotion" Thomas Kelley writes about the necessity of living out of this sense of guidance.  Kelley writes: "When we say Yes or No to calls for service on the basis of heady decisions, we have to give reasons, to ourselves and to others.  But when we Yes or No to calls on the basis of inner guidance and whispered promptings of encouragement from the Centre of our life, or on the basis of a lack of any inward 'risings' of that Life to encourage us in the call, we have no reason to give, except one - the will of God as we discern it.  Then we have begun to live in guidance.  And I find that He never guides us into an intolerable scramble of panting feverishness." ( pg.100)

The life that God calls us to live is not a life of frenzied deadlines and last-minute projects.  God does not wish us to feel so overwhelmed at the things of life that we feel cut off from the Spirit of God in us. Jesus invites us to know life, and know it in abundance.  It remains then, that the way of God must also involve the denial of demands, and not just the acceptance of them.  The abundance of life that Christ invites us into is not merely an abundant of things to do.  In fact, the abundance of God may very well be experienced through our ability to refuse such demands.

God calls us to say no in certain situations just as much as He calls us to say yes.  God may call us to put down or limit certain tasks we enjoy, or demands we are interest in, in order to cultivate a deeper rootedness in His kingdom.  We say no, not because something is bad, or even because we do not wish to do that which is asked of us;  we say no out of desire to remain centred in holy focus.  The act of saying no to a demand is an act of saying yes to God's will in our lives.  This is the root of a life of faith.  We are able to say our no with just as much confidence as we say our Yes because we recognize that our no is yet another way in which we turn to God.  We put down the demands of life for the sole purpose of dwelling more securely in the presence of our Lord.

What is it that God may be asking you to say no to?  What is the task, or duty, or demand you have been holding onto to that God is asking you to put down?  

It can be scary to say no.  It can be scary to turn down offers, or refuse demands, but there is tremendous freedom in do so.  When we say no to something, out of the deep desire to remain rooted in God's surrounding presence, then we release ourselves from the burden of control.  We sit with a spirit of patience and submission and in this we are graced to experience the movement of God in our lives and in this world.  As Thomas Kelley describes it, this manner of life 'is a life of unhurried peace and power.  It is simple. It is serene. It is amazing.  It is triumphant. It is radiant. . . .We need not get frantic.  He is at the helm.  And when our little day is done we lie down quietly in peace, for all is well.'

Week #26: Consider the present sacred

For each of us there is a certain degree in which our lives are filled with the mundane and the normal.  In fact, most of our lives probably do not exude the extraordinary, the miraculous, the exciting events that we spend much of our time hoping for.  Rather, we live amid the humdrum of life.  The routine.  The trivial. The regular.  There are phone-calls and deadlines, traffic jams, and dinner preparations.  Rarely do we see these moments as places of providential blessings or miraculous peace.

What do we do with these ordinary moments, moments that simply bleed one into another?  Often, we ignore them.  They are, after all, nothing special.  Yet such negligence of the holiness around us is to cut ourselves off from the presence of God in the sacredness of the present moment.  Our lives, as ordinary as they may be, are the very places where God chooses to dwells with us.  The tasks of the day, no matter how mundane or trivial, are able to be the means of God's grace, places where we enter into life with the Holy Spirit.

When it comes to living a spirituality of ordinary moments, the Celtic tradition has a unique take on this. Believing that we are able to remember God's presence in the most trivial of places, Celtic tradition advocates a ritualization of ordinary places.  By surrounding the tedious moments of life with a prayer or blessing, the moment is thereby transformed into a place of divine intimacy.   Take, for example, 'The Blessing for the Receiving of Phone Calls;

Here is a child of God,
image of the Father,
redeemed by the Son,
invited by the Spirit,
I welcome this person,
with the heart of Christ.

(For those on eastern and western shores, you may wish to look at 'A Celtic Blessing for the Harvesting of Seaweed.')

What would it look like if we saw the ordinary things of life as places whereby we are invited into a deep connection with the Spirit?  What if we saw every phone call as a Spirit-led conversation, every interruption as an insertion of divine agenda, every trivial matter as a place where we are able to breathe deep the presence of God?  Would some of our frustrations end?  Would irritability and short fuses decrease?  Would we be more accepting of the things around us, or even ourselves?

Our faith is lived in the real, tangible, and often ordinary moments of our lives.  The ordinary places of life are not untouched by the presence of God.  In fact it is in the present moment where we abide with Christ, where we feel his love and grace, where we are led by the Spirit, where we receive mercy and forgiveness.  Denying the holiness of the present moment is to deny the very reality of our life with God. In his famous book "The Sacrament of the Present Moment,' Jean-Pierre de Cassaude writes 'What treasures of grace lie concealed in these moments filled, apparently, by the most ordinary events. That which is visible might happen to anyone, but the invisible, discerned b y faith, is no less than God operating very great things."

The language of the present moment being a 'sacrament' is intriguing.  It reminds us to look beyond the surface frustrations to what may truly be occurring in our lives.  We peer past what our eyes see and attempt to interact with the deep things of life from the place of faith, the place where true life resides.  What is more, there is excitement here, writes de Cassaude. He writes 'If we could lift the veil, and if we were attentive and watchful God would continually reveal Himself to us, and we should see his divine action in everything that happened to us, and rejoice in it.  At each successive occurrence we should exclaim, "It is The Lord!"  and we should accept every fresh circumstance as a gift from God.'  Imagine seeing every moment as a place where we bump into our Risen Lord.

Yet is that not the life that we are called in to?

Each moment of life bares the opportunity for divine nearness.  The present moment is sacred because in it we uncover the freedom of knowing that we are called to be no other person than who we are here and now.  The present moment tells us that we are called to no other place then where God has placed us in this instant.  Why strive to control, to manage, to direct, when there is a deeper reality at work.  Yes the present moment may be ordinary, even dull.  Yet it is a place filled with God's holy presence, and in that there are multitudinous possibilities.