Spiritual Practices - A Beginning

A few years ago, I read these words from Richard Foster:

God has given us the Disciplines of the spiritual life as a means of receiving his grace. The Disciplines allow us to place ourselves before God so that he can transform us...By themselves the Spiritual Disciplines can do nothing; they can only get us to the place where something can be done. They are God's means of grace.

- Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline, p. 7

I continued to read Celebration of Discipline with an immense hunger to put Foster's practices into place in my life and be transformed by God's grace. I started. And I failed. And I started again. And I failed again. And again. And again. And again.

Foster wrote so beautifully about meditation, solitude, fasting, service, prayer, submission, and confession. I wanted to engage in all of these disciplines. But I struggled and felt like I wasn't good enough. I couldn't hack it. Maybe I wasn't a Christian after all.

Since then, I have learned two valuable lessons about spiritual practices. The first is this: there are many, many ways to "get us to the place where something can be done." Certainly the "classical" practices - such as those described by Foster and many others - are not the only ways to deepen our relationship with God. Without a doubt, they are good ways, but not the only ways. And the second is this: don't be so hard on myself. Over the years, I have engaged in different spiritual practices. Some I actually stuck with for longer that 3 days! Others were, well, more difficult. And that's ok. I think one of the most valuable spiritual practices is seeking spiritual practices!

So, I am embarking on a series of writings here to discuss some of the spiritual practices I have adopted and strive to maintain. I also want to discuss a few I plan to begin and hope to continue. For my very small but dedicated group of blog readers (all four of you!), I hope you will be encouraged by these posts to seek your own practices. For me, these posts will be a type of accountability system - especially for the new practices I want to start. And, it has been obvious to me over these past months (especially this past week) that I need to cultivate some new ground in my heart for God to work. "Cultivate" may be too nice of a word. I need to rip out some weeds, turn the ground over, till it under, dump weed-killer all over it, and pray that God will seed some new life into me. I need that. Badly.

In one sense, this blog is a spiritual practice for me. As I sit down to write, I reflect on recent days in my life and times in which I sensed God. Writing is a way to stop, reflect, remember, and celebrate. It helps me to remain present to God and others in the ordinary moments of life.

I hope you will read along with me and comment on what you like, don't like, agree with, or disagree with. Let's walk together and "place ourselves before God so that he can transform us."

Slowly coming back to reality

We are back from vacation and beginning to re-engage with the regular world. The cruise was terrific - the trip home was not. After flight cancellations, delays, and finally a flight to Las Vegas followed by a drive home in a rental car, we made it home two days later than planned. Now I need another vacation to de-stress after that ordeal. I won't bore you with the details, but suffice it to say that JetBlue is now on the "won't do that again" list.

But New York was awesome, and we had a lot of fun on the cruise with our friends and at the ports. We took a small boat tour in Bermuda and the kids snorkeled. We zip-lined in Puerto Rico (yay!), shopped in St. Thomas, and splashed in the ocean on Grand Turk. We also experienced quite the rainstorm at sea and watched with a little apprehension as our balcony filled with water. But it never came into the cabin, so everything was ok. The food was, of course, plentiful and very tasty. I'll be paying for that for a while. But it's good to be home.

A very small sampling of pictures we snapped:

Top of the Rock in Manhattan

Little pink houses in Bermuda

Carolyn on deck

Kids being goofy at dinner

San Juan, Puerto Rico, at night under a full moon

View of St. Thomas from Paradise Point

Getting off the ship in Grand Turk

Off to the Caribbean

It's here at last.

Tomorrow we leave for New York where we will spend a busy Thursday followed by going aboard our cruise ship on Friday headed to the Caribbean for 9 days! Ahhh...let the endless buffet begin!

So we will be completely offline for the next 11 days. No computer. No pagers. No cell phones (once we leave New York, that is). Just each other and our best friends. Reading. Sleeping. Eating. Drinking. Relaxing. Playing games. Enjoying God's beautiful creation.

Signing out...

22 years of marriage

Yesterday was a great day. After sleeping in until 9:00 (unheard of), I got up, made breakfast for the kids, and then Carolyn and I went shopping for several hours. I needed to pick up a few things before our trip this week. We had just the best time. I love days like that with her. If the day had ended then, it would have been a great day. But to top it off, Kim and I went to dinner with some friends to celebrate her graduation and 22 years of marriage. We had such a good time at Blanco Tacos and Tequila, enjoying - what else? - tacos and tequila. A little Starbucks on the way home, a little conversation on the patio, and the day ended in near perfection. It doesn't get any better than that, and my heart is filled with gratitude and joy.

Done with Greek (the class, that is)

Ahhhhh.....

Can you feel it? The lightness of step. The carefree look to the horizon. The wind at your back. The whistle on your lips. The smile at rush-hour traffic. The emptiness of thought.

Three quarters, 30 weeks - all done! The final wasn't too bad, and I am so glad it's finished. This last weekend did me in, so I was ready to put my lexicon and grammar on the "courses finished" book shelf.

Now, I have to figure out ways to keep all of it from completely leaving my memory. I know some (ok, maybe a lot) will, but I've already purchased this and this to help. In fact, one of my upcoming new spiritual practices (which I'm going to write about in the near future) is continuing to expand my knowledge of the language so that I can read the NT in Greek.

I'm so glad I decided to take this 3-quarter series. I had difficulty deciding to spend three of my nine electives on a language, especially without knowing what lay ahead of me after this degree. And to be perfectly honest, the overriding initial reason was to meet a language requirement in most doctoral programs - something I'm considering in the distant future. But once we started, and especially in this last quarter where so much came together in our translations, I got hooked. Besides, I met and became friends with four great people in the class!

Greek is a beautiful language, and it's filled with subtlety which is often hard to translate into English. So, I now completely agree with what I had heard from several people and seminaries: if you really want to study the New Testament, do so in Greek. For old(er) dogs like me, it can be trying to learn another language - but it's worth it!

A beautiful Sunday morning

It's hard to believe that today is the first day of June. Hard to believe, because, it really has not been hot (yet). We had an unbelievably spring-like May, and even on my walk this morning, the air was cool. No complaints...because I know it's coming. Maybe it will wait until we leave for vacation before it really arrives.

Random thoughts this morning:

• Greek final is Tuesday night - lots of studying still ahead
• Had a wonderful dinner last night with my fellow Greek students at our instructor's home - I'm going to miss them all...
• Thinking about spiritual practices a lot lately - my lack of them and my goals to turn that around this summer (watch for more on that)
• Solar spotlights on our water fall in the backyard are nice and bright - solar is getting better every day!
• We leave for our cruise in 10 days!