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No new year’s resolutions this year. No “one word to capture what I want this year to be about.” I’m committing myself to one thing: s-l-o-w-i-n-g.

S-l-o-w-i-n-g. I think I first learned the term about ten years ago in a chapter by the same name in one of John Ortberg’s books. I’ve always liked the concept and every once in a while I remember it, but these days something magnetic about the idea pulls me into it’s orbit. Maybe that idea of “orbit” and “gravity” is the real issue. The world I so regularly create and commit myself to has such gravitational pull that it holds me in a very close orbit. The closer the orbit, the faster we must move to get around it. Consider this:

Time it takes pluto to orbit the sun: 248 years
Time it takes the earth to orbit the sun: 365 days
Time it takes the moon to orbit the earth: 28 days
Time it takes the International Space Station to orbit the earth: 91 minutes

The closer the orbit the faster we must move. The faster we move the less we see. The less we see the more limited our perspective. The more limited our perspective the shallower our wisdom. The shallower our wisdom the more anemic our life.

I’m slowing. Practically speaking it means I will drive at least 5 miles under the speed limit, especially around town. I will work in focused segments of time, at least 20 minutes in length, doing only one thing. This necessitates not checking email, facebooking, twittering, texting, or answering my phone out of turn. Whenever I have the chance to walk somewhere I will walk. I will “behold” other people when together. I will read one poem a day. I will gaze at artwork every time I am near it. I will put away my iPhone between the hours of 6pm and 6am. I will take my time when I wash dishes or fold clothes or brush my youngest’s teeth. I will keep Sabbath weekly. I’m s-l-o-w-i-n-g.

In his book, The Contemplative Patstor: Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction, Gene Peterson writes, “It is far more biblical to learn quietness and attentiveness before God than to be overtaken by what John Oman named the twin perils of ministry, ‘flurry and worry.’ For flurry dissipates energy, and worry constipates it.”

If this strikes a chord in you, please join me. I’d love to see your every day practical ideas as to how “slowing” can happen. Jot down your ideas in a comment below.

/>The life hid with Christ in God is all at once much harder than we realize yet much easier than we might think. It’s easier in this: we don’t have to be a devout “religious” person in order to “get” God to be with us. This is not a duty to be devoted we are after. It is so easy to fall into what I call the “if-then” trap. “If” I study my Bible and pray and fast and devote myself to spiritual disciplines and . . . . “then” I will experience God’s presence, love, power and grace in my life. The corollary also holds true in our thinking. “If” I don’t do all these things properly, “then” I will not experience God’s presence, love, power and grace in my life. This “functional” approach serves quite well to create a “yoke” of slavery. This approach can lead to a legalistic choke-hold as well as charismatic craziness. (see the New Testament Pharisees for the former and the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel for the latter. (1 Kings 18 I think).

So how is the life hid with Christ in God harder than we think? I think it is harder because it calls for a totalizing kind of attentiveness and because a life of distractedness comes quite naturally to us. (And I think I’m suggesting that the very things we do to try and cultivate this totalizing attentiveness can all to often become the distraction.)

Back in High School four friends and I went on a whirl wind trip to Europe with one of our teachers. (We never actually saw her again after New York Kennedy Airport, but that’s another story.) I remember our visit to the Louvre, arguably the most famous art gallery in the solar system. For whatever reason, all we cared about was the celebrated “Mona Lisa,” painted by Leonardo da Vinci. We passed up the tour guide and began our search. We ran up and down hallways and through galleries never so much as glancing at any of the priceless art adorning the walls. Finally, we arrived at the treasured shrine. Gasping for breath, we beheld the picture in the way only a 15 year old can do. I’m not sure what we were expecting, but Mona didn’t actually provide the kind of ecstatic experience we must have imagined she would.

Despite our underwhelm-ment, I think this quest gets at what the life hid with Christ in God looks like. It’s all at once the journey of relentless pursuit and intermittant finding that inspires more pursuit. It is strenuous but not tiring, disciplined but not dutiful. It’s running past every other shiny prize in the quest to find the only thing worth finding. The pursuit of God is not like the daily chore of taking out the trash. No, it’s ripping open the trash bag and feverishly searching through every piece of discarded waste in pursuit of the lost engagement ring.

And before I mix in another metaphor– I’ll stop. ;0)

Can you relate this Mona Lisa story to your own life?

We are just underway in our Fall Common Text journey. This Reader is called, Perfect, and tracks through most of Matthew’s Gospel with special emphasis on the Sermon on the Mount.

Lots of ways to engage this one.

1. On your mobile device go to www.asburyreader.com and it will take you to a mobile app. I’ll be leading exercises about twice a week to help us activate the Sermon on the Mount at street level. We will also host Dr. David Bauer, a world renown scholar on Matthew’s Gospel. He will teach an 8-10 minute audio segment on the Sermon on the Mount each Monday.

2. “Perfect” may also be accessed in an online magazine format via this link. To see it now go to bottom of post.

3. As always, we engage Twitter through our @Twiturgy account to post short scripture texts from the days readings at key points during the day.

4. And yes– hard copies are available. If you will send us $10 at 204 N. Lexington Avenue, Wilmore, KY 40390 ATTN: J.D. Walt. I’ll get it in the mail. (this includes all shipping costs).

I’m working on a little guidebook to responding to the call of God and wanted to test a line of thought by you with this entry below. I welcome your feedback, push back or back pat in the comments section.

Dedication to devotion is not the goal. Discipline in spiritual practices is not the goal. Abiding does not consist in ratcheting up your “quiet time” a few notches. So what, you ask, is the goal? The goal is the life hid with  Christ in God. If the secret to abiding is not dedication or devotion or discipline then what is it?

Desire.

“One thing I ask of the Lord,” says the Psalmist, “this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.” Psalm 27:4

Danish theologian, Soren Kierkegaard, famously said, “Purity of heart is to will one thing.”

Our desires determine both our direction and destination. Yet so much devotional energy gets spent fighting against desire. Certainly, the desires seated deep within our broken human nature lead us in the wrong direction.  Freedom from these broken desires comes not from striving to overcome them via our devotional habits. Doing so leads to a place where our habits stand in the way of our holiness. We become devoted to our devotion.  One may look the part on the outside, while inside the war rages.

We need a reorientation of desire which comes from a total renovation of the heart. This is why Jesus doesn’t spend his time developing strategies of sin management. The repentance he calls for and empowers cuts to the core of our desires and reorients them in such a way that they can be trusted instead of resisted. This is the liberty of the sons and daughters of God. This is what pruning and abiding are all about.

To move forward in responding to the call of God might mean trading in the consistency of your devotion for the constancy of His abiding. It might seem a subtle distinction. In the end, it will make all the difference.

I’m searching for a new word, one that captures a growingly frustrating everyday phenomenon. Here’s the dilemma:

I’m sitting at my desk, positioned in front of my “screen.” As I move through my email I come across a reminder from a co-worker  to send them a link to that article from the Wall Street Journal by Stephen Johnson.

So I shuffle over a few screens to my internet browser to find the article again. As I arrive at my browser, several pages are already open. I note someone new has joined the new project I am working on. This someone new happens to be a friend I’ve lost touch with from years before.

Before you know it, I’m back at my email sending this long lost friend a quick note to reconnect. Then I remember. I shuffle back over to the prior task in the internet browser. As I arrive there again, I can’t for the life of me recall the task that took me there in the first place. Remember the WSJ article I was to send to a coworker? For some reason, I don’t have the foggiest memory of it. I sit there dazed and confused at what to do next. Then a blogpost catches my eye and before you know it, I’m clicking on an embedded link in the blogpost.

Then I hear the “ding” on my iPhone and I reach down to see who’s texting me. And after that, I see the notification that “toocoolforhomeshool” has played a word on Words with Friends. And on it goes. . . . . .

So I’m looking for a word to describe that phenomenon– when you begin to fulfill a task or do a piece of work and by the time you get to the place where the work can begin you’ve become so distracted and disoriented you can’t remember what it was you were going to do in the first place.

I’ll come up with a prize for the best idea.

Sequence is everything. What comes first? What comes second? One way of seeking God begins with what we do. The other way begins with what God does.

The life hid with Christ in God is a life of pure receiving. I find at least five basic ways of receiving identified in Scripture:

Breathe. Hear. See. Eat. Drink.

Note how each one requires receiving. Each requires us to receive something from outside ourselves. Each requires us to turn to some source of giving: air, sound, image, bread, wine.

Why is it that my starting place has so often been these five words:

read, pray, fast, serve, give?

It’s not that I’m not interested in that list. I think so often I’ve just gotten the wrong list first. I want to get back to the most fundamental realities.

To do that I must return over and over and over again to the most fundamental fundamental of all: Receiving.

Maybe that explains it. I think that in order to receive I must do something, some practice or discipline or exercise.

But what if there is a place preceding receiving? I think there is such a place, but it’s not so much a place as a posture. It’s not a discipline but a disposition of heart. It’s the prerequisite to receiving.

I think it’s gratitude.

“To be grateful is to recognize the Love of God in everything He has given us – and He has given us everything. Every breath we draw is a gift of His love, every moment of existence is a grace, for it brings with it immense graces from Him.  Gratitude therefore takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder and to praise of the goodness of God. For the grateful person knows that God is good, not by hearsay but by experience. And that is what makes all the difference.” -Thomas Merton

The problem with not starting today is this: it’s always today.

Email apnea – a temporary absence or suspension of breathing, or shallow breathing, while doing email

From Linda Stone, the woman who brought us the captivating phrase, “continuous partial attention,” comes another zinger of a nomer (opposite of misnomer). The term is “Email Apnea.” Most of us are familiar with the condition known as sleep apnea. It’s when  you pay a team of doctors thousands of dollars to watch you sleep and confirm what everyone has been telling  you for years, “You snore!” In all seriousness, people who suffer from sleep apnea don’t really sleep because they cease breathing hundreds of times during the night. Sleep doctors harness such persons up with a fighter pilot looking mask that makes you sound like Darth Vader. It’s a breathing machine that helps you sleep. (no I don’t have one, but it is fun to try on friends masks).

Linda Stone observes that when people are doing email, be it on their desktops, laptops, phones, iPads, they stop breathing. I’ve begun observing myself at this task and find it true. The problem comes with all the problems that not breathing regularly causes. Allow me to state the obvious: Not breathing kills you. Right? If one stops breathing long enough they are dead. It makes sense that the ongoing practice of not breathing is the pathway to death. Linda doesn’t put it so bluntly because she is a lot smarter than me. She actually spells out what happens in great detail, ranging from obesity to hypertension. Check it out. Maybe that’s why I’ve gained 30 lbs in the last couple of years. Maybe it wasn’t the late night Snickers after all. Giving up email will be a lot easier! ;0)

And watch yourself today as you are changing the world one email at a time. Try sustained breathing. It turns out that breathing and typing at the same time aren’t that easy after all.

I recently happened on a few lines in a Mary Oliver poem that stopped me in my tracks. The verse both gladdened and challenged me. They distilled the complexity of daily life into the simplicity of basic instructions. Somehow I believe if I can live by these words everything will work out fine; despite the inevitability of them not always working out in the way I think best.

So what are these words? She places them at the center of a poem called, “Sometimes,” in their own little section. They don’t seem to have a lot to do with the rest of the poem. The three lines come after an initial phrase that captions them. The caption over these 7 little words reads, “Instructions for living.”

7 words……. Simplifying…….Clarifying……….Distilling………..Purposing……………Empowering……………Captivating………….Orienting

And No, those aren’t the 7 words.

So these 7 words…… Can they possibly live up to the preceding prelude of unparalleled expectation? Probably not, but it’s a definite maybe.

Here they are:

Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

These are the words of Easter.

Your reactions appreciated.