Trading Mystery for Security ~ When the Life You’re Living is Someone Else’s

We don’t get out of life alive. If we love our kin, our tribe, our family, it only makes sense to offer our time, talent, and energy to make them proud, pleased, and happy. If we are married, part of loving our mate seems to entail the willing sacrifice of life’s choices and commitments to and for the sake of the communion. If we belong to a faith community & hold sacred truths and time-tested values in common, it’s very nature point to service and stewardship as well as spiritual disciplines & practices worth developing.

But what happens when we have done all the right things for the right reasons and we are still miserable? What happens when the life we are living is someone else’s life? James Hollis says …”when certain principles, energies, values are denied, or have been pushed to exhaustion, they cease to function as sources of vitality.” What happens when we offer up our engagement with the mystery that is life for security?  Upon deeper analysis of the inner malaise we discover this misery that we are disowning appears now as an uprising. Now, the security all these values and actions represent seem to bring outrage to the soul rather than peace. They manifest symptoms of depression, unruly discordant envy and jealousy.  We have what we wanted & it still feels like loss & absence. How could this be?

What we have become in our jobs, our marriages, our faith communities, our creative enclaves, is now frequently the obstacle to us being who we were called to be. Most likely someone else must point out to us that we have chosen security over the mystery. Upon a deeper pondering I now begin to realize the true price of the success or approval I had sought for so long & so diligently. The soul is making demands and I have lost my nerve. My failure to grow is due to excessive attachments to the very things that are killing me. Blind acceptance & a satiated sense of being the rewards of my past used to be enough. I could bath in my projected wins, things conquered, accolades received, dreams partially met. But the journey, the life, now is on hold. I have stopped longing for the wonder & revelation. I am living life in reverse.

The imagination plays such a powerful role in this encounter with the soul’s enigmatic nature. Boredom is the pathology of the depressed or the unimaginative. I have discovered a few things about how my imagination drives this forward motion of the soul. Security over growth always is accompanied with a deep sense of inner smallness. Now my curiosity and sense of exploration, so vital to my experience of longing, begins to whither and wane. Why learn, why experience the new, why risk anything at all? But the soul is in exile & it cries out to reengage the journey.

The journey metaphor has played a primary narrative role in my life. Calling as well implies travel and travel implies journey. To hear & to listen is to follow the call and to follow the call is to live one’s life as if it were their own.

Hollis goes on to say, “We all set off expecting the achievement of our goals to bring long lasting satisfaction. It is not the goals that are unworthy, as such, but that they so often become tempting stopping places for the soul, cul-de-sacs where we decline the invitation to trade still more mystery for security.” Apparently something more is being ask of us. 

In my brief lifetime I have often made some of life’s goals destinations. But the soul will not consider mystery for safekeeping or refuge. The soul does not consider this an even trade. The invitation, the summons of my soul beckons louder and louder as I turn away from its call. Rilke said that our task in life is to be defeated by even larger things. Now, in the second half of life’s journey, I am emptied of some of the hubris of my youthful ego’s pretense. Knowing now that this beckoning towards enlargement will undoubtedly bring some degree of failure and loss, I count the costs differently, & I weigh my resolve with great care & stewardship. But when I take my lead from the familiar postures of soul, my companions of lethargy and fear sound obsessed with security & are no longer able to feed the soul’s deepest longings. I am learning that uncertainty is still my closest companion, still my most reliable & trustworthy muse, and still the “divine discomforter” needed to wake me up to hear the call, sing the song, light the fire, & pour my very being out to heighten the blaze. A mystery driven life is a beautiful incendiary - a fire starter to burn away the dross & light the dim lit path my soul deems part of the journey.

Spiritual Direction & the Mentoring Process

Attraction We define attraction as the initial establishment of the mentoring relationship. The tone is set by Augustine’s challenge to the mentor, “Attract them by you way of life.” Key components include claming you own story as the mentor; initiation of the relationship primarily by the mentoree with a challenge by the mentors to recognize potential mentorees; covenant making to establish motivation, frequency, location, confidentiality, evaluation and closure; potential relationship to avoid.

Relationship We define relationship as the nurturing hospitable space of trust and intimacy. The life of the mentoree will more effectively be heard when a safe space is created by the mentor. Key components include; the respect of vulnerability and boundaries seeing the mentoring relationship in the progressive stages of friendship of selection, probation, admission and harmony, recognizing the essential functions of holy listening , holy seeing, and wholly listening .

Responsiveness We define responsiveness as the sustaining of a responsive spirit of teachability. In order to grow, the mentoree must submit willingly to the guidance of the mentor. Various prayer movements such as the "seven dwelling places" of Teresa of Avila and the dark night of St. John of the Cross are used to assist in fostering a spirit of responsiveness.

Accountability We define accountability as growth through the exercise of grace facilitated by the mentor. Ignatius sets the pace with spiritual exercises categorized as preparations of the heart, virtues of the heart, habits of the heart and rewards of the heart. Further suggestions include adaptable hospitality, intentionality and discipline, imagination, and discernment. Guyon’s prayer through Scripture; the disciplines of questions; and lectio divina.

Empowerment We define empowerment as the discovery of one’s unique voice for kingdom service that derives from intimacy with God and ultimate identity as a child of God. The mentoree discovers his or her unique voice in God’s salvation story. The foundation is set in Scripture and validated through the classical perspectives.

An Invitation to the Mystery

Every moment of every event of every man's life on earth plants something in his soul.
Thomas Merton

We live in a harried time. The ways of God are often pushed aside for issues of narcissism, efficiency and busyness. Waiting on God is a lost art. The Scripture tells us that the Spirit is like the wind. It goes where it will. This metaphor reflects the mystery of God’s revealing and our human inability to contain it. Spiritual direction is the practice of honoring God’s presence and purposely taking great care to “feel the wind” as it were. This honoring is a posture in that it looks like something. Rather than just be a bunch of information in our heads, real faith is constantly and consistently reflected in how we live our lives. We know what we value by how we live. One fruit of spiritual direction is the revelation of our heart’s treasures. We discover what we desire when we intentionally invite the Spirit of God into our lives and conversations to discern and declare His ways.

Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is…All moments are key moments and life itself is grace. Frederick Buechner

Because life is filled with mystery, our engagement with its meaning and purpose are sacred tasks. Our age exalts knowledge, thus deep listening is considered a luxury only for professional spiritual people like ministers, monks, and sages. Unfortunately this acquiescence of our true calling means we live a life unquestioned, untested desires. Spiritual direction is the act of offering up the way our heart is formed.

For nearly a decade I have been involved in a process I have come to call “the work.” It came to be called “the work” as a group of men met consistently and christened their awakening and journey towards Christ likeness as their true spiritual vocation. We concluded that this is our calling in life; to integrate all our desires, our goals, work, dreams, and future and bring them under the Lordship of Christ. We also found, however, that wanting it on a certain level and embodying it on another level were entirely different things. Why was the obedience part so difficult? Why were certain parts of our lives obviously in need of great healing? Why wasn’t our regular “church” attendance filling the bill? Why was deep peace and joy so rare and random?

Many of these questions have been answered over the years as I committed myself to a Christ and His Kingdom rule, a group of men and to “the work.” There was one consistent truth, however, that seemed to hover over all the others as I progressed towards this holy calling. This was the role of what I have come to call “pier mentoring” or “soul friendships.” One man in particular came out of the fog in my life and spoke into my soul on such a consistent basis that my growth was tangible and observable. I had not experienced this kind of transformation in my previous fifteen years of my faith walk.

It is out of this experience and deep conviction that I write a number of my friends who I have journeyed with on some level since coming to Nashville. Some of you have been walking with me for a number of years already. Under the canopy of ORB (Organization for the Restoration of Beauty), I am taking on mentoring relationships with men and women in the greater Nashville area. These relationships are being formed around an ancient practice called “spiritual direction.” These relationships involve intentional spiritually directed engagements that are focused on the activity of God and His voice in the life of the disciple. These relationships involve a concerted effort on my part to come into the time with my heart and my mind prepared to listen, serve and offer up a companioned observer to the process of spiritual growth in the life of the disciple.

These times are being set up on weekly or monthly basis depending on the needs and preferences of the friend. During theses meeting times the soul friend and I enter into prayer, focused dialogue around the perceived activity and voice of God and attempt to strip away any impediments to spiritual growth. These soul friendships consist of walking along side a brother or sister with the primary desire for God to be revealed. Although we have many friends who desire that for us, few if any, commit their lives and a focused period in time to seeing the fullness of God’s revelation manifest in our lives. For those of you who have spent hours with me over coffee, late night rants, or protracted phone conversations that turned to into prayer meetings, you already know of what I speak.

So what is Spiritual Direction?

The whole purpose of spiritual direction is to penetrate beneath the surface of a man’s life, to get beyond the facade of conventional gestures and attitudes which he presents to the world, and to bring out his inner spiritual freedom, his inmost truth, which is what we call the likeness of Christ in his soul.
Thomas Merton

In recent years, my personal journey has become more and more invested in and formed out the formation of spiritual disciplines such as submission, confession, solitude, silence, fasting, prayer, frugality, meditation and contemplation. Out of these disciplines of abstinence and engagement, I have found greater freedom in Christ and a more teachable heart. By intentionally and consistently engaging the disciplines I discovered greater intimacy with God, a keener sense of His activity in my life, a deeper desire to know Him and make Him known, a holy longing to obey God in all my decisions and a gradual but observable change in my heart’s affections.

Spiritual Direction
Here is the vision and some questions.

• Are you hungering for a deeper and fuller sense of God’s activity in your life?
• Do you sense you may need some assistance and some scheduled times set aside intentionally for this purpose?
• Are you facing some daunting decisions and pressures that reveal a deep desire for direction and trust?

The Work of the Soul was birthed and designed to create a space for your soul to seek, ask, ponder, and obey. There are times where prayer is the most meaningful response to God while at other times questions and doubt, dialogue, and even journaling offer guidance.

I am in the process of scheduling times for spiritual direction. For those who desire ongoing encounters, I am now setting up those times with a short and long term sense of over site. I would love to talk with, set up a time of discussion and inquiry, and hopefully pray about entering into some kind of relationship around the activity of soul friendships. My email is: TheWorkoftheSoul@aol.com and my phone is 847-971-5106.