Everyday Liturgy: When I started this blog a year and a half ago I did it in part to begin to explore ways to expand my relationship with God.  I had recently graduated from a Bible college and wanted to build on the foundation in Scriptures I had been given.  The evangelical answers, quiet time and prayer cards, no longer seemed capable of leading me further in my spiritual journey.  Bible-software, inductive study, and individual petitions no longer seemed adequate.  What role do you see "Ancient Practices" having in our technological, individualistic world?

Brian McLaren: Thom, I think you've really diagnosed a key dimension of the problem: individualism. I think our spiritual lives languish in a "Jesus and me" isolation chamber, but they become robust and deep when we realize that God calls me into an "us for all of us" way of life. To echo Paul's amazing words in Ephesians 3, I come to know the love of God "with all the saints." Knowledge in this sense is a knowing with - knowing God with people of different periods of history, different cultures, different denominations, and so on. So the ancient practices draw us into a wider, deeper way of knowing God that includes but also transcends my individual experience.

EL: One of the biggest challengers and provokers in my life has been an Eastern Orthodox friend.  Through his entrance into the Eastern Orthodox church a whole new world of spiritual practice has been opened up to him, and I have been able to see glimpses of how he is being shaped in community with God and others.  What role does community play in spiritual practice?

BM: Like your friend, I have been enriched by Eastern Orthodox practices and values. In the book I use an example - limited and flawed, admittedly - to schools of cooking. There are certain flavors that Italian cooking specializes in - and very different ones in Thai or Mexican or Indian cooking. So various spiritual traditions maintain various rich flavors of the spiritual life ... we might even say that different traditions nourish in different ways. When we enter a community, we can learn their way, discover the "ingredients" they specialize in, and be nourished by what they uniquely offer.  This becomes quite dynamic in our time, I think, because we're realizing that if you want to be nourished in evangelism, Evangelicals have a lot to offer, and if you want to be nourished in sacramentalism, you need to go to the Orthodox or Catholics or Anglicans. If you want to be nourished in peacemaking, the Mennonites carry on that tradition in a special way, and if you want to be nourished in deep Biblical study, the Presbyterians excel. I believe the time has come for us to share our treasures and specialties with one another and not try to keep our "flavor" as proprietary. We can have a big banquet and each bring our specialties to share.

More after the break...!

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I had a heart to heart with my prayer life this weekend after reading Bradley Nasif's essay The Poverty of Love (part of the Christian Vision Project). As an Eastern Orthodox theologian at an evangelical institution, Nasif is able to communicate the nuances and particulars of the Orthodox faith in the evangelical language I am more accustomed to reading, thinking, and writing.

Nasif makes the crucial point that:

When practiced in humility, ascetic rigor results in greater love. The monks fasted because they were hungry to love God more; they prayed because they wanted closer communion with God and neighbor; they contemplated so they could better fix their gaze on their divine spouse; they practiced silence because they wanted to hear God so they could speak and act more wisely to the people around them. The end goal of every spiritual practice employed by the monks was love.

Over the past couple of weeks some crazy stuff has been happening in my life that has caused a fog to roll over my brain.  I haven't been able to write without assistance from movies, books, or events to provide perspective and direction to my thought. 

When life gets rough this "thinking malaise" happens to me.  I can write about communities after watching some movies, but I just cannot sit and think about community---too much other stuff on my mind.  Or too little.

When life gets rough everything starts blending together and I enter this "spiritual comatose" when I cannot be silent but cannot really think either.  It's like my brain keeps yawning and hitting the snooze button. ... more

 What is the value of prayer?

Sometimes it is very hard to pray - it can feel so lame and repetetive. I once read an exhortation to "let your praying become doing, and your doing praying."

(I've never been able to find where this qote came from, so if any of you can help me out, I'd be grateful!) For some reason it has stuck with me, and I've spent the past few years trying to "go and learn what this means." It is a hard lesson. Colossians 4:2 says we should be devoted to prayer - so, as a first point if we are doing what the Word says then doing does become praying. And prayer, I've noticed, is convicting. Yes, that ugly word. But conviction leads to action, and that is how praying becomes doing. There is another side to the coin though; if you don't do one, you will undoubtably fail to do the other (even if you don't notice that you're failing). Letting your praying become doing is a way of communing with God in all things, not just during your devotional time; instead, it moves that devotional time into every moment of your day because everything falls under the category "doing." ... more

It took me a while to get my head around making my own prayer beads. I wanted my prayer beads to be individualized because I made them, not because I am starting my own mode of prayer. Although, if I did I could write a book and tour the country preaching the easy 5-step plan that starts with making your own prayer beads and ends with the final step of signing the lease to your yacht as it rests in the crystal blue waters of the resort town you just bought in Cancun. Oh wait, wasn't that book called the Prayer of Jabez? (It's been a long time since you heard those words, huh? Never forget!)

So off I went to the local craft store to find some wooden beads and a cross pendant. My wife came along for both moral and aesthetic support, and she joined me in making her own prayer beads as well. We found some really nice beads that fit our own personalities. I think it is important to have beads that reflect your personality, because then they become a part of you, a way to transcend your individuality (yourself, your beads) to the communion of the saints (the Godhead and the Body of Christ). If nothing else, you will not use the beads if you dislike their appearance. Call me vain, but I picked out some wood beads that remind me of the woods and bookshelves, both things I enjoy, especially when heavily laden with either fruit or books, respectively.

A big snag came with the purchasing of a cross pendant. The one at the local craft store was pathetic---it had was painted, flimsy, and looked like a toy you get in the plastic bubbles at the grocery store. It took me a while to find a pendant that fit my liking, but I providentially stumbled upon Full Circle Beads, and Cyd was gracious enough to let me pick out a pendant from her collection and buy it without beads. I highly recommend the store, the beads are fantastic and the service equally so. ... more

Lent is sometimes viewed as a masochistic spiritual deprivation.  We give things up and clamp our mouth, fast, and bear the burden for no other reason than that's what we were taught to do.

Worshiping that which is dirt...that is what has been happening in a New Mexico sanctuary visited on pilgrimages, much to the changrin of the sanctuary's priest.

Erik Eckholm reports, "tens of thousands of pilgrims walk eight miles or more to the shrine on Good Friday, some bearing heavy crosses and others approaching on their knees. Scores of people visit every day the rest of the year, many hoping to cure diseases or disabilities with prayer, holy water and, most famously, the healing dirt, which visitors collect from a hole in the floor inside the church." [1]

The priest, Father Roca is a believer in the miraculous, yet he clarifies, "They are the work of the Good Lord.  I always tell people that I have no faith in dirt, I have faith in the Lord." [2]

Legends abound about the site, how the pit of dirt is continually filled, how the cross in the sanctuary came to be found---yet out of these legends miracles still happen.

At first I thought it was ironic that dirt, the indirect victim of the Fall, the essence of our mortal bodies, the genesis of our earthly lives was given such high honor. I thought: shouldn't we be aiming for glorified bodies of the second Adam, not making holy that which is of the first? ... more

Paul Soupiset, whom I interviewed in this month's edition of The Everyday Journal, is building a labyrinth with Gordon Atkinson and their fellow congregants. 

I had wanted to post on the labyrinth for a while but Paul kept updating everything so quickly it would have been old news.  Thankfully he has produced a page that highlights the whole process.

I have never participated in a labyrinth before, and have no idea how to find one in my area: North Jersey/New York City.  Any help would be appreciated. ... more

Or, why is everyone in Hollywood movies suddenly keeping their babies?

Maybe it's courage, maybe it's subversive, maybe it's countercultural---but the latest unwed movie mommies have all been shunning abortion and carrying their babies to term, sometimes getting married to the father (as in Knocked Up), or sometimes giving the child up for adoption (Bella and Juno).

Pray without ceasing...

When most people contemplate the meaning of Paul's famous phrase, the emphasis is always placed on ''without ceasing.''  The questions asked are What does without ceasing mean?  How do I get to a place in my spiritual life when I pray incessantly?