"Mind-boggling"

In a recent exchange with a blog reader, we discussed the "mysterious"nature of God. I have always been puzzled by my fellowship's lack of acceptance of one of the Trinity--The Holy Spirit. In all other things, we cross our t's and dot our i's, but here we draw the line----this amorphous, formless being scares the logic out of us! He cannot be difined or drawn (although there is that dove), nor pinned down, nor really explained--which some of like to do to Biblical things. Yet, He is what Christ left us, when he departed this planet--and therefore, should be joyfully accepted.

The person I wrote and his cohorts are desperately afraid of contemplative prayer, meditation, solidude, the saints, and all things unexplainable. (As if one could explain God!) "Eastern" influences in religion are suspect. (Have they ever looked at the map to see where Christianity originated?) The New Age movement worries them. They distrust all things they have not discovered and interpreted in Scripture. They throw around words like "the occult" freely.
They distrust Thomas Merton, Dallas Willard, Richard Foster and "those broken down Catholic saints" and of course, the desert fathers and mothers.

They need to find what Esther deWaal calls "the religious imagination." I leave them with this Celtic (also suspect surely) prayer:

Three folds of the cloth, yet only one napkin is there,
Three joints in the finger, but still only one finger fair
Three leaves of the shamrock, yet no more than one shamrock to wear,
Frost, snow-flakes and ice, all in water their origin hare
Three Persons in God, to one God alone we make prayer.

Zoe Redux II

The workshops for the leadership portion of the Zoe Conference were mostly on some of the spiritual disciplines: Silence, Solitude and Sabbath. Appropriate for those leaders pressed in this world of whirling schedules.

In her class on Silence, Jackie Halstead focused on contemplative, inaging prayer which seemed to be a new idea for some. Her term "the prodigal mind" in prayer (in which our minds go in and out of focus) was a good one.

Finding time to do any spiritual discipline is the big problem. Jackie suggested getting up early, taking 10 minutes of lunchtime with the door closed, and using examen for 20 minutes at night. She also said that we obsessive creatures who try to cram in all the spiritual activities we can into our day, "must find time to manage our compasssion." That seems to be a repetition of Randy's idea that we are not humbled to the idea that everything doesn't count on us.

She also stressed practicing mindfulness--being present in the moment--not looking over the heads of people who talk to us, etc.

There is no doubt about it. Silence is counter cultural. Seems Mr. Jobs comes up everyday with a new way to distribute noise. Some people even fear silence and the self-examination it brings.