Websites I love

For ideas on how to soak up more of God, I love having a trawl around these websites:

www.emergingchurch.info (try out the prayer lava lamp!)

www.jonnybaker.blogspot.com

www.imagodeicommunity.com

www.msainfo.org

Literature and God

I think that in each person there is some odd way that connects them straight to God. Odd in that it is outside the prescribed Bible reading and prayer formula of the spiritual disciplines, and often does not resonate easily with others.

For me, certain books seem to take me straight into the presence of God, or have spoken to me in some deep place of a great truth. Here I'll list those books that I love, and think that everyone should read.

CS Lewis - 'Surprised by Joy'

GK Chesterton - 'Orthodoxy'

Donald Miller - 'Blue Like Jazz'

Ritual and traditionalism

I've been thinking about the place of ritual and traditionalism in finding God.

I don't think that I have really utilised ritual or traditionalism in my search for God. I'm familiar, on a first names kind of basis. It's not really the Kiwi way, to react to pomp and circumstance, we like bringing things, and people, down to size. I am quietly amused at the repetition of liturgy, distasteful of hallowed objects that take precedent over the tenets of faith. I find that I fall into the belief that ritual and traditionalism is the domain of the grey haired.

I wonder though if sometimes God just doesn't show up because I have no idea of what I'm dealing with, no true concept of who he is (or she - might do a post on this). Or he does turn up, but I miss him completely because I'm not looking for the God of the universe, but down, at my small, familiar concept of him.

Ritual, the repetition of time honoured traditions, brings a sense of continuity. You and I are not awash, alone, in our worship. Thousands have gone before us, saints, grandmothers and grandfathers, preachers and cleaning women. Believing, praying over us.

Words repeated over centuries, sacred objects, bread broken, the sacraments shared. These bring the presence of those who have gone before us, those who have endured the same dark nights, have lived and had brokenness mended. This speaks to us of a God who is there throughout. We remember, as the Israelites did, the God of the Old Testament, of fierce loyalties, and miraculous interventions.

Through ritual and traditionalism we take a step back and remember that we are not the center of our own stories. That our faith was designed to revolve around the unknown, the God whose holiness is more than a human can behold and live.

We step back and in humility remember our place, that we do not understand, that we are not in control, but we exist in awe.

Title post

"tis hard for us to rouse our spirits up,

it is the human creative agony
though but to hold the heart an empty cup,

or tighten on the team the rigid reign
many will rather lie among the slain,

than creep through narrow ways the light to gain
than wake the will and be born bitterly.

but we who would be born again indeed
MUST WAKE OUR SOULS UNNUMBERED TIMES A DAY
and urge ourselves to life with holy greed.

now open our bosoms to the wind's free play
and now, with patience forceful , hard, lie still,

submiss and ready to the making will
athirst and empty, for god's breath to fill."

(george macdonald, diary of an old soul)