practicing presence
What we think of prayer and speaking with God and how we practice such things may have little to do with how God speaks or communicates with us. Learning more of the nature of God’s communication and native language from the ancient Christian tradition can tremendously help point us in the best direction when it comes to unceasing prayer.
Blessed Assurance
Dave Brisbin 12.29.19
Anticipating a new year and new decade, how best to prepare and direct ourselves? How best to find the hope, peace, and assurance we need to remain undeterred and undistracted amid the noise and chaos of another year? Coming from an unexpected direction, I get a phone call from a licensed clinical psychologist, a PhD who had a near death experience that was so profound that he had to write about it, asking if I would be willing to read his manuscript. His story stood out among other such experiences I’ve read in its sincere attempt at objectively describing what is inherently a radically subjective and ultimately inexpressible experience—an experience of pure presence, of God’s presence—yet completely devoid of religious imagery. And most interestingly, his description matched in some cases almost word for word the experiences of the mystics and contemplatives who have written for millennia.
Anticipating a new year and new decade, how best to prepare and direct ourselves? How best to find the hope, peace, and assurance we need to remain undeterred and undistracted amid the noise and chaos of another year? Coming from an unexpected direction, I get a phone call from a licensed clinical psychologist, a PhD who had a near death experience that was so profound that he had to write about it, asking if I would be willing to read his manuscript. His story stood out among other such experiences I’ve read in its sincere attempt at objectively describing what is inherently a radically subjective and ultimately inexpressible experience—an experience of pure presence, of God’s presence—yet completely devoid of religious imagery. And most interestingly, his description matched in some cases almost word for word the experiences of the mystics and contemplatives who have written for millennia.
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The Gifts of the Magi
Dave Brisbin 12.01.19
Why is there so much depression and anxiety at Christmas? One psychologist writes that there are three reasons: the demands of time, preparation, activities, and finances; family dysfunctional issues that are highlighted during the season; and inability to meet expectations placed on us both physically and emotionally. When you think about it, we first experience Christmas as children—learn what our culture says it’s supposed to be through a child’s eyes. And it’s a perfect storm for children: from three feet off the ground, the lights, decorations, candy, treats, magical beliefs, gifts, suspense, and anticipation create a breathless wonder. How do we expect to recreate all that through our adult eyes, looking at a different world from six feet off the ground? To recreate Christmas as our hearts remember it, is to recreate the world in our hearts as the child sees it.
Why is there so much depression and anxiety at Christmas? One psychologist writes that there are three reasons: the demands of time, preparation, activities, and finances; family dysfunctional issues that are highlighted during the season; and inability to meet expectations placed on us both physically and emotionally. When you think about it, we first experience Christmas as children—learn what our culture says it’s supposed to be through a child’s eyes. And it’s a perfect storm for children: from three feet off the ground, the lights, decorations, candy, treats, magical beliefs, gifts, suspense, and anticipation create a breathless wonder. How do we expect to recreate all that through our adult eyes, looking at a different world from six feet off the ground? To recreate Christmas as our hearts remember it, is to recreate the world in our hearts as the child sees it.
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Stars Beneath Our Feet
Dave Brisbin 9.22.19
Years ago, I drove all the way to Death Valley deep in the Mojave desert, arriving late at night so I could walk out into a dune field under a really dark sky to see the stars. I wasn’t disappointed. The vast canopy turned overhead with the band of the galaxy angling across, and from my dunetop perch, I felt close to the stars. But was I any closer there than here in the city where I can count the stars on a couple of hands, or during the day when no stars pierce the blue curtain at all? Truth is, the stars are just where they are all the time, whether we can see them or not. And more mind bendingly, there are stars beneath our feet as well. It’s just that the ball we’re standing on always obscures. God’s presence is like the stars—always there whether we see/feel it or not.
Years ago, I drove all the way to Death Valley deep in the Mojave desert, arriving late at night so I could walk out into a dune field under a really dark sky to see the stars. I wasn’t disappointed. The vast canopy turned overhead with the band of the galaxy angling across, and from my dunetop perch, I felt close to the stars. But was I any closer there than here in the city where I can count the stars on a couple of hands, or during the day when no stars pierce the blue curtain at all? Truth is, the stars are just where they are all the time, whether we can see them or not. And more mind bendingly, there are stars beneath our feet as well. It’s just that the ball we’re standing on always obscures. God’s presence is like the stars—always there whether we see/feel it or not.
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Maundy Thursday
Dave Brisbin 4.7.19
Fifth Sunday of Lent: And so we come to Maundy Thursday as we work through the liturgical days of Holy Week. The traditional scripture passages associated with Maundy Thursday are all the events and preparations for the Last Supper, the agony in the Garden, and Jesus’ arrest. It’s a busy day as Jesus gives a new commandment to his friends at supper—to love each other as he has loved them, institutes the Eucharist/communion, washes his friends’ feet, and prays a long prayer before going to the garden of Gethsemane. But as we look at the deeper significance of each of these events, the principle at the core of all of them is the unity for which Jesus prays at the end of supper.
Fifth Sunday of Lent: And so we come to Maundy Thursday as we work through the liturgical days of Holy Week. The traditional scripture passages associated with Maundy Thursday are all the events and preparations for the Last Supper, the agony in the Garden, and Jesus’ arrest. It’s a busy day as Jesus gives a new commandment to his friends at supper—to love each other as he has loved them, institutes the Eucharist/communion, washes his friends’ feet, and prays a long prayer before going to the garden of Gethsemane. But as we look at the deeper significance of each of these events, the principle at the core of all of them is the unity for which Jesus prays at the end of supper.
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Tuesday and Wednesday
Dave Brisbin 3.31.19
Fourth Sunday of Lent: Each liturgical day of Holy Week from Palm Sunday to Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday has a name and scripture passages designated that tell the story of the final week of Jesus’ earthly life. But each day and its passages also tell another story when we look beneath the literal meaning. They show us the internal experience of the Way of Jesus…the path he takes all the way to the cross.
Fourth Sunday of Lent: Each liturgical day of Holy Week from Palm Sunday to Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday has a name and scripture passages designated that tell the story of the final week of Jesus’ earthly life. But each day and its passages also tell another story when we look beneath the literal meaning. They show us the internal experience of the Way of Jesus…the path he takes all the way to the cross.
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the task within
Dave Brisbin 3.24.19
Third Sunday of Lent: Flipping channels, ran across the movie Chariots of Fire. Hadn’t seen it in decades and got immediately pulled in. Story of two runners preparing for the 1924 Olympics—a British Jew and Scottish Christian who couldn’t be more different. As the Brit is using running as a weapon against the prejudice he’s endured as a Jew, the Scotsman simply “feels God’s pleasure” when he runs. And his whole life as both athlete and Christian missionary to China reflects his ability to do two things: to see through the surface task—whether running or teaching—to the deeper, spiritual task beneath, and to radically accept life as it presents in any moment. Whether the pressure of an Olympic event or the advance of the Japanese army into China, he remains himself, wholly committed to the welfare of either competitors or students. How did he manage to get to this kind of balance? In his early twenties, no less?
Third Sunday of Lent: Flipping channels, ran across the movie Chariots of Fire. Hadn’t seen it in decades and got immediately pulled in. Story of two runners preparing for the 1924 Olympics—a British Jew and Scottish Christian who couldn’t be more different. As the Brit is using running as a weapon against the prejudice he’s endured as a Jew, the Scotsman simply “feels God’s pleasure” when he runs. And his whole life as both athlete and Christian missionary to China reflects his ability to do two things: to see through the surface task—whether running or teaching—to the deeper, spiritual task beneath, and to radically accept life as it presents in any moment. Whether the pressure of an Olympic event or the advance of the Japanese army into China, he remains himself, wholly committed to the welfare of either competitors or students. How did he manage to get to this kind of balance? In his early twenties, no less?
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living lent
Dave Brisbin 3.10.19
On the first Sunday of Lent, we stop to consider what Lent has meant since the middle of the second century to millions of Christians from ancient to medieval to modern times. What is its place in the liturgical calendar and how did it and the other seasons of the church along with their cultural practices bind the people together in common experience? A common experience we no longer possess in our culture. But understanding Lent by understanding the model from which it came, Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness, we begin to see that regardless of what the church taught and practiced, Lent was not about suffering or deprivation as some sort of sacrifice for God’s favor. Nor was it about penance for past sin.
On the first Sunday of Lent, we stop to consider what Lent has meant since the middle of the second century to millions of Christians from ancient to medieval to modern times. What is its place in the liturgical calendar and how did it and the other seasons of the church along with their cultural practices bind the people together in common experience? A common experience we no longer possess in our culture. But understanding Lent by understanding the model from which it came, Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness, we begin to see that regardless of what the church taught and practiced, Lent was not about suffering or deprivation as some sort of sacrifice for God’s favor. Nor was it about penance for past sin.
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forward and back
Dave Brisbin | 12.30.18
The run up to Christmas was full of personal setbacks and a difficult week, but the Christmas service itself seemed to simply erase all that angst in one stroke as I allowed myself to immerse in the images, music, and sense of connection to the people in the room. We think of our spiritual journey as one solid path that we’re either on or off, and once on, should stay on if we only have enough faith. But life and scripture tell a different story: that the spiritual journey is not one path, but one moment—a moment we either choose to be connected or choose not. That being on the spiritual Way of Jesus is stringing enough of those kingdom moments together to form a kingdom necklace, and that our progress along the Way is always marked by two steps forward and a step back.
The run up to Christmas was full of personal setbacks and a difficult week, but the Christmas service itself seemed to simply erase all that angst in one stroke as I allowed myself to immerse in the images, music, and sense of connection to the people in the room. We think of our spiritual journey as one solid path that we’re either on or off, and once on, should stay on if we only have enough faith. But life and scripture tell a different story: that the spiritual journey is not one path, but one moment—a moment we either choose to be connected or choose not. That being on the spiritual Way of Jesus is stringing enough of those kingdom moments together to form a kingdom necklace, and that our progress along the Way is always marked by two steps forward and a step back.
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A Study in Presence
Dave Brisbin | 10.14.18
Last Thursday was a tale of two hospitals. First a trip to a prominent children’s hospital to speak to the director and manager of spiritual care about new programs they are initiating for patients, families, and clinical caregivers. I am struck by the unhurried presence of the two I meet. Unhurried, gracious, taking their time with me, as if I were the only person in their world until the moment they have to move on to their next meetings. From there, I drive forty miles to visit an elderly friend in critical care in a massive hospital downtown. Darker, more serious, not for kids. I walk into the darkened room and she asks what brought me all the way downtown. I say, only you, dear. I’m here just for you. She says, oh isn’t that wonderful? And we talk and hold hands and seven minutes later, she asks what brought me all the way downtown, and I realize her memory has reset itself. Still carrying the unhurried presence of the last hospital, I choose to enter her world and simply say, only you, dear. I’m here just for you, and she says, oh isn’t that wonderful? We repeat this every seven minutes for the 45 minutes I’m with her, and I have just as much a thrill in telling her as she does receiving the news.
Last Thursday was a tale of two hospitals. First a trip to a prominent children’s hospital to speak to the director and manager of spiritual care about new programs they are initiating for patients, families, and clinical caregivers. I am struck by the unhurried presence of the two I meet. Unhurried, gracious, taking their time with me, as if I were the only person in their world until the moment they have to move on to their next meetings. From there, I drive forty miles to visit an elderly friend in critical care in a massive hospital downtown. Darker, more serious, not for kids. I walk into the darkened room and she asks what brought me all the way downtown. I say, only you, dear. I’m here just for you. She says, oh isn’t that wonderful? And we talk and hold hands and seven minutes later, she asks what brought me all the way downtown, and I realize her memory has reset itself. Still carrying the unhurried presence of the last hospital, I choose to enter her world and simply say, only you, dear. I’m here just for you, and she says, oh isn’t that wonderful? We repeat this every seven minutes for the 45 minutes I’m with her, and I have just as much a thrill in telling her as she does receiving the news.
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Running with Swimmies
Dave Brisbin | 10.7.18
Sometimes insightful messages come in sets of threes, it seems. Or maybe it’s that as the first time goes right over our heads, second brings awareness, and the third really hits home, we’re just sensitive to the threeness of things. I suppose it’s always our choice to see life as either a series of coincidences or having divine influence or somewhere in between. And that’s the point: how we see the events in our lives and our place in them is a choice. Any worldview we choose will answer some questions and beg others, but whether we hit an objective accuracy we could never prove anyway, some views of life are just more fun. A series of events of the past week from a trip to the zoo to the homecoming greeting by our pet dog, to an email from a friend in crisis telling the story of a young boy running into the pool with his swimmies on, a pattern of experiences and images formed with an impact that seemed to far outweigh mere coincidence.
Sometimes insightful messages come in sets of threes, it seems. Or maybe it’s that as the first time goes right over our heads, second brings awareness, and the third really hits home, we’re just sensitive to the threeness of things. I suppose it’s always our choice to see life as either a series of coincidences or having divine influence or somewhere in between. And that’s the point: how we see the events in our lives and our place in them is a choice. Any worldview we choose will answer some questions and beg others, but whether we hit an objective accuracy we could never prove anyway, some views of life are just more fun. A series of events of the past week from a trip to the zoo to the homecoming greeting by our pet dog, to an email from a friend in crisis telling the story of a young boy running into the pool with his swimmies on, a pattern of experiences and images formed with an impact that seemed to far outweigh mere coincidence.
