STAYING AT OUR POST

In this economy, and in this culture, Americans in 2012 are taxed with many burdens.  Personally and professionally, we face (and must face down) challenges perhaps never known in our lifetimes.  Our resources help us to find our course.  Our faith helps us to stay the course. 

Guides and Guideposts

Two writers spanning 2000 years come to mind when I think of finding and drawing upon strength to endure tough times:  first-century apostle Paul, and 21^st century author and professor of theology Robert Mulholland. 

Paul, who lived a full life, admitted and found strength through his failings, and in so doing gained respect for the authenticity in his teachings from his first-century contemporaries.  From Tarsus to Corinth to Galatia to Ephesus to Philippi to Colossae to Thessaloniki to Rome, he traveled and preached and taught people from many differing cultures and circumstances to walk in the spirit of gratitude to God and love for each other.  From Barnabus to Titus to Philemon to Timothy and even to Peter (with whom he openly disagreed) he urged walking in love and disregarding the strictest interpretation of the law when necessary, and for that he gained their respect as followers. As an historical figure, Paul stands out as a man dedicated to advancing community through personal initiative and individual accountability.

Robert Mulholland, who graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy before going on to pursue advanced degrees in Theology and Divinity at such prestigious institutions as Wesley, Harvard, and Duke, has a C.V. which reads as much like a corporate resume as a pastoral and teaching credential.  Like Paul, his work reaches out to peoples of various cultures.  Like Paul, he is relentless (Paul traveled to Corinth and Thessaloniki twice - to restate and re-emphasize many of the precepts he taught in his first trip; Mulholland wrote Invitation to a Journey, bundling corporate and social spirituality as the responsible path toward optimizing ones potential in the world, only to follow a decade later with The Deeper Journey describing the next step in the process of discovering your own self, to go further in love for others and compassion for the world.). 

How do these authors speak into the life of the 21^st century pilgrim?  Let’s take a look.

The Apostle Paul: “Don’t frustrate God’s Work By Showing Up Late”

In his second trip to Corinth, Paul spoke into the lives of a diverse populace living in strife and conflict.  In simple but profound language, he gives us insight into understanding, and perspective in facing, today’s challenges.

2 Corinthians 6

^1-10Companions as we are in this work with you, we beg you, please don't squander one bit of this marvelous life God has given us. God reminds us,
I heard your call in the nick of time; The day you needed me, I was there to help. Well, now is the right time to listen, the day to be helped. Don't put it off; don't frustrate God's work by showing up late, throwing a question mark over everything we're doing. Our work as God's servants gets validated—or not—in the details. People are watching us as we stay at our post, alertly, unswervingly . . . in hard times, tough times, bad times; when we're beaten up, jailed, and mobbed; working hard, working late, working without eating; with pure heart, clear head, steady hand; in gentleness, holiness, and honest love; when we're telling the truth, and when God's showing his power; when we're doing our best setting things right; when we're praised, and when we're blamed; slandered, and honored; true to our word, though distrusted; ignored by the world, but recognized by God; terrifically alive, though rumored to be dead; beaten within an inch of our lives, but refusing to die; immersed in tears, yet always filled with deep joy; living on handouts, yet enriching many; having nothing, having it all.

“Your Lives Aren’t Small…Live Openly And Expansively!”

Never one to leave without a positive note, Paul encourages followers to stay the course and maintain an upbeat and full heart:

^11-13Dear, dear Corinthians, I can't tell you how much I long for you to enter this wide-open, spacious life. We didn't fence you in. The smallness you feel comes from within you. Your lives aren't small, but you're living them in a small way. I'm speaking as plainly as I can and with great affection. Open up your lives. Live openly and expansively!

Robert Mulholland:

“We Become Agents of Healing or Carriers of Sickness”

In Invitation to a Journey: A Road Map for Spiritual Formation, Robert Mulholland writes of individual choice and personal responsibility:

“We become either agents of God's healing and liberating grace or carriers of the sickness of the world.” 

“Silence is the Deep Inner Reversal of That Grasping That Characterizes our Culture”

He speaks of the need to escape into solitude to draw on our personal strength:  

"We tend to think of silence as simply being still. But the silence of which the mothers and fathers of the church speak goes far beyond mere quietness. Their silence is the deep inner reversal of that grasping, controlling mode of being that so characterizes life in our culture.”

Warning us to avoid the chase for the material, and the illusion of control, Mulholland goes on to once again recommend the solutions found in silence and solitude:

“We have noted the powerful tendency in our culture to objectify everything and everyone around us--to make them objects that are to be arranged within our ordering of our world. We have also noted our penchant for then grasping those objects and bringing them under the agenda we have for the shaping of our world according to our own desires and purposes...The practice of silence is the radical reversal of our cultural tendencies.”

And how does he describe that silence, that stillness in solitude that can re-orient us toward the life we are intended to live?

“Silence is the Inner Act of Letting Go… Solitude is Acknowledging Our Bondages, Our False Securities, Our Posturing Facades.”

“Silence is bringing ourselves to a point of relinquishing to God our control of our relationship with God. Silence is a reversal of the whole possessing, controlling, grasping dynamic of trying to maintain control of our own existence. Silence is the inner act of letting it go.

The second inner dynamic of our disciplines is solitude. We tend to think of solitude as simply being alone. In the classical Christian spiritual tradition, however, solitude is, in the silence of release, beginning to face the deep inner dynamics of our being that make us that grasping, controlling, manipulative person; beginning to face our brokenness, our distortion, our darkness; and beginning to offer ourselves to God at those points. Solitude is not simply drawing away from others and being alone with God. This is part of solitude. But more than this, it is being who we are with God and acknowledging who we are to ourselves and to God...This is what solitude is: in the silence of releasing control of our relationship with God to God, coming face to face with the kind of person we are in the depths of our being; seeing the depths of our grasping, manipulative, self-indulgent behavior; facing the brokenness, the darkness, the uncleanness that is within; acknowledging our bondages, our false securities, our posturing facades; and naming ourselves to God as this kind of person.”

Mulholland concludes by leading us to prayer.

“Prayer Becomes the Offering of Who We Are to God for the Work of his Grace in Our Lives”

“The final dynamic of spiritual disciplines is prayer. Prayer is the outgrowth of both silence and solitude. In silence we let go of our manipulative control. In solitude we face up to what we are in the depths of our being. Prayer then becomes the offering of who we are to God; the giving of that broken, unclean, grasping, manipulative self to God for the work of God's grace in our lives."

Paul in Silence and Solitude

Paul certainly knew very well the importance of silence and solitude. After his conversion he withdrew for three years in the isolation of the Arabian Desert to allow his faith to grow and mature (Galatians 1:15-16).  And after his encounter with the risen Christ he spent three days in solitude and silence for prayer and fasting (Acts 9:9).  His love for his God was his unquestioned source of strength, and neither law nor cultural norm proved a deterrent to him in walking in that love.

Then and Now

Life happens by coming at us day by day.  The needs of our loved ones and those of ourselves, met in the face of the constraints of time and resources, are pressing and can be a source of stress and concern.  We live in community and seek the advice and counsel of others, but at some point we need to stand in our own knowledge.  Stand for our beliefs.  Stand for our decisions.  Stand against the grain, the more popular choice, or the common ideal.  When we take the time to pray and meditate, our values are allowed to play the key role in our decision-making, and we can feel the right-ness, and even the righteousness, of our chosen direction. 

Teachers who have gone before us have known the stress and strain to which our human condition is prone.  Especially those like Paul and Mulholland, who have lived full lives in the company of many sectors of society, can act as guides to encourage and inspire us.  They cannot do our work for us, but through their experiential and anecdotal evidence they let us know we are not unique, and we are not alone.