Faith is unpredictable

"Faith cannot be taught by any method of instruction; we can only teach religion.  We can know about religion, but we can only expand in faith, act in faith , live in faith.  Faith can be inspired within a community of faith, but it cannot be given to one person by another.  Faith is expressed, transformed, and made meaningful by persons sharing their faith in an historical, tradition-bearing community of faith……the schooling-instruction paradigm works against our necessary primary concern for the faith of persons.  It encourages us to teach about Christian religion by turning our attention to Christianity as expressed in documents, doctrines, history and moral codes"
John Westerhoff 'Will our children have faith?' (p 35)

Spiritual directors

Nouwen in Reaching Out is talking about the lack of spiritual directors. I think I would want to include other consultative roles as well which enable our supervision.

“At least part of the reason for this lack .. is that we ourselves do not appeal to our fellow human beings in such a way as to invite them to become our spiritual leaders. If there were no students constantly asking for good teachers, there would be no good teachers. The same is true for spiritual guides. There are many men and women with great spiritual sensitivity whose talents remain dormant because we do not make an appeal to them. Many would, in fact, become wise and holy for our sake if we would invite them to assist us in our search for the prayer of our heart.

“A spiritual director does not need to be more intelligent or more experienced than we are. If is important that he or she accepts our invitation to lead us closer to God and enters with us into the scriptures and into the silence where God speaks to both of us. Often we will discover that those who we ask for help will indeed receive the gift to help us and grow with us toward prayer.” (98)

Cited in centers and margins, prophets and poets blogpost.

Questions of faith

“God created man in his own image. And man, being a gentleman, returned the favour.” Jean Jacques Rousseau
 “If you comprehend it, it is not God.” Saint Augustine (354-430)

Lessons on leadership from nature

"There is a simpler, finer way to organize human endeavor. I have declared this for many years and seen it to be true in many places. This simpler way is demonstrated to us in daily life, not the life we see on the news with its unending stories of human grief and horror, but what we feel when we experience a sense of life’s deep harmony, beauty, and power, of how we feel when we see people helping each other, when we feel creative, when we know we’re making a difference, when life feels purposeful."

"Over many years of work all over the world, I've learned that if we organize in the same way that the rest of life does, we develop the skills we need: we become resilient, adaptive, aware, and creative. We enjoy working together. And life’s processes work everywhere, no matter the culture, group, or person, because these are basic dynamics shared by all living beings."

"Western cultural views of how best to organize and lead (now the methods most used in the world) are contrary to what life teaches. Leaders use control and imposition rather than participative, self-organizing processes. They react to uncertainty and chaos by tightening already feeble controls, rather than engaging people's best capacities to learn and adapt. In doing so, they only create more chaos. Leaders incite primitive emotions of fear, scarcity, and self-interest to get people to do their work, rather than the more noble human traits of cooperation, caring, and generosity. This has led to this difficult time, when nothing seems to work as we want it to, when too many of us feel frustrated, disengaged, and anxious."

"There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about."

"To resolve most dysfunctional situations, the first thing to do is flood them with information."

from Margaret Wheatley

Prayer

Photo of Japanese Contemplation Garden by Scott MacLeod-Lddle

Here are some great quotes about prayer.

I wake up in the morning and don’t know whether to save the world or savor it, and this makes it hard to plan my day.
E.B. White

My shoes

I leave aside my shoes - my ambitions,
undo my watch - my timetable,
take off glasses - my views,
unclip my pen - my work,
put down my keys - my security,
to be alone with you, the only true God.

After being with you,
I take up my shoes - to walk in your ways,
strap on my watch - to live in your time,
put on my glasses - to look at your world,
clip on my pen - to write up your thoughts,
pick up my keys - to open up your doors.

Anonymous