Sitting Still in Silence

I have been watching the television show Lost lately. The show is about a group of passengers on a flight from Sydney to Los Angles whose plane crashes on an island in the Pacific. Some how there are 48 survivors and they are alone on a beautiful island. The refuges become restless and bored with nothing to do but gather food and water and we gather the feeling that there is no entertainment or ways to keep their lives busy.

Watching Lost has made me realize, this is a feeling I have never had. We have established social systems that do not allow for idle time. From the earliest ages, young children have established schedules from 2-year-old schools following with play dates on Mondays & Wednesdays, and piano lessons once a week. Family dinners are becoming less frequent and stress levels are rising every year. High school youth are expected to play multiple sports, musical instruments, participate in social clubs, and somehow find time to participate in church youth groups, but only after everything else is finished.

Right now I am on our youth fall retreat on Kentucky Lake. We began our day with a short five or ten minute Morning Prayer service. Since the goal of this weekend is to have everyone slow down their busy lives a little, I was very intentional about silence after each prayer. I have obviously forgotten how difficult it is to be silent. I found myself unable to sit still for as long as I intended, but instead moved through the service faster than I wanted to. Silence and being still became a challenging task.

I think silence is important and reflection is necessary in our lives. The few times in my life when I have really been able to slow down, I have found it much easier to hear that still small voice in my head. I have been able to find my calling without feeling too helpless and lost. As we spend our time on Kentucky Lake trying to slow down our busier lives, I challenge anyone who reads this to do the same. Try sitting still for five minutes. It really is much more difficult than I ever thought.

On the Canterbury Trail - Part II

After spending the night in Holmsbury, St. Mary, we awoke to set our eyes on Canterbury. Canterbury is the home of the worldwide Anglican Communion and when we finally arrived that evening, we felt as if we had accomplished something great on our pilgrimage. Since we had spent the entire previous day with nothing but our own sense of direction, a twenty-year-old map, and the presence of God, we were fully transformed into true pilgrims on the Canterbury trail, ready and waiting for what God had in store for us upon our arrival.

Walking through the Cathedral in Canterbury served to be more powerful and magnificent than I ever would have expected. The stairs that headed from the nave up to the quire had been worn down from hundreds of thousands of pilgrimages over the years. Just behind the quire rested a monument representing the four swords that murdered Thomas Becket. We talked about the situation in which Thomas Becket had been murdered. What we all realized was that Becket had willingly unlocked the Cathedral doors to make a statement, while knowing people were coming for his head.

I wonder a lot of the time, what I really do hold dearest in my life. I talk a lot about my faith, and working with young people in a church, I am forced to reflect on my faith all the time. But is my faith so important that I would willingly leave the Cathedral doors unlocked, just like Thomas Becket? It seems more often than not, I put my pride before anything else. My ego just seems to get in the way of all that I deep down am trying to accomplish.

Heavenly father, help me to leave my ego behind and put my heart forward so that I can better serve you so when that time comes to unlock my doors, I am ready to put you before all else. Amen

On the Canterbury Trail

On the fifth anniversary of one of the most horrible tragedies of my lifetime, I have chosen instead to write about one of the most powerful experiences of my summer. You might feel this is unfair, and today is a day that we all should remember. Believe me, I have thought about 9/11 a lot today, but I probably have nothing new to add that we all haven’t heard before, and I feel I need to think of something else.

On June 30^th, 2006 we pilgrims from Memphis on our Journey to Adulthood pilgrimage arrived at a youth hostel off of a dirt road in Dorking, England. Our guide had the GPS system in our rental car, but this hostel was really off the beaten path and after several hours of looking for our hostel, we drove down a dirt road for close to half of a mile to find a small guest house in the middle of the woods. Several of the young men that I was traveling with had recently seen the Quentin Tarantino movie Hostel which was a horror movie about a hostel in Europe, and I believe everyone was just a little bit nervous about our accommodations that night.

We pilgrims were on the Canterbury Trail and after a tough night of sleep we awoke to continue on our journey. Our guide had made reservations at a hostel about 12 miles away in Holmsbury, St. Mary. This guide had never been to this part of England, but he assured us that everything would be alright and in the morning, found a local survey map of the area from the one person who was not in our group and staying in the hostel. The map was old, but sure enough it showed us a way to our next hostel from a trail that led out the back of the hostel we had just stayed in. Everyone was optimistic and packed a light lunch and began our hike along the Canterbury Trail.

It soon became clear that both our hike would be extremely difficult and our guide had no clue where he was going. The trail forked nearly every quarter mile and at each turn we guessed using our best judgment which way we should go. The journey was beautiful and exciting and ultimately very scary. We had put our blind faith in a clueless leader to make sure we arrived to our desired location and were able to be fed and have a place to sleep. After nine hours of hiking and what we estimated was between 12 and 13 miles, we walked out of the woods to see a sign for the Holmsbury, St. Mary youth hostel only 500 yards up the road.

During our whole day of hiking, we began to realize that our journey was not our own, but that we were apart of something greater. For the first time in my life, an entire group of people who were so used to being shepherds became sheep. Everyone learn to trust one another and for one short day we worked together like one person, like one body. No one struggled to make all of the decisions and no one got mad at anyone else. Just like pilgrims of the last one thousand years traveling along the Canterbury Trail, we walked aimlessly trusting that God would provide us all that we needed. We might end up in place we wouldn’t want to stay, but we would have what we needed. And for one day, I really knew what it felt like to be that one body of Christ.

The Reason behind Barefoot Spirituality

I used to have really long and wild red hair. After I got my first buzz haircut in eighth grade, my hair continued to grow back curly and untamed. Teachers told me to brush my hair, and believe me I did. My hair style just never worked out quite like anyone anticipated. The way my face would color was quite bizarre and by college, I looked like Lion-o from the 1980’s cartoon Thundercats. I used to wear a ratty old Grateful Dead t-shirt and some dark green cargo shorts from Old Navy. Going to college in the cornfields of Indiana proved to be quite an experience and as soon as I stepped on the campus of Purdue, I stood out like a sore thumb.

I remember walking to a physics class during the fall of my sophomore year. I lived in the Phi Tau house across the street from the physics building. Since I lived so close, I often waited until the last minute to get ready and that day I couldn’t find my shoes, but I still had to go to class.

Maybe it was growing up in a relatively large city, or my southern flare, but I obviously wasn’t like most other Midwesterners. This was the first occasion that I really remember hearing the question, “John, why do you have to be so different?” People were confused with my ways. Most students wouldn’t walk out of their rooms without gel in their hair and I walked out barefoot.

I wasn’t that different than the students at Purdue and the friends in my fraternity. In fact we had a lot more in common than not, and I still remain great friends with many of those people today. But I didn’t see having to be the same in every aspect a requirement or priority of friendship. We didn’t have to like all the same music. Nick liked the Backstreet Boys and N’Sync and I despised both of those groups. I wouldn’t even listen to Metallica. But that wasn’t what was important. We shared similar values, although not always the same, and we listened to each other. And this was enough to teach me that just because everyone else is wearing their shoes doesn’t mean that there is anything wrong with walking around barefoot.

Conflict Resolution

Last week I had the chance to catch up with a good friend of mine who is an Episcopal priest in New York. My friend has been receiving a lot of criticism and flack about his own theological opinions especially with all that is going on with the Episcopal Church today. My friend and I disagree on a few theological questions, just as he disagrees with the Bishop of New York. Yet they still have a great working relationship and we have a great friendship.

Every time I turn on the television or open the newspaper, I find more stories about struggles and conflicts. We have horrible wars in our world over the fight for who believes they best understand the word of God. The word of God has been wrestled for years with more interpretations and opinions formed than probably any other topic out there.

“God has spoken, and the rest is commentary, right?” A friend of mine sent me a copy of a book called Velvet Elvis and these were the last words on the back cover of the book that have been resonating in my head since I read them. We often listen, read, and discuss God’s word but we often forget that this is only commentary. I constantly find myself believing that my views are more correct and even better than other people’s views all the time. And this is when I begin to get myself in trouble.

Jesus says in Mathew 18:20 “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” We don’t always have to agree with our brothers and sisters. But when we come together to study and learn with those who are different, the dialogue begins to teach us more about ourselves and are own spirituality. We learn more about who we are becoming.

We often forget that not everyone around us thinks exactly like us, but who ever said we all have to agree just to get along?