Sunday, January 13, 2008

Job: Wrestling With God

A Formative Exploration
Columbia Theological Seminary Spiritual Formation Certificate
© May 1998 by Norman Stolpe

My first serious encounter with the Book of Job came at age seventeen in a public high school World Literature class. The style of Christian faith I absorbed as a young person in the church where I grew up seemed to have little if anything to do with the challenges of the "human predicament" that I found increasingly enticing as I studied literature. Studying something from the Bible (Job) as literature that addressed this fascination was a profoundly integrating experience. I said to myself: "Ah ha! God does understand the pain of being human." The New Testament understandings of incarnation and Jesus' crucifixion became living realities to me. I have marked that as the beginning of my "adult faith," and I resonated with the way we looked at Job as a window on adult faith in this course.

Of all of the interwoven themes we looked at in Job through the week, I was particularly drawn to and moved by viewing the Book of Job as sort of case study on authentic relationship with God. I found this far more compelling and reasonable than trying to find a rationale for human suffering in the Book of Job. This took me back to the awakening moment in my seventeen-year-old experience with Job. Though I did not have the understanding, experience or maturity to appreciate it as much at the time, God's self-revelation and Job's overwhelmed response was what evoked the sense of satisfaction and integration that nurtured my faith at the time. Now, having pursued a life of contemplative prayer for several years as an adult, this most recent conversation with the Book of Job brought a sharp focus for me on my relationship with God.

The Longing to "See God"

Since adolescence I have been drawn to the theme in the contemplative tradition of the beatific vision, to be able to have a direct, spiritual encounter with God. This, of course, is a grace that is given by God, and no amount of meditation or ascetic discipline can manufacture an authentic experience. They merely prepare one to be ready to recognize and receive the gift. Yet, contemplative tradition presents the spiritual longing to "see God" as a legitimate motivation for pursuing the contemplative life. The popular notion is that such a vision of God is filled with bliss and delight. While the sweetness and wonder of intimacy with God permeates the writing of
many contemplatives, that emphasis is balanced by heavy encounters such as St. John of the Cross's dark night of the soul and Ignatius' understanding of consolations and desolations. I found the image of landings on a spiral staircase that descends into the depths in Thomas Keating's Intimacy with God (Crossroads, 1994) to be a very helpful tool for discerning God's presence when I am only aware of God's absence.

I have taken Jesus' Beatitude "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God." (Matthew 5:8) as encouraging in me the longing to "see God." Kierkegard's explorations of this in Purity of Heart Is To Will One Thing (Harper and Row; 1938), helped me grow past seeing purity of heart merely as moral innocence but as being consumed by the single desire to "see God." My development of spiritual disciplines has been inspired by Psalm 37:4, "Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart." As God has increasingly become the delight and desire of my heart, I have tasted the "reward" of direct relationship with God, much as God said to Abram in Genesis 15:1, "I am your shield, your very great reward." (NIV)

I am intrigued by some of the encounters people have with God that are recorded in Scripture. Moses asked to see God's glory, to which God responds with this anthropomorphism, "While my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen." (Exodus 33:22-23) When Isaiah "saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty," he responded, ""Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!" (Isaiah 6:1,5) As I reflect on these kinds of accounts, I ask myself if I could stand the wonder and terror of a direct encounter with God. The answer at one level is "No! Of course not! You fool, you'd be consumed." And then I am reminded of the worlds of Abba Joseph, "If you will, you can become all flame," and I yearn for such total immersion in God.

John's Gospel starts with the impossibility of seeing God as a way of presenting Jesus as the one who shows us God. "No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made him known." (John 1:18) And Jesus says to Philip, "Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'?" (John 14:9) Taking this cue from the New Testament, I have made a point of soaking in the Gospels (not to the exclusion of the rest of Scripture, however) so I can be as fully saturated with Jesus as possible as the avenue for "seeing God."

In John 17:3 Jesus describes eternal life in terms of knowing God by knowing Christ. "This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." Paul echoes a similar idea in describing the consuming passion of his life in Philippians 3:1-11. "I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead." As I have pursued and cultivated my relationship with God, this focus has defined my personal sense of meaning. Jesus' words about eternal life and Paul's focus on the resurrection from the dead contrasts with the existential immediacy of Job. Yet, while Job does not speak of resurrection or eternal life in a New Testament sense, I find a connection between my hope of resurrection and the quality of intimate knowledge of God through Jesus Christ.

At a superficial level eternal life suggests a personal existence that extends without limit beyond the end we call death, and the resurrection from the dead points to a better life beyond this life. I am certainly not interested in denying or diminishing in any way the New Testament hope of a personal experience of the resurrection to eternal life; however, the way both Jesus and Paul link it with knowing Christ emphasizes a glimpse of God far outweighs an endless life without God.

It is here that the power of Job's encounter with God compels me in my pursuit of the contemplative life. In his flash of hope in 19:26 Job asserts, "in my flesh I shall see God." Job's declaration after being encountered by God is, "Now my eyes have seen you" (42:5). This deep longing and persistent asking to see God is at the heart of God's approval of how Job "has spoken of me what is right" (42:7) Thus, the Book of Job not only approves but encourages seeking to see God.

Job also holds out the expectation of having that longing fulfilled. However, this is not some conventional piety. Seeing God is not something that can be controlled or commanded. It does not come in expected fashion nor is it comfortable. Without an explanation of what has caused his suffering, without the promise of personal participation in Paradise, before the restoration of his fortunes, Job finds resolution and satisfaction in God's direct encounter with him.

I have always had a hard time with the popular distortions of the New Testament's witness to resurrection into a heaven where people become angels or disembodied spirits. Part of my difficulty is how the focus shifts from God to humans. Such a perspective misses what Gustavo Gutiérrez asserts, “Not everything that exists was made to be directly useful to human beings ... [but] for the freedom and delight of God." (On Job, Orbis, 1987, p. 74) Certainly "heaven" is even more for God than earth is. So in a certain sense, the resurrection to eternal life that Jesus and Paul speak of is to be so absorbed or consumed by one's focus on God that questions such as location and duration cease to matter.

Thus Job, without knowing what the New Testament will eventually say about the resurrection to eternal life, samples it in God's encounter with him. Though Job's cry in 19:25-26 (" I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God.") is not a theological assertion of resurrection, God's response to it gives Job a taste that is consistent with how Jesus and Paul talk about knowing Christ in connection with resurrection to eternal life.

Seeing Christ's Presence in Suffering People

In 1992, along with my wife and youngest son, I had the opportunity to live for four months in the L' Arche Daybreak community in Richmond Hill, Ontario. A superficial view of the community was of about 50 "core members" with a variety of identified "mental handicaps" being cared for by a dedicated group of "assistants." However, at the heart of the L' Arche vision is the reversal in which the "assistants" are those in need of receiving God's grace which is mediated through the "core members." An essential ingredient in each weekly orientation session for those of us who were new "assistants" was to answer the question: How did you see the presence of Christ in the suffering of one of the "core members" this week?

That discipline was one of the most profound transformations of my entire life. It was much deeper than just a role reversal from a paternalistic giver to a humble receiver, though it certainly was that. It was an encounter with Christ as the "man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity" (Isaiah 53:3). Some of these were stunning, such as the glow that came over Dave when he put on an alb to assist in communion, which I mused to my wife must have been something like how Moses appeared after coming from the presence of God (Exodus 34:29). Others were more subtle; such as the community's grieving as they waited helplessly for Morris' impending death. Attaching labels and definitions to these encounters was difficult. Even more challenging was recognizing the reality of Jesus in unadulterated pain, not just the flashes of triumph over the pain: stares and even abusive comments of people outside the community, the frustration of wanting skills and experiences that would never be available, the indignity of uncontrollable bodily functions, language and emotions.

At seventeen, I was attracted to Job because it illuminated the "human predicament," particularly how to face and understand pain and suffering. However, I did not relate this to either the questions of injustice nor of God's special love for the poor and oppressed. Somehow, my definition of "the human predicament" was limited to those I thought were pondering what it meant to be human. I had somehow never included those who were just trying to get by day to day. I was concerned for practical compassion and justice and recognized God's priority on trying to get by day to day. I was concerned for practical compassion and justice and recognized God's priority on seen until receiving this spiritual direction in the experience of Daybreak.

Writing out of his Latin American experience, Gustavo Gutiérrez puts special emphasis on the poor and oppressed in his book On Job, which reminded me of a particular spiritual discipline I undertook in New Jersey after leaving Daybreak but for which I have not found a suitable substitute since moving to Milwaukee. In the church I served New Jersey I led a weekly lunch with worship for people off the street which we called "Bread and Bible:" a half-hour family-style lunch and a half-hour very simple worship. As my own spiritual discipline after each "Bread and Bible" I asked myself, "How was I able to see Jesus through one of the people at the table today." By talking about this awareness with others in the church who shared these sorts of ministries, we were able to enhance our sensitivity to God's presence among us, and God kept shaping us from the providers of physical resources to the receivers of spiritual riches.

The congregation I serve now is in the affluent suburbs of north Milwaukee, and the obviously poor and oppressed are not visibly at our doorstep. However, we do have urban ministry partnerships with several congregations in the city, and third-world partnerships with congregations in Haiti and Honduras. I have personally participated in these and had brief glimpses of God. Virtually all of those who have begun attending our church since I came as pastor have been people with obvious pain. That has been somewhat disconcerting to some who thought this congregation would appeal to successful suburban executives. I have also discovered God looking back at me in my relationships with these folk. However, they are less frequent, less intentional and less intense than my weekly experiences in New Jersey. While I still don't know what shape it will take, my reflections on Job have reminded me how much I need the spiritual discipline of relationships with the poor and oppressed for my own spiritual health.

Seeing God in the Impenetrable Darkness

In his Old Testament Guide to Job (Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), J. H. Eaton develops the picture of Job speaking into the "impenetrable darkness" (p. 25) to appeal to God for vindication which acknowledges "the power and mystery of God beyond human comprehension" (p. 17). As I plunged into Job again, I also found myself identifying with the craving to see God in the darkness. This is not the darkness of unpleasant circumstances, rather it is the darkness of God's absence and apparent withdrawal. It is the experience of having climbed into an elaborate cave with many labyrinthine passages, steep and slippery cliffs, and deep pools of icy water, and then to stumble hopelessly breaking the lamp. Eyes strain into the impenetrable darkness for any hint of light while groping along what may be a precipice or a broad arena.

Job expresses this experience in 23:8-9. "If I go forward, he is not there; or backward, I cannot perceive him; on the left he hides, and I cannot behold him; I turn to the right, but I cannot see him." Thomas Keating suggests that this sort of experience is actually the work of the Spirit to bring us to a more mature level in which "we are capable of making a more complete surrender of that attachment or that aversion. ... In this way we reach a new level of interior freedom, a deeper purity of heart, and an ever increasing union with the Spirit." (Intimacy with God, p. 89)

Some months ago criticism of my ministry was at a peak and I had given up the expectation of continuing as pastor of this congregation. Suddenly I found renewed fervor for preaching and one particular sermon was especially energetic and even my critics acknowledged its power. Talking about this with my son David, we came to call that my "Janis Joplin message," after her singing of Chris Christopherson's Freedom's Just Another Word for Nothin' Left to Lose. Here, in a very small microcosm was that glimmer of seeing God at the moment of greatest darkness.

As a pastor I have accompanied people through many dark and painful experiences. The catalog is really quite predictable: divorce; rebellious children; suicide of spouse, friend, child, parent; debilitating illness or injury; loss of career; someone else's death; one's own death. However, my own life has been smooth in these sorts of areas. While painful, my sister's divorce and the subsequent trauma to her children has not obscured an awareness of God's presence and activity in their lives, nor has it threatened the smooth path our family has been able to live. Even in the current conflicts that have swirled around my two-year pastorate in Milwaukee, we have able to live. Even in the current conflicts that have swirled around my two-year pastorate in Milwaukee, we have encouraging and supportive. Thus, for me this question of seeing God in the impenetrable darkness goes beyond whether my current circumstances are comfortable or understandable.

Rather, looking to see God in the impenetrable darkness has more to do with God's own inscrutable mystery. That is, recognizing God's wild freedom that defies my ability to describe, define or predict. In the evangelical circles where I serve, the commitment to the authority and reliability of Scripture is all too often and easily reduced to proof-texts for a manageably reduced portrait of God. However, for myself, I find that the deeper I plunge into Scripture and the more seriously I take it, the less I am able to package God. As my reservoir of Scripture grows, the more important my pursuit of contemplative encounter with God becomes for me. This is not in any way a revelation beyond the data in Scripture, but a direct relationship that comes alive with all the ambiguity of a relationship with someone who is wild and free and powerful beyond my imagination.

Here, then, is the impenetrable darkness of choosing an intimate relationship with someone I can neither understand nor control. Someone who beckons me to a greater depth of intimacy that goes far beyond whether or not my personal circumstances are pleasant or whether the conditions of people in the world seem to reflect justice and peace, righteousness and mercy consonant with what I think I know of God's character. Like many Christians, I am fond of trying to identify signs of God's presence in the circumstances of my own experience and the events of life in the world, both historic and present. However, I as I grow in contemplative prayer, I find I must relinquish these tangible signs to see God directly, not through external circumstances, not through definable signs. This sort of prayer is the extreme sport of spirituality.

Discerning Authentic Occasions of Seeing God

The Book of Job presents Job's vision of God as authentic and discredits the claims of Eliphaz (4:15) and Elihu (33:4; 36:2) to have received a message from a spirit or vision that allows them to speak for God. The pursuit of a mystical or contemplative encounter with God is fraught with the dangers of subjectivity and deception. In the conflicts that have troubled the church I am serving, a number of people have claimed to have "a word from the Lord" or "a message from the Spirit" to tell us what to do. Often these are contradictory and mutually exclusive, and the debate all too easily degenerates into what I call "spiritual blackmail" of people asserting that their spirituality validates their claims. Both within Christianity and in other religions, many have claimed various visions from God, which often turn out to be fraudulent. Thus, looking at Job as a model for authentic relationship with God calls for discernment.

Consistency with the teaching of Scripture and witness of the Church is the obvious answer, and true enough as far as it goes, but variations in Biblical interpretation and disagreements among church traditions clearly show this is inadequate to resolve the question. In the conflicts of my present congregation, I have said that if we were all hearing the same Spirit, what we are hearing would be the same thing or at least it would fit together. If one person is truly hearing from God, it would be confirmed by other spiritually sensitive people. Again, this may be true enough, but our current conflicts demonstrate that alone is not the path to discernment.

Of course, these are strategic debates in which people marshal whatever arguments then can to support their positions, and that is different than discerning if one's own contemplative experience is an authentic encounter with God. But I do think that this illustrates that not all claims to or, for that matter, experiences of direct encounter with God are equally valid. Perhaps the greatest danger of all is self-deception, convincing myself that a mere psychological phenomenon is God, or worse yet that spiritual evil is God.

The New Testament talks about testing the spirits (e.g. 1 John 4:1-3) and a spiritual gift of discernment (1 Corinthians 12: 10), but the Book of Job does not present either evidence for the authenticity of Job's vision of God (in contrast to Eliphaz and Elihu) nor a discernment procedure. Rather, it seems to present God's encounter with Job as self-evident. Job has been calling for God, and when God showed up, Job recognized God. Furthermore, God speaks to Eliphaz (42:7-9) correcting Job's friends, and they seem to recognize this as God's voice as well. When God speaks, the human debate ends.

This is much like the corporate confirmation of the leading of the Spirit, I mentioned earlier. However, it goes much deeper than just that we who have been disagreeing now agree because we heard what God wants. Both Job and his friends are humbled by their encounters with God. Job's humbling validates his cry for a direct encounter with God. The humbling of Job's friends prompts repentance and reconciliation with Job. When the Apostle Paul writes about his vision, he immediately goes on to write about the "thorn in the flesh" that was sent to humble him (2 Corinthians 12: 1-10). So, somehow, humility is a key to discerning authentic encounters with God. They will not result in spiritual one-ups-man-ship or spiritual blackmail.

Over the years of learning about my particular mix of spiritual gifts, I have become comfortable talking about pastor/teacher and wisdom as my gifts. However, I have felt particularly deficient in discernment. I frequently misread other people and situations. I frequently miss cues that could have tipped me off to particular needs to be addressed or opportunities to be seized. So I have looked to others who seem more gifted in this area to alert me to what is going on in people. Over the years, I have had three Roman Catholic spiritual directors who have fulfilled this function in connection with my contemplative life. However, especially among the cerebral evangelicals I serve with, talking about this seems to raise suspicions and incredulity rather than empathetic discernment.

While the qualities of humility and mutual self-evidence are helpful hints at discernment in Job, this most recent experience with Job has left me asking questions about discernment in my own contemplative prayer. Of course, discernment can't be reduced to some series of tests with a score to determine the authenticity of a mystical encounter with God. That would negate both faith and the mystery of the impenetrable darkness. That would reduce an intimate relationship with a wild and free God to an abstract theological construct. Yet, I see the need for discernment to avoid heading down the wrong path, thinking I am going with God but actually just chasing my own imagination or worse.

What to Expect when Seeing God

God speaks to Job out of the whirlwind (38:1; 40:6). The special effects people in the movie industry as well as the hyper-literalists might scale this back to audible words from a tornado. Certainly a tornado is a wonderful picture of wild and free power. No one willingly embraces intimacy with a tornado. Yet, our whole technological society with its fixation on measuring and explaining all phenomena, reads things like Job and asks, what did Job see and hear? If we played back a video, what would come out on the screen? Clearly, these are the wrong questions. They are just another way of trying to capture the wild and free God with definitions, whether scientific or theological. Yet, people who are serious about wanting to see God do ask what to expect, and books such as Thomas Keating's Intimacy with God try to give some guidance for answering that question in a spiritually responsible fashion.

In my own journey of contemplative prayer, I have had occasions that have seemed to me to be little snatches of direct encounters with God. I have felt physical tingling and release through my whole body, not unlike sexual intimacy. I have occasions of seeming to be in some sort of trance in which I knew I was fully awake and alert and yet completely unaware of my immediate surroundings. I have more often found solutions to dilemmas that were troubling to me or insights for ministry immediately after times of centering prayer. I have experienced an ebbing away of tension and an upwelling of peace and calm during centering prayer. I have also experienced the spiritual or emotional terror of someone I was ministering to during these times. However, these experiences are the exception. More often my prayer times are a quiet solitude, keeping my attention on God but not experiencing anything extraordinary. I certainly know that I cannot do anything to compel these experiences to come, but I must wait in the silence for God. I also know that these experiences are not the goal of contemplative prayer but are merely a gracious byproduct of intimacy with God. I also know that while they share some commonality with the experiences of other contemplatives, they are not some expected pattern prescribed for me, nor that I can prescribe for others.

What was it that Job actually experienced when God spoke to him out of the whirlwind? That, of course, is a modern question, and answering it is not the purpose of the text. However, I believe Job suggests that seeing God is an overwhelming reality, much like embracing a tornado.

Tuesday, January 1, 2008

Images of My Pastoral Ministry

Response to an Assignment from my Spiritual Director
© September 15, 2006 by Norman Stolpe

Shepherd

This is clearly the controlling image to which all of the others attach. Some of the power of the shepherd is linguistic. The word “pastor” is the English rendition of the Latin base for “shepherd.” A shepherd pastor feeds, leads to safety and nourishment, tends the wounded, rescues the wandering, protect from threats. A shepherd pastor knows and loves the sheep.

Coach (pastor-teacher)
Ephesians 4 put pastor and teacher together as a single office that might be comparable to a modern coach. Teaching is not merely cognitive, it is affective; it changes people’s thinking, feeling, being, living. The coach motivates and guides people toward spiritual maturity, effective ministry, practical discipleship. The coach observes and guides in making adjustments, points people to beneficial resources and exercises, models the disciplines others can follow. The coach also builds cooperation and camaraderie among the team members, helping them appreciate the unique gifts each one brings to the team. The coach succeeds when the team and each member succeeds.

Pilgrim Guide, Accompanier, Companion, Partner (spiritual director)
Pilgrimage of journey is a common and helpful way of understanding the spiritual life. In this role, the pastor is the experienced guide who knows the path and the handholds on the cliffs firsthand. Besides giving direction, warning of danger, the pilgrim guide points out the inspiring views, the delightful discoveries of the journey. A wise guide knows that other pilgrims have valuable knowledge and insights to be shared. And the guide is not always “in charge” but accompanies with conversation, presence and partnership.

Old Man of the Mountains (story teller, poet, encourager)
As I am aware of my energy waning, I pray that the wisdom that I have come to accept as my spiritual gift is waxing. I have been blessed with a wide variety of experiences, relationships, interests and readings. As Jesus did with his parables, the “old man of the mountains” juxtaposes stories with peoples experiences, doubts, wounds, gifts, insights. The stories more that the “teaching” stimulate mind, heart and even body to stretch, challenge, comfort, encourage seekers and stumblers. The story teller’s voice leaves people relaxed and a peace. Unlike the images of shepherd, coach and guide, the “old man of the mountains” may not be directly involved in the activities of the listeners but provide a refuge for refreshment.

Odysseus Lashed to the Mast
Eugene Peterson uses this image to wrestle with calling, vocation and ordination. Regardless of how enticing the distractions, the pastor stays with the Church, and as much as possible the congregation. The responsibility for the spiritual well being of individuals and the congregation cannot be abandoned just because it is painful or difficult or because something else (even another congregation) is more attractive. This is a living model of the rich and joyful harvest of long term fidelity and commitment.

Camera as Icon-Eye into Spiritual Reality

Rome Pilgrimage Formative Reflection
Columbia Theological Seminary Spiritual Formation Certificate
© July 8, 2004 by Norman Stolpe

I wrote in my paper on Elizabeth Canham’s book Heart Whispers: Benedictine Wisdom for Today that I wrestled with what to do about a camera for the pilgrimage. I wanted to be a pilgrim savoring and relishing spirit enriching experiences, not a tourist preoccupied with documenting the sights. For one thing, the density of sights was so intense that even the most avid photo-tourist would have to be selective. I quickly began to see that my camera could be a kind of icon-eye to sharpen my acuity for sacramental images, that is the tangible sights that offered insight into God’s spiritual reality that touched me. I still ended up with about 150 pictures, some of which undoubtedly are touristy. However, I have selected six that I have enlarged for framing to use for a personal prayer center.

Above the stairway leaving the Monastery and Church of St. Benedict in Subiaco is a statue of Benedict with an inscribed blessing for those who visit. I certainly felt the light of God’s blessing as I visited each place on this pilgrimage, which I hope to take with me everywhere I go. Though not a major piece of magnificent sculpture or a central attraction, this became to me an icon of the purpose of this pilgrimage, to purposely bask in Christ’s light.

I was captivated by the smiling expression of Christ in the ceiling mosaic at Santa Croce in Gerusalemme (Church of the Holy Cross) and the ceiling fresco at the Monastery of St. Benedict. I took these as windows to Christ’s smile on me as I yearn to be close to him amid the realities of pastoring a struggling congregation and trying to launch a floundering nineteen year old son into adulthood. It spoke to me of Psalm 147:11, “The Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him.” They allow me to adopt for myself the expression Brennan Manning extracts from the apostle John, “I am the one Jesus loves.”

The cross is the most widespread and readily recognized Christian symbol, and crosses and crucifixes were ubiquitous in Rome. Many were highly ornate, and others were elegant in their simplicity. When our guide pointed out the absence of crosses in the catacombs, I was a little surprised, which helped me attend to and appreciate some of their more common symbols: the Good Shepherd, Chi Rho, birds, people at prayer and worship. But I was enthralled by two crosses. One was on the Pascal Candlestick in St. Paul’s Basilica dating from 1186 CE and reputed to be the first known crucifix depicting Jesus on the cross. Its primitive presentation gives me a sense of immediacy, of entering with the sculptor into the suffering of Jesus. The other cross that fascinated me was the one hanging over the altar in the upper Church of St. Benedict in Subiaco. Its unusual shape and texture seem to be an extension of the rock walls of the cliffs and caves that remain exposed and unadorned, congruent with St. Benedict’s three years in his stone hermitage. With the symbols of the four evangelists on the four arms of the cross and Christ portrayed in resurrection if not ascension glory, this cross conveys to me the hope of the Gospel. Its earthiness and luminescence fuse the realities of my daily living with hope, not just of ultimate redemption but of flashes of present glory.

All over Rome we saw flags proclaiming “pace” (peace). In one of the churches many hundreds of written prayers were tucked in every crevice and heaped in a deep accumulation around the base of a statue, even post-it-notes stuck to the hem of the statue’s robe. A mother was helping a young girl write a prayer and try to get it on to the statue. One prayer open on the base read in Italian “peace in Iraq.” Pagan grave markers were inscribed “D.M.” (to the gods) but in the catacombs and other Christian burial markers read “IN PACEM” (in peace). Our group talked often about our yearnings for peace in the world and in the Church, not just between Protestants and Roman Catholics, but among the people of our congregations. The floor grate in the baptistery of Sts. John Lateran which read “CHRISTUS PAX NOSTRA” (Christ our peace) evokes my longings for peace and centers that longing in Christ. Whether that specific casting is that ancient or not, this site goes back to the time of Constantine, the Fourth Century. Turmoil has plagued the world, the Church and the lives of individual Christians through all these centuries, yet this piece blends my prayers for peace with those of these generations of Christians, and it centers me in Christ so I can be at peace within, even when surrounded by turbulence.

Relics as Icons of the Communion of Saints

As Protestant pilgrims, most of us out of the Reformed tradition, visiting the holy sites around Rome prompted comparisons and examination of how to reverence and be formed by relics and holy sites. I don’t believe any of us climbed the “Santa Scala” (Holy Steps) on our knees, yet I felt comfortable and appropriate genuflecting as we entered each church, before going to see the sights. I made a point of spending some time praying in each church, and where kneelers were provided, I used them. In my own congregation I lift my hands in worship when a hymn directs glory to God and I cross myself when I receive the Lord’s Supper. These are not common among Disciples of Christ, but I feel congruent doing them.

The pilgrimage took me to many graves: St. Paul and St. Peter, the catacombs, Francis and Clare, Ignatius of Loyola, hundreds of Popes in St. Peter’s Basilica. I didn’t fit with either the curious tourists or the pious Roman Catholics, yet I was moved and sensed the blessing of Christ’s light at these places. As I puzzled at my responses, I considered how we in the United States now consider “ground zero” of the World Trade Center in New York City to be a “holy site” and a “shrine.” To build St. Peter’s Basilica over Nero’s Circus makes a “holy site” of this place where Christians died for their faith, perhaps not unlike the Americans who died in a symbol of capitalist faith in New York. It’s more than respect or even reverence, it’s connection and solidarity.

In Chiesa Gesú (Jesus Church) where St. Ignatius of Loyola is interred, a glass case under the altar contains three clearly visible skulls and a number of bones. As best we could tell these were from early Jesuit martyrs, though we were not able to get specific information. Reflecting a bit on church history, I realized they may well have been martyred by Protestants. In the Vatican Museum’s room commemorating the religious wars is a painting of Franciscans being hung by Protestants. The face of the monk awaiting his noose was positively radiant, conveying a powerful sense of the privilege of dying for Christ, much like Stephen in Acts 7:55-60. Accustomed to thinking of Protestants martyred at the hands of Roman Catholics, I grieved the murder of these brothers in Christ and the violent divisions the Church has not escaped. Though I did not know the owners of those skulls, I had somehow connected to three people who, like me, were hungering for and vigorously pursuing spiritual intimacy with Jesus. These tangible relics conveyed to me the personal reality of distinct individuals and their costly devotion of Jesus.

Of all of the holy sites, this sense of connection was strongest for me at the catacombs. As we walked those passages, passing the crypts and niches, I kept saying to myself, “a person, a fellow Christian lived and died and was buried in each of these spots.” The family chapels and tiny crypts for children evoked for me the love and grief that was celebrated and remembered in these tunnels. Certainly my modern, Protestant sensibilities contribute to my appreciation that the artifacts and artwork (relics) left here were those made and used by the Christians of the Second and Third Centuries. Here was no shrine constructed later and out of joint with the origins. Here I was seeing and touching the lives and deaths of my Christian forbearers, with as little between us as possible. Not only was their hope of resurrection almost palpable, but so was their joy of living as Christ’s people in a time before Christianity was popular, when it was at times even dangerous. When one of the women in our group began singing “For All the Saints,” I hoped we would swell into it, but the practicalities of going single file through twisting tunnels, without a song leader or words, precluded a rousing chorus. But here, of all the holy sites of Rome, I most felt surrounded by the great cloud of witnesses of Hebrews 12:1.

Though I think Benedict and Francis would probably be appalled, or at least surprised and dismissive, to see what has been built in their places, I did have a certain sense of congruence in Subiaco and Assisi. The subdued, restrained frescos seemed to fit their emphases on humility and simplicity far more than the gilding and coronation in the churches of Rome. My prayers in the chapels of the Monastery of St. Benedict and the nave of the Basilicas of St. Francis and St. Clare were warmly satisfying. I found it especially powerful to pray at Francis’ tomb. The accruements of the shrine could not distract from the direct simplicity of his rough stone sarcophagus. By contrast, the hardest church for me to pray in was St. Peter’s Basilica. It was not that the artwork offended my Protestant sensibilities. Actually, much of it was beautiful and moving. It was not even the constant flow of people with their chatter and camera flashes. Rather the sheer abundance of beautiful, wonderful and significant things made focusing difficult. I did spend a positive half-hour in the Chapel of the Holy Sacrament which was set aside specifically for prayer. But even there, the density of visual stimuli made anything like centering prayer impossible for me. However, a nun who was praying there seemed totally absorbed in her prayers, unperturbed by all the distractions.

Fellow Pilgrims as Icons of the Communion of Saints

The advanced readings about St. Benedict and St. Francis were wonderful preparation for visiting Subiaco and Assisi. It was not just a question of being knowledgeable, but of connecting and relating to them as partners in the Communion of Saints and as fellow pilgrims following Jesus. Especially in the cave of the shepherds (I found the sculptures in Benedict’s cave just too overwhelming), I felt I was sitting with Benedict looking out over the valley and listening as he taught not just shepherds but me, especially about being gentle with myself and others as we make the Christian pilgrimage together. Perhaps more than anything I saw in Assisi, the fresco portrait of Francis in St. Gregory’s Chapel in Subiaco was like a magnet, pulling me toward this saint. As I gazed at his face, I said, “Here is someone I want for a friend. Here is someone I can trust.” Since we know more about Francis from what others said and wrote about him than from his own words, it was harder to get a sense of listening to him teach. But perhaps that’s how he’d rather have it. “Live like this,” he’d say, rather than a lot of words. Perhaps more than anything, I felt Francis’ joy.

My youngest son attended Jesuit College Preparatory School in Dallas, I use a Jesuit retreat center close to Dallas for personal silent retreats, and I have used Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises for my own spiritual formation as well as to help others who have sought my spiritual guidance. So inadvertently discovering Ignatius’ tomb at Chiesa Gesú was serendipitous. It seemed to me to make a complete set: Benedict and community life, Francis and exuberant faith in action, Ignatius examen of conscience for spiritual formation.

While the ancient saints folded me into the Communion of Saints (Peter, Paul, the Christians of the catacombs, Benedict and Scholastica, Francis and Clare, Ignatius) my fellow pilgrims were essential to experiencing the Communion of Saints afresh. Discovering that Rebecca Cole-Turner had been at Wheaton College as an undergrad while I was there in grad school made for an instant bond. As we talked and discovered we both had young adult children struggling to get their lives underway and directed, made us prayer partners on the same parenting pilgrimage. When Bob Anderson shared the flounderings and need for unified vision of the congregation he pastors, I immediately felt encouraged. The similar needs of the congregation I pastor were neither exceptional nor hopeless. Mike Fitze and I might seem to be at opposite ends of the contemplative-activist spectrum, but his exuberance, blending with that of St. Francis, energized and buoyed me every day.

Pilgrimage as Icon for My Personal Journey

The pursuit of this Certificate in Spiritual Formation has been something of a pilgrimage in and of itself. As much as I have enjoyed and appreciated it, I am glad it is coming to a conclusion, not because I am tired of it, but because of feeling the approaching satisfaction of completion of a goal pursued over time. During these seven years, I have journeyed from an associate ministry, largely in Christian education, to serving as a solo pastor, from the Presbyterian Church (USA) through a non-denominational congregation into the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), from a Yankee to a Texan.

First Presbyterian Church of Mt. Holly, New Jersey, where I served as Minister of Nurture for seventeen years, had a staff of three pastors, a music director, an administrator and two lay ministers. For the most part we were a good team, and I was comfortable as a team player. With the enthusiastic blessing of the leadership of that church, I went to MorningStar Christian Church in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with the expectation of a pastoral role as shepherd and coach. Not long after arrival, a small but vocal and powerful group called for me to be a CEO-executive director pastor, which just did not fit me. Moving on was painful for the church as well as for me and my family. Central Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) where I have been the pastor since 2000 has also struggled to find a future oriented vision and direction. Old disputes erupted in January of 2004 and people on both sides departed, along with some who just didn’t want to hang around in a contentious atmosphere. While all of the substantive and relational issues are not totally resolved, there is now a sense of wanting to stick together and move forward. However, no clear unifying vision or mission is rising from the congregation or its lay leadership. In contrast with our experience in Milwaukee and some of the history of this congregation, the leaders and most of the congregation have determined that the solution is not another pastor. Instead they have not only said they want me to continue, they want me to point the way to the future.

After some prayerful soul-searching and intentional steps of discernment, my wife (and our son) and I are convinced God has called us to serve this congregation at this time, and we have committed ourselves to God and the church for this end. This brings me to the realization of a new phase of my pilgrimage. After having been a collaborative team member, God has put me in a place beyond my comfort zone, but I do not believe it is beyond what God has called and gifted me to fulfill. That is to be an initiating, visionary leader without becoming an autocratic CEO kind of pastor.

As I read about the Abbot in the Rule of St. Benedict in advance of this pilgrimage, I was challenged and instructed. On the pilgrimage I tried to pay particular attention to the leadership of Benedict and Francis. In my prayer and contemplation times each day on the pilgrimage I gave attention to how God might be shaping me for this new challenge for my leadership.

In my times of lectio divina on the pilgrimage, one of the passages I worked with was 2 Kings 2:1-14 (one of the lectionary readings for that Sunday we were in Rome), which is the account of Elijah being taken up to heaven. I identified a lot with Elisha. He was to become “the man of God” in a hostile and threatening time as the successor to one of Israel’s most powerful figures. Just as he asked for a double portion of Elijah’s spirit, I prayed for the filling and equipping of God’s Spirit. As Elijah is taken from him, Elisha cries out “My father! My father!” articulating the human loneliness of his new responsibilities. I, too, feel alone in a way different than I have felt before as I sense the leaders of this congregation watching me to discover where to follow. Elisha receives the sacramental sign that God is with him when he not only sees Elijah taken from him but receives his mantle, the tangible tool by which God’s power was exercised. When he heads back across the Jordan River, Elisha cries out, “Where is the Lord God of Elijah?” As I looked through the icons of each day of this pilgrimage, I also asked, “Where is the Lord God of Elijah?”

I saw the blessing of light from St. Benedict and the smiles of Christ. I saw the centrality of the rhythm of the cross: crucifixion and glory. I saw the peace of being centered in Christ. I saw myself welcomed in the Communion of Saints, with the same access to the same God that Peter and Paul, the Christians of the catacombs, Benedict and Scholastica, Francis and Clare, Ignatius and Calvin all trusted and loved and found sufficient for their challenges. In answer to the lonely cry of Elisha, I heard the encouragement of the other pilgrims in our group as well as even the cheers of the leaders of the congregation I am serving.

After Elisha asks, “Where is the Lord God of Elijah?” he strikes the river with Elijah’s mantle and it opens ahead of him. The Lord God of Elijah is present and working with him. The point of an icon is to be a sort of spiritual spectacles through which the spiritual reality of God may be perceived. These icons, whether the ones I selected to photograph or the holy sites and relics I saw or the people past and present who are the Communion of Saints, were truly windows through which I could see the God who will be with me on this next stage of my pilgrimage.

Healing and Wholeness in the Christian Life

A Formative Exploration
Columbia Theological Seminary Spiritual Formation Certificate
© June 18, 2001 by Norman Stolpe

The pursuit of this certificate in spiritual formation has corresponded with the second major transition in my ministry career. At the time of my Immersion Week at Makemie Woods in April 1997 I was seeking to discern God’s direction for leaving a seventeen-year ministry as an associate with First Presbyterian Church in Mt. Holly, New Jersey to take a solo pastorate at a new non-denominational church in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. My prayer partner, small group and conversations with Kent Groff and Ben Johnson were important further confirmations of making that move. During the two tumultuous years I served MorningStar Christian Church in Milwaukee, I took three courses at Skyline, and the community there has been a critical support as I struggled to serve and lead a deeply divided congregation.

I felt wounded and in need of healing through that process, and one of the most obvious casualties was my confidence in discerning God’s leading. A variety of forces, including the delay of this course, meant that I was not able to take any courses during the year of transition from the time I left MorningStar Christian Church until I came to be the pastor of Central Christian Church in Dallas, Texas. In that year my wife and I went for a week of retreat and counseling at Fairhaven Ministries in Roan Mountain, Tennessee – a center specializing in a ministry of healing for wounded pastors. An important part of that process was identifying and exploring ways that I contributed to the problem, lessons I am learning, and benefits received through the difficult experience in Milwaukee.

Now, after two delays, this course, “Healing and Wholeness in the Christian Life,” comes almost a year into my new ministry in Texas. As I expect to be taking the rest of my courses in the program in Austin, this one is a sort of bookend on my time with the community at Skyline. The themes of healing and wholeness are particularly appropriate, almost orchestrated (as a Calvinist, I could even say preordained). This course is not just relevant to my present situation; it is clearly part of God’s provision for concluding a time of difficult transition and being prepared for entering into a new era of ministry. As I write this, I am approaching my first anniversary with Central Christian Church and have already experienced a satisfaction and affirmation in ministry as well as hope for future fruitfulness that I never tasted in Milwaukee. This course has helped me address issues of personal wholeness and congregational wholeness.

Personal Wholeness

Henri Nouwen spoke often about wounded healers. The Apostle Paul wrote that God “consoles us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to console those who are in any affliction with the consolation with which we ourselves are consoled by God.” (2 Corinthians 1:4) In personal wholeness, I am facing my aging and mortality, discovering how to reform wholeness out of this time of transition, and learning how to nurture wholeness in my pastoral calling.

Aging and Mortality

Becoming a grandparent, undertaking what I expect will be the last pastoral call of my career, becoming aware of decreased levels of energy during these four years of pursuing this program and making this life transition has been the sort of crisis that James Fowler describes as realizing that old solutions, values and meanings don’t and won’t work any more. In this transition process I have become aware of my aging and mortality. The way I see myself is shifting.

I have not just moved from a long-term associate pastoral role to being a “head of staff,” I am realizing wholeness now means owning my life experience and wisdom, not as a novice just gathering experiences. I am learning the difference between tentativeness and humility, and becoming comfortable with being confident. My image of myself has shifted from apprentice to mentor. I am appropriating a deeper respect for myself.

I am also recognizing personal limits, not just in reduced energy, but also in sensing that the terminus of my career and life are no longer remote and abstract. So along with respect, wholeness calls for some grieving. As Celeste Snowber Schroeder writes of our deepest longings for the many losses of life: “loss of joy, dreams, or expectations, emotional or physical illness, a severed relationship, or even our ache for the presence of God.” (p. 157) Bringing this “ache for the presence of God” up against grieving over my limitations (specifically a disappointing, brief ministry in Milwaukee) and mortality balances my dread of death with an insatiable appetite to be with God. Wholeness in the present is receiving glimmers of God’s presence with joy without settling for less than the full satisfaction that is only possible in the resurrection.

Reforming Wholeness from Transition

In our discussions, Bill Clemmons spoke of “break-in moments that let us see.” For me these past four years have been a protracted, slow motion break-in moment, more like gradually bringing a picture into focus than turning on the lights. Some of this has been very intentional, such as writing out “what I learned from the experience with MorningStar” as part of the counseling at Fairhaven Ministries. Some of it has been purposeful, such as trying to draw as many insights as possible from the courses in this program. And some of it has been seemingly incidental if not accidental, such as alternately giving and receiving support with two old friends as they went through unwelcome ministry career changes in this same time window.

In retrospect, I can see that pursuing training and starting my career in Christian education was a drawing toward spiritual formation, though at that time I did not have the categories to talk about it that way. As I matured, I increasingly shifted my emphasis from cognitive to affective learning. With more experience in teaching ministry I became acutely aware in myself as well as in those I served that, as Bill Clemmons said, “discipleship is not information or even reformation but at God’s hand. The transformation from brokenness to wholeness is a gift from above.

Thus, these courses that I have taken at Skyline have been way stations on this four-year transition, enabling me to examine, be supported in, and extract nourishment from the crises that have pushed me past a certain comfort zone into a new phase of my spiritual journey. The timing of this course on healing and wholeness has been appropriate as it has allowed me to look at and refine my understanding of who and where I am now and to give thanks for the people and difficulties of this four-year crisis.

I struggled with being thankful rather than resentful for having my calling and character attacked, being forced to move my family twice in three years, and having a year of frustrating unemployment. Theophan the Recluse’s image of the “mud bath” became the Holy Spirit’s recurrent and defining tool for shaping me during this time. “When you find that you are being maligned, accept it: it is a kind of healing mud-bath. You do well not to lose the feeling of brotherly friendliness towards those who apply this medicine to you.” (The Art of Prayer, compiled by Igumen Chariton, first published in Russian in 1936, Elizabeth Palmer’s English translation published in 1966, p. 242 in the 1997 paperback edition by Faber and Faber, Boston)

I have journeyed in prayer through the Psalms monthly for about thirty years. Especially during the year of transition between churches, as I was seeking to see myself from God’s perspective and follow God’s direction in a seemingly trackless wilderness, I felt exposed before God. When I came to “O Lord, you have searched me and known me. … Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. … See if there is any wicked way in me” (Psalm 139) on the 19th of each month I first struggled with feelings of embarrassment, that I had let God down by not bringing MorningStar together. I experienced what Celeste Snowber Schroeder described. “We, too, can become naked before God in our journey through the Psalms. We do not have to put on an act that everything in all right. That we are always the triumphant Christians. No! We come in brokenness.” (p. 107)

This line was one of those “break in moments.” It was not just that I am naked before God and want to hide, as Adam and Eve hid in the Garden, but that if I could see myself as God sees me, even in this difficult transition, I would see that I don’t need to hide, I can relax. As the psalmist says, “I come to the end (or trying to count God’s thoughts) and I am still with you.” All through this time, I kept up the practice of my “rule” (started many years earlier and set on paper in Immersion Week). As we practiced lectio divina and centering prayer together during this course, I realized that I had never lost the awareness that I have been with God (or more to the point, that God has been with me) through this whole time.

In the “Prayer in Many Forms” course, I found Ignatius’ description of rhythms of “consolation and desolation” to be very helpful. Particularly the information conversations with those who have shared this journey with me, I began to see that in this past year the period of desolation has faded and consolation has dawned. Thomas Keating reminded me to accept and live in this consolation without clinging to it or analyzing it. “As soon as we start enjoying Him, we have to reflect, ‘O boy, I’m enjoying God!’ And as soon as we do that, we are taking a photograph of the experience. Every reflection is like a photograph of reality. It isn’t our original experience. …When we experience the presence of God, if we can just not think about it, we can rest in it for a long time.” (pp. 84-85)

While some folk from MorningStar questioned my calling, many others were quite affirming. One of these supporters encouraged me (and raised a lot of money to make it possible) to try to start a community chaplaincy ministry. Nursing homes, funeral parlors, apartment complexes, businesses, day-care centers, pulpit supply and interim pastorate. As much as I tried and even had some degree of “success” in these endeavors, I saw myself ever more clearly, and I believe from God’s perspective. It is not just that pastoring is what I like to do or do well. In one way, pastoring is not so much what God has called me to do. A pastor is what God has been and continues to form me to be.

The attempt at chaplaincy put me in a lot of short-term emergency situations with people who were not especially interested in an ongoing relationship. It required me to spend well over half of my time selling and managing the “business.” Even though a small advisory board guided me, I was cut off from the accountability and community of congregational life. I was afraid I was a disappointment to those who had invested time, energy and money into the chaplaincy ministry. Toward the end of this time, I got a major chaplaincy opportunity to help a small struggling church as interim pastor. This was the break-in moment in which I saw (I believe from God’s perspective) that I was not a chaplain but a pastor. I was alive and thankful for those who had made it possible for me to see who I was not so I could better see who I truly am.

Nurturing Wholeness in Pastoral Calling

As the clamor of those in MorningStar who questioned my calling grew more raucous, I futilely made adjustment to try to satisfy their complaints. Both my ministry and I became distorted. During my few months as interim for Lake Drive Church, I felt a freedom to be more myself as I knew I would be with them only a short time. Suddenly, and almost unconsciously, the desolation faded and I emerged into this new consolation. I was effective without having to manipulate myself into something I was not.

Bill Clemmons asked us, “What happens when a tree tries to become a rosebush? What happens when we try to be what we are not, when the interior and exterior are incongruent?” By trying to accommodate myself to other people’s expectations of a pastor, my emphasis shifted from sharing the overflow of my relationship with God with the congregation to matching the external forms that I knew they were looking for. Ministry became an intellectual exercise, like trying to write a paper to get a grade. I never could satisfy my detractors, and deprived others of my authentic ministry. I lived in self-doubt and desolation. I am very thankful that the experience as interim pastor for Lake Drive Church reminded me that I am most effective by being who I am in Christ. Even more important than “career success” is the congruence of being the same person before God, with my family and among those God calls me to serve as pastor.

In the transition time I read Eugene Peterson’s books on pastoral ministry. Besides confirming and giving me more ways to talk and think about the kind of pastoral ministry to which God has called me, he reminded me of how the integrity of being a pastor, not just doing pastoral things, is essential to the commitment of calling and ordination. Drawing on the image of Ulysses being lashed to the mast as he sailed past the sirens, Peterson writes as the conscience of the church, “With these vows of ordination we are lashing you fast to the mast of Word and sacrament so you will be unable to respond to the siren voices.” (The Contemplative Pastor, Eedrmans; Grand Rapids, Michigan; 1989; p, 139)

Congregational Wholeness

Having had to face my own need for healing and wholeness, I believe I am better prepared to help this congregation find God’s healing for some of its old wounds, accompany them through the grieving of the passing of a formative generation in the history of this church, and instill hope for the future of the church.

Healing Old Wounds

After about 20 years of drifting and decline and the departures of two pastors under a cloud of scandal and controversy, the church faced a crisis in which the old solutions, values and meanings didn’t work any more. Those who had led the church through the last surge of growth (in the late 60s and early 70s) had tenaciously hung onto power through the slow decline of the 80s and 90s. Many of the leading voices had died, and others had surrendered their leadership as they were aging. However, a new generation of leadership had not formed and did not have a clear sense of vision.

A powerful break-in moment is needed to get out of this drifting discouragement. While there are projects to do and decisions to make, more to the point is to be encountered by God. Celest Snowber Schroeder writes, “We ache to taste the wildness of God, where honey and fire meet, … a God so bursting with wild passion, it is hard to comprehend how we could have relegated the Creator to conventions of sterility and predictability. … Our God dances into history with a fierceness that is compelling and sometimes repelling at the same time. When we truly come face-to-face with the presence of God, we are stunned to the bone.” (pp. 119-120)

Though God can certainly break into a congregation through someone besides the pastor, as pastor my priority has to be on being shaped by God’s wild presence in me. Then I have to live with such transparent authenticity that God’s presence is evident to the congregation. Spearheading programs, adding staff and improving facilities are futile if God hasn’t encountered us as a community. Neither information nor reformation will bring about this transformation for a congregation any more than for an individual.

Some of the past experiences have been so painful that folk want to just leave them behind and not think or talk about them any more. Some who remember the last era of flourishing want to be sure those days are not forgotten. This congregation needs some time to explore the core question of spiritual direction, in what ways can we identify God present or working in both the good and the ill of our experience? Then as a community we can give thanks for how God has formed us as we were forced out of our comfort zones. Then we can together know that when we come to the end of our counting God’s thoughts for Central Christian Church, we will know that God is still with us.

Congregational Grieving

Central Christian Church has a disproportionate proportion of older people. All else being equal, assuming I am the pastor here for 12-15 years until I retire, I will conduct funerals for half of the present congregation. While this has strategic implications for reaching out to and developing a new generation, more to the point to the spiritual formation of the congregation is a profound process of grieving. Many are already widowed or will be widowed soon. People are saying “good-bye” to not only their friends but those who have been their spiritual leaders for fifty years or more. The groups and programs that they started and enjoyed, especially during the last great surge of growth, have been discontinued or are fading quickly. I am finding that conducting funerals is one of my most appreciated pastoral functions. They are a sort of congregational spiritual direction of identifying how God has been present in and through the life not only of each deceased person but among those around them. It is a way of saying “thank you” for God’s forming work through and joys and pains of the past.

Celeste Snowber Schroeder writes, “We need to find places for lament in our spiritual journeys, liturgies, and worship services. Only in being attentive to lament can we honor our grief and pass through it. Otherwise grief can lodge in our body-soul in destructive ways, eating us to our very core.” (p. 158) One man who seems to have connected very well with my preaching confided to a friend, “I want Norm to be a pastor who stays with us long enough that when he puts me in the ground he will know me.” One frail woman said to me after a funeral, “Take care of yourself. I want you to do mine.” Two adult Sunday school classes were founded in the early 40s as young adult classes. They are now close to the point where they will not have enough able people to continue to function. I don’t know if there can be a funeral for a Sunday school class, they do need some recognition of shared grieving and acknowledging God’s presence in their history. And though the form will be different as we reach out to a new generation of young adults, the people of these classes are a model of God’s work of bringing together a generation of young adults through whom God shapes the church for many years. Finding God’s presence in the passing of the oldest generation of Central Christian Church is not an inspiring program strategy, it is essential to discerning how God is continually forming the community and its individuals.

Hope for a Future of Wholeness

As a person and as a pastor, I certainly have not achieved some designated level of wholeness in order to lead the church from their woundedness into a static state of wholeness. Life is dynamic. Growth is continuous. Transformation comes from God, not from what we learn or our spiritual disciplines. The “disciplines” open us to and prepare us for God, but they do not make God do our bidding. Yet, God is more ready for intimacy with us than we are for God. So when we yearn for God, we can be sure God will find us and awaken us. As Bill Clemmons told us, being found and awakened by God has consequences. We are changed; we are shaped, and not always the way would have predicted or requested.

Spiritual Dimensions of Suffering, Healing and Wholeness

A Formative Exploration
Columbia Theological Seminary Spiritual Formation Certificate
© May 17, 2002 by Norman Stolpe

As a pastor I am often called upon to walk with others through their times of suffering. During these experiences I intentionally try to focus on the other person and not draw attention to myself. While I often get feedback indicating that my presence has been beneficial, internally I wrestle with a strong sense of being inadequate for the need. This is more than being unsure of having the “right thing” to say or do. It is an awareness of how inconsequential my own sufferings have been. I have a sense of the presumptuousness of accompanying someone else through an affliction of far greater magnitude than anything I have experienced.

At such times I have come to appreciate the power of Scripture and the Holy Spirit. As a discipline for my own spiritual formation and as a tool for pastoral care, I have purposely cultivated a familiarity with the Psalms over the past 30 years, praying through them monthly and reciting a memorized index line for each one twice a week. So as I listen to someone sharing their pain, I am almost always able to identify a Psalm that resonates with their experience and emotions and read it to them. This seems to be a source of courage and strength for many folk.

I also find that the deeply engrained “Jesus Prayer” springs readily to mind as I drive to the emergency room in the middle of the night or ride the elevator to be at someone’s hospital death bed. What starts out as a prayer for mercy on me, that I can say and do the right things, quickly turns to a prayer for mercy on the ones who are suffering, that they will experience the reality of God’s presence. Somehow, when I am with the person in pain, my concern and calculation about what to say and do melts away. I am no longer anxious, and everything from if and how to pray to if and how to touch just seems to flow, and I say and do things I had never thought of before. If I believe what people tell me after these experiences, the things that seem most beneficial are those that were farthest from my mind when I arrived. I can only believe that this is the work of the Holy Spirit. Though in a different context, it feels like what Jesus said in Matthew 10:19, “Do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say; for what you are to say will be given to you at that time.”

Reflecting on the issues of the Spiritual Dimensions of Suffering, Healing and Wholeness following our course and my own personal and pastoral experience, I began to see how accompanying others in their suffering had shaped my spiritual formation. I also became aware that while not catastrophic for me, I had received some wounds that have significantly influenced my spiritual formation. I concluded that I could benefit from examining some of my key experiences with suffering in light of this course for this formative exploration paper.

My Sister’s Divorce

My sister’s first marriage was in trouble before they reached their first anniversary. After seven years and three children a violent, painful split was irrevocable. Though 25 years ago, my mother’s anguish is still vivid to me, as she went from Illinois to Kentucky to rescue her daughter and grandchildren from a squalid shack and a hostile son-in-law. On moving in with my parents, my sister discovered she was pregnant again. I watched my parents sacrifice the comfortable life they had settled into to support my sister and her children for five years until she could get an education and a career. As those children have grown up, they have gone from crisis to crisis, and my parents have provided counseling, shelter, cars, schooling.

My wife and I met regularly with a small group with some other couples in our church. They had been prayer support through the weeks all of this developed. Usually I asked for prayer for my sister and reported the most recent events. During one such evening’s update I was overwhelmed with the inevitability of what was happening and my parents’ anguish. Suddenly this was not just another one of my sister’s “stupid mistakes;” this was a disaster. I began to cry, then to weep, then to sob and tremble.

The others in the group gathered around and rested their hands on my shoulders. No one said anything. As my tears subsided, I realized the others were all crying too. I learned something of the spiritual power of presence that night. How glad I was that our friends were just there – no assurances, no advice, not even Scripture or verbal prayer – just presence. Though I could not have articulated it then, as I reflect on it now, I hear the words I have often said as a pastor, “I do not have solutions for life’s most serious problems, but I can promise you will not have to go through them alone.”

Questioning My Calling

I got into congregational, pastoral ministry in the aftermath of an argument between the pastor and the Christian education chairperson of our church. It was part-time, and I kept my editorial, research and consulting CE ministry. After a couple of years I took both my personal satisfaction and my perceived effectiveness as a confirmation of God’s call to permanent, full-time pastoral ministry. At just that time, the senior pastor I was working with asked me to resign because he did not think I had the gifts for pastoral ministry. I was crushed, but with the encouragement of the elders, we stayed in that church for several more years and have maintained a friendship with that pastor to this day.

I view that as my “dark night of the soul.” For over a year I struggled with depression without pursuing therapy or medical help. They might have been beneficial, but it might also have short-circuited the spiritual lessons I learned during that time. Somehow, Proverbs 17:22 seemed to be the key that released me from depression, “A cheerful heart is a good medicine, but a downcast spirit dries up the bones.” It took another year of reflective prayer, conversation with trusted advisors, and trying many opportunities before coming to a settled conclusion that God had indeed called me to pastoral ministry in the church. And it took still another year until a received a call to first Presbyterian Church of Mt. Holly, New Jersey, where I served as Minister of Nurture for seventeen years with great satisfaction.

I had begun my monthly prayer excursions through the Psalms before this experience, and it was the cries of anguish and complaints that so characterize the Psalms that sustained me through that year of depression. In this experience I learned that “if I make my bed in Sheol, [God is] there.” (Psalm 139:8) I learned the value of many counselors in confirming the calling of the Holy Spirit when the elders of that church (including the pastor who had requested my resignation) commissioned me for ministry in New Jersey. I have also learned the value of not running from painful relationships and situations. That very same pastor turned to me for support and prayer twenty years later when he was forced out of another church.

Christ’s Presence in the Broken

My life and my ministry have always had an urban character. In Mt. Holly I was immersed in “street people,” drug addicts, the broken down people at the bottom of just about any heap you could imagine. I led youth mission trips that brought protected middle-class young people into relationships with poor folk in the urban centers of the eastern U.S. I have been to Haiti twice and to Honduras. But it was a four-month sabbatical at L’Arche Daybreak in Richmond Hill, Ontario that gave me a perspective by which relationships with those who suffer in these ways has shaped me spiritually. For Jean Vanier, the founder of the L’Arche movment (a global network of communities in which mentally handicapped “core members” and their “assistants” live together), it is not that the “normal” people take care of the “handicapped,” rather it is that those who are suffering convey the presence of Christ, not just to the “assistants” but through the community to the whole world.

In this way, the ministries of mercy and justice essential in an urban setting are less a way of meeting people’s physical needs, than they are the settings for relationships in which the presence of Christ is discovered and proclaimed. Through these relationships with suffering, broken, wounded people I have learned to be a receiver, to live in grace.

A man in one congregation I served has schizophrenia and is resistant to treatment. With a magic marker he draws stigmata on his hands and sometimes on his forehead (for all I know he may draw them on his feet and side too). Understandably, many in the congregation are uncomfortable with him, and he is a strain on his daughter who cares for him. But I have learned that I need him, the congregation needs him, as a witness to our complete helplessness and dependence on God’s grace. I take his magic marker stigmata as a sign from God of how fully Jesus entered into our human suffering through the cross.

Confrontation with Catastrophe

Despite my acknowledged inadequacy, I have accompanied people through many of life’s inexplicable tragedies (premature death of a parent or child, debilitating illness or injury) while keeping my own equilibrium. I have found this more difficult when accompanying people through suffering willfully and knowingly inflicted by someone loved and trusted (suicide and murder). For me the pain has been most excruciating when I have been called into the middle of marital infidelity involving church leaders with whom I have not only served but been close friends. On more than one occasion I have kept information confidential, not even telling my wife, who could perceive my pain but offer no effective relief.

From this I have learned something of honestly facing my own vulnerability and the importance of vigilance and spiritual accountability. While my conversations with the spiritual directors I have had has not actually focused much on those specific incidents, having felt the pain of the disasters of others has encouraged me to be transparent and honest with talking with a spiritual director. It reminds me that I need to be alert to the director God has for me in Texas.

Lessons from A Disastrous Pastorate

After seventeen fruitful years in Mt. Holly, with the blessing of the Session of First Presbyterian Church, I went to serve as (solo) pastor for a new, nondenominational church in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. By the time I had been there six months I had my first of several confrontations with a small group demanding my resignation. They wanted the pastor to be an “executive director” not a “shepherd.” Despite three distinct, official affirmations of the Board that I was called to be their pastor, this group prevailed, and I resigned.

For a year I developed a community chaplaincy ministry. I am thankful for those who supported that effort as it kept my family together in that time of transition. It also confirmed loud and clear my calling to pastoral ministry. I had hoped to stay in Milwaukee so our high school son would not have to change schools. But that didn’t happen. I still feel that he suffered most from our sojourn in Wisconsin, and wrestle with my feelings of regret for him.

In Mt. Holly, I had the fellowship of Monmouth Presbytery and the Rancocas Valley Clergy Association, but in a nondenominational church in Milwaukee such avenues were not automatic; I had to make them for myself. I learned the importance of team ministry and mutual support in mission. I met regularly with a prayer fellowship of urban pastors. I introduced myself to other pastors in the neighborhood. I developed close relationships with eight and phoned one of them a week to ask how I could pray for them. When things got really ugly at the church I was serving, a trusted core of this group became my prayer support and sounding board. I found guidance and encouragement. One, from a large congregation, included me in their staff fellowship during my months of community chaplaincy. Not only did I feel included and supported, they asked me to do some teaching on spirituality for their staff.

During that year, my wife and I took a week at Fairhaven Ministries in Roan Mountain, Tennessee where they offered retreat and counseling for wounded pastors. That began a process of asking questions and exploring the lessons learned from the experience with the church in Milwaukee. Exploring those lessons has consumed many pages in my journal. Perhaps the most significant is: don’t try to pastor alone!

On coming to Dallas and to a Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), I have made a point of participating in their monthly pastors’ lunches. I attend the Greater Dallas Community of Churches meetings, and I participate in the visiting clergy education programs at Baylor and Presbyterian Hospitals. I have a list of prayer-partner pastors. I need the spiritual shaping of others who share this pastoral calling.

Mental Illness Strikes Home

Just before we left Wisconsin our oldest son’s wife had their second child. A few weeks after his birth our daughter-in-law had a sever episode that was identified as post-partum psychosis. Our son phoned from Pennsylvania in the middle of the night to tell us his wife had been taken by ambulance to a psychiatric hospital. Months of hospitalization, medication and therapy have been positively effective, and our grandson is now two and his Mom is functioning quite well.

I felt utterly helpless as I listened to Jon on the phone that night and as we struggled through the months of uncertainty. I had some sense of the distance that evoked Jesus’ cry, “Why have you forsaken me?” I felt considerable fear as I had experience with people who suffered with bipolar disorder who became non-functional and almost impossible to relate to, and a dreaded that this might be my son’s fate. I became keenly aware that “doing all the right things” was no protection from this kind of pain. I found that my response to the Andrea Yeats case was way out of step with the angry blaming so many people engaged in. I could only hurt, not analyze. After teaching about intercessory prayer that gets beyond asking God to fix things and asks that we see from God’s perspective, I urgently prayed for God to fix our daughter-in-law.

Facing Mortality

A couple of the continuing education events I have recently attended at hospitals have been about grieving. The congregation I serve has many older people, so I am doing a lot of funerals. They have classes and groups that were started in the 1940s and are struggling to continue, and many are grieving the loss of those institutions. Both of my parents and both of my wife’s parents are still living, though age and health concerns are increasing. They live in Illinois and Minnesota, while we are in Texas.

This juxtaposition recently prompted me to write in my journal at some length about our parents’ deaths. I imagined likely scenarios for the remainders of their lives, circumstances of their deaths and their funeral wishes, particularly what role they might want me to have in their funerals. I examined my emotional responses. I thought about talking about some of this when we visit with them this summer.

All four of our parents are Christians of great faith. Death in itself seems to hold little fear for any of them. Yet, I have been thinking how their deaths will shape me spiritually, and how anticipating the reality of their deaths shapes me spiritually right now. Somehow it doesn’t seem to have much to do with hope beyond the grave or looking forward to an eternal reunion with them. It seems, rather, to speak more to my awareness of the need to be dependent on God, of realizing that however much I have drawn from my parents, and however long they will be living, they are not the secure center. Only Christ is that secure center, not in some shallow pietistic way, but in the sense in which Simone Weil writes that “the Cross is our only hope.” (p. 75)

Conclusions

I have not organized these reflections to try to derive some specific conclusion. Rather, I have tried to look at how I have been shaped spiritually by my most significant encounters with suffering. I think I do see here patterns in my pastoral ministry. I try to offer to others those things that have been sources of healing and wholeness for me: presence, touch, prayer, Psalms.

I am drawn back again to the centrality of the cross. By entering into the suffering of another (even if my own personal experience of suffering is far smaller), as Christ entered into our suffering through the cross, we find the path to expectant hope, not just for ourselves but for those God calls us to serve.

A woman in the church in Mt. Holly was diagnosed with a rare, fatal cancer of the lining of the lungs. When she could no longer go out, I stopped by her home as she moved toward death. One day she told me, “When you come, I believe again that I can get through this. You hang onto God, and I’ll hang onto you when I can’t find God any more.” As I review the spiritual shaping of my suffering experiences, I realize that the extent to which I am “hanging onto God” is the result of having hung on to others when God was elusive to me.

Kreeft writes, “What then is suffering to the Christian? It is Christ’s invitation to follow him.” (P. 137) Here is this reciprocity of “hanging on” again in a different form. In our suffering as human beings, Christ entered into our suffering, as it were through the cross, to “hang onto us” while he “hung onto God.” Now we are called to “hang onto” Christ through our sufferings, both for ourselves, and when we are called upon to accompany others through their suffering.

It is not only my own personal sufferings that shape my spiritual formation. If I will truly enter into the pain of those to whom I am called, then their suffering can be formative for me as well (though the way I am formed may well be different than the way they are formed). So presence, listening, Psalms and prayers are not merely “skills” for helping someone else with their suffering. I, too, am shaped by the presence of Christ between us, by the way they speak of their pain, by the honest struggles of the psalmists, by even my own prayers that call people to experience the reality of God’s presence in their time of suffering. I am not the professional, pastoral care giver (even if empathetic and effective), but I am a person made in God’s image being molded to be like Christ by each encounter with someone else’s suffering.

But I am also God’s presence to the person in pain by which they are also being brought through their suffering toward the expectant hope of wholeness. This divine influence is not dependent on my having suffered a pain of similar magnitude to the person I am with. It is not dependent on my skills in pastoral care (which isn’t to say that good skills are not beneficial). It is not even dependent on whether I am myself aware of and in tune with God’s presence in that particular moment. Rather it is that in some fashion, God is taking us together through the cross, through our suffering, toward hope and wholeness.

I have written out of my pastoral experience, not because this is the domain of pastors, but because it is the context in which God brings me up against formative suffering. This is not about “how to do pastoral work.” It is about how this one pastor is discovering that God is shaping me with the presence of those who suffer around me, while at the same time God shapes others with my presence in their suffering.