Spiritual Disciplines

Is Creativity Allowed in Presbyterian Worship?

4 Comments / Current Events, Leadership and Spirituality, PCUSA, Personal, Spiritual Disciplines / By /

Every fiber of my Reformed body cringed during my presbytery’s worship time two weeks ago, described in yesterday’s post. Among people who should have known better, what we did together was not worship. It certainly was an experience—I’ll grant you that—but because it dwelled on ourselves and our experience of our bodies and never even acknowledged God’s presence, it was nothing like what you would call Reformed Worship. In the note I finally received yesterday from our executive presbyter, Jeff Hutcheson acknowledged that the service was “outside the box,” but shared his own spiritual experience through it as significant and […]

Is Creativity Allowed in Presbyterian Worship? Read More »

Breathing Lessons and the Big Contest

2 Comments / Death & Dying, Leadership and Spirituality, Lung Cancer, Personal, Spiritual Disciplines / By /

I celebrated a milestone of sorts today, the last session of a pulmonary rehabilitation class I have been taking to learn how to breathe and manage my air. A group of twelve has met for a total of 36 hours over these last seven weeks, instructed by respiratory therapists, physical therapists, nutritionists, pharmacists, psychotherapists, and doctors. We have been supervised in the gym for a minimum of 1½ hours of tailor-made exercises each class day, and we marked our progress. We are now considered “educated patients” who have learned how to observe our health status and to know when to

Breathing Lessons and the Big Contest Read More »

Bible Reading Plans

5 Comments / Personal, Spiritual Disciplines / By /

The best of intentions languish without a plan. My goal is very simple: to read a little bit of Scripture every day and keep acquainted with the whole counsel of God.  To this end, I offer the following recommendations among the many possibilities available these days. All links have been checked today so these are good to go. I start, however, with my favorite because it was devised by one of my favorite people, Dr. Dale Bruner, formerly of Whitworth University and now retired and writing commentaries in Pasadena, California. He sketched this reading plan out on a white-board one

Bible Reading Plans Read More »

A Red Flag

5 Comments / Personal, Spiritual Disciplines / By /

Going back to my original list of “why I haven’t been blogging,” today I shall address the last one enumerated there: I have not been “in the Word” as a daily or even regular spiritual discipline. I realize just how much the Scriptures are food for thought, and I haven’t been eating. So, this is really a confession of sorts, but not a self-indulgent one, I hope. My aim is simply to articulate an experience that you may have had, too, and to respond to it. My personal, spiritual disciplines of the traditional kind, especially Bible reading and study, have

A Red Flag Read More »

Ministry without Power

2 Comments / Leadership and Spirituality, PCUSA, Personal, Spiritual Disciplines, The Pastoral Call / By /

As the church family awaits the celebration of Pentecost on Sunday, I have been reflecting on what it would have been like if the Spirit had not come as promised. From the testimony of the gospels and the book of Acts, we know that the disciples—waiting as instructed for “power from on high”—basically did nothing risky or bold in the interim. Unless you consider the nomination and election of a new elder to fall into that category . . . (see Acts 1:12:26). I have two personal experiences to share that gave me an inkling of what it is like

Ministry without Power Read More »

Getting in SHAPE

1 Comment / Leadership and Spirituality, Lung Cancer, Personal, Spiritual Disciplines, Teaching, The Pastoral Call / By /

This morning I will be meeting my personal trainer at the gym for the first time in over six months. Not with a little fear and trepidation, I will submit to thirty minutes of exercises, addressing each muscle group and testing my capabilities. What I know is this: I am out of shape. Cancer-drug-related weight gain has plagued me since the first of the year, my overall strength has diminished, and stamina is completely redefined by pulmonary limitations at the moment. Yes, it sounds pretty pitiful for one who used to be able to run the paces and maintain a

Getting in SHAPE Read More »

My Mother, Myself: A Final Word

6 Comments / Death & Dying, Personal, Spiritual Disciplines / By /

The Skagit County Tulip Festival in Mt. Vernon, Washington, draws crowds to view acres and acres of colorful bulbs each April. In the intervening days between my mother’s death and her memorial mass, my husband and daughter ventured forth to explore the tulip fields. The pair brought back two bouquets, knowing they were my favorite flower, so I brought them to Mom’s church the next day. The reason I love the tulip is that it is the only flower I know that continues to grow after it is cut. A very tight, short arrangement of blooms grows gangly over time,

My Mother, Myself: A Final Word Read More »

Feelings and the Christian Experience

3 Comments / Lent, Lung Cancer, Personal, Spiritual Disciplines, Spiritual Progress through the Interior Castle / By /

The Church has just been through the lows and highs and the Christian calendar, walking with Jesus through his passion and death, experiencing the emptiness of Holy Saturday, and the exultation of Easter. People’s reaction to this emotional ride vary from indifference to obsession, but the intensity of the calendar’s events is intended to draw us in to Christ’s experience in order to appreciate all the more what he did for us. My post on Good Friday was an expression of that gratitude. But then there are people who felt almost nothing, though they would have liked to, and it is

Feelings and the Christian Experience Read More »

The Fifth Mansion: Longing for Oneness with God

4 Comments / Lent, Parnell v. San Francisco, Personal, Romans 8, Spiritual Disciplines, Spiritual Progress through the Interior Castle, Theological Reflection / By /

Have you ever wondered what Jesus was really praying for in the High Priestly Prayer when he asked his heavenly Father to make us one with Jesus as Jesus is one with the Father? (John 17:22-23). The idea of oneness conjures up different images. I have come into contact with a distinctly Eastern religious view of “oneness with the Universe.” As I understand the concept, the goal of life and the event at death is a complete absorption of one’s personhood and personality into The One Cosmic Being. Only that Universe remains in existence, all other beings having become a

The Fifth Mansion: Longing for Oneness with God Read More »

The Fourth Mansion: Discovering the Love of Jesus

1 Comment / Lent, Lung Cancer, Personal, Spiritual Disciplines, Spiritual Progress through the Interior Castle / By /

One of the spiritual accomplishments of this year’s bout with lung cancer has been an exit from the rat race. Actually, that transition has been long in coming, since I left the full-time pastorate at the very end of 2006. Various projects kept me busy and over-stimulated for another five years, but I have been working at home alone in a virtually self-directed manner since then. Last Fall this illness hit and its treatment modulated my pace down to a slow-motion ride through Disneyland’s Space Mountain. This prolonged experience seems to coincide with further spiritual development identified by Teresa of

The Fourth Mansion: Discovering the Love of Jesus Read More »

Scroll to Top