As usual, I’ve kept silent the last couple weeks, withholding my words until some abstract, vague resolution has popped its beady little eyes out of the ground-hog hole of my soul…or maybe just procrastinating out of fear… So anyway, here’s what’s happened:

The Franciscan Retreat

Returned a couple weeks ago from a wonderful time of contemplation in the outskirts of San Antonio. My wife and I took part in a Franciscan Retreat hosted by Gordon Atkinson, the Real Live Preacher and his amazingly gracious people at Covenant Center for Contemplative Christianity.

It has taken some time for me to process the experience. I’ll mention just a couple highlights in the way our very loose itinerary materialized… (You’ll need to experience for yourself to truly appreciate it…so consider including it in next year’s plans…)

A summary thought about the retreat: About the most wonderful thing about the retreat was that there were people from all walks of life there, from various parts of the nation (Brooklyn, Austin, The Midwest, etc.)…and it was nice and small. About 15 or 20 of us. Some Christians, some atheists, or somewhere in-between, some Unitarian-Universalists, some Baptists (or post-Baptists), etc. etc. etc. …ALL of us were pilgrims of some sort. And here’s the best part: Communion…

I, like most Christians, was taught that communion should only be taken if (1) you’re a bona-fide, publicly-announced Christian, and (2) if you’re completely caught up on your confessions of the sins in your life. Otherwise, you’d be taking the body if Christ “to the eternal damnation of your soul” or something like that.

Well, perhaps the biggest thing that touched me deeply during this time in San Antonio was the communion time. Gordon, in my mind, illustrated the true heart of Christ when he got up in front of everyne and invited EVERYONE to partake of the bread and wine…everyone, regardless of beliefs, or spiritual position or whatever. And I think that’s exactly how Jesus would do it. I think Jesus would say, especially of his own offering/sacrifice, something like, “I don’t give a shit if you’re a Jew, gentile, Samaritan, pagan, Wiccan, atheist, Pharisee, Christian, Buddhist, gay/lesbian, Catholic, Charismatic, agnostic..whatever….YOU are welcome to have my love and acceptance… It’s not about who is ‘in’ or ‘out’…this is not a club…this is love.”

Other samplings from my itinerary…

5- 7am: Pray, Chant/Sing, Pray … After that, I walked a wilderness path through oaks and cacti and meditated my way through a labyrinth. Even in my pre-dawn walk, I found it somewhat difficult to quiet my thoughts and allow space in my soul. If nothing else, this helped me realize how noisy a place my head can be…even just after waking up. And, in a time when I usually feel closest to God, especially in such a natural setting, I became aware of a stagnant feeling in myself, some sort of absence of God in that moment, which led to a mild frustration. Thankfully, I had my handy Pocket Thomas Merton with me, from which this little gem came:

“God approaches our minds by receding from them. We can never fully know him if we think of him as an object of capture…. Wherever we are, we find that he has just departed. Wherever we go, we discover that he has just arrived before us.”

This helped me acknowledge the frustration without focusing on it. Then I just tried to acknowledge the positive things going on around me… A pair of cardinals chasing each other through the air. A stink bug slowly staggering across the pebbles. The sauna-like smell of juniper/cedar trees being heated by the rising sun. Squirrels chattering at me from the trees. The sound of a nearby cow calling her neighbors. My sandals flip-flopping and softly crunching the twigs beneath them. And the feeling of my own breath passing through my nostrils and throat. …Wow…all the life around me and within me! Maybe God is here…inside me and outside me, or at least his radiant energy.

9-1030am: Pray/Sing/Chant/Pray some more. Then we learned a little more about St. Francis and his “Rule of Life” and how to make our own rule of life. (The Franciscans had basically three ‘rules’ categories, those for fellow monks (the Franciscan order rules) and clergy, those for their sisters, or nuns, and rules for laity or the ‘regular’ people around them. But all the rules centered around the three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.)

This was beautifully practical. Regardless of your spiritual beliefs, this is a great way to help yourself to start living intentionally: Make a list with three categories, “Values,” “Disciplines,” and “Rules.” My example:

Value: The End of Extreme Poverty / Discipline: Learn the facts and donate to help / Rule: Finish reading The End of Poverty and Donate through Kiva.org at least once a year.

…So that’s one of the most practical things I’ve ever learned in ANY religious-type setting! Thank you Gordon and everyone else there! (By the way, I highly recommend you check out the beautiful jewelry art by Jeanene, Gordon’s wife.)

New Monastics–Irrelevant Idealists or World Changers?

Toward the close of the weekend, I had a chance to speak to my friend Paul about New Monasticism. Although I know some about the movement, he knows a hell of a lot more than I do, so I had some questions for him, with particular regards to the overall idea behind it. I’m a fan of the concepts and people involved in it (whether they claim that specific term or not), people like Shane Claiborne at The Simple Way and my friend Gideon at Vox Veniae here in Austin, but I just had to ask rhetorically, from a practical perspective, “What’s the point?” Why get a bunch of of your friends together, buy houses in the same neighborhood and pool resources and live together and do almost everything together, baby-sitting for each other and sharing meals every night and neat things like that…

Because while I am a sort of idealist, I am also a sometimes-depressive realist. Because there are small groups of revolutionary-minded people all over the place that want to change the world by living by example…but unfortunately, those groups often remain just that…a small group of idealists. But what I do see in this is, while many of these groups may not ‘change the world’ at large, they are changing their world…the one at their doorsteps.

They are grabbing the hands that they can reach right now. And that is what it’s a ll about. And as Paul said it…It’s just about living intentionally and trying to affect positive change where you really can. And in my mind…that truly is realistic. And that’s what St. Francis did…although in helping his local ‘world’ he changed the whole world…so much so that I am writing about his impact today, hundreds and hundreds of years later.