Creating a Spiritual Center Point

It actually doesn’t make sense to talk about contemplative practice in isolation. It is interwoven into the journey itself. This is why I think many people fail in their attempts to establish a contemplative practice. It is because they are doing it apart from the larger context of the spiritual journey. It is like trying to drive your engine apart from your car. It just doesn’t seem to work. We don’t establish a contemplative practice in the same manner that we take piano lessons or join a service organization.

We shouldn’t really be too concerned if we haven’t yet established a contemplative walk. It is enough that we are seeking a spiritual depth. We shouldn’t really try to make it happen. God will build us toward the depths that we earnestly seek. What we can do is make place for God to draw us into those spiritual depths. James 4:8 says: "Draw near to God and he will draw near to you." We can draw near to God by making a place where He can find us. We can give Him greater access to us. This is our real work.

When I was entering onto a contemplative path I did not even know what it was. I was not trying to establish a contemplative practice. I just felt that I needed a deeper spiritual walk. So I simply went down to our family room every morning, not with the intention of doing anything, but just being where God could find me. I began with an intention, not any kind of practice. Eventually this developed into a full-blown contemplative walk.

In one of my contemplative classes I had someone come up and draw a circle on our white board. I asked this person to concentrate on the marker itself, and the line that was being drawn. Try this some time just with a pencil and paper. If your focus is on the pencil itself drawing the line, your circle will probably not be very round. This is how we normally arrange our affairs in life. We focus on each individual affair itself. It usually turns out to be quite a balancing act trying to put them all in order. You see, it is often this way in our spiritual practices. We try to make them just another of our life’s affairs, and to arrange them in the same manner.

So how can we draw a perfect circle? I made a sort of compass by tying a lag bolt to a marker with a piece of twine. I drew a dot on the board and placed the bolt over the dot. Then, without even attending much to the marker, I moved it around that center point in the fashion of a compass. The circle came out pretty good. Here, I was focusing on the center point, not the circle itself. This is really a form of contemplation in itself. In fact, it is the essence of contemplation; to focus on the center.

If we establish a spiritual center point then that tends to arrange our affairs in an orderly way around that point. Like spokes in a wheel, our affairs radiate outward from our center point and keep the outer surface of life firm and in a shape determined by our spiritual center.

As we go along this path that essential spiritual center point will begin to grow. Our spiritual space will enlarge. Here God will be able to bring whatever disciplines into our lives fit the way that He created us. The one essential thing along the contemplative path is what Paul tells us in Col 3:1-3:

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God.

A Continuing Journey

I am entering into the final stages of life on this earth. But the sense has been coming on me for several years that I am entering right now, even in this present life, into eternal realms. You know, we have a picture of what it is to die. I mean, the common idea of dying and going to heaven is one of a sudden change. There we are, a person lying on his or her deathbed and at the moment of death that person’s spirit leaves the body phantom-like and floats up to heaven to be with God. One moment that person is here on earth, the next moment he or she is sitting on a cloud playing a harp. That is not a Biblical picture. I don’t mean the cloud and harp part but the idea of one moment here, the next in eternity.

According to the writings of the apostle Paul if we are in Christ here and now on this earth then we are already seated with Him in heaven at the right hand of God. Paul says:

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God. Col 3:1-4

We have been raised with Christ. Our spiritual essence is with Christ in the eternal realm. As we walk a spiritual path of intentional reaching toward that heavenly existence we live more and more within our spiritual essence. We draw ever nearer, ever more fully into the eternal realms the closer we get to our physical death. We hold less tightly to the things of this earth. Our physical death, then, is not so much a sudden flying up to our heavenly home as it is our final and complete letting go of our earthly existence.

We are not really ending life. We are continuing a journey. We know this because as we walk this path of spiritual surrender we become increasingly aware of the divine realm. Increasingly, it merges with our existence here on earth. We become ever more heavenly minded. I have heard that old accusation of being so heavenly minded that I am no earthly good. But Paul says that we are to set our minds on our eternal home. Far from being no earthly good, you see, as we increasingly seek our eternal essence the Divine Nature that we receive from above finds an ever wider place to manifest here on earth.

This is a journal, the journal of my journey into the eternal realms. I invite you to share in this journey, to share your reflections if you are on this spiritual path. If you are seeking this path I invite you to share your questions, your comments, your struggles, doubts, fears, joys, dark nights, divine comforts and consolations. For we are truly walking into eternity. I have walked an intentional contemplative path now for twelve years; walking ever deeper, ever higher into the eternal realms. I am on my way out of this life but on my in to a larger space where increasingly I live within His Divine Presence. As I decrease in the world Christ in me increases. His light shines brighter as I let go of the life that I have been clinging to in this life. As I let go of that self that I have built around my concerns here on earth the eternal within me finds greater place to manifest Himself on this earth.

The contemplative path is a path upwards and inwards. More and more I sense myself ever being lifted upwards, transcending, going toward my true destination. I know so many people in this stage of life that perceive only the end of this life. Perhaps after having a good career, gaining reputation, having made a comfortable living, and then sort of whiling the time away until they finally die. The usual conception, I think, is one of a hill or a bell curve. One ascends in a career, reaches a peak, and then descends into retirement.

I don’t see my life like that. I have not had a brilliant career, nor made lots of money, nor established a good reputation. In fact, I can feel with Paul that I count it all as dross. Actually I count it all as preparation for what God is right now doing with my life. I am at the prime of life! I have come now earnestly into my Divine Purpose. All my whole life to this point has been but preparation for where God is right now taking me. There is no downward trend into retirement. It is all upward, all progressing toward eternal life; not toward deterioration but toward the fullness of my created being. Consider this passage:

When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Col 3:4

This all sounds like the sweet by and by but it is just so evident to me from Scripture how the eternal bleeds over into this present life. We draw too definite a line between this temporal realm and the eternal. Christ who is our life is manifesting in us as we open ourselves to Him and increasingly give our lives over to Him. As we walk toward the eternal so does the Glory of Christ manifest within us spreading outwardly into the world around us. The more heavenly minded we become the greater is the Glory of God able to penetrate into this world and to touch all that are around us. How cool is that! This all happens as we venture into the eternal realms. We are not really trying to be Christ-like. It happens as we walk ever deeper into the wholeness of life.

Walking in Divine Purpose

How do we think of ‘church work?’ The image, which my own experience with ‘church’ has shaped into my mind, is that of a static institution honey-combed with slots in which people serve. The people that serve in these slots are rather interchangeable. I may serve in a slot one year and someone else doing pretty much the same job serves in the same slot the next year. I think this helps people feel that they are being good Christians by putting in a couple of hours of church duty per week. But it seems rather dead. And how does such a church speak outwardly into a world that is hungry for something other than the same sort of institutional life that we find everywhere in the world?

This is a picture of an institutional church filled with slots seeking people. I would contrast this with an image of a community of people seeking purpose within a spiritual body. Ah, you can just feel the fluidity, the melting of that rigid structure into something that flows both inwardly and outwardly. Here there is Life flowing both deeply within our souls and outwardly into a world of rigid facades where people are hungry for deep meaning.

How do we break out of this institutional rigidity? It is not really a matter of how we structure the church. It is not trying to find some sort of church program that will do this. That just adds program upon program. It is a matter of how we work within the church structure. We do not need to change what we now have, but perhaps we need to look at how we approach what we now have. Here is the question we should ask ourselves. Are we seeking in our work in the church to simply fulfill an obligation -- to discharge a duty -- or is this an opportunity to really dig into the divine purpose for which each of us was created? If the church is static it is because a rigid church position forms us. We become quite ‘churchy.’ The church becomes living as we ourselves live our work in the church from the inside out. Paul says in Ephesians 2:10: For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. This goes to the heart of who we are, our essential identity. We are designed inwardly for a purpose on this earth.

Do we regard ‘church work’ as the outward expression of our inner identity? If we did, then our work in the body of Christ would be about the most meaningful thing we do in life. That few hours per week of church work would encompass our whole being. If we give God but a small space to work within us that is all He needs. In that small space He can ‘mine’ into that which is of ultimate importance in our lives. It only takes a small door to lead into a large space. It reminds me of the main entrance into the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, which was erected over the site where Jesus was born. The church itself is immense, once you get inside. But you enter the church through a door so small that you have to duck through it.

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Contemplative practice can bring us through that narrow opening into an immense region of Spiritual purpose. It is not even a matter of struggling with how we are suppose to do this church work to make it fit our inner design. If our contemplative practice focuses us on working our innermost being open to the Life of Christ within us, this begins to release our Life-charged inner nature into our external work. Over time our work in the church, and everywhere else for that matter, will take on the shape of our inner design.

This is the struggle of becoming. It is the birth of our created souls. Our work will not be benign. Our spiritual becoming involves breaking through the thick armour of our ‘false self.’ As we move in the work for which God created us He will bring much to the surface that He wants to purge out of us. We must expect to walk through rough places of conflict and opposition, and some ‘dark nights’ of painful enlightenment about ourselves.

Scripture talks about silver being refined. The silversmith heats the silver to a liquid. This frees it up so that the impurities can rise to the surface. For so long the silver has clutched onto those inner impurities. They have become part of the silver itself. When the silver becomes liquid it is able to release those particles of impurity. They rise to the surface and the silversmith scoops them off. Then he or she can mold the silver into a beautiful and useful object -- a wine goblet, perhaps, or an eating utensil.

Contemplation makes us workable to God. When we release our whole being into His hands it makes us as molten silver. When a solid becomes liquid the rigidly bonded molecules can flow and slide freely over one another. It is an unfreezing process. Perhaps we can think of contemplation as just such a de-solidification. The rigid thing that we have built up to protect us and make us acceptable to the world around us is an unworkable object in the hands of our Maker. Contemplation is the practice of releasing our solidified self into the hands of the Molder of our lives. We become clay in the hands of the Potter.

This is how God can use church work to form us into His true intention for us. He shapes our work to serve the purpose that He is working over the whole earth. It really is a big deal. We give Him the space to unfreeze us from our false self and He integrates us into the entirety of His work on the earth. You see, it is not just an isolated slot that we work within. We become connected to the whole body of Christ. All things came into being in Christ. That few hours a week of church service can become spiritually connected into everything that there is. On the surface it looks small but its roots run deep. It connects with the very center of Being itself.

If we walk in such a surrendered manner letting God shape us, the emerging purpose within each of us fits us together into a living body. The gifts of others are the very means by which our own gifts get unwrapped. The body that comes into being through the release of our inner nature is itself the nurturing ground in which we grow in purpose. It works back on itself. Paul presents a profound picture of this in Ephesians 4: 12. The gifts that God gives us are …to equip the saints for the work of ministry. Working within our gifts, that is, within Divine purpose is …for building up the body of Christ. Which in turn has the result that …we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature (personhood), to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. You can see how beautifully this works. It grows upon itself. If only a few of us reach for the depths of spiritual purpose it begins to infuse the whole church with the spiritual nurturance by which the whole body reaches “…the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” This fullness does not stop at the church walls but reaches outwardly with the living, breathing Presence of Christ into a world hungry for meaning and purpose.

I Am A Clown

By Gene Culbertson

In life I’ve gone
The way of praise,
Of warm applause and cheering crowds who know me not
But seek my smiling mask
To please them, fill them, entertain.
A clown I am upon this stage
They laugh and clap to see my foolery performed.
I juggle balls and prat and fall
I am the foolest fool of all.

Or is there deep within this clown
Something there, deeper down
In depths so deep I cannot see.
Yes, there, a light so small, so weak
What then? Is that a part of me?
A glimpse – brief and dim but something real
Before my eyes – no now it’s gone
Elusive, passing, misty – something grey.
There, again, I see it clear
A candle’s flame
Of swirling smoky silver dust
A brightening light
A parting cloud
Something piercing through the night.
Ah there, I see, now face to face
The under-layers of God’s grace.
On solid ground
I touch my feet
Upon the ultimate of me.

But wait! The crowds! I hear their noise.
They stamp their feet and shout,
Where is their boy who struts and stumbles
Flops and fumes and makes them feel
That they are just a little bit above
This sad buffoon?
So I must go and leave this bit of solid ground.
My audience awaits!
I am a clown.