What God Wants For Your Life

Our spiritualities are carved out in a world dominated by big M materialism. At heart, we are taught that what is real is what we can see, feel, smell, hear, and touch. Ask us what we know about the world and we give you facts, figures, and measurements.

For atheists, that means that life’s only mysteries are what we have yet to learn. For some believers it means that God lies just beyond what we don’t know or just beyond what is yet to be known. The debate over creationism illustrates how much atheists and some believers have in common: They may come to different conclusions, but they can’t believe that God is somehow present in and through the world in which we live.

The result is a God of the gaps or none at all.

There are a lot of problems with big M materialism. Some of them are these:

One, not all truths — not even the most important truths — are material. We are moved by far more than what we can see, feel, smell, hear, and touch — by love and conviction, for example.

Two, the scientific method — the road to mastering our knowledge of big M materialism is a great, but limited tool. It can describe what happens in the world around us, it can’t explain why it exists at all. Thanks to science I know that mass and gravity are related. Science can’t tell me why the relationship does or should exist.

Three, for people of faith, a devotion to big “M” materialism, a devotion to it drives God to the boundaries of our existence. The best of the Christian tradition has always held that God is both beyond our existence (transcendent) and active in our world (immanent).

Four, for the atheist a devotion to big M materialism never quite eliminates the need to have faith. Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens — all of the “new atheists” I can think of still want to talk about meaning, beauty, morality, and significance. Why? For what reason? If we are here as the product of an accident — then why care, even if we are here for a long time?

Don’t be bullied by big M materialism. The Greek Orthodox tradition has always held that the world around us exists and holds together thanks to the creative and animating work of the Trinity. Science isn’t a window into the absence of God, it is a small window into the grandeur of God.

Ancient Hebrew tradition is filled with stories of God crafting covenants and of familial relationships which (often imperfectly) reflect the relationships that God seeks with human kind. At their best, those relationships are the bearers of two gifts:

Love and blessing…the security of knowing that we are loved and the promise of a future all our own. Growth is not possible without both gifts.

They are the gifts that God gives to us and they are the gifts we give to others in life’s more intimate and enduring relationships. The engine of all spiritual and emotional growth and health lies in receiving and giving both.

One of my favorite treatments of Ignatian spirituality tracks the growth of the great saint. In each step along the way, the writer observes that what Ignatius could imagine depended upon the spiritual horizons within which he worked.

As a prince, the world he knew was shaped by the horizons of a soldier prince.

As a new Christian he thought of Jesus as a model to be imitated.

As his horizons grew he thought of Jesus as a Lord to be served.

And, at the its most expansive, he thought of his life as an invitation to be Jesus’ companion.

It was this last horizon that defined the order that Ignatius founded. To the world that order is known as The Society of Jesus or the Jesuits. But even today it is the title, “companion,” that the Jesuits themselves prefer.

What we think of our relationship with God and what we expect from God will shape our horizons. Often, the growth we experience has less to do with what God is willing to give us and more to do with what we expect.

What are your spiritual horizons?

I have discovered that as director of spiritual formation, you are often asked questions that no one dares ask anyone else. Some of those questions are more appropriate than others. I have been asked about columbaria, Christmas decorations, apocalyptic television series, the Episcopal Church, and Tim LaHaye. There may be a common denominator there. I can’t be sure — and I’m not sure I want to know.

Others questions I’ve been asked are topically relevant, but sweeping in character, like the question, “What is Celtic spirituality all about?” My answer has been, “Christian, only dark and broody, with a dash of animism.” But in the spirit of Lenten discipline, I suppose that I should confess that answer was calculated to bedevil an old Irish colleague and friend.

Truth be told, Saint Patrick actually represents a far more robust view of Christian spirituality than my playful definition suggests. Though we don’t know a great deal about the bishop, what we do know is that he was captured as a child by Irish marauders who sold him into slavery and for six years he managed the flocks of a cruel master. When he finally escaped to Britain, he placed himself under the tutelage of St. Germain. He was eventually ordained to the priesthood and — at his own urging — was sent back to Ireland.

Tradition has it that his first act was to pay his own ransom to his former master and give him God’s blessing. One of the few surviving texts attributed to Patrick is a prayer that today is called St. Patrick’s Breastplate. A portion of that much lengthier prayer reads:

I bind to myself today

God’s Power to guide me,

God’s Might to uphold me,

God’s Wisdom to teach me,

God’s Eye to watch over me,

God’s Ear to hear me,

God’s Word to give me speech,

God’s Hand to guide me,

God’s Way to lie before me,
God’s Shield to shelter me,
God’s Host to secure me,


Happy St. Patrick’s day…

Famed composer and director Leonard Bernstein popularized — or at least exposed — the boomer generation to classical music. (Most of us were looking for electric guitars, a drum set, or the microphone that the lead singer was using, but Bernstein’s effort was heroic.)

At one point, he observed, “To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not quite enough time.”

Ironically, I think that most of us would argue that a lack of time is the very thing that keeps us from doing a great many things — living our dreams, taking that defining risk, doing what we feel called to do. And I wondered — are we out of time or are we out of hope?

Out of hope that what we feel called to do in life won’t matter? Out of hope that the opportunities won’t be there? Out of hope that we are even equal to the task?

THIS IS NOT A MOTIVATIONAL PITCH…

Sadly, I think that it is actually possible for us to find ourselves in the place where we never get to do quite what we hoped to do. Or — in the midst of life — to find ourselves the proverbial day late and a dollar short. Life’s responsibilities, changes we could have never anticipated, the mean-spirited behavior of a co-worker or boss — there are countless reasons we might never do what we hoped to do.

In fact, I think that to one degree or another most of us are convinced of that we are not doing quite what we hoped to do. None of the friends I have talked with of late feel that they are doing precisely what they planned to do at the level and in the places that they hoped to do them.

To say, then, “I don’t have enough time,” might not be enough as a starting point for our prayers. It doesn’t name the loss, or the grief we feel.

Instead, the place to start is with acknowledging the bangs, bruises, and lost dreams we have experienced along the way. That’s the kind of honest prayer that allows us to ask…

“So, now what, Lord?”

I don’t know what the answer to that question will be for you.

I do know this: God loves us not our dreams and any effort we make out of the deep sense of love that God has for us and shares that love with others is never a waste. Efforts of that kind are, in fact, the best of gifts. By contrast, when I think about efforts done on a larger stage, with more in the way of fireworks, I begin to realize that no one would have necessarily connected with those efforts or would have been touched or moved by them quite the way that I thought that they might.

In fact, regardless of what I achieve, my love for the people God has put in my life and their love for me makes all the difference. And that gives me hope.

And the time? That is here, now…in this moment.

My prayer for you is that you will find that kind of hope in this moment as well.

I don’t know a great deal about Feng Shui (pronounced Fung Shwee), but it is, as I understand it, a Chinese concept of aesthetics that used the laws of heaven and earth to order one’s life in a way that maximized the use of life’s energy in a fashion that harmonized with the world around us.

Today it is used in a rather more trivialized and commercial fashion by interior decorators who probably don’t know a lot about ancient Chinese philosophy. But they do know an exotic way to sell their services when they see one.

In the middle of a rather lengthy business meeting last week, those of us around the table found a way to kill a few free moments by joking about the rather strange table arrangement we had been given for our meeting. The worst of it was that there were people left at tables behind us. They were forced to face the backs of our heads and we were forced to turn our backs on them.

Thus, one of the funnier “you had to be there to understand” moments was one in which we critiqued the arrangement as a product of “dys-feng shui.”

Whether you find that funny or not, I think it is true that the more we live into the spiritual life, the more we take responsibility for the world around us. We notice feng shui and dys-feng shui — or to turn the vocabulary in a direction that is a bit more familiar to me, you notice where the Spirit of God is at work and where the Spirit of God is marginalized.

I am not talking about some kind of soft social consciousness, never mind a body of political beliefs. I am talking about the capacity to look at the world around us through the eyes of God.

Not everyone who considers themselves spiritual necessarily takes that larger responsibility into consideration. In fact, most of us are taught that spirituality is about getting God involved in our lives, fixing our problems, comforting us when we are down, showing us the way. Our culture has taught us to think that way; and some spiritualities are devoted to that understanding of the spiritual life.

Now, at one level, I’m all for God being involved in my life. I don’t relish having problems. When God seems particularly close I enjoy the palpable sense of peace that goes along with such moments and I never mind knowing what to do next. But, at the same time, I don’t think that is the purpose of the spiritual life.

We have a larger responsibility. Feng shui doesn’t quite capture that responsibility, but it hints at a concept found in the Torah, in the prophets, and the teaching of Jesus — pretty much the entire Bible, in fact. It’s called the righteousness of God — the order God intended, to put it in more accessible terms. Put another way, we are called into partnership with Jesus to care about the way in which the world around us does or does not conform to God’s design.

Contributing to the righteousness of God won’t be as easy as rearranging the furniture in a room. Doing that in our world is a much bigger job. Not everyone will think that God’s opinion on where the furniture should go will agree with us. We won’t even agree among ourselves on where it should be all the time. And this side of eternity the furniture will never be where all of it should be.

But we can witness to making God’s righteousness a reality. We can make personal choices and relate to one another in ways that reflect the presence of God in our lives. Those may not be large pieces of furniture, but it’s a good place to start.

Nelson Mandela, President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999 once observed, “The greatest glory in living lies not in never failing, but in rising every time we fall.”

Failing is a part of life’s landscape. We fail by accident or through errors in judgment. We fail as result of ignorance. And, of course, we fail because we willfully make the wrong choices — we sin against God, against one another, against ourselves.

But many of us cannot distinguish between the kinds of failure we encounter and we find it hard to accept forgiveness for ourselves when there is something worth forgiving.

When that happens we can find ourselves carrying false guilt, because we take responsibility for everything that goes wrong. And, when we do need forgiveness, we find it hard to believe that it is possible. Sadly, for some people guilt and shame are, as a result, not just something they experience now and then, but a way of life.

The Lenten emphasis on repentance and forgiveness is not about adding to this struggle. It is about finding spiritual balance and health.

That involves distinguishing between accidents and sins. It involves distinguishing borrowed or carried guilt and shame from guilt and shame that is rightly our own. And it requires the knowledge that God can and does forgive us when we need to be forgiven.

Mandela is right. “The greatest glory in living lies not in never failing, but in rising every time we fall.” But that the knowledge that we do fall and the assurance that there is glory in rising is God’s gift.