Pot Luck Spirituality

I have a go-to, inner circle friends who are those women I can get real with.  And, they call me out when needed.  We pray, cry, and mostly laugh together.  We are all alike in that we want to be good people, like to enjoy life along the way, and we have a desire to follow Christ- but beyond that, we are also quite different.
We meet at 8am on Saturday mornings usually- which I have never liked.  However, the alternative of not having these amazing women in my life prompts me out of bed, out of the house, and headed out by 7.40.  They seem to be early birds, and on Friday nights I like to stay up late with my family.  That would be my first difference.

I leave a house of sleep.  Even the dogs are snuggled up as I leave.  I love this snuggling world.  It is peaceful.  We give ourselves Saturday morning to relax after a week of tasks, teaching, studying, sports and practices, go go go, and work.  This peaceful space changes again by mid-morning- which in this house is 10:30-11am. All the hustle begins again and focuses on what is to be cleaned, bought, fixed, budgeted, or completed.

Sleeping Oscar

This past Saturday I really did not want to get up.  I was so tired!  Patrick had been traveling- he helps so much, and my work week was busy.  So, I was tired.
But, I headed out.  I am so glad I did because it was such a fruitful meeting with many pieces that are still nurturing me (and likely others).  This was the morning that we came up with a way to structure our meetings and named it "Pot Luck Spirituality":

• One person will be responsible for the Meat (the main focus of the meeting- like a podcast, book chapter, bible study...) 
• 2 people will bring the sides (small bits to bring to the meeting like video clips or quotes)
• 1 person brings dessert (music or music videos to begin with and end with through the meeting)

My girls and I with Bishop Barry and Father Barry- my brother.  The Barry bookends.

We will rotate every meeting so all have a piece of ownership.  

We began this particular meeting with Roseanne reading from 

Henri Nouwen's book  "A Spirituality of Living".  

That was our meat for this week.

We love it when Roe reads.  

She reads emphasizing some areas- or just stops and repeats something that we may have missed.  Imagine hearing this in a strong New York voice - 

"The spiritual life is a life that is guided by God's Spirit, the very same Spirit that guided the life of Jesus".   

She stops and says "Wait.  Did you hear that?  

The very same Spirit that guided the life of Jesus is guiding us?

Holy S*%T !

(Roe is a cussing saint)  

Think about that?  The first line of the book (this is still Roe talking) 

It is powerful!!!

The title of the chapter is Discipline and Discipleship, but Roseanne keeps saying discipline-ship (she is in pic below who is on the far left).  She reads this and we ignore it at first, but then she reads it again a few more times and we make light fun of her.  We are happy that someone with as much education as Roseanne messes up, too.  We continue to listen to her read while sitting on a porch with the sun streaming and dancing across the water.  It is so pretty. We have been blessed with the perfect spot for a prayer meeting which overlooks the Reservoir.

She keeps reading -now correctly, and she gets to this:  

The word discipleship and the word discipline is the same word.  

Somehow the Spirit came through her right from the start.  

So disciplineship is now our word, and our work. 

How do I follow Christ with a disciplined life?  Nouwen says that, 

"It requires real discipline to let God and not the world be the Lord of our mind".  

Roe keeps reading the chapter and we hear 3 things:

1. Jesus spent time in solitude
2. He spent time in the community
3. He went out and Preached and Healed people.

If we are to follow as disciples, we must copy Him.  We must have 

1. Time in solitude, 
2. Time in the community, and 
3. Time working for God.

The order is important.  We need to be quiet with God, just like Jesus was before he met with the community or did His work. 

We discuss how we all want to fill up our downtime- with community or work.  We may do this cluttering our minds with texting, media, technology, or constant business in our homes.  We just seem bored or feel lazy with nothing but silence with God.  The discipline to get silent is counter-cultural these days.  We decided our homework in the next week was to work on this.  The "How to have Disciplineship" would be front and center.

The last bit Nouwen wrote had us question How to do this? He says, 

"If we create space in which God can act and speak, something surprising will happen.  You and I are called to these disciplines if we want to be disciples".

Click here for a  Podcast on Stillness

Click here for Peaceful music to worship with

I wonder what the surprise will be as I learn to create a still, quiet space?