Tuesday, August 24, 2004

Rhythm of Life During my "brooding" time this morning, a phrase began suggesting itself. (Okay, okay--I thought something.) "Rhythm of life." Hmmm. "Rhythm of life." Hmmm. What might that mean? What questions make sense to ask when "rhythm of life" pops into your brain? Part of my credo is that spiritual formation and the pursuit of God takes time. A certain kind of time. Not chronos time, but kairos. Kairos is a sense of time beyond that which can be measured. Madelaine L'Engle calls it real time, God's time. Time taken to meditate, reflect, brood. Time entered into fully, unselfconscious time, time in which being slowly re-asserts itself. In the evangelical tradition, we call it quiet time, though I fear the idea of the necessity of quiet time has become another piece of busy business to do on the way to punching my salvation card. "Rhythm of life" makes me think of time, time used, time wasted, perhaps most often in unfocused productivity. Is the great danger of our age wasted time, as in sloth and laziness? Perhaps for some, but it seems that greater waste may lie in the direction of productivity for productivity's sake. A good friend of mine reminded me about this time last year of a proverb: "Don't just do something, sit there." Modernity and post-modernity share a love of speed, an intensity of experience, and a density of choice. "Driven rather than called?" comes the question. Call me old-fashioned, but still, my favorite thing in the world is a quiet spot, a warm cup of coffee, and deep conversation with the wise. "Rhythm of life" suggests a question, I guess. The question "What is the rhythm of my life?" "How is the rhythm of my action impacting my spiritual formation?" If Jesus were to say, "Let's talk about time and its spending," what might that conversation suggest? Of course, that might be a long conversation, and we might not have the time. Rhythm can't help but suggest music, too... 11:25:05 PM   comment []

The Creativity of Prayer  In recent months, prayer became difficult. Not because I didn't want to pray, but because whenever I did so, a feeling of futility would sweep in. But the futility was not what you might expect. It was a sort of back-door faith that God already knew my thought before I'd uttered it, as the Psalmist might say, and beyond that, God already knew the need and was on it. So why was I bothering to ask? And in his wisdom, the thought went, he had already decided what to do about it. Ah, the old free will question raises its head again. Somewhere in my notes for Act One: Writing for Hollywood is the following quote: "God created until he created a being who could create, then he stopped." While I disagree with the strict theology of the statement (I think God is still creating), I affirm the basic thrust of it. That for some reason, the Maker of things decided to create a being that would join him in the creation. And that the creative acts of the creature would have meaning, reality, and long term consequences for both good and evil. Recently, while trying to come to terms with this prayer thing, it struck me that prayer is an essentially creative act, especially if we believe God bothers to hear us in a truly interactive fashion. That as in all things, we have choice as to what we call God's attention to. Now that's an odd statement, as if God needs his attention called to anything, but isn't that in essence what prayer is? A paying of attention, a joining with God (as Dallas Willard might say) in the ongoing unfolding of his kingdom? If artists call an audience/viewer to attend to a particular thing, isn't that what we are doing as we play to the audience of one in our prayer life? Aren't we calling God to join us in attending to a particular person, or need, or hope? Prayer...a strange and mysterious thing, as with all things of power... 10:09:25 PM   comment []

© Copyright 2004 Jeff Berryman .