Holy Goose

My brother has spent a lot of time studying the Celts and their missionary journeys. He lit up with recognition as we talked and said: “Do you know were the phrase a wild goose chase comes from?” The phrase symbolized, for me, a useless, futile exercise that produced nothing. I wasn’t prepared for the explanation he shared. The Celts had a name for the Holy Spirit - an Geadh-Glas which means the wild goose.  By this they meant that the Spirit of God can’t be put in a neat box, confined to a vision and values statement or tamed within a strategic plan. The wild goose is unpredictable (like the wind). Taking seriously this sense of God, Celtic missionaries went on wild goose chases entering the spaces, towns, hamlets, and villages of 7th century England in the conviction that the wild goose was out there ahead of them. They were open to being surprised by the wild goose, prayerfully asking what God was doing and joining there by naming the name of Jesus, dwelling among people and opening the great story of God’s love and grace.

Alan Roxburgh 

Communal life

Communal life is again being recognized by Christans today as the grace that it is, as the extraordinary, the “roses and lilies” of Christian life.


Dietrich Bonhoeffer in “Life Together” HarperSanFrancisco, 1954 p21

Body of Christ

Now we are in him. Where he is, there we are too, in the incarnation, on the Cross, and in his resurrection. We belong to him because we are in him. That is why the Scriptures call us the Body of Christ.


Dietrich Bonhoeffer in “Life Together” HarperSanFrancisco, 1954 p24

disillusionment

Just as surely as god desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves.


…

Even when sin and misunderstanding burden the communal life, is not the sinning brother, with whom I, too, stand under the Word of Christ? Will no his sin be a constant occasion for me to give thanks that both of us may live in the forgiving love of God in Jesus Christ? Thus the very hour of disillusionment with my boether becomes incomparably salutary, because it so thoroughly teaches me that neither of us can ever live by our own words and deeds, but only by that on Word and Deed which really binds us together—the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ. When the morning mist of dreams vanish, then dawns the bright day of Christian fellowship.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer in “Life Together” HarperSanFrancisco, 1954 p 27, 28-29

Human love, spirit love

Human love lives by uncontrolled and uncontrollable dark desires; spiritual loves lives in the clear light of service ordered by the truth. Human love produces human subjections, dependence, constraint; spiritual love creates freedom of the brethren under the Word. Human love breeds hothouse flowers; spiritual love creates the fruits that grow healthily in accord with God’s good will in the rain and storm and sunshine of God’s outdoors.


Dietrich Bonhoeffer in “Life Together” HarperSanFrancisco, 1954 p37

To whom the morning belongs

The early morning belongs to the Church of the risen Christ. At the break of light it remembers the morning on which death and sin lay prostrate in defeat and new life and salvation were given to mankind.


Dietrich Bonhoeffer in “Life Together” HarperSanFrancisco, 1954 p41

Proper reading of the scriptures is not a technical exercise that can be learned; it is something that grows or diminishes according to one’s own spiritual frame of mind. The crude, ponderous rendition of the Bible by many a Christian grown old in experience often far surpasses the most highly polished reading of a minister.


Dietrich Bonhoeffer in “Life Together” HarperSanFrancisco, 1954 p56-57

New Song

The new song is sung first in the heart. Otherwise it cannot be sung at all.


Dietrich Bonhoeffer in “Life Together” HarperSanFrancisco, 1954 p58

Our bread

The table fellowship of Christians implies obligation. It is our daily bread that we eat, not my own. We share our bread. Thus we are firmly bound to one another not only in the Spirit but in our whole physical being. The one bread that is given to our fellowship links us together in a firm covenant. Now none dares go hungry as long as another has bread, and he who breaks this fellowship of the physical life also breaks the fellowship of the Spirit.


Dietrich Bonhoeffer in “Life Together” HarperSanFrancisco, 1954 p68

Speak surely

None speaketh surely but he that would gladly keep silence if he might.


Thomas a Kempis

Listen, speak

We should listen with the ears of God that we may speak the Word of God.


Dietrich Bonhoeffer in “Life Together” HarperSanFrancisco, 1954 p99

Seek God, not happiness

“Seek God, not happiness”—this is the fundamental rule of all meditation. If you seek God alone, you will gain happiness: that is its promise.


Dietrich Bonhoeffer in “Life Together” HarperSanFrancisco, 1954 p84

Interrupted by God

We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God. God will be constantly crossing our paths and canceling our plans by sending us people with claims and petitions.


Dietrich Bonhoeffer in “Life Together” HarperSanFrancisco, 1954 p99

God alone

God alone judges, and God’s judgment is helpful and healing.


Dietrich Bonhoeffer in “Life Together” HarperSanFrancisco, 1954 p107

Closed Doors

A door opens to me. I go in and am faced with a hundred closed doors.


Antonio Prochia

Four royal sons were questioning what specialty they should master. They said to one antoerh, “let us search the earth and learn a special science.” So they decided, and after they had agreed on a place where they would meet again, the four brothers started off, each in a different direction. Time went by, and the brothers met again at an appointed meeting place, and they asked one another what they had learned. “I have mastered a sciences,” said the first, “which makes it possible for me, if I have nothing but a pieces of bone of some creature, to create straightaway the flesh that goes with it.” “I,” said the second, “know how to grow that creatures’ skin and hair if there is flesh on its bones.” The third said, “I am able to create its limbs if I have the flesh, the skin and the hair.” “And I,” concluded the fourth, “know how to give life to that creature if its form is complete with limbs.”


Thereupon the four brothers went into the jungle to find a piece of bone so that they could demonstrate their specialties. As fate would have it, the bone they found was a lion’s, but they did not know that and picked up the bone. One added flesh to the bone, the second grew hid and hair, the third completed it with matching limbs, and the fourth gave the lion life. Shaking its heavy mane, the ferocious beast arose with its menacing mouth, sharp teeth, and merciless claws and jumped on his creators. He killed them all and vanished contentedly into the jungle.

Tales of Ancient India

Conversion and Revolution

I am increasingly convinced that conversion is the individual equivalent of revolution.


Henri Nowen in Wounded Healer, Doubleday, 1979, p19

Commpassionate Christianity

Through compassion it is possible to recognize that the craving for love that men feel resides also in our own hearts, that the cruelty that the world knows all too well is also rooted in our own impulses. Through compassion we also sense our hope for forgiveness in our friends’ eyes and our hatred I their bitter mouths. When they kill, we know that we could have done it; when they give life, we know that we can do the same. For the compassionate man nothing human is alien: no joy and no sorrow, no way of living and no way of dying.


Henri Nowen in Wounded Healer, Doubleday, 1979, p41

People of prayer

The Christian leader must be in the future what he has always had to be in the past: a man of prayer, a man who has to pray, and who has to pray always.


Henri Nowen in Wounded Healer, Doubleday, 1979, p47

Being presence

Nobody can offer leadership to anyone unless he makes his presence known—that is, unless he steps forward out of the anonymity and apathy of his milieu and makes the possibility of fellowship visible.


Henri Nowen in Wounded Healer, Doubleday, 1979, p65

Eyes full of expectation

A Christian leader is not a leader because he announces a new idea and tries to convince others of its worth; he is a leader because he faces the world with eyes full of expectation, with the expertise to take away the veil that covers its hidden potential.


Henri Nowen in Wounded Healer, Doubleday, 1979, p75

Community

Community arises where the sharing of pain takes place, not as a stifling form of self-complaint, but as a recognition of God’s saving promises.


Henri Nowen in Wounded Healer, Doubleday, 1979, p94

Announcement!

But this is exactly the announcement of the wounded healer: “The master is coming—not tomorrow, but today, not next year, but this year, not after all our misery is passed, but in the middle of it, not in another place but right here where we are standing.”


Henri Nowen in Wounded Healer, Doubleday, 1979, p95

800 Pacos

There's a Spanish story of a father and son who had become estranged. The son ran away, and the father set off to find him. He searched for months to no avail. Finally, in a last desperate effort to find him, the father put an ad in a Madrid newspaper. The ad read: Dear Paco, meet me in front of this newspaper office at noon on Saturday. All is forgiven. I love you. Your Father. On Saturday 800 Pacos showed up, looking for forgiveness and love from their fathers.
Bits & Pieces, October 15, 1992, p. 13.

Andre Gide describes the time when he observed a moth being reborn from its chrysalis during a classroom lecture. He was filled with wonder, awe, joy at this metamorphosis, this resurrection. Enthusiastically, he showed it to his professor who replied with a note of disapproval, “What! Did you know that a chrysalis is the envelope of a butterfly? Every butterfly you see has come out of a chrysalis. It’s perfectly nature.” Disillusioned, Gide wrote, “Yes, indeed, I know my natural history as well, perhaps better than he…But because it was natural could he not see that it was marvelous? Poor creature! From that day I took a dislike to him and a loathing to his lessons.”


Richard Foster, A Celebration of Discipline, HarperCollins, 1998 p 73

If we love creation...

Of this much we can be sure: if we love the creation, we will learn from it.


Richard Foster, A Celebration of Discipline, HarperCollins, 1998 p 74

Freedom from Anxiety

Freedom from anxiety is characterized by three inner attitude. If what we have we receive as a gift, and if what we have is to be cared from by God, and if what we have is available to others, then we will posses freedom from anxiety. This is the inward reality of simplicity. However, if what we have we believe we have gotten, and if what we have we believe we must hold onto, and if what we have is not available to others, then we will live in anxiety.


Richard Foster, A Celebration of Discipline, HarperCollins, 1998 p88

Cross-life

The most radical social teaching of Jesus was his total reversal of the contemporary notion of greatness. Leadership is found in becoming the servant of all. Power is discovered in submission. The foremost symbol of this radical servanthood is the cross. “He [Jesus] humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2:8). But note this: Christ not only died a “cross-death,” he lived a “cross-life”. The way of the cross, the way of a suffering servant was essential to his ministry. Jesus lived the cross-life in submission to all human beings. He was the servant of all. He flatly rejected the cultural givens of position and power when he said, “You are not to be called rabbi….Neither be called masters…” (Matthew 23:8-10). Jesus shattered the customs of his day when he lived out the cross-life by taking women seriously and by being willing to meet with children. He lived the cross-life when he took a towel and washed the feet of is disciples. This Jesus who easily could have called down a legion of angels to his aid chose instead the cross-death of Calvary. Jesus’ life was the cross-life of submission and service. Jesus’ death ewas the cross-death of conquest by suffering.


Richard Foster, A Celebration of Discipline, HarperCollins, 1998 p 115-116

As Thou Wilt

As thou wilt; what thou wilt; when thou wilt.


Thomas a Kempis

Greatest and Least

Whenever there is trouble over who is the greatest, there is trouble over who is least. That is the crux of the matter for us isn’t it? Most of us know we will never be the greatest; just don’t let us be the least.


Gathered at the Passover feast, the disciples were keenly aware that someone needed to wash the others’ feet. The problem was that the only people who washed feet were the least. So there they sat, feet caked with dirt. It was such a sore point that they were not even going to talk about it. No one wanted to be considered the least. The Jesus took a towel and a basin and redefined greatness.

Richard Foster, A Celebration of Discipline, HarperCollins, 1998 p 126

True Service

True service finds it almost impossible to distinguish the small from the large service. Where a difference is noted, the true servant is often drawn to the small service, not out of false modesty, but because he genuinely sees it as the more important task. He indiscriminately welcomes all opportunities to serve.


Richard Foster, A Celebration of Discipline, HarperCollins, 1998 p128

Service of Common Courtesy

There is the service of common courtesy. Such deeds o f compassion have fallen on hard times in our day. But we must never despise the rituals of relationship that are in every culture. It is one of the few ways left in modern society to acknowledge the value of one another. We are “to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all men” (Titus 3:2).


Missionaries understand the value of courtesy. They would not dare to blunder into some village demanding to be heard without first going through the appropriate rituals of introduction and acquaintanceship. Yet we feel we can violate these rituals in our own culture and still be received and heard. And we wonder why no one will listen.

Richard Foster, A Celebration of Discipline, HarperCollins, 1998 p137

A Morning Prayer

Begin the day by praying, “Lord Jesus, as it would please you bring me someone today whom I can serve.”


Richard Foster, A Celebration of Discipline, HarperCollins, 1998 p140

Confession

Although I had read in the Bible about the ministry of confession in the Christian brotherhood [family], I had never experienced it until I was pasturing my first church. I did not take the difficult step of laying bare my inner life to another out of any deep burden or sense of sin. I did not feel there was anything wrong in the least—except one thing. I longed for more power to do the work of God. I felt inadequate to deal with many of the desperate needs that confronted me. There had to be more spiritual resources than I was experiencing (and I’d had all the Holy spirit experiences you’re supposed to have; you name them, I’d had them!) “Lord,” I prayed, “is there more you want to bring into my life? I want to be conquered and ruled by you. If there is anything blocking the flow of your power, reveal it to me.” He did. Not by an audible voice or even through any human voice, but simply by a growing impression that perhaps something in my past was impeding the flow of his life. So devised a plan. I divided my life into three periods: childhood, adolescence, adulthood. On the first day I came before God in prayer and meditation, pencil and paper in hand. Inviting him to reveal to me anything during my childhood that needed either forgiveness or healing or both, I waited in absolute silence for some ten minutes. Anything about my childhood that surfaced to my conscious mind, I wrote down. I made no attempt to analyze the items or put any value judgment on them. My assurance was that God would reveal anything that needed healing touch. Having finished, I put the pencil and paper down for the day. The next day I went through the same exercise for my adolescent years, and the third day for my adult years.


Paper in hand, I then went to a dear brother in Christ. I had made arrangements with him a week ahead so he understood the purpose of our meeting. Slowly, sometimes painfully, I read my sheet, adding only those comments necessary to make the sin clear. When I had finished, I began to return the paper to my briefcase. Wisely, my counselor/confessor gently stopped my hand and took the sheet of paper. Without a word he took a wastebasket, and, as I watched, he tore the paper into hundreds of tiny pieces and dropped them into it. That powerful, nonverbal expression of forgiveness was followed by a simple absolution. My sins, I knew, were as far away as the east is from the west.

Next, my friend, with the laying on of hands, prayed a prayer of healing for all the sorrows and hurts of the past. The power of that prayer lives with me today.

I cannot say I experienced any dramatic feelings. I did not. In fact, the entire experience was an act of sheer obedience with no compelling feelings in the least. But I am convinced that it set me free in ways I had not known before. It seemed that I was released to explore what were for me new and uncharted regions of the Spirit. Following that event, I began to move into several of the Disciplines described in this book that I had never experienced before. Was there a causal connection? I do not know, and frankly I do not care. It is enough to have obeyed the inner prompting from above.

There was one interesting sidelight. The exposure of my humanity evidently sparked a freedom in my counselor/friend, for directly following his prayer for me, he was able to express a deep and troubling sin that he had been unable to confess until then. Freedom begets freedom.

Richard Foster, A Celebration of Discipline, HarperCollins, 1998 p149-150

Spirit touches spirit

We can have the best possible liturgy, but we have not worshiped the Lord until Spirit touches spirit.


Richard Foster, A Celebration of Discipline, HarperCollins, 1998 p158-159

Go!

So go, even if you don’t feel like it. God, even if worship has been discouraging and dry before. Go, praying. Go, expecting. Go, looking for God to do a new and living work among you.


Richard Foster, A Celebration of Discipline, HarperCollins, 1998 p172-173

Unity in the Spirit

A classic and dramatic illustration [of spirit-given unity] occurred in 1758. John Woolman and others had pricked the conscience of the Society of Friends over their involvement int eh demonic institution of slavery. As Philadelphia Yearly Meeting gathered for its business meetins that year, the slavery issue was a mojor agenda item. A great deal with at stake and the issue was hotly debated. John Woolman, with head bowed and tears in his eyes, sat through the various sessions in complete silence. Finally, after hours of agonizing prayer he rose and spoek. “my mind is led to consider the purity of the divin Being and the justice of His judgment, and herein my sould is covered with arfulness…Many slaves on this continent are oppressed and their cries have entered into the ears of the Most High…It is not a time for delay.” Firmly and tenderly Woolman dealt with the problems of the “private interests of some person” and the “friendships which do not stand upon ummutable foundation.” With prophetic boldness he warned the Yearly Meeting that if it failed to do its “duty in firmness and constancy” then “God may by terrible things in righteousness answer us in the matter.”


The entire Yearly Meeitng melted into a spirit of unity as a result of the compassionate witness. They responded as one voice to remove slavery from their midst. John Greenleaf Whittier states that those sessions “must ever be regarded as one of the most important religious convocations int eh history of the Christian Church.”

That untied decision is particularly impressive when we realize that the Society of Friends was the only body that asked slaveholding members to reimburse their slaves for their time in bondage. It is also striking to realize that under the prompting of the Spirit, Quakers had voluntarily done something that not only of the antislavery revolutionary leaders—George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry—was willing to do. So influential was the united decision of 1758 that by the time of the signing of the Declaration of Independence Quakers had completely freed themselves from the institution o slavery.

Richard Foster, A Celebration of Discipline, HarperCollins, 1998 p183-184

Prayer in Schools

A friend of mine who teaches emotionally handicapped children decided Godwanted him to pray for them. Of course, he did not tell the children what he was doing; he simply did it. When one of the children would crawl under his desk and assume a fetal position, my teacher friend would take the child in his arms and pray silently that the resurrected Christ would heal the hurt and self-hate within the boy. So as not to embarrass him, the teacher would walk around the room continuing his regular duties while he prayed. After a while the child would relax and was soon back at his desk. Sometimes my friend would ask the boy if he ever remembered what it felt like to win a race. If the boy said yes, he would encourage him to picgture himself crossing the finish line with all his friends cheering him on and loving him. In that way the child was able to cooperate in the prayer project as well as reinforce his own self-acceptance. (Is it not ironic that people will be deeply concerned over the issue of prayer in public schools but will seldom utilize the opportunity to pray for schoolchildren in this way, against which there can be no law!) By the end of the school year, every child but two was able to return to a regular classroom. Coincidence? Perhaps, but as Archbishop William Temple notes, the coincidences occur much more frequently when he prays.


Richard Foster, A Celebration of Discipline, HarperCollins, 1998 p42-43

I was once called to a home to pray for a seriously ill baby girl. Her four-year-old brother was I the room, and so I told him I needed his help to pray for his baby sister. He was delighted, and so was I since I know that children can often pray with unusual effectiveness. He climbed up into the chair beside me. “Let’s play a little game,” I said. “Since we know that Jesus is always with us, let’s imagine that he is sitting over in the chair across from us. He is waiting patiently for us to center our attention on him. When we see him, we start thinking more about his love that how sick Julie is. He smiles, gets up and comes over to us. Then, let’s both put our hands on Julie, and when we do, Jesus will put his hands on top of ours. We’ll watch the light from Jesus flow into your little sister and make her well. Let’s watch the healing power of Christ fight with bad germs until they are all gone. Okay?” Seriously, the little on nodded. Together we prayed in this childlike way and then thanked the Lord that what we had prayed was the way it was going to be. Now, I do not know exactly what happed, now how it was accomplished, but I do know that the next morning Julie with perfectly well.


Richard Foster, A Celebration of Discipline, HarperCollins, 1998 p41-42

Deep People

Superficiality is the curse of our age. The doctrine of instant satisfaction is a primary spiritual problem. The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people.


Richard Foster, A Celebration of Discipline, HarperCollins, 1998 p1

Change Thyself

Everybody thinks of changing humanity and nobody thinks of changing himself.


Leo Tolstoy

In Contemporary society, our Adversary majors in three things: noise, hurry, crowds.


Richard Foster, A Celebration of Discipline, HarperCollins, 1998 p15

Risky Business

Once [the Isrealites] leaned a little about God, they realized that being in his presence was risky business and told Moses so: “you speak to us, and we will hear; but let not God speak to us, lest we die.” (Ex 20:19). In this way they could maintain religious respectability without the attendant risks.


Richard Foster, A Celebration of Discipline, HarperCollins, 1998 p17

What Joy it is!

Only to sit and think of God,
    Oh what a joy it is!
To think the thought, to breathe the name.
   Earth has no higher bliss

Frederick W. Faber

 

Us and God

Human beings seem to have a perpetual tendency to have somebody else talk to God for them. We are content to have the message second-hand. One of Israel’s fatal mistakes was their insistence upon having a human king rather than resting in the theocratic rule of God over them. We can detect a note of sadness in the word of the Lord, “They have rejected me from being king over them” (1 Sam 8:7). The history of religion is the story of an almost desperate scramble to have a king, a mediator, a priest, a pastor, a go-between. In this way we do not need to go to God ourselves. Such an approach saves us from the need to change, for to be in the presence of God is to change.


Richard Foster, A Celebration of Discipline, HarperCollins, 1998 p24

Christianity in Our Time

[A person] who has meditated on the Passion of Christ but has not meditated on the extermination camps of Dachau and auschwitz has not yet fully entered into the experience of Christianity in our time.


Thomas Merton

To Pray is...

To pray is to change.


Richard Foster, A Celebration of Discipline, HarperCollins, 1998 p33