Why Contemplation?

When I think back to when I began weaving the first threads of Mystic Winds, I remember just feeling like I had finally honed in on what I had been feeling in my spirit since a very early age. Perhaps growing up as an only child makes you more attuned to your need for love and for loving presence. Maybe that’s even more the case for someone who lived in the very beautiful and very quiet southwest Michigan countryside. And maybe even more so when you live as a Millenial on lake front property with fewer and fewer neighbors each year. Your own existence is very clear and the need to be seen feels even more poignant.

This wooded grotto was close to the cabin we stayed in that weekend, though I had taken it earlier than my retreat with Greg and company. Closed and given back to the Potawatomi tribe near Dowagiac, MI Crystal Springs UMC Camp was a powerful place for me contemplatively and is sorely missed…

Mystic Winds was seeded when I was given Richard Rohr’s devotions during a retreat with a friend of mine who had recently returned from an Eastern European university where he served in a cross cultural appointment as a chaplain for the students. Upon his return, his call felt strained - I hope he’d agree with that characterization. I was feeling the same in my months after college graduation, marriage, and my certification as a UMC ministerial candidate. I had a deep feeling of not only depression, but the added elements of identity: husband, “adult”, and someone whose call was now confirmed. A lot to live into. At this retreat, a few other men had joined us who were in a similar place that I was: post-college men looking for meaning.

I hadn’t expected to feel that familiar sense of uncertainty and loneliness that comes from not knowing where you are going. And yet, there was a comfort in feeling this with other men who found themselves in this same moment in life. We rested, made meals together, prayed, and just talked. It’s everything I feel the church ought to be. At times the church needs to be the institution working to better the world at 30,000 ft. And sometimes the church needs to be a pop-up convent for retreat and renewal between four men who trust one another enough to be frank about the existential dread weighing on their spirits. I know of nothing more honest and healing than people revealing personal brokenness authentically. 

Image provided by Mikhail Nilov, pexels.com

When Greg had given me the recommendation for Richard Rohr’s devotions, it validated everything I had ever felt about the faith I had inherited from my grandmother and exceeded it to the point where I had been taken back to the most intuitive and potentially scandalous feelings about God I had had as a boy. My skepticism of Christian devotions in general were not only respected, but they were taken seriously by Rohr’s respectful and frank writing. It was not only validating, it changed my life and gave me hope for what spiritual discipline could be. Whether intentional or by accident, Rohr had spoken to a deep thirst I had for a textured, complex, and rich faith from my earliest days.

Mystic Winds was seeded on the day when someone listened to my needs and met them honestly, but also when the writings of a friar in Albuquerque, NM sought to meet people like me. It was a subtle affirmation to the later-learned notion that mystics are encouraged to test the depth of their orthodoxy and traditions and thus deepen it as a result. I desired more and I graciously found it.

Image provided by music4life, pixabay.com

Remember your story:

Christians are tied to one another throughout time. The Great Cloud of Witnesses - those saints both living and with God in eternity - continue to hold each of us as we endeavor to be perfected in love. While the saints have been somewhat lost in the Protestant traditions, I’ve found my expressions of the wider Wesleyanism branch of our collective tradition to widen the definition of “saint.” That is to say, the Christians that have come before us hold us in prayer constantly. Who are those saints for you?

As you sit with this devotion in mind today, think of your own story in faith. Pray this prayer and then spend your time reimagining and remembering that story. Spend time in it, recall it, become it. Breathe that forgone air as you remember it.

“God of the story,

I remember the subtlety of your grace

As it erodes my brokenness

As it calls me deeper into the waves of your mercy

As it strengthens the bones of my faith.

Bring me back to the story we’ve told together

And etch the moment I first felt you move into memory…

For I have forgotten in my hurry, lost sight in my worry.

In the name of the Christ, who was, who is, who will come. Amen.”