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Subscribe to CommentsBack from vacation Up North (f you seek a pleasant peninsula–look about you!). Spent all day yesterday cleaning up my home office, where my praying space is. In Mystically Wired I have a little section on making a physical space for prayer in your home or apartment and keeping that one spot clear for prayer. No paying bills or arguing with your wife in that space. A set apart place.
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Just got back from a sweet time in Sugar Land, Texas, home to the Sugar Land Vineyard and the headquarters of Vineyard: A Community of Churches. It’s the deep South. Tom DeLay’s old congressional district. Senior Pastor of the Sugar Land Vineyard is Reagan Waggoner, named after you know who. A talented younger pastor who has the Jesus nerve to teach on social justice. A church I’d gladly attend every Sunday. And a place I learned the wisdom of that Southern phrase, “y’all.”
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If you’re a young pastor, chances are you’re electronically connected: emailing, text messaging, Facebook, all the day long. And you know this has an addictive quality. The brain is wired to be alert and curious about any new information. And electronic media delivers! We consume triple the daily information that we did (er, I did) in 1960. While new media brings myriad advantages, you know in your bones that it’s also a curse: a steady stream of white noise that leaves you feeling a mile wide and an inch deep.
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Detroit Tiger pitcher, Armando Galarraga, had every right to call for Jim Joyce’s head on a platter. Joyce, the first plate umpire, blew the call on what would have been the final out of a perfect game.
After the game, Galarraga expressed his respect for Joyce as a first-rate umpire and let him off the hook with a simple and poignant, “Nobody’s perfect.” Kind words from a man who had just pitched a perfect game ruined by an imperfect call.
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As the engineers seek to contain the gusher in the Gulf of Mexico, how do we get our hearts around what’s happening there?
An ancient take on the world around us might help. Few people seem to notice that in the creation account of Genesis, chapter one, God blessed the sea creatures and the birds of the air—the very creatures affected by the British Petroleum oil spill—first.
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The thesis of Mystically Wired: Exploring New Realms in Prayer is simple: Most of us only use a small portion of our brains when praying and there’s more to pray with than that. Mainly we use the parts of our brain used for study, for conversation, perhaps for problems solving, analysis, and argument. We use the rational parts of our brain. Sometimes we add the parts of our brain that sing, perhaps even the parts of the brain engaged in tongues speaking.
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Today is the official release date for Mystically Wired. It’s a book about intimacy, a hallmark of the spirituality I learned from John Wimber, captured in the intimate worship songs of Vineyard. But, as the sub-title (Exploring New Realms in Prayer) infers, the book explores new forms of prayer, new ways of praying, and new experiences mediated by those new ways. Which, of course, are mainly old ways, forgotten, neglected or left unexplored thanks to that great blinding influence: prejudice.
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Jesus, Moses and Elijah met on a mountain. The disciples fell asleep as glory short-circuited their attention span. Jesus blazed whiter than the white hot sun. Hmmmm….the most extraordinary experiences of God seem to happen out in nature, as though nature were an outdoor cathedral.
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Did you hear about the man who talked to the moon when he prayed? And to the sun and the stars, to the fish, birds, and trees. Is this allowed? Is it proper? Is it sane? Should someone take him aside and set him straight? Or was the man inspired?
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Several years ago on vacation, a still small voice told me, “Pay attention to what I’m doing among liberals.” Words of that unexpected specificity don’t come often to me, so when they do I pay attention. Thus began a significant shift in my attentiveness. What we pay attention to matters. What we look for matters.
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