key-click prayer

sometimes just the act of writing 
gives me 
an uncommon peace. 

God i feel closer to You 
clicking these keys

as i still my spirit.

i sense You 
in the rhythm of the click,

on the wave of the exhale, 

on the smooth, the flow, the jazz of silent. 

You are here, inhabiting this space.  

flow.  ahhhhhhhh.

following down the current like water to its pool. 

settling me now

moment by moment. 

i sense You at work setting me right.

this feels like true prayer.  

connected to the body,

to the breath. 

sometimes my prayer is distracted..

i have to push toward heaven, 

pressing it uphill, 

not quite sure it's real--

was my heart was in it?  

today, i breathe this prayer.  it lives.  

i release it to the care of God.

i bid it bon voyage...

see you in heaven good friend.. 

do your work.  

this requires time
patience  

and no sense 

of needing to be somewhere else.

war zone

My friend Jay reminded me of something I told him long ago:  We walk, live and move on a battleground of the spirit. Sometimes I lose sight of the intensity of the conflict behind the scenes of our visible physical world, but some days it doesn't take much to remind me.  

the spiritual world 

it is a war zone  

it is skirmish and schrapnel

tripwires and rocketfire

it’s not the garden of eden 

not a game 

not lord of the rings 

it is scruff and red wound 

and life leaking away 

concussions and car bombs 

sabotage, innocent hostages 

and no cease fire in sight

it’s the flesh

the human souls

one or two at a time

walking heads up
eyes darting
in this battlefield 

every last soul is loved 

and worried over in Your sight 

You watch each cell

down to the DNA  

with maternal concern

You scrutinize the iris of every eye  

is there color in our face 

symptoms of shell shock 

battle fatigue

you are on night watch

scanning for any lurking ambush trap set  

around the next dark corner

and how provisions are holding out

who might be there 

if anyone 

to wipe the tear off

prayer is the lifeline

the GPS

chopper touchdown 

the airlift 

Christ is the soldier 

who gives himself for his friend

in a firefight

and so here are we...

singed
but still standing

thanks be to God

something's coming

The Lord had said to Abram, "Go from your country, your people and your father's household to the land I will show you. "I will make you into a great nation... and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you..."

So Abram went, as the Lord had told him...  Genesis 12:1-4

Abram was 75 when You gave him the word.

He and his wife were beyond childbearing age, and she had been unable to conceive anyway, when You called them to parent a great nation.  

He trusted and pulled up stakes and took his possessions and servants and accoutrements and went off because You told him to.  

He left familiarity, the established life he had built, and became a nomad.  A stranger everywhere he went. And not just an anonymous hobo, but a wealthy stranger, a traveling city, with a huge entourage and herds and flocks: a nomadic zoo, a traveling road show. 

He couldn't slip in and out of a town or a country unnoticed. 

This move was a huge commitment for him and would change his status, his life, everything he had built and gathered.

But he had had a clear message from You:

Abram, leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you...

You must have given him hints along the way.  This must not have come entirely out of the blue. 

Then, there was no Israel.  There were no chosen people. No scripture.  No prophecies to consult. He was the first of the tribe. Plucked out of obscurity.

But he believed You.  

Did he believe you earlier in life, in his formative years before You said these things to him? Did he practice-believe?  Work up to trust?

He had no earthly reason to expect anything.  He was a senior, and may have felt unblessed, unknown by the heavens, abandoned, because even with all his herds and flocks, there was no son, no heir.  He may have felt inadequate, unprospered, because offspring were everything in those days.  And the lack of a familial heir made all the herds, flocks, servants, and assets empty and hollow. 

But did you speak into his ear time and again, in preparation, over the years?  Test flights? Did he get an occasional little spasm of hearing a voice?  

Abram.

Abram.

Wait for it.  Wait for it.

Was he like the character Tony in the movie West Side Story?  Given an uncanny sense of expectancy which defied all known natural patterns?

Could be..

Who knows..

There’s something just out of reach

Down the block on a beach

Under a tree

I’ve got a feeling there’s a miracle due

Gonna come through

Coming to me

Could it be

Yes it could

Something’s comin’

Something good

If I can wait,

Something’s comin’

I don't know what it is

But it is gonna be great.

        --(from West Side Story)

So maybe, like Tony, Abram had a recurring sense of destiny that wouldn't leave him alone.

Do I have that?

Hmmm.  Sometimes.  Strangely, at 55, yes. Quirky. Fascinating.

No grand vision, really.  Certainly not an Abraham thing (we have no children and I don't have delusions of grandeur).  

Not a radically strong sense, nor unmistakable.  Often I chalk it up to self-deception.  But I have it nonetheless. A sense of expectancy.  As though I have something to do yet that I must prepare for.

Maybe we all do.  Are we listening?  

With a click

With a shock

Phone’ll jingle

Door will knock

Open the latch...

just one exhale away

So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.  Luke 11:9-10

Help. Flowing.

For every dead end 

or dense fog, 
every disorientation. 

It is not blocked,
Not scrambled at the source.
Not log jammed.

It is not tied up in red tape.

It is not confounded or confused,

It has not lost its way.

God You are flowing Your help this instant.
In real time.

I am not alone on this planet without guidance or assistance.
Ever.

The thing is, 

I must remain wide open, 

not crimping the reception 

with my inattention, 
or doubt.

What if I

lived this day expectantly,

confidently,

assured that the great gates are open

and the rushing river of rescue is available,

waiting only for us to open our souls

and receive it. 

Just a little bit of trust,

And we’re there.

Just one exhale away.

two lenses

I have two lenses through which I can view my world.

They're very different.

I can look at life as a
position to be defended

or as an
adventure to be explored.

The first lens feeds a bubbling undercurrent of anxiety.

The second opens me up to new worlds
and recovers my smile.

A thousand voices tell me to choose the first lens, because the world is a hard place and it will steal what you've been given--the millisecond you're not vigilant.

One Voice tells me to toss that worthless, blurred-up lens of anxious grasping, and start the adventure.

As a person of faith, I must believe I'm not locked in by DNA or past history or the dire warnings of the world.

So... I can choose which lens I look through.

Which will it be today?

the twenty minute window

A word with power is a word that comes from silence. 

So say the Egyptian Desert Fathers of the third century A.D. 

So says one of my old spiritual mentors, the late Henri J. M. Nouwen.

So says the life and speech of Mama Maggie of Cairo, one of my new spiritual mentors.

Our world is wordy, says Nouwen, and we all know that. A conflicting, chaotic rush of verbage. Often we are word-saturated and we tune it all out.  Often it won't let us ignore it.

Where is silence to be found? 

For me it’s a window of about twenty minutes in the early dawn.  Before the dog rushes in, tail flying, near missing my coffee.  Before news and music and blogs and vehicle engine noise rush into my world. 

For those early twenty minutes, I am relatively still.  Sometimes, as Mama Maggie prescribed, I silence my thoughts; listen to my heartbeat.  Then I listen to my spirit.

Then...I silence my own spirit, and try to listen to God’s Spirit.  It’s hard to sort out what exactly is happening in those moments—what are brain synapses firing, what is sleepy REM half-dreaming, what is  true listening, and whether I’m listening to myself, or to God.

But I believe that

in the heavenlies

at the recesses of the dawn

God, always attentive

is sorting that out for me,

or in spite of me.

I do know I get blips, impressions.  I probably receive them throughout the day, carefully customized for me from the Creator.  Spoken in love to me. 

Do I hear them?  Sometimes. But the highest probability of my hearing them is in that sacred early morning twenty minute window--

when I’m still and listening

when the car engines are not humming

when the school buses haven’t arrived

when the sunrise is still a distance away

when silence

calls.

Is there a place, 

a time in your day or evening, 

in your world, 

to listen 

in silence 

to the Great Creator?

sing out loud

Do what you love to do.... a lot.


This is what I sense from You, God, this morning.  


Because You made me to gravitate toward certain lifegiving arts, recreations and adventures-- why would I not engage in what you pull me toward with such joy and vigor?


I'm sitting in a Caribou café, and at the checkout, on a little card, I saw the phrase, Sing out loud.  After I forced myself not to think of it as a marketing slogan, I saw something real and deep in it.


Sing out loud... like... for the sheer joy of it.


Singing (when you're not a professional singer, and if you have no aspiration to be one, and/or it's not all about impressing your friends or wanting to be a rock star) is a sign of inner well being, of a basic happiness.


Remember the old show song from the musical Oklahoma?  Oh what a beautiful morning... sang Curly, the leading man.   He was just grooving, enjoying the cornfields, and the haze on the meadow, and he opened up those vocal cords and let it fly.  The old baritone sang it out and it rang through the cornfields, or...OK... the sound stage.


Why would we not sing out loud for the joy of it, as a gratitude?


Maybe because we're not that happy. Or we're scared, or stressed.  Or we just don't have time to be that free and relaxed in spirit.


Singing, or writing, or playing volleyball, or biking, or board games, or hiking, or playing banjo...exulting in what we can do since we have the ability and health to do it--for the sheer joy of it, brings health to our bones and joy to You, God, who made us, as You take pleasure in our joy, like we take pleasure and delight in the joy in the posture and play of our children or our pets when they are clearly happy and at ease with the world and comfortable in their skin.


But when these pastimes, these natural expressions, become a performance, they can become something less real than when they were done for their own sake, and out of pure gratitude.  And then it becomes about us, and what people think of us, and it's just one more stress-producer.  Defeats the whole purpose.  


Becomes a little idolatry.


It's too easy in this world to go sad;  too easy for healthy people with a good life, to go dark. I'm sure that breaks Your heart.


So... reminder for me for today--
When I can, why would I not breathe and enjoy and make Your heart warm,  and sing out loud-- for You, just for the sake of the ability to do so, for the cornstalks, for the haze on the meadow, for having basic health, and because I'm blessed with people who I love and who love me?

Cain and me

Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil. 3 In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the lord. 4 And Abel also brought an offering—fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, 5 but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast.

6 Then the lord said to Cain, "Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? 7 If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it."    Genesis 4:2-6

Lord of all perfection of design, wild art and heart-stopping beauty, some offerings You accept and look on with favor, and some You don't.  If we were to get angry at the lack of delight and support from You upon our offering, maybe there is something mucking it up, either in the offering itself, or in the spirit in which it’s given, thus tainting the gift.


Maybe it’s something lurking in our lives, our attitude, our relationships.  Maybe it’s greed, or selfishness. Maybe it’s a spirit of self-elevation, pride in our stratospheric position, scrapping competition for your favor, ego gone wild.

Sin is crouching at our door, like a wildcat, says the Lord.


Licking its chops,
sharpening its eye,
instinctively knowing our abilities and our vulnerabilities,
wanting to have us,
and eat us alive.

Like Obiwan Kenobi, or Mr. Miagi, You spoke to Cain:

It desires to have you, young Jedi,

but you must master it.

Cain had enough anger and jealousy in him to kill. Much like Joseph’s brothers years later.  Enough envy to murder.  God, You saw that and favored the other, the one who was pure.  You did not support envy. 

So the question hangs out there for artists, or leaders or influencers:


Is inflammable ego, or smoldering envy, crouching at the door of our inner house, of our bodies, our spirits?

Somehow we need to learn to show up in our world stripped of the toxins, as servants only.


Open handed inner poverty.


The goal is to be able to say in truth:


Nothing in my hand I bring except a desire to help and to serve.  If I be exalted, God keep my soul pure of pride.  If I be abased, I serve at the pleasure of my Lord, whether in the highest elevation or the lowest abyss.

God, giver of my joy, enabler of the work of my hands, is there anything within me that might taint my gift, my sacrifice to You?  What might make it unacceptable and not at all delightful to You--You whom I so want to please?

peace be still (mark 4:35-41)

though the wind and waves pound

and resound

too much for the groaning mast

and the fraying lines

pushed so close to the brink of collapse

though this sorry excuse for a boat

wasn’t built for this

rocking and swaying

reeling and shaking

the boom wildly swinging and banging

though every tolerance is tested

the seal on the verge of breaking

the sound of hull joints cracking

the waves slapping

the wind invading

the water seeping

encroaching

unrelenting

and oh that deadly chill-

peace

be still.

you think you’ll never get to dry ground

you think in a moment you'll be drowning

in the dark waters of the unknown

but even so

breathe

for now

and know

the Pilot 

has it under control.

peace

be still.

Hold On: song written Sept 11, 2001

This weekend there will be services all over the country in stark remembrance of the shattering moment that ripped apart our sense of security and well-being exactly ten years ago.  

I've been asked to sing at my parents' church service on Sunday.  I'll sing Hold On, a song I wrote as events were unfolding with ferocity on the day of September 11, 2001.  The words started forming as startling footage was being played on every station, and all planes nationwide were grounded (which explains the line, "despite the awkward silence in the air").  It was indeed an awkward silence and we all felt it.  In the vacuum that brought New York, and all of us, to our knees, gasping for breath, the question arose in the throats of many of us, "where does God fit into all this?" This song was my way of dealing with it.


Since then, I've revisited these lyrics when earthquakes have buried thousands, tsunamis have swallowed entire islands, and wars have stolen so many of our best and brightest. I've revisited them when cancer took one of my best friends from childhood, and diseases stolen the mobility and well-being of friends and beloved family members. When I read or listen to the song, it holds up for me, because it reminds me of all that, deep down, I know to be true.


hold on


despite the devastation now
beyond the things I'll never understand
God I'm reaching for Your hand
beyond the questions hanging here
despite the awkward silence in the air
I believe that You're still there

and I'll hold on to the Voice that calls my name
hold on to the Heart that feels the pain
hold on to the promise that remains
hold on

and I'll hold on to the Hand that gently guides
hold on to the strength that's left inside
the shreds of belief that just won't die
hold on

the gift of one more day begins
the act of breathing out and breathing in
the will to start again
one more day to serve, to give
to reach beyond the wreckage and to live
to respect the sacred gift

hold on though the world is not the same
hold on to the God who'll never change
hold on to the fragments of your faith
hold on

hold on and believe the Holy One
and know that His justice will be done
hold on to the Kingdom yet to come
hold on

and just hold on for the world is turning still
despite every tremor we will feel
hold on for eternal life is real
hold on

and just hold on though the mountains fall apart
the pieces of hope left in our hearts
will hold us until the healing starts
hold on

just hold on.
--
Link to recording of "Hold On"
Hold On ©2001 Greg Ferguson.  

Mama Maggie of Cairo

From my perspective, the Global Leadership Summit is always a wild adventure. Every year God moves, stirs and shakes things up, and our hope as creatives is to stay alert and attuned to His activity, whenever and wherever it reveals itself. One compelling evidence of this stirring of God’s Spirit is the presence of Mama Maggie of Cairo in Session 5.

She is a unique, disarming leader with a deep soul and a resounding mission.  Her roots run deep in the Coptic Christian tradition.  Born into a family of doctors in the upper echelon of Egyptian society,  she became a professor at American University, the most prestigious university in Egypt.  She knew everybody who was anybody in the glitterati of Cairo.  She had wealth, status, influence and elegance. 

And she let go of it all because her heart was pulled by God into an entirely other world.

She found her heart broken by Mokattam, Garbage City, where Cairo's refuse and rubbish is dumped, processed, harvested, recycled, and repurposed by a community that ekes out a meager livelihood.  The children often walk barefoot among the trash and filth that lines the street and fills the yards.

When she toured Garbage City, Mama Maggie saw past the smell and the mountains of trash and saw the children.  She saw Christ in their eyes, and their infinite potential.  She began to visit them regularly in their shack homes, befriending them and their families.  She listened to them, engaged them, and came to care about them deeply.  Their need for help was so pervasive, she began to enlist others to come alongside her to share in her labor of love. 

As a result, this ministry, which she calls Stephen’s Children, has grown into a dynamo of transformation.  For the past 25 years, she has led a growing army of  home visitors, teachers and helpers, numbering almost 1500 now, most of them young Christ-followers, who agree to give at least two years to this mission. Some of them stay much longer.  She inspires them and develops them into compassionate Christ-centered leaders.   They devote themselves to educating these children, spiritually mentoring them, caring for their medical needs, teaching them about hope, and preparing them for a future in a world full of new options.   Last year, more than 30,000 children were impacted deeply by this ongoing ministry.

It’s a compelling story when a woman of elegance, means and high position throws it all away and becomes a Mother Teresa.  

Mama Maggie’s decision to say no to the values of the prevailing social-climbing culture, and yes to the downward pull of the poorest of the poor, has given the families of Mokattam, and now other areas of Egypt as well, a dignity of soul that God has seen in them all along.  She and her team have given themselves fully to revealing and nurturing that bright promise, and lifting the entire community--one child, one family at a time. 

Mama Maggie will grace our stage during Session 5, Friday morning.

We’d love it if you would pray not only for her, but for the entire Summit event.  God continues to stir and move and shape and surprise. 

And we want to be ready. 

The Global Leadership Summit happens this Thursday and Friday, August 11-12, broadcast from Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, IL.   There are satellite-linked sites near most major cities in the U.S.  It will then be experienced on a delayed basis in the next several months in countries around the globe.

Ramping up to The Global Leadership Summit 2011!

Revving up the engines. Wondering what wondrous surprises the Great Creator has in mind.


I'll be back up to speed here on this blog after the Summit push is complete.  In the meantime, I so hope some of you get to experience the event!  Watch for Mama Maggie, Session 5, Friday morning. That session will contain a lot of Soul.  :-)


Pray for us, if you will!  For the teams, for tech to go well, for sync to sites all over North America, for our faculty, for our interviewers, for presence of mind, physical energy, organizational fluidity and tuned-in spirits.  God will move... I just know it.  

scribbling

...Jesus declared, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”

“How can a man be born when he is old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born!” (John 3:3-4)

I see how important it is to become like a child to enter the Kingdom of God, to approach Him.  How do we with our sophistication, our learnings, our language,  our history, our ingrained patterns, do this?  We can’t go back in time... How can I do it?  Do I study harder?  Focus harder?  Do I make myself be quiet for long stretches of time? Assume a certain posture?

Maybe we need to purposefully, intentionally let go of our jaded adulthood.  Not going back in time, but… beyond time. 

I know too much, I've learned too much.  And I get too cerebral and earthbound.  I default to automatic responses...autopilot.  In so doing I numb out, and drift too far away from the God I want to really love.  To become childlike in the sense I think God is hoping for, I have to purposefully forget stuff.  Forget my preconceptions, my culture, my history... even my style of praying.  So..

I experimented...I started writing letters to God… purposefully stream of consciousness.


Praying freestyle on the page.  Breaking the rules of composition. Keeping the pen moving, without punctuation or forethought or editing very few capitals or even rules of grammar.  at times I just let it fly unlearning UNLEARNING every buzz phrase I ever learned every church word spiritual word knowing nothing nothing except God except my shepherd who knows me and every brain wave and every pain and every hope and every dream unlearning and stopping the reasoning and worry lists and ever infringing sense of rights and responsibilities going right brain and letting it flow..

I think you get the idea. 

The other day I stumbled across one of my first experiments in this practice—a letter I scrawled to God back in 1998.  

At the time I believe I was on a beach (that always helps) …I had a small pad of paper (sunscreen smudges and all) and I just wanted to let go of all effort and preconceptions and keep the pen moving from right to left on the page, without thinking, without crafting, without forethought - directing my thoughts and feelings Godward as best I could. 

Not great literature.  Not even close.  But it's written prayer from the gut--doing an end run around my mind.  That's what had to happen.  That's what makes it an effective practice for me.

Here’s what I scrawled out, freestyle, back then:

scribbling

move in motion

move in steps

move where you lead

i will go

i have no reason

to resist

i have no mind

turned on now

i want just to

see your smile

i hope you will

love this love

i hope you will

love this hope

baby steps

toward your heart

i could be your

flowing blood

i could swim

into your flood

of living water

this is true

and clear and pure

and visceral

this is hope

in raw form

this is peace

a child in your arms

i try not to try

just alone in love

alone in floating

closer to your heart

short phrases

can say so much

prayers don’t have

to be so long

i could be a man of fewer words

i could be a servant

in your temple

reading the signs

moving slow

resting simple

in a heart

that is let go

i feel the rhythm

i find the things

that are real

inside me

looking for the passageway

from me to you

from you to me

jacob’s ladder

where angels ascend

and descend

from heaven to earth

i am looking for the passageway

i will tread carefully

not wanting to be misled

by any other

only led by you

don’t let me be led astray

i want only your heart

only your heart

only your mind

i want to connect

only to the vine

--

Maybe this is a practice you'd want to try--praying freestyle onto the page..  It's easier than you think.  Baby steps.  And it can be liberating.  And maybe, like me, you'll see its potential as you look for a useful way to move your heart and soul closer to God.
I'd love to hear your thoughts...