This last chapter is an invitation to incorporate some of these Soul Feast practices as daily bread.
 
Looking back over these last nine weeks I can say that I’ve rediscovered a couple of practices that nourish me. Most of all, I have rediscovered my garden. There has been a lot of hard work out there and there’s still a lot of hard work to do, but I’ve found that my garden labor has created time and space for prayer and reflection even as it has connected me to God’s creation.
 
Even the gardening process has been a metaphor for spiritual work. I’ve cleared out weeds, turned over soil, pruned/moved/tended existing plants and I’ve added some newcomers to my garden. Gardening has also let me do spiritual work that parallels those garden tasks.
 
My interior “weeds” have been subject to confession and pardon (even if they may well grow back again!). I’ve turned over texts, from the Bible, to commentaries, to books, to Thompson’s chapters. There’s been time to tend to prayer concerns from the personal to the global. And as I was out in the garden yesterday, I kept asking myself if it’s time to add another intentional spiritual practice to my routine. (Honestly, I might just keep up the gardening!)
 
Thompson suggests three questions for discerning whether and which spiritual practice(s) to adopt: 1) Practice-wise, what am I deeply attracted to or repelled by, and why? 2) Where do I feel God calling me to balance or stretch my spirit? 3) What practices best fit my circumstances or season of life? Her hope is to encourage us toward a commitment, but not a commitment just for the sake of having made one, but that we might find ourselves drawn “into greater intimacy with the Lover of [our] soul[s].” (p. 161)
 
>Pause to consider: A quote in the margin of page 161 says “Abba Poemen said about Abba Pior that every day he made a fresh beginning.” What Soul Feast of a fresh beginning might you make?
​

Brandon will pick up the NRPC blog for a while beginning next week. I’ll be interested to see in what direction he takes the project. Meanwhile, I’ll sort out a plan for when he passes the baton back to me.
 
Until next time,
Peace
Lisa!
 
Thompson, Marjorie, Soul Feast: An Invitation to the Christian Spiritual Life (New Rev edition). Westminster John Knox Press, 2014.

One sentence on page 2 of Thompson’s chapter 9 stopped me in my tracks.
 
The entire time I’ve been doing this blog project based on Thompson’s Soul Feast, I’ve been amazed at the ways the particular practices have intersected with the peculiarities of life in the time of coronavirus. Sabbath, Worship and Fasting have been especially poignant in this time when usual routines are so thoroughly upended.
 
So, I’ve been wondering what this Hospitality chapter would say and how it might speak to this time when hospitality – at least hospitality as we commonly understand it – is verboten.
 
>Pause to consider: Regarding “hospitality as we commonly understand it,” Thompson invites us to consider these questions: What are your most vivid memories of receiving hospitality? Of offering it?
 
The sentence that stopped me in my tracks occurs in Thompson’s section on “Hospitality in Jewish and Christian Tradition.” In particular, she writes that “hospitality to strangers was a matter of mutual survival. It was a kind of social covenant, an implied commitment to transcend human differences in order to meet common human needs.” (p. 132)
 
This is exactly the understanding of hospitality that I’ve been considering as I wondered to myself about hospitality in the time of coronavirus.
 
For the first sixty days or so of this massive interruption of life as we knew it, hospitality seemed to blossom. Seems counterintuitive, doesn’t it? We shut down human-to-human contact, closed down schools/businesses/restaurants/churches/offices and locked down our homes. At the same time, though, we opened ourselves to what was happening next door.
 
Our neighborhood children wrote chalk notes to folks on our street and delivered painted stones to many a stoop. When we’d see Fritz on the way to the mailbox, we’d ask whether he and Helen – the senior-most couple on our street – needed anything from the grocery store. And several families nearby are gathering regularly for lawn chair visits (at a distance, of course). I even think I experienced an uptick in waves and smiles between drivers and pedestrians and between grocery shoppers and check-stand clerks. I suppose isolation at home brought out our friendliness and concern on those precious few occasions when we ventured out.
 
>Pause to consider: What new sorts of hospitality have you observed during stay-at-home orders? What forms of hospitality have you been missing? 

​Until next time,
Peace!
Lisa
 
Thompson, Marjorie, Soul Feast: An Invitation to the Christian Spiritual Life (New Rev edition). Westminster John Knox Press, 2014.

Apart from guidance that is directive, as when Ben helped me navigate a particular hurdle, spiritual guides can also be shining signposts (guiding 'stars' - hence my garden selections this week? insert cheesy grin here) that bring us to new awareness about the life of faith.

Bob Bardin – the pastor who preached when I was installed as Pastor at North Raleigh – is another spiritual guide who has shaped my life. He was the pastor at my home church from about the time I graduated from college and on through my first career. I wasn’t there week in and week out (I lived in a different city), but Bob’s engaging sermons and worship leadership fed my spirit every time I worshiped in Wilmington. Of course he guided me when he suggested that I visit with Ben Campbell Johnson, but was even more of an influence on me in the ways he taught me about grace in the way he lived his life.

I remember a phone conversation with Bob shortly after I landed at White Memorial. His parents were members there and visiting with them made me want to catch up – it had been so many years since our last encounter and his life and ministry had been, well, turned upside down. “Tell me what you’ve been doing.” I asked Bob. “Well, I’ve recognized that I’m an ‘extra grace required’ person and I’m serving in an ‘extra grace required’ church, so we are finding our way together.” One sentence spoke volumes to me. It was confession, assurance of pardon and invitation to discipleship all rolled into one!

Our paths crossed again several years later when I was serving as vacancy counselor for a church in Goldsboro. (You might say that vacancy counselors are spiritual directors for search committees as they journey through an interim period and toward new pastoral leadership!) Imagine my delight when I learned that that congregation was in conversation with one of the influencers of my own spiritual life, Bob Bardin. It was a privilege when I was able to be a part of Bob’s re-entry into ministry in the PC(USA) and an absolute joy when he was able to be a part of my new ministry at NRPC.

Spiritual directors can also be spiritually attuned friends who journey alongside you as you make your way in faith and life. Such a peer-to-peer relationship might stretch over a season or a lifetime. Or spiritual directors can be more formalized relationships that might feel like a cross between talking with a counselor and talking with a pastor. And, of course, many pastors are gifted to function as spiritual directors.

>Pause and Consider: Who has shaped your understanding of grace or helped you understand its depths?

One of the marginal quotes in Thompson’s chapter summarizes the role of a spiritual director: “So what does the spiritual director teach? In the simplest and also most profound terms, the spiritual director is simultaneously a learner and a teacher of discernment: What is happening? Where is God in this person’s life? What is the story? Where does this person’s story fit in our common Christian story?” (p. 116, quoting Margaret Guenther)

This chapter on spiritual direction is a reminder that we are not alone as we make the journey of faith. Many have traveled this way before, many are making this journey even as we are and many will surely come behind us. Thompson’s urge – and mine – is that you seek out a partner or mentor who can guide you and accompany you as you journey ever deeper into relationship with the risen and living One. (And if you’re looking for a formal spiritual director, I’ll be glad to help you in your search!)

Until next time,
Peace
Lisa

Thompson, Marjorie, Soul Feast: An Invitation to the Christian Spiritual Life (New Rev edition). Westminster John Knox Press, 2014

(Postscript: About the time that I was making my way back into active church life, Sue Monk Kidd was writing When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life's Sacred Questions. I listened to that book on Audible over the weekend and can recommend it as an armchair form of spiritual direction offered by a consummate story teller. Would love to collect names of anyone who'd want to work through that book together? Lemmeknow!)

Somewhere in between “I’m too busy to spend time reflecting on my life” and “I spend more time reflecting on life than any other aspect of living” there is a point where we are constructively aware of our best and worst selves and able to live honestly and gratefully with our neighbors and Lord. Practicing that sweet spot is what Thompson urges us toward in chapter 7 of Soul Feast.
​
Those words “honestly” and “gratefully” reflect two basic truths Thompson sets out as a crucial foundation for healthy self-examination. First, self-examination can become self-condemnation if it’s not done in light of gratitude for God’s unwavering love. Nothing we can learn about ourselves can separate us from that love. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zero. Zilch-o. (No, not that, either!) Second, while self-improvement is fine, being human means being imperfect, so the goal is to be honest about who we are rather than to ‘fix’ who we are.
From that place of honesty and gratitude, self-examination can be a wholesale review of one’s life thus far (akin to Step Four of the Twelve Steps, where one makes a “fearless and searching” self-inventory) and/or it can be a regular evaluation of a shorter timeframe (like a day at a time).

Thompson suggests that the culmination of self-examination is prayerfully to confess one’s life to God. She writes that such a prayer might go something like this: “God, here are the patterns I see at work in my life. This is who I know myself to be and how I know myself to act. Yet you know more than I do. Bring me to greater clarity and understanding of myself. Let every true need in me be filled by you, every wound and effective response be healed and taken into your will. And thank you for these particular gifts and learnings that are part of my life journey. Strengthen them in me and help me share them with others.” (p. 101)

>Pause to consider: Recall one formative experience in your life. How have your thoughts and actions in that experience shaped you as an individual?