Articles By: Jan Johnson

I believe spiritual disciplines (including welcoming the stranger) are as much caught as taught. Spiritual practices can sort of rub off others onto us. Hence, the presence of a very good person in our lives has an enormous result. I saw this a while ago.

As I sat comfortably nestled under a bunch of telephone kiosks in Chicago O’Hare Airport, I worked hard on notes for a class I was going to teach on contemplative spirituality. The only electrical outlet I could find for my laptop was located in this cubbyhole and I was relishing how hidden I was from others.

I liked the idea better when it was only talked about in the leadership meeting. Putting it into action was difficult. That idea, the “three-minute guideline,” suggested that in the last three minutes before the church service began and in the first three minutes after it ended, leaders would greet only people we didn’t know. While I’ve always felt empathetic toward newcomers, I found I really just wanted to talk to the people I knew. It was . . . easier, more fun.

To walk up to the Homeboy Industries building in the shadow of Los Angeles City Hall is to find yourself in the middle of a community with surprising similarities to a monastery. There, in gang-neutral territory, former gang members dressed in various colored T-shirts with the slogans “Jobs, not Jails” and “Homeboy Industries” sweep the sidewalks, step aside to let you pass, and say, “Hello, Ma’am” or “Hello, Sir.” As you open the door, you are greeted by a 20-something male receptionist who smiles and speaks to you more politely than the teen who lives next door to you ever has.

Recently I was doing lectio divina on Matt 18:1-5 where Jesus sets a child in the middle of the disciples who had been squabbling over who would be the greatest and tells them, “Be like this!” (Mark 9:33-37). I liked how instead of chiding them for their egotism, Jesus distracts them with the absurd idea of becoming like children, who were very lowly creatures in that culture, quasi-servants, in many cases. Why should these guys—gatekeepers to the latest and greatest prophet (Mt 17:24)—be like humble children?

I had a sense God was inviting me up there, inviting me to stop being mad at him. I couldn’t talk about it to anyone. After the sessions, I stayed in the chapel to gaze. I shut my eyes, knowing the window and the trees were there. No words. No tears. When I got home, I found that for the first time in a few years, I was ready to move forward with God. Those hours God and I had spent together, relating but not speaking, helped me become almost comfortable with God once again. I wasn’t so cynical, but I also wasn’t hopeful. I was just ready to hang out with God. But this time I wouldn’t bombard God with so many prayer requests. This time I would just be still and know that God is God. And learn to love it.

For years I’ve been practicing and teaching the familiar styles of Scripture meditation, but it seems that only recently I’ve begun to grasp this basic point: each time I approach the Scripture, I need to deliberately and submissively give God permission to speak to me through those Holy Spirit-breathed words. It’s actually a prayer of request: Veni, Spiritus Sancte (Come, Holy Spirit). Maybe because I’ve let my mind wander so often, I now understand I need to preface any meditative interaction with Scripture by asking with a sincere, searching heart for the Holy Spirit to speak to me today. I don’t find this to be a formality or a checklist task, but a moment filled with the dearness of an older couple who have asked each other the same question every day of their lives: How was your day? They still mean it when they ask, and each still listens for the other’s answer.

Running home to Mom and Dad . . . Returning to the nest . . .In a culture in which renting rooms is no longer widespread, and relationships lack stability, adult kids are returning home to live with their parents, who have become their economic safety net. But when Mom and Dad are deceased or unsafe as living companions or unwilling to have those kids come home, homelessness abounds.

The E-mail read, “So which graduate program do you think is best for me?” I winced as I typed out my more-than-sound-bitesize reply: “It depends on what you really want to learn and how you want to learn it. Write that down. Pray and wait. Refine it. Then do some research and line up the features of both programs. Finally, set it all aside and wait and pray a little more.” I knew my correspondent wanted a fill-in-the-blank answer and that my reply frustrated him, but to advise him to skip the path of discernment would have been a disservice.

Several years ago, a woman came to me after I finished teaching a series of writing workshops. She took a deep breath and explained that she had wanted to come to the first workshop, but refrained because she’d attended one I led ten years earlier. She had sensed back then that I was angry with the students (and with the world), and this upset her.

As soon as she began talking, I felt my mind and body slip into spiritual direction mode. I turned directly toward her, let my arms hang to my side, and fixed an attentive, steady gaze on her. I didn’t try to do this—my body automatically moved into this space when I heard the intensity of her words. It did not occur to me to ask questions or defend myself. Her words and feelings poured forth in the midst of a crowd that quietly gathered. She then said that she’d decided to come the second day and sensed that I had changed a great deal. I knew I was to remain quiet.

She continued, “Now I realize that I resented you before because I was as angry as you were. I saw myself in you. I hated you. I hated me.” At this point she started crying, and people began handing her tissues. But I stayed with her gaze as she went on to say more: “I see that your anger is gone now—I want that too.” Finally, she became quiet, and I waited a little longer to make sure she was done. She fell into my arms and I held her for a while.

A confession:  I was unable to write anything on the blog topic:  “Lectio My Life (Instead of Resolutions or Reflections, What Do You Hear From God When You Practice Lectio with the Past Year of Your Life).”

I tried.  I began reading my prayer/lectio journal entries in January and February, 2011, and stopped.  Yuk—too much of it focused on struggles similar to the ones I’m dealing with now!  What I heard was: You’re a mess!  That might not be God.