Articles By: Jan Johnson

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.

To get out of taking a PE course in college, a young friend of mine enrolled in a ballroom dancing class. This six-football, stocky young man with a shaved head explained to us how it wasn’t so bad, and then he left to buy dancing shoes. We didn’t dare laugh because we saw that he actually liked it. So we watched him in his “final exam.” I was mesmerized by how he and his partner moved in tandem, leaning away from each other and then coming together again as if this were the most delightful, automatic way to move on the planet’s surface.

That rhythm of coming together and moving apart is a metaphor for life with God. In this contemplative dance, God is the lead partner. God comes close, and we follow his lead. We gaze at what we can glimpse of God with great joy.

One  reason Rebecca found trusting God so difficult was that Christians had tried to move her out of grieving by saying, “But you have another child,” and “God wanted your son in heaven,” and even, “God thinks you’re strong enough to handle this.” She said to me, “I don’t think I like their god.” She was not so much angry as she was confused.

A confession:  Illustrations have been my downfall.  I used to use a story about myself that brought the house down but I began to see that I was showing off.  I was making my speaking about me.  It took me a few years to give it up because people loved it. Once I did, I was relieved.

For many people this summer included  vacations, enrichment tours, hiking trips, or pleasure cruises—all crammed with pressure-packed schedules. What about a day or two of rest and renewal? Personal retreats are just that. But people wonder how to take one.