Free Stuff

David G. Benner needs no introduction to the readers of Conversations. As a founding editor, David has poured much of himself into creating a space for honest dialogue about transformation. Now living on Vancouver Island and semiretired from all things not fun, David has been sailing in exotic places around the world and working on some new writing projects, such as his just-released book, Opening to God: Lectio Divina and Life as Prayer. His recent thinking about that book and the theme of this issue—contemplation and action—serves as the backdrop for this conversation. So pull up a deck chair and listen in.

Gary W. Moon: David, you begin your book with a provocative reflection: “Just imagine how different your life would be if moment by moment by moment you were constantly open to God.” How is your life different when you are able to live with that kind of openness to God?

David G. Benner: My experience of that openness is far from constant…

GWM: So why are you writing in this area, David? Just kidding; please continue.

DGB: Hmm. As I was saying, the moments when I have known this openness are rarer than I’d like, but they leave a taste I can never forget. It’s a sense of being at one with myself and, in the same moment, with all that is. It’s a feeling of alignment, wholeness, and everything belonging. Like any taste of God, it leaves me hungering for more. And this is the way it most impacts life. Once you taste this oneness and experience even for a moment the sense of being sufficiently open to God to allow God to flow through you, desire, not willpower, becomes all that is necessary to lead you forward. And that desire comes from the lingering taste—the residual memory—that remains within you. How does that make my life different when this is my experience? I am spoiled for any lesser goods, any lesser gods.

“But you don’t want to run ahead of yourself. Begin with love.”

–John Cassian

Empower us to carry each other’s burdens.

It’s a prayer I pray each week, along with the rest of my church family as we stand together on Sunday. I attend a liturgical church, and our communal prayers—for hope, for peace, for salvation, for thanksgiving, for forgiveness—are one of my favorite moments during the service. Together, we lift our hearts and our requests to God. We speak aloud the names of those for whom we pray and the circumstances around the world that beg for peace and resolution. We pray for needs we know and needs we don’t know. We give voice in prayer to what we hear God whisper to us. When members of the family can’t pray, struck mute by fear or doubt or pain, the community carries them on a rising tide of petition that washes them up on the shores of grace. I know, because I’ve felt that tide carry me.

But over the past months, I’ve struggled with this, my most cherished moment in worship next to the Eucharist. I’ve struggled and squirmed and felt shameful. Why?

Dallas Willard needs no introduction to the readers of Conversations. After all, he is responsible for the fact that our five sections correspond to his components of the person—and that we try to hear from a representative of each of the six great traditions of Christian faith in each issue. He is also responsible for the fact that I, for one, have come to believe it is actually possible to become like Jesus. I believe it because I see the way Dallas lives his life.

Dallas is an ordained Southern Baptist pastor who left the traditional version of ministry to study philosophy in the early 1960s after God told him, “If you stay in the churches, the university will be closed to you, but if you stay in the university, the churches will be open to you.” After receiving his Ph.D. in 1965, he had two immediate job offers—one from the University of Southern California and one from the University of Georgia. While some (okay, just me) think he made a mistake in picking USC, he has had an amazing academic and ministry career. Some refer to him as America’s C. S. Lewis.

I remember the first time I noticed that some people arrange their lives to see sunsets. It was summertime in the Gulf of Florida when the days were hot and the nights were balmy. During the day, crowds of people were out lying in the sun and playing noisily on the beach, but in the early evening the real sun lovers came out. These were the ones who planned their whole day around seeing the sunset; in the early evening they would emerge from their condos with beach chairs and maybe a glass of wine. They would position their chairs at the edge of the water and settle in as though they were awaiting the beginning of a much-anticipated movie or play. At first there was chatting, but as the sun sank lower in the sky, people would become quiet; couples would lean in closer to each other; children would stop their playing, and beachcombers would pause just to watch. As the sun hung low on the horizon, pregnant with color, and the cloud formations glowed from the inside out, a reverent hush would descend upon all who were gathered. In that fullness of time no words were necessary. It was enough just to be in the presence of such beauty.

Despite how hard we often tend to work at it, Christian spiritual transformation is not something we are either responsible for or able to do much about. It is God’s business. And we should be careful to keep our noses out of God’s business and mind our own.

Self-improvement spirituality is the offspring of the therapeutic culture of the late twentieth century and the spirituality culture of the opening decade of the twenty-first. It is far too narcissistic and willful to be of the Spirit. Getting our spiritual act together is not the point of Christ following. God is that point. Even checking to see how my transformation is going is a distraction that merely shifts my attention from God to myself. The self-preoccupation this involves gets in the road of seeing where God is actually at work—something we are seldom able to glimpse because God’s ways are not our ways. Have no doubt about it; God is at work making all things new in Christ. But the way God does this is much more like the mustard seed in the story Jesus told in the Gospels than the sort of triumphalistic stories we want to hear—and sometimes tell each other. It happens in the darkness beyond our sight, and it seems to take forever.

While God’s work in our depths is beyond our control, we can cooperate with it. We do this by making space for God and for the things that bring God to us and open us to God. One of the most transformational ways we can do this is by turning toward God, as we can, in openness and surrender.

This is where contemplation enters in. Contemplation is not merely a style of relating to God or the world that is suitable for those of a certain disposition or personality type. Contemplation is important for all of us who seek to make space for God. Contemplation is as basic as turning and looking.

Recall the story of Moses, the children of Israel, and the poisonous snakes in the wilderness. After many of them were bitten and started to die, God told Moses to create a bronze replica of the snake and hold it high on a rod, instructing people to look at it and be healed. In doing so, Moses illustrated the role of artist as healer—creating a work of art that others, by gazing on it, might experience a restoration of well-being and a renewal of life that has been lost. He also offered a prototype of the contemplation that has been encouraged by the cover art and guided meditation on it that has been part of each issue of Conversations to this point.

Stillness before God is essential for the deep encounter with self and God that forms the core of spiritual transformation. Our part is to make time and space for that encounter in stillness. Contemplation is an important way in which we can do this. Most essentially, it is simply being still before God in openness and trust and turning our attention from ourselves to God.

With this issue we end our regular involvement with Conversations. When we signed on to our respective roles at the launch of the journal, we made a commitment to support the project through its first seven years of development. That has happened, and we now look forward to turning our responsibilities over to others as we move on to new opportunities. Thanks be to God for grace and blessings received over the course of these seven years and fourteen issues. And blessings on those who now carry the journal forward. May we all continue to learn how to keep our focus on God and make space in stillness for the deep meeting of God and self that is the gift of our new life in Christ.

—David & Juliet Benner

A Note from the Editors:

We are grateful for the gifts and talents that David and Juliet have brought to the pages of Conversations over these past years. We are also blessed that Conversations will remain in dialogue with the Benners. In our upcoming issues, we will continue to hear their wisdom, through interviews with David and features on their upcoming projects. David will also continue on our masthead as one of the three executive editors, along with Larry Crabb and Gary W. Moon. Please join us in praying for and blessing the Benners as they pursue God by embracing new opportunities in their journey.

What Are You Seeking? Would you like to have abiding peace? Would you like to have a heart that is filled with love? Would you like to have the kind of faith that sees everything—even your failures and losses—in light of God’s governance for good? Would you like to have the kind of hope that endures even in discouraging circumstances?

If this is the life you most deeply desire, then this book is meant for you.

Spiritual Friendship introduces you to principles of friendship that bring focus to your spiritual life. You’ll discover what it takes to have a rich, God-centered relationship that will nourish your soul.