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 As I began to contemplate (verb chosen deliberately) the writing of this article, I did what any alert 21^st –century seeker would do: I went online. Sure enough, my article has already been written many times, both tersely and expansively, eloquently and not so eloquently, and almost exclusively under the rubric “Centering Prayer.” As I browsed among the offerings unfurled upon my screen, it became clear to me that more than enough has already been written about method and that I was drawn to something deeper.

I have come to believe that God is not far from any of us and that if we are attentive to this fact we will become aware of regular Divine visitations. I like to ask people how they experience the Divine in their lives. Some answer by naming one of the traditional “means of grace”—things such as the Eucharist, the sacrament of reconciliation (confession), prayer, or Bible meditation. Others have told me of the remarkable openness to God they experience when walking in the woods. Many tell me how silence and solitude provide them with their most powerful experiences of God’s presence. Others, how pain or suffering allows them to uniquely meet God. A few are bold enough to confess that it is in their sin that they have their most immediate encounters with Grace. The list goes on and on, but makes clear that the variety of ways in which we can experience the Divine is remarkably diverse.

Conversations is dedicated to hearing from diverse voices united by a common goal. It’s our privilege to set the table, pour the coffee, and welcome into the dialogue everyone who wants to become more like Jesus. We’re drawn together by our shared longing to experience Christian spiritual formation.

The articles in this issue have presented a number of wonderful ways of understanding and practicing discernment—and reasons why it is important. In this closing page I would like to explore briefly what I consider to be the most important reason discernment is essential if we want our spiritual eyes to be opened and to live with awareness of God’s presence. That reason is the nature of human experience—or more particularly, the nature of our experience of God.

In Spiritual Direction and the Encounter with God, William Barry argues that the possibility of humans’ experiencing the transcendent Wholly Other is grounded in the fact that this same God is also immanent—forever connected to the material world and our experiences within it. Every experience we have involves this created world in which God resides. Furthermore, since—as we are assured by the Apostle Paul—Christ is in us, not simply in the world, every experience is even more closely connected to God. In fact, Barry argues, it is not possible for a human to have any sort of experience of which God is not a part.

My attraction to monastic life began in my mid-twenties, even surviving my marriage – which was the point when I determined that my own calling was definitely not monastic! I still recall the first time I met a monk. While I was in graduate school, a Cistercian monk spoke at a United Church of Canada congregation I attended. I was deeply touched  by what Father Joe had to say, but more by the obviously deep walk with God that was his. He spoke with passion about meeting God in stillness and silence, and about a life of prayer that went much beyond speaking to God. I knew immediately that my response had much to do with his depth and stillness and with my own corresponding shallowness and restlessness.

I have a good friend who turned a fascinating idea into a fine dissertation. Marty Goehring is the friend. He’s a clinical psychologist, but like so many of the therapists I admire, he talks more about the spiritual classics than modern psychology.

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.

If you were to ask a room full of people, as I often have, what instigated the greatest level of transformation in their lives so far, the number one answer is always the same: pain. It comes under varying names, of course: “my divorce,” “my illness,” “losing my job,” “finally hitting rock bottom.” Many different ways of saying the same thing: pain.

About fifteen years ago I started reading the fourth-century monastics who fled the corruption of church and society to seek Christ in the solitude of the Egyptian desert. Before I read the desert mothers and fathers, I thought of them as Christian superheroes. After I read them, I realized I couldn’t have been more wrong.

For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it

Luke 9:24 (NIV)

I have a tendency to oversimplify things. Some people say I’m a compulsive summarizer. So with those two confessions out of the way, I want to—no, I have to—summarize a couple of things that relate to this issue of Conversations.

First, I believe that a primary reason for one of the darkest times in Church history (the first church split—1054 A.D.; over 1,000 years after Jesus prayed, “May they be one, Father…”) was the two competing operating systems that dominated Christian thought at the time: the Greek East and the Latin West.

While I’m aware that geographic, political, and linguistic strains had been fraying the connective tissue of the body of Christ for centuries; I believe the Great Schism was also a result of two very different approaches for processing theology. The Eastern mind-set seems more like a Mac computer. The West used PCs.

Now of course, they didn’t really use computers; neither Steve Jobs nor Bill Gates had been invented yet. What I am trying to say is that the Eastern way of viewing God seemed more at home with user-friendly icons and featured a simpler, big-picture focus. Not to mention, the color graphics package was out of this world.

By contrast, the MS-DOS system of the West had a penchant for capturing spiritual things using an Excel-spreadsheet type of approach. The Western church seemed to employ more of a logical, left-brain method for systematizing God. The tragedy—it occurs to me as I type these words using Microsoft software for my Apple computer—is that putting both together would have been much better.

What does that have to do with this issue of Conversations? I recently discovered that I have a major problem with the operating system of my soul—and now I’m talking about something much more fundamental than Mac vs. PC.

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