Ruth Haley Barton Quotes

One thing we can know for sure is that when we are confessing our sin to God but not to the people around us in ordinary, nitty-gritty life, there is not much real spiritual transformation going on

Discernment is first of all a habit, a way of seeing that eventually permeates our whole life. It is the journey from spiritual blindness (not seeing God anywhere or seeing him only where we expect to see him) to spiritual sight (finding God everywhere, especially where we least expect it).

We are starved for quiet, to hear the sound of sheer silence that is the presence of God himself.

The purpose of journeying together in spiritual friendship and spiritual community (whether there are just two of you or whether you are in a small group) is to listen to one another's desire for God, to nurture that desire in each other and to support one another in seeking a way of life that is consistent with that desire.

Psalm 46: 10 tells us there is a kind of knowing that comes in silence and not in words-but first we must be still. The Hebrew word translated "Be still" literally means "Let go of your grip.

Most of us are more tired than we know at the soul level. We are teetering on the brink of dangerous exhaustion, and we cannot do anything else until we have gotten some rest...we can't really engage [any spiritual disciplines] until solitude becomes a place of rest for us rather than another place for human striving and hard work.

Your desire for more of God than you have right now, your longing for love, your need for deeper levels of spiritual transformation than you have experienced so far is the truest thing about you. You might think that your woundedness or your sinfulness is the truest thing about you or that your giftedness or your personality type or your job title or your identity as husband or wife, mother or father, somehow defines you. But, in reality, it is your desire for God and your capacity to reach for more of God than you have right now that is the deepest essence of who you are.

Parker Palmer observes, "A leader is a person who must take special responsibility for what's going on inside him or her self, inside his or her consciousness, lest the act of leadership create more harm than good.

Because we do not rest we lose our way.... Poisoned by the hypnotic belief that good things come only through unceasing determination and tireless effort, we can never truly rest. And for want of rest our lives are in danger.

The great illusion of leadership is to think that man can be led out of the desert by someone who has never been there.

We bind ourselves to each other in times of strength so that in moments of weakness we do not become unbound.

being angry is not the same thing as being called.

Only those who have been brave enough to ride their own monsters of anger and greed, jealousy and narcissism, fear and violence all the way down to the bottom will find a truer energy with which to lead.

As Robert Mulholland says: “Our cross is the point of our unlikeness to the image of Christ, where we must die to self in order to be raised to God into the wholeness of life in the image of Christ. . . . So the process of being conformed to the image of Christ takes place right there at that point of our unlikeness to Christ.

Most people do not see things as they are; rather, they see things as they are. Richard Rohr

This self is freer, because it knows itself to be finally and ultimately held safely in a Love that is unchangeable and real.

Truly, the best thing any of us have to bring to leadership is our own transforming selves.

True love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and border and salute each other.

The great illusion of leadership is to think that man can be led out of the desert by someone who has never been there. HENRI NOUWEN, THE WOUNDED HEALER

good. Over time, as we surrender ourselves to new life rhythms, they help us to surrender old behaviors, attitudes and practices so that we can be shaped by new ones.

The truth is that spiritual transformation takes place as we embrace the challenges and opportunities associated with each season of our life.

Discernment, in a most general sense, is the capacity to recognize and respond to the presence and the activity of God—both in the ordinary moments and in the larger decisions of our lives.

The first leg of Moses' journey as a leader, then, was not to lead anyone else anywhere; it was to allow himself to be led into freedom from his own bondage. Before he could lead others into freedom, he needed to experience freedom himself. In solitude he was able to let go of the coping mechanisms that had served him well in the past but were completely inappropriate for the leader he was becoming.

Sabbath keeping is the primary discipline that helps us live within the limits of our humanity and to honor God as our Creator. It is the key to a life lived in sync with the rhythms that God himself built into our world.

And as Donald Capps so aptly points out, "Since our churches have taken on many of the characteristics of bureaucracies, it is not surprising that clergy are sometimes rewarded, not punished for their narcissistic behaviors.

When it comes to transformation or deformation, organizational cultures are rarely neutral. For the most part cultural norms will support and catalyze or work against the process of spiritual transformation. Cultivating a culture

I cannot transform myself, or anyone else for that matter. What I can do is create the conditions in which spiritual transformation can take place, by developing and maintaining a rhythm of spiritual practices that keep me open and available to God.

If the churches came to understand that the greatest threat to faith today is not hedonism but distraction, perhaps they might begin to appeal to a frazzled digital generation. Christian leaders seem to think that they need more distraction to counter the distraction. Their services have degenerated into emotional spasms, their spaces drowned with light and noise and locked shut throughout the day, when their darkness and silence might actually draw those whose minds and souls have grown web-weary.

ON TIME RUTH HALEY BARTON There have to be times in your life when you move slow, times when you walk rather than run, settling into each step . . . There have to be times when you stop and gaze admiringly at loved ones, marveling that they have been given to you for this life . . . times when hugs linger and kisses are real, when food and drink are savored with gratitude and humility rather than gulped down on your way to something else. There have to be times when you read for the sheer pleasure of it, marveling at the beauty of words and the endless creativity in putting them together . . . times when you settle into the comforts of home and become human once again. There have to be times when you light a candle and find the tender place inside you that loves or sorrows or sings and you pray from that place, times when you let yourself feel, when you allow the tears to come rather than blinking them back because you don’t have time to cry. There have to be times to sink into the soft body of yourself and love what you love simply because love itself is a grace . . . times when you sit with gratitude for the good gifts of your life that get lost and forgotten in the rush of things . . . times to celebrate and play to roll down hills to splash in water or make leaf piles to spread paint on paper or walls or each other. There have to be times to sit and wait for the fullness of God that replenishes body, mind, and soul— if you can even stand to be so full. There has to be time for the fullness of time or time is meaningless.

Heal our inner sight, O God, that we may know the difference between good and evil. Open our eyes that we may see what is true and what is false. Restore us to wisdom that we may be well in our souls, Restore us to wisdom that we and our world may be well.[2]

Many of us try to shove spiritual transformation into the nooks and crannies of a life that is already unmanageable, rather than being willing to arrange our life for what our heart most wants. We think that somehow we will fall into transformation by accident.

there is a way of doing life in leadership that is not so complicated and heavy—a way of making decisions that does not have to rely on our own brilliance and ability to think hard, a way of being involved in God’s work that ends up being more about God’s work than our own.

Desire has its own rhythms. Sometimes it ebbs and sometimes it flows. But in the end it is the deepening of spiritual desire and the discipline to arrange our life around our desire that carries us from the shallow waters of superficial human wanting into our soul’s movement in the very depths of God. Sometimes the tide brings us closer in to the shore and the soul frolics in the waves. But increasingly we find our life to be hidden in the depths of God, and whatever is seen on the surface springs up from those depths full of beauty and grace.

Holy One, there is something I wanted to tell you, but there have been errands to run, bills to pay, meetings to attend, washing to do ... and I forget what it is I wanted to say to you, and forget what I am about or why. Oh God, don't forget me please, for the sake of Jesus Christ.

At times the strength of spiritual community lies in the love of people who refrain from getting caught in the trap of trying to fix everything for us, who pray for us and allow us the pain of our wilderness, our wants, so that we may be more deeply grounded in God. ROSEMARY DOUGHERTY

Your desire for more of God than you have right now, your longing for love, your need for deeper levels of spiritual transformation than you have experienced so far is the truest thing about you. You might think that your woundedness or your sinfulness is the truest thing about you or that your giftedness or your personality type or your job title or your identity as husband or wife, mother or father, somehow defines you. But in reality, it is your desire for God and your capacity to reach for more of God than you have right now that is the deepest essence of who you are.

So—why do we need a covenant? Because a written covenant makes our commitment real on a level that mere conversation does not. It provides a way for the group to claim shared ownership for their behavior because it contains detailed guidelines that help the group function together in agreed-upon ways.

If we are able to stay with our frustrations long enough and not give up, we may begin to suspect that the things that most need to be known and solved and figured out in our life are not going to be discovered, solved or figured out at the thinking level anyway. The things we most need to know, solve and figure out will be heard at the listening level, that place within us where God's Spirit witnesses with our spirit (Rom 8:16). Here God speaks to us of things that cannot be understood through human wisdom or shuffled around and filed away in the mind (1 Cor 2:10-13). Spiritual discernment is given as pure gift in God's way, in God's time, beyond what the human mind can force (1 Cor 2:14).

Although I wouldn’t have known how to talk about it then, slowly but surely the Scriptures were becoming a place of human striving and intellectual hard work. Somehow, I had fallen into a pattern of using the Scriptures as a tool to accomplish utilitarian purposes rather experiencing them primarily as a place of intimacy with God for my own soul’s sake.

The sad truth is that many of us approach the Scriptures more like a textbook than like a love letter. In Western culture in particular, we are predisposed to a certain kind of reading. We have been schooled in an informational reading process that establishes the reader as the master of the text. As the reader, I employ key techniques that allow me to use the text to advance my own purposes. With this kind of reading, the intent is to cover as much ground as possible as quickly as possible. Our emphasis is primarily on mastery, that is, controlling the text for our own ends—gathering information, interpreting or applying the information, proving our point about something, gaining a ministry tool or solving a problem.

God, gather me5 to be with you as you are with me. Keep me in touch with myself, with my needs, my anxieties, my angers, my pains, my corruptions, that I may claim them as my own rather than blame them on someone else. O Lord, deepen my wounds into wisdom; shape my weaknesses into compassion; gentle my envy into enjoyment, my fear into trust, my guilt into honesty. O God, gather me to be with you as you are with me.

The depth of desire has a great deal to do with the outcome of our life. Often, those who accomplish what they set out to do in life are not those who are the most talented or gifted or who have had the best opportunities. Often they are the ones who are most deeply in touch with how badly they want whatever they want; they are the ones who consistently refuse to be deterred by the things that many of us allow to become excuses.

Intense conflict is an invitation to turn to God, who wants to lead us forward into restored relationships and into new organizational processes. JAN WOOD, LON FENDALL AND BRUCE BISHOP, PRACTICING DISCERNMENT TOGETHER

Self-knowledge and self-examination. Parker Palmer makes this very sobering statement about leadership: “A leader is a person who must take special responsibility for what’s going on inside him/herself, inside his or her consciousness, lest the act of leadership create more harm than good.

I have been drawn to the story of Moses, because his hard-won strength of soul forged in his private encounters with God gave him the staying power he needed for the long haul of leadership. He made it all the way to the finish line of his life in leadership not because he knew how to think about leadership and conceptualize it in clever ways. He lasted because he allowed his leadership challenges to catalyze and draw him into a level of reliance on God that he might not have pursued had it not been for his great need for God which he experienced most profoundly in the crucible of leadership. He literally had no place else to go!

This knowledge of God progressively replaces the rabid busyness and self-importance that drives most human beings, including the religious ones. It comes to possess us no matter where we are. Now, "Whatever we do, in word or deed, we do in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him" (Col 3:17). Solitude and silence are not another job. They are not, really, something we have to think to do. They are whom we have become. We still need to cultivate solitude and silence, from time to time going alone and being quiet. But we carry them with us wherever we go. In the contemporary context (especially the religious context) someone needs to tell us about solitude and silence just to let us know there are such things. Someone then needs to tell us it's okay to enter them. Someone needs to tell us how to do it, what will happen when we do, and how we go on from there.

In silence our speech patterns are refined because silence fosters a self-awareness that enables us to choose more truly the words that we say.

Practicing rhythms of silence and words, stillness and action, helps us learn to wait on God--which doesn't come easily for those of us accustomed to busily trying to make things happen.

Sabbath keeping is a way of ordering one's whole life to honor the rhythm of things--work and rest, fruitfulness and dormancy, giving and receiving, being and doing, activism and surrender. The day itself is set apart, devoted completely to rest, worship, and delighting in God and his good gifts. And the rest of the week must be lived in such a way a way as to make Sabbath possible.

Ask me not where I live      or what I like to eat. . . .      Ask me what I am living for      and what I think is keeping me      from living fully for that. THOMAS MERTON, Thoughts in Solitude

The prophets of Baal called to their gods all day, but nothing happened. Then Elijah repaired the altar of the Lord, dug a trench around it and placed a bull on it as an offering to the Lord. For good measure, he soaked the altar with water three times until the water ran all around the altar, filling up the trench. Then he cried out to God, and the fire of God descended on the altar, consumed everything on it and around it, "and even licked up the water in the trench." The people of Israel fell on their faces in God's presence, acknowledging him as the true God. The prophets of Baal tried to run away from such a fearsome display of power, but Elijah captured them and killed them all. When we catch up with Elijah in 1 Kings 19, he is exhausted from the outpouring of spiritual, physical and emotional energy that this confrontation had required. His life is in danger because of the threat he now posed for the queen of the land, and he is deeply afraid. He is in the throes of the kind of major letdown that often comes when we have given everything we've got. So there was literally nothing he could do but collapse under a solitary broom tree.

spiritual transformation is central to the message of the gospel and therefore central to the mission of the church.

Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, "What are you doing here, Elijah?

A good journey begins with knowing where we are and being willing to go somewhere else. RICHARD ROHR

The grass is not greener “over there”: one must work out one’s problems with this person because if one doesn’t, one will have to work it out with that person. This is precisely what is so freeing about the vow of stability . . . to have to work it out is to demand growth, as painful as it is, and that is freeing. Faithfulness is a limit that forces us to stop running and encounter God, self, and other right now, right here.[2] Lord

The struggle is real because the danger is real. It is the danger of living the whole of our life as one long defense against the reality of our condition.

In the realm of spiritual transformation, the questions we are willing to ask ourselves are more important than the answers we think we know. At

None of us exists in this world apart from being one gender or another, and in fact our existence as male and female is one of the most complete ways God has revealed the diverse aspects of his own being.

Las prácticas de la soledad y el silencio resultan radicales porque nos desafían en cada nivel de nuestra existencia.

Podemos descansar confiadamente mientras ocupamos nuestro lugar debajo del arbusto solitario en medio del desierto de las propias dudas, interrogantes y anhelos no cumplidos, porque estamos en buena compañía.

El permitirnos desear con desesperación algo que no estamos seguros que podamos obtener, nos atemoriza; especialmente cuando se trata de algo esencial, como la presencia de Dios en nuestras vidas.

Puede ser que no estemos conscientes de ello, pero nuestro deseo de Dios es la cosa más verdadera y esencial que tenemos

Amamos a Dios porque Dios nos amó primero.

Cuando Elías entró en la soledad y el silencio, una de las primeras cosas que debió tener en cuenta fue lo cansado, lo agotado que se encontraba a todo nivel.

El Señor comenzó por ocuparse de la fatiga y el agotamiento físico de Elías.

la historia de Elías me invitó a dejar de intentar combatir el cansancio y rendirme a él en la presencia del Señor.

Pero los tiempos de soledad y silencio no son tiempos para emitir juicios con respecto nuestra conducta. Son tiempos para darnos cuenta, para descubrir, la verdad sobre nosotros mismos en un momento dado, y entonces presentarnos a Dios con todo aquello que hemos notado.

Cuando incorporamos el descanso al tiempo que pasamos a solas con Dios, llegamos a experimentar un tipo de renovación muy profunda.

El cansancio peligroso conforma una condición atmosférica inestable del alma y presagia el riesgo de una gran destrucción. Se trata de una fatiga interior acumulada a través de meses y meses, y no siempre se manifiesta con cansancio físico. Es más, puede estar enmascarada tras una actividad excesiva y un trabajo exagerado.

Aun cuando nuestra forma de vida pueda parecernos heroica, hay una buena proporción de nuestra frenética actividad que perturba a aquellos que nos rodean.

Cuando eso sucede, pierdo contacto con aquel lugar del centro de mi ser que me da conciencia acerca de quién soy en Dios, en el que descubro lo que he sido llamada a hacer, y donde puedo responder a su voz privilegiándola por sobre todas las otras voces. Cuando eso sucede, estoy a merced de todo tipo de fuerzas externas, llevada de aquí para allá por otras expectativas y por mis propias compulsiones.

¿qué sucedería si eligiéramos permanecer en la presencia de Dios y hablar con él con respecto a nuestro cansancio, reconociéndolo de la manera en que lo haría un niño frente a su padre que se preocupa y puede ayudarlo?

realidad, la historia de Elías nos enseña que si no le damos descanso a nuestro cuerpo, a nuestra mente y a nuestra alma, la travesía hacia la soledad y el silencio puede resultar algo excesivo para nosotros.

«Vengan a mí todos ustedes que están cansados y agobiados, y yo les daré descanso» (Mateo 11:28). ¿Cómo sería escuchar esas palabras ahora mismo? ¿Crees que es posible para ti encontrar el descanso que necesitas?

He calmado y aquietado mis ansias. Soy como un niño recién amamantado en el regazo de su madre. SALMO 131:2

Mi corazón no es orgulloso, ni son altivos mis ojos; no busco grandezas desmedidas, ni proezas que excedan a mis fuerzas.

Cuando nos encontramos en un estado básicamente descansado, lleno de vigor, la soledad nos ayuda a mantener ese estado saludable, que no es poca cosa en un mundo que demanda tanto de nosotros.

El aprender a descansar en Dios en los tiempos de soledad comienza con el cuerpo, como la imagen del niño amamantado lo sugiere. Esta imagen me lleva a los momentos llenos de suavidad y ternura de mis primeros tiempos como madre.

Dios sabe cuánto necesitamos nosotros estar juntos «más allá de las palabras». Por eso es que espera con paciencia que dejemos de movernos agitadamente y nos relajemos para poder recibir la nutrición de su presencia.

Puede ser que creamos que la travesía espiritual tiene lugar en una esfera completamente separada del cuerpo. Pero la verdad es que el recorrido espiritual se realiza dentro de un cuerpo físico, y que hay una conexión muy real entre el cuidado de nuestro cuerpo y el profundizar nuestra relación con Dios.

Comencé a descansar mucho más verdaderamente (en lugar de recurrir a los beneficios a corto plazo de la cafeína), a comer alimentos nutritivos, a beber más agua, a prestar atención a mi respiración y a ir abriéndome paso lentamente hacia un estilo de vida más activo. Comencé a sentir más vitalidad y a estar más despejada en todas mis actividades, incluyendo el tiempo que dedicaba a pasar en soledad. En lugar de verme cansada y distraída, comencé a desarrollar un modo de ser más despierto, vital y listo a responder a aquel que ama mi alma.

Uno de los dones de Dios para nosotros es el ejercicio físico que libera endorfinas y tranquiliza las emociones, calma los sufrimientos y mejora nuestro estado de ánimo.

La práctica de analizar mi día con Dios se arraiga en las antiguas prácticas cristianas del examen de estado de conciencia (revisar el día pasado para percibir la presencia de Dios) y del examen de conciencia (notar mi respuesta, o falta de ella, a esa presencia).

Aprender a escuchar al cuerpo, a darle descanso y a respetarlo como un lugar en el que Dios nos hace conocer su presencia, se convierte entonces en una importante disciplina para el peregrino espiritual.

Mi corazón no es orgulloso, ni son altivos mis ojos; no busco grandezas desmedidas, ni proezas que excedan a mis fuerzas. SALMO 131:1

¡Hasta qué punto necesitan nuestras mentes aprender a descansar de la forma en que lo describe el salmista!

El silencio nos ayuda a bucear por debajo de la superficialidad de nuestras construcciones mentales hasta el lugar de nuestro corazón, que resulta más profundo en cuanto a su realidad, que cualquier cosa que la mente pueda captar o expresar en palabras.

Con el tiempo notamos que de la quietud y la confianza nace nuestra fortaleza, porque vez tras vez encontramos allí todo lo que necesitamos para sustentarnos.

At some point in our Christian life, many of us realize no one ever told us how to deal with our wounds that are still there—buried deeper than ever—but still there.

Jesus indicates that it is possible to gain the whole world but lose your own soul. If he were talking to us as Christian leaders today, he might point out that it is possible to gain the world of ministry success and lose your own soul in the midst of it all.

In her book Leaving Church, former parish priest and award-winning preacher Barbara Brown Taylor describes what it was like to feel her soul slipping away. She says: Many of the things1 that were happening inside of me seemed too shameful to talk about out loud. Laid low by what was happening at Grace-Calvary, I did not have the energy to put a positive spin on anything. . . . Beyond my luminous images of Sunday mornings I saw the committee meetings, the numbing routines, and the chronically difficult people who took up a large part of my time. Behind my heroic image of myself I saw my tiresome perfectionism, my resentment of those who did not try as hard as I did, and my huge appetite for approval. I saw the forgiving faces of my family, left behind every holiday for the last fifteen years, while I went to conduct services for other people and their families. Above all, I saw that my desire to draw as near to God as I could had backfired on me somehow. Drawn to care for hurt things, I had ended up with compassion fatigue. Drawn to a life of servanthood, I had ended up a service provider. Drawn to marry the Divine Presence, I had ended up estranged. . . . Like the bluebirds that sat on my windowsills, pecking at the reflections they saw in the glass, I could not reach the greenness for which my soul longed. For years I had believed that if I just kept at it, the glass would finally disappear. Now for the first time, I wondered if I had devoted myself to an illusion.

God works miracles of transformation in the world through miraculously transformed people.

The real surprise was not that this happened but the fact that the shift was so subtle. After all, the purposes for which I was using the Scriptures were not bad in and of themselves. It’s just that over time, without my awareness, those purposes had trumped the greater purpose for which the Scriptures have been given: to allow my own heart and soul to be penetrated by an intimate word from God. My mind remained engaged, but my heart and soul had drifted far away.

waiting on God to move or to shift something inside me while at the same time still needing to lead in the public arena.

Behind my heroic image of myself I saw my tiresome perfectionism, my resentment of those who did not try as hard as I did, and my huge appetite for approval.

But times of solitude and silence are not times for judging. They are times for noticing — noticing what is true about us in a given moment and then being in God’s presence with the things we’ve noticed.

It is a very quiet and simple desire, but it is still there. It is a sweet desire that resides in a very authentic place in me. I do not know what will come of that desire and whether it will involve finishing what I started all those years ago. I do know there is a wonderful freedom that comes from paying attention to those desires without needing to figure everything out, but rather being willing to simply watch for the work of God.

This part of me, if left as it is, will be no good for anyone.

knew that if his soul was to be well, he could not afford to live his life driven blindly by unexamined inner dynamics.

In carrying out his mandate, it is evident that, in addition to being a man of prayer, Dr. King was a contemplative, Dr. Ruth Haley Barton, founder of the Transforming Center, affirmed the inclusion of contemplation and prayerfulness in his life when, in honor of Martin Luther King Day in January 2010, she wrote that Dr. King’s “life was characterized by a powerful integration of prayer and contemplation with a profound commitment to decisive and loving action in the world.’ Barton’s insight is extremely valuable in the discussion of the power of prayer and spiritual direction from an African American perspective. In identifying Dr. King as a man of contemplative action, she included a clear definition of that term: ‘Contemplative action is action that emerges from our real encounters with God. It is doing what God calls us to do when he calls us to do it - no matter how afraid we are or how ill-equipped we feel. Contemplative action is the willingness to go beyond being primarily concerned for our own safety and survival to the place where we know that our real life is hidden with Christ in God no matter what happens to our physical life. Contemplative action is doing the right thing, at the right time, in the right Spirit, completely given over to a Power that is beyond our own - even, and perhaps most especially, when the risks are very great. This kind of action is impossible without being radically in touch with the Source of our life through prayer and contemplation.