Sacred Pathways Quotes

May each of us remember this truth; 'one cannot forget mother and remember God. One cannot remember mother and forget God.' Why? Because these two sacred persons, God and mother, partners in creation, in love, in sacrifice, in service, are as one.

We will live in this world, which for us has all the disquieting strangeness of the desert and of the simulacrum, with all the veracity of living phantoms, of wandering and simulating animals that capital, that the death of capital has made of us—because the desert of cities is equal to the desert of sand—the jungle of signs is equal to that of the forests—the vertigo of simulacra is equal to that of nature—only the vertiginous seduction of a dying system remains, in which work buries work, in which value buries value—leaving a virgin, sacred space without pathways, continuous as Bataille wished it, where only the wind lifts the sand, where only the wind watches over the sand.

Witches seek the sacred knowledge the rest of the world has already forgotten.

Finding fulfillment in God is the most powerful antidote to any sin.

The tree is a mediator between the living and dead. Where a limb is malformed, where her branches twist and wave into one another, or where a wound on bark remains unhealed, all these imperfections are sacred pathways between the realms.

In the end, what I love most about contemporary yoga is its ability to synthesize the everyday with the extraordinary, the practical with the visionary, the mundane with the sacred. I love that yoga can work to release my tense muscles, negative emotions, and psychic detritus at the same time. That it can connect me to my body in ways that create new neural pathways in my brain. That it offers a practical tool for coping with everyday stress, as well as an intuitive opening to the hidden magic of everyday life.

Good spiritual directors understand that people have different spiritual temperaments, that what feeds one doesn’t feed all. Giving the same spiritual prescription to every struggling Christian is no less irresponsible than a doctor prescribing penicillin to every patient.

Like an artist, a conscious griever makes choices that come from deep within, inviting grief to reveal the healing gift of that particular loss. Grieving consciously creates pathways into deeper self-knowledge, invites an increased ability to be grateful, and encourages connections to loved ones that transcend time and space.

A mask partially conceals, but it also tells us that something is behind the mask.

I’ve learned that we must first create a space of time, quiet, and isolation before we can truly see God. Three elements are necessary for this. We need to first believe, then learn to perceive, and finally receive.

sacred pathways Naturalist — finds God in nature Ascetic — is drawn to disciplines Traditionalist — loves historical liturgies Activist — comes alive spiritually in a great cause Caregiver — meets God in serving Sensate — senses God through five senses Enthusiast — loves to grow through people Contemplative — is drawn to solitary reflection and prayer Intellectual — loves God by learning (For more information on these categories, read

I have other stories just as mysterious, just as beautiful, just as sacred, but it seems good to stop here and wonder if it is possible for us to begin to let go of our expectations about the shape in which healing may arrive, to trust the treatment plan lying dormant and waiting within our people, to cultivate a gradually gathering stillness so that, in the safety of the space between, healing pathways have the possibility of revealing themselves.

I no longer call you servants,…I have called you friends.”14 Servants is a “doing” word; friends is a “being” word. What do servants do? They cook, clean, et cetera. A friend, however, is something you are, not something you do. A servant is Martha, a friend is Mary.

Pathways toward a New Shabbat Do 1. Stay at home. Spend quality time with family and real friends. 2. Celebrate with others: at the table, in the synagogue, with friends or community. 3. Study or read something that will edify, challenge, or make you grow. 4. Be alone. Take some time for yourself. Check in with yourself. Review your week. Ask yourself where you are in your life. 5. Mark the beginning and end of this sacred time by lighting candles and making kiddush on Friday night and saying havdalah on Saturday night. Don’t 6. Don’t do anything you have to do for your work life. This includes obligatory reading, homework for kids (even without writing!), unwanted social obligations, and preparing for work as well as doing your job itself. 7. Don’t spend money. Separate completely from the commercial culture that surrounds us so much. This includes doing business of all sorts. No calls to the broker, no following up on ads, no paying of bills. It can all wait. 8. Don’t use the computer. Turn off the iPhone or smartphone or whatever device has replaced it by the time you read this. Live and breathe for a day without checking messages. Declare your freedom from this new master of our minds and our time. Find the time for face-to-face conversations with people around you, without Facebook. 9. Don’t travel. Avoid especially commercial travel and places like airports, hotel check-ins, and similar depersonalizing encounters. Stay free of situations in which people are likely to tell you to “have a nice day” (Shabbat already is a nice day, thank you). 10. Don’t rely on commercial or canned video entertainment, including the TV as well as the computer screen. Discover what there is to do in life when you are not being entertained.

Seeking miraculous experiences simply for the sake of experiencing the miraculous makes us spiritual drug addicts who simply want to get “high.” This book is about learning to love God, not learning to join a spiritual circus. Enthusiasts need to be especially careful to remain true to seeking and loving God rather than searching for new experiences. When we seek “spiritual experiences” for their own sake, they can actually become, and be used for, evil.

I know this may sound radical, but we live in a very arrogant society, fostered in part by the wrong notion that everybody’s opinion is just as valid as anybody else’s. This wrong notion is the child of relativism. We live in an age of polls and are encouraged to develop and publicize uninformed opinions. But there are some matters where my opinion is worth no more than a wild guess. It would be arrogant for me to seriously question someone who has a much better basis on which to form their opinion.

This is a Pathway of Sacred Tears, tears shed for the beauty, the pain and the breaking down of self in devastatingly real moments of humbly accepted personal ‘truth.’ Embracing and sticking with Divine Truth at all costs means all else pales into insignificance besides the Only Thing that really matters. There is a big difference between tears cried about the effects of a wound, and tears sobbed and released from the primal place within the soul where the causes of its deepest pains, suffering and heartbreaks dwell. The tears of crying on the surface of an emotion have little emotional impact, and are not felt by those more sensitive to truth and the deeper reality of the soul.

The earlier Aryan invaders of the Gangetic Plain presided over feasts of cattle, horses, goats, buffalo, and sheep. By later Vedic and early Hindu times, during the first millenium B.C., the feasts came to be managed by the priestly caste of Brahmans, who erected rituals of sacrifice around the killing of animals and distributed the meat in the name of the Aryan chiefs and war lords. After 600 B.C., when populations grew denser and domestic animals became proportionately scarcer, the eating of meat was progressively restricted until it became a monopoly of the Brahmans and their sponsors. Ordinary people struggled to conserve enough livestock to meet their own desperate requirements for milk, dung used as fuel, and transport. During this period of crisis, reformist religions arose, most prominently Buddhism and Jainism, that attempted to abolish castes and hereditary priesthoods and to outlaw the killing of animals. The masses embraced the new sects, and in the end their powerful support reclassified the cow into a sacred animal. So it appears that some of the most baffling of religious practices in history might have an ancestry passing in a straight line back to the ancient carnivorous habits of humankind. Cultural anthropologists like to stress that the evolution of religion proceeds down multiple, branching pathways. But these pathways are not infinite in number; they may not even be very numerous. It is even possible that with a more secure knowledge of human nature and ecology, the pathways can be enumerated and the directions of religious evolution in individual cultures explained with a high level of confidence.

I’m trying to remember how I got this way. I don’t recall always being this out of it. Nicholas Carr blames our use of electronic technology for scraping us gaunt. In his book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, Carr points out that our habitual electronic multitasking between smartphones, websites, news feeds, and social media is dramatically rewiring the neurological pathways in our brains. According to Carr, all our browsing and liking and streaming and retweeting has conditioned the ability to focus right out of us. “In the choices we have made . . . ,” writes Carr, “we have rejected the intellectual tradition of solitary, single-minded concentration. . . . We have cast our lot with the juggler.”4 “Tell me,” a wise friend once asked, “What is it you are doing with the singular gift of your life?” Juggling?

At its deepest root, ambition is often a fight against powerlessness and a fight for control. The ambitious person is also inherently selfish. This search for control, unimpeded by thoughts of concern for another’s welfare, certainly provide a fertile seedbed for sexual lust, which may therefore find a particularly comfortable home in an ambitious soul. I was speaking to a group of Christian activists not that long ago, and I sobered them with the words, “The very qualities that help you succeed as an activist may tempt you to fail as a Christian.” Ambitious men and women need to allow others to hold them accountable. Ambition coupled with secrecy is a fertile ground for sexual sin; throw in fatigue, and you’re almost certain to embarrass yourself and the ministry God has given you. The activist may face more temptation in this regard than many of the other temperaments.

There is no end of things in the heart. Somebody once told me that. She said it came from a poem she believed in. She understood it to mean that if you took something to heart, really brought it inside those red velvet folds, then it would always be there for you. No matter what happened, it would be there waiting. She said this could mean a person, a place, a dream. A mission. Anything sacred. She told me that it is all connected in those secret folds. Always. It is all part of the same and will always be there, carrying the same beat as your heart. I am fifty-two-years old and I believe it. At night when I try to sleep but can’t, that is when I know it. It is when all the pathways seem to connect and I see the people I have loved and hated and helped and hurt. I see the hands that reach for me. I hear the beat and see and understand what I must do. I know my mission and I know there is no turning away or turning back. And it is in those moments that I know there is no end of things in the heart.

The sacred site thus created is a space that nurtures the sense of the continuum in which we are immersed. Many indigenous cultures still have this sacred relational sense of the world that is nurtured by ceremonies; and many of a variety of cultures in these times of great change seek such a relational sense – and who may identify as being in “recovery from Western civilization” . I have been engaged for decades now, in re-turning to my indigenous religious heritage of Western Europe, re-creating, and re-inventing a ceremonial practice that celebrates the sacred journey around Sun: it has been an intuitive, organic process synthesizing bits that I have learned from good teachers and scholars, and bits that have just shown up within dreams and imagination, as well as academic research. It has been a shamanic journey: that is, I have relied on my direct lived experience for an understanding of the sacred, as opposed to relying on an external authority, external imposed symbol, story or image. It has not been a pre-scriptive journey: I have scripted it myself, self-scribed it, and in cahoots with the many who participated in the storytelling circles, rituals and classes over decades. The pathway was and is made in the walking. It is part of a new fabric of understanding – created by new texts and contexts, both personal and communal - that have been emerging in recent decades, and continue so, at awesome speed in our times.

You dare travel on the sacred road, although you may not know the end.

At first, much of spirituality can look like psychological healing and “personal growth.” This is a significant layer of the excavation and evolution because it’s about revealing limiting thoughts and feelings. Everyone can also benefit from the chance to explore their preferences and attractions. Before you know yourself well, you may be attracted to superficial pleasures because they’re easy, appealing, and enforced by society. If you continue to be open to questioning and exploring your true nature, those superficial needs and desires become less satisfying as you naturally turn further inward, connecting to your spiritual essence. As your spiritual practice reveals the value of the intangible, you’ll often be surprised that your experience of the world dramatically changes. Opening your heart with the presence of compassion and connection in your choices will begin to attune you to your subtler senses and perceptions. As you release judgment and expectations, you’ll experience the power of being fully present and aware. This is the beginning of spiritual experience. At times, you may encounter new dimensions of the world, such as the possibility of subtle energies, mysterious forces, or the sense that you’re being guided or watched over by Divine beings. An openness to the unfolding self leads to an openness to fresh possibilities, and you’ll witness your ability to effect change in the world.

We don’t always need a change. Sometimes, we just need a rest, and there is no better place to rest our bodies and our souls than outside.

God will speak to us through creation if we’ll only listen. If you feel like your time in front of books or listening to sermons has become stagnant, grab a coat, pick up a walking stick, and step outside into a school that never closes.

The intent of our spiritual practice isn't to escape life but to embrace it. The content of our spiritual experiences isn't disconnected from our everyday life; rather, it's vitally important to it. When we choose to integrate the wisdom we encounter through our spiritual practices, our lives are healed in a radical way. When individuals and communities of people deepen their direct experience of the spiritual nature of this universe, the world is transformed to reflect the qualities of those experiences: peace, connection, love, and cooperation. We begin to see that The Sacred is not a separate being; it is our own nature. We experience the "oneness" of all things.

life.

Ten Pathways toward a New Shabbat Do 1. Stay at home. Spend quality time with family and real friends. 2. Celebrate with others: at the table, in the synagogue, with friends or community. 3. Study or read something that will edify, challenge, or make you grow. 4. Be alone. Take some time for yourself. Check in with yourself. Review your week. Ask yourself where you are in your life. 5. Mark the beginning and end of this sacred time by lighting candles and making kiddush on Friday night and saying havdalah on Saturday night.

This segregation has erected denominational walls and impoverished many Christians. Unless you happen to be born into just the right tradition, you’re brought up to feed on somebody else’s diet.

God plan the best pathways for every sacred soul.

The Gardens seemed like a huge, dark forest that stretched into eternity, peopled by creatures who were strangers to the world outside, a timeless place of enchantment. The pathways were dark tunnels at the end of which anything might greet the unwary traveller.

There is no end of things in the heart. Somebody once told me that. She said it came from a poem she believed in. She understood it to mean that if you took something to heart, really brought it inside those velvet folds, then it would be there waiting. She said this could mean a person, a place, a dream. A mission. Anything sacred. She told me that it is all connected in those secret folds. Always. It is all part of the same and will always be there, carrying the same beat as your heart. I am fifty-two years old and I believe it. At night when I try to sleep but can't, that is when I know it. It is when all the pathways seem to connect and I see people I have loved and hated and helped and hurt. I see the hands that reach for me. I hear the beat and see and understand what I must do. I know my mission and I know there is no turning away or turning back. And it is in those moments that I know there is no end of things in the heart.

To the extent you identify and honor your true path in this lifetime, you will know genuine satisfaction. Real peace in your own skin. You will be infused with vitality and a clarified focus. New pathways of possibility appear, where before there were obstacles. You will know a peace that will buffer you against the madness of the world. A clarity, a direction, that will carry you from one satisfaction to another. Life will still have its challenges, but you will interface with them differently. Coded in an authenticity of purpose, that sees through the veils, to what really matters. To the extent that you avoid the quest for purpose, you will live frustrated. A half-life. Your avoidance manifests in all manner of disease. Perpetual dissatisfaction. Emotional problems. Depression. Addictive patterns. All reflections of your own alienation from the purposeful root of your being. There is really no escape from reality. There is only postponement. You should be more afraid of avoiding your path, than walking it. You are sacred purpose.

The result of meditation and ethical living is that our soul becomes like a pure spotless glass, reflecting the light of the God. Then, the light burning within us shines its sacred flame of bliss and love to light our pathway to the Divine

As will be on display throughout this book, Zen has all along been an ironically "iconoclastic tradition." Some of its canonical stories include Bodhidharma (fifth–sixth centuries) telling Emperor Wu that he has gained no karmic merit from all of his meritorious activities, and that the most sacred truth is that that there is nothing sacred; depictions of Huineng (seventh century) tearing up the sutras; Linji (ninth century) encouraging his students to "kill the Buddha"; Ikkyū (fifteenth century) writing erotic poetry about his steamy love affair during the last decade of his life with a blind musician; and "an older woman of Hara" (seventeenth century) boldly retorting "Hey, you aren't enlightened yet!" after she told the eminent master Hakuin of her luminously enlightening experience and he tested her by saying that "Nothing can shine in your asshole. " Contemporary Zen Buddhists should feel free to carry on this irreverent and iconoclastic tradition of destroying false idols of Zen—but only insofar as they have sufficiently imbibed its true spirit and are doing so in a genuine effort to keep it alive and let it thrive.

I think I'm beginning to understand that the quest is the point. Our sense of enchantment is not triggered only by grand things; the sublime is not hiding in distant landscapes. The awe-inspiring, the numinous, is all around us, all the time. It is transformed by our deliberate attention. It becomes valuable when we value it. It becomes meaningful when we invest it with meaning. The magic is of our own conjuring. Hierophany - that revelation of the sacred - is something that we bring to everyday things, rather than something that is given to us. That quality of experience that reveals to us the workings of the world, that comforts and fascinates us, that ushers us towards a greater understanding of the business of being human: it is not in itself rare. What is rare is our will to pursue it. If we wait passively to become enchanted, we could wait a long time. But seeking is a kind of work. I don't mean heading off on wild road trips just to see the stars that are shining above your own roof. I mean committing to a lifetime of engagement: to noticing the world around you, to actively looking for small distillations of beauty, to making time to contemplate and reflect. To learning the names of the plants and places that surround you, or training your mind in the rich pathways of the metaphorical. To finding a way to express your interconnectedness with the rest of humanity.

I think I'm beginning to understand that the quest is the point. Our sense of enchantment is not triggered only by grand things; the sublime is not hiding in distant landscapes. The awe-inspiring, the numinous, is all around us, all the time. It is transformed by our deliberate attention. It becomes valuable when we value it. It becomes meaningful when we invest it with meaning. The magic is of our own conjuring. Hierophany--that revelation of the sacred--is something that we bring to everyday things, rather than something that is given to us. That quality of experience that reveals to us the workings of the world, that comforts and fascinates us, that ushers us towards a greater understanding of the business of being human: it is not in itself rare. What is rare is our will to pursue it. If we wait passively to become enchanted, we could wait a long time. But seeking is a kind of work. I don't mean heading off on wild road trips just to see the stars that are shining above your own roof. I mean committing to a lifetime of engagement: to noticing the world around you, to actively looking for small distillations of beauty, to making time to contemplate and reflect. To learning the names of the plants and places that surround you, or training your mind in the rich pathways of the metaphorical. To finding a way to express your interconnectedness with the rest of humanity. To putting your feet on the ground, every now and then, and feeling the tingle of life that the earth offers in return. It's all there, waiting for our attention. Take off your shoes, because you are always on holy ground.

spiritual writer Gary Thomas developed the concept of a “spiritual temperament” in his book Sacred Pathways, which is essentially a personality theory for prayer. He wrote, “There is great freedom in how we can meet with and enjoy God. This is by his design and according to his good pleasure.” His warning: “Beware of narrowing your approach to God.”[60] He categorized nine spiritual temperaments, each with its own unique pathway to God: Naturalists: loving God in nature and the outdoors Sensates: loving God with the senses—candles, incense, materials, and so on Traditionalists: loving God through ritual, symbolism, and liturgy Ascetics: loving God in solitude and self-denial Activists: loving God by fighting injustice Caregivers: loving God by caring for those in need

We cannot receive, however, unless we set aside time for God to speak—and then let him set the agenda for our discussion. I’ve found that my agenda is frequently different from God’s. He must be the initiator in my spiritual walk. He knows what I need to hear. When I’m consumed with my temporal problems, I miss the blessing of being out of doors.

There are three elements of the traditionalist pathway: ritual (or liturgical pattern); symbol (or significant image); and sacrifice. Evelyn Underhill, a popular Christian writer in the early part of this century, calls these three elements “sensible signs of supra-sensible action.”9 They are ways we use the physical world to express nonphysical (spiritual) truths.

Imagine the power of reading a psalm at age eighty that you read daily in your thirties. Rituals can tie our years together with

When I first began spending daily time in prayer, I often grew frustrated at how I could forget about God’s presence by lunchtime, even after praying for an hour in the morning. Shorter but more frequent times of prayer may actually help us to live with an increasing awareness of God’s presence in our lives. How difficult would it be for us to set aside five minutes in the morning, five minutes at noon, and five minutes before or after dinnertime to meet God in prayer?

A Christian who has a hard time living by his or her faith while driving, for instance, could hang a symbol—a cross or a fish—on their rearview mirror to challenge them when their temper begins to flare. (That’s certainly preferable to putting a Christian bumper sticker on the back of the car for all to see, and then driving like a son of perdition!) A pastor friend of mine uses a pond near his home as a symbol. As soon as he drives by that pond, he is reminded that he is going home and needs to prepare himself to focus on his wife and children, leaving the cares, worries, and concerns of the church on the north side of the pond. He can pick them back up the next morning when he passes the pond on his way to work. A symbol can be found to meet virtually every need in every situation. Men

Sincerity and effort are two strong legs, but two legs are not enough to stabilize a stool. Christian activists need sincerity, effort, and thoughtful prayer. A minister who had misgivings about the prohibition movement remarked that “the churches in the long run would get further if their activities were marked by less commotion and more insight.”24 It is hard to disagree with this. Jesus, as always, is the perfect model of a man who worked hard during the day and prayed hard during the morning and night. Peter is the model of a man who acted fast (cutting off a soldier’s ear, for instance) and had much to repent.

Ultimately, it’s a matter of spiritual nutrition. Many Christians have never been taught how to “feed” themselves spiritually. They live on a starvation diet and then are surprised that they always seem so “hungry.

Expecting all Christians to have a certain type of quiet time can wreak havoc in a church or small group. Excited about meaningful (to us) approaches to the Christian life, we sometimes assume that if others do not experience the same thing, something must be wrong with their faith. Please, don’t be intimidated by others’ expectations. God wants to know the real you, not a caricature of what somebody else wants you to be. He created you with a certain personality and a certain spiritual temperament. God wants your worship, according to the way he made you. That may differ somewhat from the worship of the person who brought you to Christ or the person who leads your Bible study or church.

Christians who demonstrate compassion because they are passionately in love with God will thus speak prophetically to a selfish culture and, sometimes, a selfish church. Selfishness distorts true sacrifice, and sacrifice is at the heart of true care. Mother

Healthy Christians create. It is the nature of our God to create. He’s introduced in Genesis 1 as the Creator of everything. One of the last images given to us in the book of Revelation is God creating the new heaven and the new earth. The Bible is literally framed around the act of God creating.

One of the most powerful antidotes to addiction is participating in different activities, lifting the addicts out of themselves and into positive, constructive acts of creation.

It wasn’t easy. In junior high, I was voted “most polite,” and it took some time for me to realize that being perceived as a “nice guy” and being a faithful Christian don’t always go hand in hand.

Reincarnation is a human trait, in which information, conferring advantages to individuals, is derived from a human mind at death and is recruited by another during gestation or infancy.

[F]ollowers of Christ think differently than others. . . . Where do we look for the premises with which we begin our reasoning on the truth or acceptability of various proposals? We anchor ourselves to the word of God, as contained in the scriptures and in the teachings of modern prophets. Unless we are anchored to these truths as our major premises and assumptions, we cannot be sure that our conclusions are true. Being anchored to eternal truth will not protect us from the tribulation and persecution Jesus predicted (Matthew 13:21), but it will give us the peace that comes from faith in Jesus Christ and the knowledge that we are on the pathway to eternal life. . . . We oppose moral relativism, and we must help our youth avoid being deceived and persuaded by reasoning and conclusions based on its false premises. . . . We reject the modern idea that marriage is a relationship that exists primarily for the fulfillment of the individuals who enter into it, with either one of them being able to terminate it at will. We focus on the well-being of children, not just ourselves. . . . “God has commanded that the sacred powers of procreation are to be employed only between man and woman, lawfully wedded as husband and wife.” That declaration is not politically correct but it is true, and we are responsible to teach and practice its truth. That obviously sets us against many assumptions and practices in today’s world--the birth of millions of innocent children to unwed mothers being only one illustration. . . . Of course, we see the need to correct some long-standing deficiencies in legal protections and opportunities for women. But in our private behavior, as President Gordon B. Hinckley taught many years ago about the public sector, we believe that any effort “to create neuter gender of that which God created male and female will bring more problems than benefits.” . . . When we begin by measuring modern practices and proposals against what we know of God’s Plan and the premises given in the word of God and the teachings of His living prophets, we must anticipate that our conclusions will differ from persons who do not think in that way. But we are firm in this because we know that this puts us on safe ground, eternally. . . . [Some] persons . . . mistakenly believe that God’s love is so great and so unconditional that it will mercifully excuse them from obeying His laws or the conditions of His Plan. They reason backward from their desired conclusion, and assume that the fundamentals of God’s eternal law must adhere to their concepts. But this thinking is confused. The love of God does not supersede His commandments or His Plan. . . . The kingdom of glory to which we are assigned in the final judgment is not determined by love but by the law that God has given us--because of His love--to qualify us for eternal life, “the greatest of all the gifts of God” (D&C 14:7). Those who know that truth will surely think differently about many things than those who do not. . . . We cannot escape the conclusions, teachings, and advocacy of modern Pharisees. We must live in the world. But the teaching that we not be “of the world” (John 15:19; 17:14, 16) requires us to identify error and exclude it from our thinking, our desires, and our actions. [CES Evening with a General Authority, Feb. 8, 2013]

Most of our solitude is forced, not chosen, creating loneliness rather than spiritual intimacy with the Father, and our culture is anything but morally strict. We gravitate toward the trite and trivial rather than the somber and grave, and we pride ourselves on adornment and complexity rather than simplicity, often because many of us are trying desperately to hide our true selves. Ascetics, perhaps more than any of the other spiritual temperaments, must truly go against their culture to practice loving God.

It is in these dark, intense, and lonely times that ascetics’ souls awaken. I think that anyone who has been stretched in ministry knows that the real battle was fought at Gethsemane, not Calvary. To be sure, only Calvary provided payment for our sins and thus was absolutely necessary, but Gethsemane was the real spiritual battleground where Jesus made the final decision to be obedient. In a wrenching, courageous act of self-denial, Jesus proved the mettle of his faith.

Don’t you know where God is leading on this?” I was asked once. “Yes, I do,” I said. “And that’s the problem. I’m waiting for my willingness to catch up with God’s.” That’s why I identify so much with Christ, alone and in agony, as he prayed in Gethsemane. It is the ultimate picture of Christianity, the picture of us struggling spiritually as God aligns our will with his. It’s the picture that fuels the ascetic spiritual temperament.

The world is full of religions and religious people who don’t know God. Religion can serve faith, but it doesn’t substitute for faith, and it can never replace faith. Meaningful expressions of the heart, mind, and will become lifeless if they’re not mixed with a deep and abiding faith.

Ascetics are “strict” only because they want to reserve a major portion of their lives for their passionate pursuit of God.

It is this strict side of the ascetic’s life that is perhaps the least understood, not only by our culture, but also by other Christians. Especially among evangelicals, who champion salvation by grace through faith, a strict faith can seem perilously close to legalism; and in some cases, it might be. For healthy ascetics, however, strictness is a cherished method of expressing love for God.

In the study of Christian spirituality, real contemplation is actually an experience with a beginning and an end that Christians pass through. Contemplation is not generally considered a life-state that one exists in, so I’m adapting the word somewhat when I use it as a label for a spiritual temperament.

God has much to say to us, but we are often too busy to listen. Our minds have a tendency to get too occupied during the day, or sometimes we are too busy praying to God with our own agendas and have lost our listening ears. Dreams are one way God can “break in” and get something across to us that we might not be open to hearing during the day.

I may not receive any new insights and God may not feel particularly close. This has taught me that the demand for spiritual experience can be as gluttonous as the desire for food, money, or sex. Desire for spiritual highs needs to be contained so that we can develop other parts of our being.

3Strengthen those who are discouraged.g Energize those who feel defeated.h 4Say to the anxious and fearful, “Be strong and never afraid. Look, here comes your God! He is breaking through to give you victory! He comes to avenge your enemies. With divine retribution he comes to save you!”i 5Then blind eyes will open and deaf ears will hear. 6Then the lame will leapj like playful deer and the tongue-tied will sing songs of triumph. Gushing water will spring up in the wilderness and streams will flow through the desert.k 7The burning sand will become a refreshing oasis, the parched ground bubbling springs, and the dragon’sl lair a meadow with grass, reeds, and papyrus. 8There will be a highway of holiness called the Sacred Way. The impure will not be permitted on this road, but it will be accessible to God’s people.m And not even fools will lose their way.n 9The liono will not be found there; no wild beast will travel on it— they will not be found there. But the redeemed will find a pathway on it. 10Yahweh’s ransomed ones will return with glee to Zion. They will enter with a song of rejoicing and be crowned with everlasting joy. Ecstatic joy will overwhelm them; weariness and grief will disappear!

How often do we Christians “take the Lord’s name in vain” during our worship? It matters to God if we lie, even if we’re singing, and even if everybody around us is singing the same thing. Music can make us feign a commitment that just isn’t there, causing us to become callous, insincere believers.