A human soul is a funny thing. And the soul of this pastor is trying to learn to "hear" again.
On the second day of this sojourn, in an Indiana monastery, a dear friend gave me a simple direction for this time away. "Listen." More specifically she said, "Your job is to listen." The task sounds simple. But today, on this first day in Assisi, Italy, I found a strange interference. And it was my role as teacher/preacher. I wonder how many pastors struggle with the same static? Let me explain.
During my time away, there have been a few moments that were simply inspired. God spoke to me through people, events or places...and I understood. But today was the day I had pictured myself getting down to the business of prayer. While Shelly was preparing for the day, I found my way to the Basilica of Saint Francis.
Once inside, I walked through the magnificent 780 year old cathedral. I took in the painted ceilings, a beautiful bronze statue and the famous Giotto murals of the life of Francis. Finding a kneeling bench toward the back, I quieted myself to pray.
Like rays of light into the cold and darkened stone building, I sensed God warming my soul. That was a moment of joy, and crisis.
Immediately, I was trying to find ways to tell my congregation what I was learning. I was thinking of how to explain what his Spirit was saying to me.
"Hush!" I told my racing mind. "BE STILL." And I began to pray again, and Peace began to speak again--words too tender to be true, and too inimate to share. But my mind didn't think so. "Why didn't I bring my notebook? What if I forget this? How will I ever teach it?"
And then for a third time, I tried to pray. Nothing.
Can you imagine that anytime you had a particularly warm conversation with your Mother or Father or child, you felt bound to make a speech about it? Or each time you shared tender words with your spouse, you found in them a poetic ecstasy about which the world just had to hear? This is the trap I walked into at some unknown point in my past. Prayer time has become prep time. Intimacy has sought a spotlight.
I've begun going to the Well of Living Water only to pour it on other souls. And my own has gone dry. My relationship with God has become the source of my preaching--even the stream of my income--rather than the font of my existence. Lord have mercy.
Distraught and distracted, I stepped from the cathedral and confessed that I have forgotten how to spend time with God without divulging our intimacies to the world. Who would want a lover like that?
Tomorrow many of you will listen to a pastor. Pray that he or she is drinking deep from the wells of God's Spirit, and not simply hustling from the well, to your Sunday.
