STORY:
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The Shema Prayer, in its older form, goes like this: Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.
This prayer is first found in the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy, and given our theme for this series on St. Benedict and our goals for this episode, we can't just pass over the fact that the book of Deuteronomy is itself a product of Israel's desire for communion with God and her efforts to reconstitute their way of life around love for YHWH. After their outer lives had been fragmented by the forces of invading empires and inner lives struck with a crisis of hope, Deuteronomy was composed to help reintegrate their prayer and politics and work and rest in YHWH's presence and promises. So, Deuteronomy is something like a Rule for God's people.
And the Shema Prayer became a central component of that integrating way of life. It became so important that committed Jewish people started praying it two times every day, in the morning and again in the evening.
Later, when Jesus came along, Israel again found herself in a place of fragmentation - they were divided both as a people and within themselves as again, the forces of the world seemed to be working powerfully against God's purposes, and they struggled to keep faith and hope in God when answers were hard to come by.
One day, in the middle of all this, a Lawyer asked Jesus what the greatest commandment was, and Jesus responded with the Shema prayer. But, he expanded it a bit, saying, "The greatest commandment is this: Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'
For many, in our own fragmentation and disengagement and struggles with faith and hope, hearing this is inspiring. Who wouldn't want every bit of every day to be whole in God and shining with the glory of divine love?
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But then, for many, trying to live this, in the midst of our own fragmentation and disengagement and struggles with faith and hope, this is also intimidating. How could you even begin to get every moment to shine with divine love?
For Christian thought, though, the fact that Jesus reinstitute this prayer changes everything about how we can not just say it, but live it. Because Jesus wasn't just another prophet telling the truth and calling us into our potential. Jesus was God in flesh. The divine, thoroughly enmeshed with our everyday reality. And this divine presence in worldly time and affairs is what opens christian thought to a brand new concept: the Sacrament.
A sacrament is an everyday, finite thing, like bread and wine, water, or human commitment, that presents us with nothing less than the divine presence, here, where we are. So within a sacramental view, something like prayer shifts from simply being us speaking words to God, to us finding communion with God.
So Jesus offering us the Shema Prayer shifts it from being something presenting us with a demand or expectation that we figure out how to use each moment to love God, to an invitation to find each moment becoming the very conduit for God's love to us, which then fuels our loving God in return in every graced moment.
And if that sounds inspiring, the exercise I'm about to introduce you to draws from St. Benedict's wisdom to help you begin to think about, use, and experience your time in this kind of sacramental way.
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As we work to embody the Shema prayer, we don't start with expecting ourselves to suddenly love God with our whole being, any more than someone who at 17 awakens to their desire to be a neural surgeon should begin by busting into an operating room and demanding a patient and a scalpel. We begin great things with small things. So in striving to love God with all we are in every moment, we begin by simply paying attention to what we pay attention to.
Because both giving and receiving love requires attention. We cannot love something we ignore, and we cannot receive love without attending to the giver and the gift. But paying attention is a skill that must be developed and practiced.
So, right now, take a moment to evaluate your capacity for unbroken attention. If you were going to do something like pray, or read a challenging book, or solve a complicated problem, how long do you think you could keep your focus on that one task before getting distracted?
Be realistic and honest. Your ego will probably want to overestimate this, but that only sets you up for failure and shame -- which is the opposite of what the Shema Prayer offers. Most people in our culture would begin at somewhere between 90 seconds to 7 minutes.
So, find your starting point.
Then, as a target goal, studies have shown that the ideal time frame for a human mind to focus intensely on one challenging subject is between 50 to 90 minutes. That's the limit, and the sweet spot, for human attention.
Over time, most people can come to handle 4 to 5 of these 50 to 90 minute blocks in a day before they reach exhaustion and start to work against themselves. But, odds are, most of your schedules are not open and discretionary enough to allow you to fill your whole workday with these kinds of time blocks.
So, to begin, simply find one or two times in a normal week where you could work to increase your capacity to give and receive love by devoting 50 to 90 minutes to practicing unbroken attention.
Then name one activity -- like reading Scripture or a Spiritual Classic or learning a difficult concept or skill -- that would connect with something or someone you already genuinely love and know it would be good for you and for the world if you were to love this person or thing more.
Then, work to protect that time, and to actually dedicate it to the task you've named.
You won't do it the first time. That's normal and okay. Remember, you're working to increase your attention span to 50 to 90 minutes. More than once, you'll start to get bored and ready to move on to something else. Acknowledge those feelings, but do your best to push through. And if you keep at it, you'll notice the span between these moments of distraction getting longer and longer.
Along the way, receive grace for yourself and notice and celebrate your progress.
Once you've built your capacity, you can start to integrate these time blocks into other areas of your home, work, and relationships, adding more and more intentional blocks in more and more areas.
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And always try to remember, these periods of growth are for more than just your productivity. Their real aim is sacramentality. The goal is divine love, flowing into and through you in more and more moments of your everyday life.
We at Shema like to say that people like Mother Teresa of Calcutta and Benedict of Nursia became St. Teresa and St. Benedict during intervals like these where they did small things with great love.
Becoming someone who loves God with your entire heart, soul, mind, and strength, and truly loving your neighbor as yourself can seem like an overwhelming goal. But isn't that exactly what you want to experience -- a love that overwhelms every moment and dimension of your being?
And while 50 to 90 minutes might not seem like a lot in comparison to that overall vision for life, small chunks of time, carried out multiple times a week, then multiple times a day is exactly what keeps you progressing in love, becoming who you were created to be.
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If you do try this exercise, and find you have further questions or would like some more specific guidance, or if you would like to share the results with someone, you can find more resources or contact us at www.shemasd.org
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DISCUSSION [Auto-Generated Transcript]
Julius: Welcome back listener to “All Things.” Um, this is Julius and Kevin and will again, um, yep. Yep.
Kevin: Indeed.
Wilson: Yes.
Julius: Verily . Um, today we're talking about, as we keep on going through Benedict's rule and kind of like, um, Take a deeper look into what these monastic communities look like and what we can learn from them.
Um, today we're talking about leadership and, um, this one, I I'm very like, uh, fascinated to see where this conversation goes. Cuz I think this was very pertinent for me in reading through I, I borrowed Will's copy of Benedict's rule like a couple of months ago and kind of was like fing through it myself.
And I remember, I think just like where I was. In life. that time. I was just like, in a particularly like angsty anti-authoritarian mood.
Kevin: As we all are.
Julius: As we all can be. And I think, I remember just like being in a bad mood, reading it and being like. All this stuff about like how the people in the monasteries are to listen to the Abbot and like how much authority is given to the Abbot.
I was like, who the heck is the Abbot? Like why, who gives him this much power? Why is that? Okay. And then like I brought that with will and he said some really good stuff to help kind of like reframe how I understand what authority is and how, um, ways that we can understand authority that is not like exploitative, which is, I think so many of our resistance to it is that we've seen so many examples of bad leadership and authority being exploited.
Wilson: And so. As is like our usual Mo like, how can we kind of like, reframe that and take a look at like, what, like just starting with what can good leadership look
like? Right. That I that's one of, well, first of all, I was all ready to go. And then you gave the intro and it always feels like when the expectations are there, it's like, shoot.
Now I gotta say good stuff. , don't be a bad leader. . Do it. Oh, but that would be so with all, I mean, time after time, after time, I keep coming back to the same sort of like fundamental position where we go like, yes, it's correct. That that is bad. And yes, that is abusive and yes, that is a misuse of these things, but that doesn't mean any of us really wants to live without this stuff.
Like power again, it's not, is there power being used? The question is like, is it good power? Mm-hmm is it being used? Well, authority, judgment. right. You know, again, I, these shouldn't be like fly by topics where you just mention them, cuz people are gonna be going like, whoa, whoa, whoa. hold on. I'm not convinced.
But so like. I guess for all of those things, we'll have to deal concretely with the principle I'm hitting at with leadership. Mm-hmm . So with all of these things before we're ready to think that the world would be better off without them. Right. Let's look for good examples. Yeah. Don't this is over and over again over again.
I tell the people like don't let the bad examples spoil something for you. Like when, when people are grasping for something that has. Influence and power when they're grasping, after it to use it for something bad to just don't let 'em have it. Mm-hmm like, don't let them take it and run a run away with it and do all kinds of wreckage and damage.
Right, right. Pulling back and, and saying like, oh, no judgment or no leadership. Right. Essentially does that. Mm-hmm . And so, so don't reclaim it. And the way to reclaim it is to look okay. If that's bad, if that's not, it what's a good example of, of where there's genuine. Genuine leadership mm-hmm . And so it's, it's clear in Benedict's rule how the Abbot is chosen and they're chosen because the community recognize you have the character and the gifts and the graces that will allow you to take authority in this role.
Mm-hmm you have they've. Already recognized the right kind of authority. And so then they're choosing to put them in that place where they can exercise that authority. Yeah. And think about it in the sense of exercise as a metaphor, use it and enact it in a way that everyone gets stronger because of your gift.
So a, a class, if you go to a class, uh, I mean an exercise class. Yeah. And they're saying touch your toes and you do it. You're recognizing their authority. You're recognizing yeah. That they have something to give. And if you obey. If you follow their lead. Yeah. Then what they have to give will be communicated to you and you will benefit from it.
Yeah. So that that's like good authority. And so I thought of that, like, what's one of the cases of like a place where I've recognized because I have, I mean, this is like, um, uh, who doesn't have issues with authority, right? yeah. It's kind of. Who doesn't have daddy issues, you know, like, you know, did you have a good one?
You, well, you got 'em still, did you not have one? You got 'em, you know, it's like, like who doesn't have authority issues. and I can, I can kick against it. I can have this like inner, passive, and even outward rebellion as much as anyone else, you know? And so when I look back to that phase, when I was kind of the most, most prone to just Uhuh yeah.
oh, I wanted to, yeah. I mean, my go-to example here is when I checked out Frankenstein from the library in my high school, cuz I was honestly just. Surprised that my small Christian school had Frankenstein in the library surprising. And I was like, I wanna read this book. And then by happenstance, a week later, it was assigned to me in my literature class, I had to read it and I suddenly no longer wanted to read it.
So like, oh yeah. And this is like that same phase in my life where, where I could just suddenly. Uh, I now suddenly don't want to do it anymore just cuz you told me I have to mm-hmm was a time when I was like in other ways, most submissive and in a way that didn't turn out to be totally bad for me.
Mm-hmm and so there was a. and actually what I'm doing here is there's one kind of like key example where I, I played, but along with there being one concrete key example for honesty and disclosure case, I'm kind of taking three or four different coaches and putting them into one kind of composite character.
Kevin: Yeah, yeah. Like a Frankenstein.
Wilson: Yeah. Um, most people, but there, but of all of these, there was, there was one that. Most embodied the characteristics. And so got mm-hmm the, the highest kind of obedience from me and that's where it came to basketball. Yeah. And this coach knew basketball. Mm-hmm there were and improved it.
Right. There are people that could talk it, but then to watch them do it, to watch them organize a team. Yeah. And he had been a coach at an NCAA D-1 team that had gone to the final four. Right, right. Had experience had proven himself. And so when this, and so there's that he had that kind of experience that sort of real.
Know how mm-hmm he understood the game. And two, we had a shared desire. I wanted to be a good basketball player. He wanted to make me a good basketball player. Mm-hmm . And from that, we had a shared tell us mm-hmm from that shared desire, we had a shared goal mm-hmm and now in that place, because he had the authority because those pieces came together.
When he told me to do something, I. If he told me to pick up the ball and don't shoot for an hour, but just dribble this way. If he told me to run all these drills for two hours, without even picking up a ball, I did it if he told me to run till I puked I, and literally once like on the court and everyone was like, duh, cuz we had to stop the, we had to stop practice for cleanup.
Like, but if he told me to run till I puked, I ran till I puked because he knew it and in basketball and in area. That there were like secondary areas that had something to do with that. Mm-hmm like, he's the reason that when I was a freshman in high school, I stopped drinking soda because he talked about nutrition.
Yeah. The connection to my body and how that connected to my goals as a basketball player. Yeah. And so I just decided at 15 years old, I'm done drinking soda. And it wasn't, I mean, it wasn't the same thing as like not partying, you know, the peer pressure, but you know, we're talking soda, not the, but it wasn't easy of course, to, for in the next four years to say no to soda, but I said no to soda.
Yeah. Because of this shared and that authority. Right. And it, it reaped huge benefits for me. In ways that still carry over, even though I didn't end up playing college basketball, like was my dream mm-hmm it got certain things into me that carry over and benefit me in all sorts of areas in life, especially now that I'm tipping over.
And I'm, you know, I'm in my forties and aging, there are certain things about physical health mm-hmm and what is good pushing through and what is no, listen and pull back mm-hmm right. That's allowing me even into my forties to experience some activities, some health and do things with my kids. Yeah. That it was, he taught me how to do.
And it got ingrained in me at that point. Right. In those areas where he had that and that's genuine authority. You recognize it. Yeah. You know what you're talking about? And so when you say so I listen. Yeah. I had other coaches that it was like, yeah, no, you have no idea what you're talking about. right.
The school just couldn't find anybody. Right. And you were the only person that agreed to take on this job. Uh, but, but, but Gary, no, no, no. You tell me to run tele IPU coming to run to LPU because you know what you're talking about, we have the shared desire and the shared tell us. Yeah. And in other like secondary issues where that's line, but then there were plenty of other places, especially as we got to know each other more and more.
where he didn't have authority in my life. but he, he tried to give me several times advice about girls and it was just a very quick, no, right? Nope. You're out of your jurisdiction. Exactly. right. No, I mean, you could
Kevin: have tried
Wilson: it and so, well, that was the thing. Like I looked at his history with basketball and his knowhow.
Right. And I looked at his for sure. That's where I'm gonna, this was pre this was no. Book, right. I'm not, I'm not going through his browser history, although I'm pretty sure, but like, but you know, but then I, I looked in those other areas and was like, no, no, no. With, with that, that's just a trailer wreckage and that's not what I want.
And so you're free to tell me these things, but I'm also free to say no, and I'm not gonna do what you say. Yeah. Right. That's that's gen the first key bit of, of genuine authority and leadership. And this is what Benedict gets at very early on the, when he first starts talking about the Abbot, he's talking.
To he's not talking to the potential Abbot that has ambitions for running a monastery. He's talking to the, the monks. Yeah. Saying these are the qualities you look for in choosing this leader. Mm-hmm this is how you recognize genuine authority where
Kevin: you were just going spark several. What sparked several ideas. Mm-hmm , uh, a couple I wanna, I wanna kind of highlight is it sounds like leadership is the kind of, um, the metaphor that comes to mind is like a, like a teacher or master to like an apprentice master. Yeah. Um, or someone like an, a craft, uh, that someone like a right.
You're trying to initiate somebody into a school of craft. Whether it be, I. Uh, wood making carpentry. Yeah. You know, and you're trying to instill in them, here are the skills, here's how you do it. And so leadership should be in that kind of realm of instilling skills and practices and, and things of that nature to make, you know, produce or what's what was a good word there, um, to create.
Someone who is like the master mm-hmm , um, to like, you know, pass on that. And what that got me going with all this, like, talk about leadership and authority is there's, uh, um, I think I quoted Bon ho last time too. So curious again, just pops up outta nowhere. It's like, oh, Hey, Hey Bonnie , um,
Wilson: back at it again.
Um, theology, nerd jokes.
Kevin: uh, but one of the cool things, I think it's in his book Christ center, he talks about Jesus and how he, he comes about and. Ex essentially comes almost outta nowhere. And people are like, who are you? Um, who are you to say these things? Um, by what authority do you do them? Mm-hmm uh, what is your leadership like?
who gave you this? Um, and essentially what Bon Harper highlights is that Jesus is on a different plane than any other human in, in, uh, history. Jesus, doesn't say like here's the teaching or Jesus doesn't have authority or Jesus doesn't give like a good word. Like he is that. Jesus is the authority. Jesus is the word that is being spoken.
Jesus is by its very nature. You know, he brings it. It got me thinking when you were talking, will that, uh, perhaps the, the mistake that abusive leaders and dictators make is that they confuse having authority with like being the authority. Yeah.
Wilson: There you go. There there's I think you, if you didn't nail it, you're right there with like your finger super close to the heart of, I mean, cuz there is a BAJI.
Specific mistakes that they make over, but that's maybe the, the fundamental. Yeah. Yeah.
Kevin: It's just confusing that having authority, which where versus saying like, I am the authority. Yep. This is ingrained in my being. So therefore listen to whatever I say, even matters that I have no jurisdiction over.
Wilson: Right. And that's where you start. When you look at. And again, it's like, uh, I mean, this is used so many times, but I, I think there's a reason they talk about counterfeiting the way the FBI trains people to find counterfeit bills is not to chase down all the, the bad ones to show them how they counterfeit or what the mistakes are.
They just over and over show them the real thing. Yeah. Right. They learn to know the real thing over and over and over again. And so. Yeah, it, I mean that's and the truth for all of us, and this is where we're gonna like put a little pressure back on all of us know that I know that this comes back to me too.
Yeah. Is you don't just complain and feel, um, feel like you've done. What is sufficient, if you can point fingers at bad cases of authority. Mm-hmm, like part of what we need to do is recognize, do the work to recognize true authority. When you start to recognize genuine authority, you'll also recognize we all have.
In certain areas. We, part of the mistake we make is to think so, uh, categorically, and even that it, I don't feel like that fully communicates, but we, we think so all or nothing. Mm-hmm so a person is a leader or they aren't a leader. And if all we have is bad leaders, then we shouldn't. Right, right. But what we need to recognize if we're gonna handle this well, is we need to recognize where authority genuine lies.
And if you start to see that, you'll start to recognize the areas where you have it. Yeah. Where people do look to you and where rightly they should. And that means responsibility to develop that so that you can provide. In, in fuller and fuller ways for the people that are looking to you. Yeah. That need that.
Right. This is even in the monastery. Right. And, and this is another, a test case of a good example. Mm-hmm to look at it, to see what's healthy and good. The Abbot is not the whole leader. The Abbot is not the leader. Not the only leader. Right. We'll come back to like what the Abbot is. Yes. There's a, a different kind of authority there because of what you just laid out and what the monastery is seeking to conform to yeah.
In the kingdom of God. But it also talks about like, Hey, but part of what you need to do is choose a leader here. And this is what you look for here as far as virtues characteristics, but also skills. So who's gonna oversee the resources of the monastery. That's not all in the Abbot's hands mm-hmm right.
And that's one of the things where you see with dictators is they want to control everything, whether or not they have the genuine authority to do it. Yeah. And so they make calls and they make hu huge calls that really affect people's lives, where they. . I mean, they may have positional power. Yeah. But they don't have authority.
They don't have knowhow. And so it goes badly and this is why they end up themselves. What they worship is power itself. Yeah. For them. So they grasp after it. And that's why there's like incredible repercussions for challenging the authority. Real leaders love helpful. Feedback right now. Well, maybe love isn't.
I mean, it can still sting them, but they recognize it they're to it and they're open and they listen and they adjust. Right. And so the community and the Abbot also chooses, here's the person that oversees the resources in the seller. Yeah. Here's the person who handles the outside business. Here's the person that, because you guys have authority in this area and they a, a, a good leader in that sense also like enables others to recognize and live into their own leadership.
Yeah. And their own authority.
Um, and the, the thing with the Abbot is, and this is where you have to with, with the characteristics. This is where, um, the things start to coalesce, or I like, I like Flannery O'Connors everything that rises must converge. Mm-hmm like if, if all of these things really are. Rising up toward God, then there's also a, a massive, beautiful convergence of all these disparate elements.
Cause we all live in a dome but uh, yeah, it's a spiritual truth. Not a physical . Alright. Earth. Okay. Um, so what Benedict right off the bat tells the community to look for. And the qualifications of the Abbot are like Christlike qualities. Mm-hmm . Right. And so your right to take it to Bon Hoffer, Jesus is on a different level.
He is the authority. And what does Jesus do when Jesus comes and uses that authority? That's one of the things you see over in the gospel is Jesus shows. He doesn't just have expertise in this area. Mm-hmm he has authority over life. Mm-hmm right. When he says, be heal, he's healed when he interprets the scriptures life changes, and God is actually revealed a book just isn't, uh, talked about right.
Mm-hmm he has authority over life. And what does he do? It's and this is the go to here. It, this is the new Testament in Christ. God was reconciling the world to himself. Mm-hmm, the one who has genuine authority, that kind of, that kind of authority, not like positional I'm the master. So do what I say. Yeah.
But the kind of authority we've been talking about Christ has that over life, cuz he's the source of life. And so what is he doing? He's healing and reconciling it. Yeah. And so if the Abbot, this is why Benedict right off the bat says these are the qualities that you look for because these are Christlike, qualit.
Hmm. And he gives the strongest warning to the people who take that position. Yeah. That the consequences of you misusing this are worse than anybody else misusing the authority or the position they have. Yeah. And so, and this is why over and over again, the, the stories of the best leaders, the best Abbots, the best bishops in the church.
Almost all of 'em have an element of, and when the church tried to put them in this position, they tried to run away. Yeah. like, like John Christo literally ran to a cave and hid and they had to physically drag him out and place him on the Bishop's seat before he would take that position. Yeah. Because they realize that in this place, what, and this is what, he's, what Benedict says.
You're you are representing. Re-presenting Christ and that is, that is an authority and a position. And like, that's the kind of thing that you don't want to just arrogantly assume for yourself. Yeah. And you probably you're qualified to take it if a good part of you knows you don't want it. Yeah. um, Because your job at that point, and this is what you see as he lays the rest of it out is to be that thing that, that heals and reconciles.
And so if that's the case, you are not amassing all the authority for yourself, you're helping other people discover, find their authority and trust that in themselves yeah. Become who they were made to be and give them opportunity to give those gifts to the community. It, and it that's the Christlike reconciling power.
That's, that's quite a different thing. You know, this is, I mean, Jesus himself says it. I didn't come to be served. Right. But to serve, yeah.
Julius: I think. That's the important, that's the important distinction that clicked for me in that conversation. When I brought it with you will, was this distinction between like we've named it as positional authority and genuine authority, that authority and leadership is like equality. It's like a type of being, it's a way of being that precedes the title and with so many abuses of power, what happens is Kevin, like you've named that people will like.
Receive the title first that they'll be like, I am the authority. That's me, regardless of whether or not they have like, um, I think you were spot on to connect it to craft because that's what I think of is like, that's the, the immediate analogy of like, oh, there are people who like, I want to learn from them.
I will listen to them because they exhibit, um, virtuosity is what it is right in craft. And in musician musicianship, it's a thing of virtue. It's a way of being that like, If this guitar player, I want to learn from them. And I want to listen to what they have to say, because I know in, in the same way that like in the scriptures, like there's a way that Jesus teaches that he teaches with authority, right?
Not like the other scribes of the day or whatever, but there is just this sense that you kind of get of like, you know what you're talking about. And also like bringing that into conversation that the best leaders that I look to, whether it's like musicians or like, and like pastors are people who know when to lead and when to, when to follow that, like the best leaders, don't always like, feel the need to be in the center of.
Like attention. And yet people still want to hear from them. Mm-hmm, , there's this like, back and forth of like, Jesus knows that he's got like this authority, but it's the Philippians two thing. He never like exploits that authority. Right. But pours himself out, knows when to speak and when to stay silent, when to listen and knowing like.
And I think that's the quality that you see in like, in my favorite teachers, my favorite musicians, like the best, like most virtuosic guitar players, like know when to not play to . Yeah. And they, and like, I there's something too when like, like I, again, like a guitar player or even like a pastor who I see that like, there's a humility in them still of like a, oh, you're still learning too.
Like, there are people that you look up to so that it's not this stark, like black and white of like this person's leader and this person's a follower and like leaders have absolute authority over everything in your life.
Kevin: Yeah. It's because, uh, authority is, is gift. It's always a gift. Right. And that's what I I've always thought about and kind of described to people in the same way.
Like respect is a gift. Like I can't demand respect me, like give me authority. right. You know, it has to be freely given and freely, freely received. Um, but even it's fascinating, even in the Trinitarian life, like Jesus has the authority, but who gave him the authority? Mm-hmm the father. the father bestowed all judgment and authority onto the son.
Mm-hmm , you know, and Jesus receives that humbly re he receives that, um, you know, with grace, but, and then he is that mm. In his very nature and. we commit like ironic idolatries when we think like, oh, I, I deserve this authority. Mm-hmm I earned this authority. I, whatever my titles, my prestige, my history, like I am this authority.
Mm-hmm that, that is just not even the son of God. mm-hmm , you know, claim that. Yeah. And so it just kind of, we rise up to some so weird form of idolatry. Yeah.
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MEDITATION
[PAD AND MELODY SWELL AND FADE THROUGHOUT]
If we're truly leading within the Kingdom of God, then leadership is always most primally about following Jesus -- through all the normal victories, defeats, and pauses of every day, all the way through the normal end that we all face.
And if the central task of leadership in a murky and chaotic environment is to creat clarity, then the first step in that process is getting clear on where Jesus is leading you next.
So, for this meditation, we want to take you through a lectio divina practice of Mark 9:33-37.
Now the ideal setting for this kind of practice is one where you can be quiet and undisturbed. So, if possible, get there, take a posture that is comfortable, but not so comfortable that you might fall asleep, take three deep breaths, and invite the Holy Spirit to guide this time.
The first time through, set aside the urge to interpret or apply anything about the text. Still your mind, and simply listen.
33 Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, "What were you arguing about on the way?" 34 But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest. 35 He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all." 36 Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, 37 "Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me."
Now notice any image, word, phrase, or idea that stood out to you. And just sit with it for a moment. Again, delaying any urge to interpret or apply it.
Now, I'm going to read the passage again. But this time through, ask the Holy Spirit for help in meeting Christ in the text, and understanding what he is saying to you, right now, through these words.
33 Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, "What were you arguing about on the way?" 34 But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest. 35 He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all." 36 Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, 37 "Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me."
Now, once you have something, talk with God openly about your reactions. Where you are drawn in, or where you feel defensive. Where you are encouraged, or where you might be unsure or afraid. Whatever your responses to Christ's words here happen to be.
Now, with these words, ask Christ for clarity on where he is leading you ... And imagine the concrete events and opportunities lying before you in the coming weeks. And see yourself moving though them as Jesus would.
Finally, ask for the grace that you need to actualize your greatness in Christ. And when given the opportunity, share the clarity you've received with others around you.
This is Christian leadership, as we help others welcome God into our world through Christlike service.
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