The passive and the active work together in a balanced Christian life

Book 2, Chapter 2

-Part 3 continued-

Self-abandonment is “the complete donation of our being to God to be used according to his good pleasure.” ~Caussade

As Father C continues to weave together strands of spiritual insight to help us better delve into our own life with God, he brings us to a discussion of the active and the passive responses that a disciple might make to God. In light of our previous discussion, we might call these the active and passive forms of submission to God.

For just a moment we need to consider that over the years talk of the interior life etc., distressed the relationship between the inner life (the passive) and the exterior life (the active). Extremists in favor of passivity-only were called Quietists in 17^th-Century France, although the roots for this are found earlier in Spain. This is considered an unbalanced bearing on the doctrines of the Christian life. Included among these are the views that the “perfect” among the Quietists can achieve sinless perfection; that their souls can be completely absorbed into God in this life; and that any dealings with the ordinary life in the world are to be strictly shunned.

The better-known of the writers from this movement are Jeanne Guyon (d. 1717) and Francois Fenelon (d. 1715). A Church Commission condemned the Quietist views of the two, for which Guyon apologized and Fenelon, an archbishop, submitted to papal authority on the matter.

Caussade carefully prefers the passive approach to God. “Although souls raised by God to the state of self-abandonment are much more passive than active, they cannot be dispensed from all action” (Page 59). Careful indeed, for Caussade wrote these notes just a dozen or so years after Guyon and Fenelon died, and in the same country. He gives something of a nod to the Quietists, but achieves more of a balance by adding, “they cannot be dispensed from all action.”

The institutional memory of the Catholic Church contains a movement toward passivity (or contemplation) and the equal and opposite reaction of movement away from passivity and toward faith in action.

While studying the contemplative lifestyle with a group of believers, I found it strange that we were warned by some of the members to avoid becoming otherwise active in the church. I believe this to be a “memory” from the debates of yesteryear.

I think it is easy for us today to see how an inner life of prayer and contemplation is needed to inform and energize an active life of faith. The two are complimentary to one another. However, it took our predecessors some time to reach this balance.

By 1907, Dom Jean-Baptiste Chautard (France again!) wrote a pamphlet that later became the book The Soul of the Apostolate, which defends and prefers the interior life. You can tell that there is still strife in the air by this time, as two of Dom Chautard’s many sections of the book are: “Is the interior life lazy?” and, “Is the interior life selfish?” His conclusion is that action is made fruitful by the interior life – a fairly balanced reckoning.

Further still, we have to consider that solitary contemplation is as much of an action as spooning up mashed potatoes at a soup kitchen. A prayer warrior confined to his home or his bed is as much a part of the overall spiritual well-being of the church as is a brilliant evangelist or popular Christian author. We must see this, although we do so rather poorly, and then still balance isolation with community; the prayer closet with the marketplace.

Jesus managed to spend time alone and isolated in prayer as well as working and teaching among people. “In the morning, long before dawn, he got up and left the house and went off to a lonely place and prayed there” (Mark 1:35). “… he would often go off to some deserted place and pray” (Luke 5:16). Matthew reports that, after Jesus healed the sick and fed the crowd of thousands with five loaves and two fish, he pressed the disciples to get into a boat and head for the other side of the Sea of Galilee, sent the crowd away, “and went up into the hills by himself to pray” (Matthew 14:23).

In passing I will point out that St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) (and France again!) was a great example of this balance. His contemporary, Geoffrey of Auxerre, reported of Bernard: “Contemplation and action so agreed together in him that the saint appeared to be at the same time entirely devoted to external works and yet completely absorbed in the presence and the love of his God.”

In his 12^th sermon on the Song of Songs, Bernard speaks of three ointments that waft from the body of the Bride. They are, he says, “Contrition, devotion and lovingkindness.” What follows is his unsurpassed description of the external manifestation of the believer filled with mercy and charity:

“Who, in your opinion, is the good man who takes pity and lends, who is disposed to be compassionate, quick to render assistance, who believes that there is more happiness in giving than in receiving, who easily forgives but is not easily angered, who will never seek to be avenged, and will in all things take thought for his neighbor’s needs as if they were his own?

“Whoever you may be, if your soul is thus disposed, if you are saturated with the dew of mercy, overflowing with affectionate kindness, making yourself all things to all men yet pricing your deeds like something discarded in order to be ever and everywhere ready to supply to others what they need, in a word, so dead to yourself that you live only for others – if this be you, then you obviously possess the third and best of all ointments and your hands have dripped with liquid myrrh that is utterly enchanting.” (Vol. 1, On the Song of Songs, Sermon 12, Page 78.)

In light of the history of the church and of the Scriptures, we can safely say that self-abandonment is not something we do lying down. The donation of our life to God for his purposes will entail a life drawn away for prayer and a life lived in the service of others.

It sometimes happens in doctrinal development that things that are discussed separately become unnecessarily separated. Faith and works is the most glaring example. In the case of the interior and exterior life, it is the believer’s responsibility to respond to God in a way that integrates “pray without ceasing” (First Thessalonians 5:17), with “love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31).

The separation of the two is needless, impractical and doctrinally unsound.

Why bother with this discussion? If it has been a problem in the history of the church, it could well be a difficulty in the life of the contemporary believer. Doctrinal history is nothing if it does not show us how to put together the forces that flow from our belief.

If prayer is your left hand, and action is your right, you must clasp them together for the Christian life. It is neither in the right, nor the left, but in the interlaced fingers that bring them together.

We kind of want God to manage our inner life ... sometimes

Book 2, Chapter 2

-Part 3-

God’s actions upon the soul are his alone.

I think this is often overlooked. The soul is in his domain only. Divine action upon the soul can only be authorized and completed by the movement of his Spirit, the operation of his mind, the production of his being.

What indeed would be the result if we were supposed to build and keep our own soul? Each of us may or may not be aware of the ruinous result and the incidental damage we do to our inner life when we believe ourselves to be the maintainers of the soul.

That life, the spiritual inner life of the person, is best kept in the exclusive care of God. Since he is the only one who divinely acts, and the soul exists to be divinely acted upon, it stands to reason that the best ground for us as the beloved of God is one of submission to him.

As was pointed out before, there is something instilled in us as creatures of God that makes it natural for us to give ourselves away. Obviously, mankind is faced with choices as to what or to whom he will give himself. The crucial theological fact of what we might here call “The Problem of Man,” is that we can abandon ourselves to destruction or to restoration; to death or to life; to denial of spiritual truth or acceptance of its reality in God. If we are in fact made to give ourselves away, then, for the sake of our position in eternity we ought to review our choices. As the Scriptures say, “Choose this day whom you will serve” (Joshua 24:15).

As it is, we do not know very much about our own inner life, and we do not know the mind and workings of the Holy Spirit who dwells in the midst of the inner life. So, I myself am not the best option as my own inner life manager, director, remodeler or repairer. Little spiritual growth can occur until we grasp this. Somewhere, at conversion or in the teachings of the faith, this concept has been lost while being central to spiritual well-being: My soul is in God’s domain, and only he will act upon it whenever and with whatever he wants. No one else gets to play.

We may never in our lives be comfortable with this, but we must face the utter and uncomfortable truth. Why are we so uneasy with this? Partly, because we can only trust God so much. As Christians, we believe our souls to be very precious. So precious in fact, that we are not at ease when we do not know or cannot see what God is doing with the soul. We are not sure if we want him to do all the directing.

We know that he can use anything terrible, painful or tragic and make it something good for the soul, but, who wants terror, pain and tragedy? With just that much mistrust, we will want just that much management control over the soul. This, beloved of God, is a rookie mistake.

So, to whatever extent we mistrust God and acquiesce to our entanglements, we place the soul in peril. Perhaps not peril of eternal damnation, but peril of inestimable damage.

While the life of the soul is entirely in God’s domain, we are to respond accordingly to the action of God upon us. His work, although beyond us, is not separated from us. He does not take our inner life to the laundry while we live our lives awaiting a pressed and folded spirit to be given to us at a later time. So, we need some guidance on what to do now that we know God as the first mover, director and owner of the soul.

As we shall see, our response is not nothing. This submission to God is not doing nothing.

Can we freely belong to God while held by entanglememts?

Book 2, Chapter 2

-Part 2 continued some more-

We are hard pressed by these pages to relinquish our grip on the snares that hold us fast; to allow their unwinding and loosening so that we can turn more fully and more willingly to the awesome condition that awaits us: “the state of pure love” (Page 58).

Already we have reviewed how much we love and enjoy our entanglements. We have seen enough of ourselves to wonder if it is really worth it to give these up in order to obtain something as admittedly nebulous as “the state of pure love.” After all, we can be saved and entangled, can’t we? That is surely a comment that the 21^st Century Christian should mull.

Do we not, in fact, have plenty of God in salvation, such that the search for deeper and less-convenient spiritual domains is, well, kind of unnecessary?

It is not a strong faith, not a biblical faith and not a Christian faith that entertains such questions. There appears to be no doubt in Caussade’s mind that his hearers will want to proceed with this deeper walk with God. My readers are different. Our culture has provided us with many thinking options. God, if there is one, is accommodating, easy-going, and quite possibly a woman.

But here is where Caussade steps out of line. God, he says, is one of “loving severity.”

He answers how we go about getting ourselves disentangled: “It is only through a continual self-contradiction and a long series of all kinds of mortifications, trials and strippings that one can be established in the state of pure love. We have to arrive at the point at which the whole created universe no longer exists for us, and God is everything” (Page 58.)

Two opposing forces are at work in our faith: Our desire for “the state of pure love” with our God, and our recoil from this love’s severity in terms of “trials and strippings.”

Here we are at the heart of Christian mysticism. A wrong turn here could lead us down a weird and twisted path; a pretense that the world doesn’t quite exist or that physicality is an illusion.

No, we are still talking about the master that we will serve; the influence to which we will yield; the winds to which our sails will respond. We are here faced with the same two shepherds that are mentioned in the Psalms – the Lord, or Death. Truly, the world as our guide is in essence Death in a deceptive more acceptable form.

Christian mysticism does not ask us to live in pretense, but to choose entirely between God or Death (disguised as the world) as master. Once we are faced with this choice, God, indeed, is everything.

“A heart that thus lives for God is dead to everything else and everything is dead to it.” (Page 59)

Here is wording is nearly identical to Paul’s in his letter to the Galatians: “But as for me, it is out of the question that I should boast at all, except of the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Galatians 6:14).

In short, the key to freedom from entanglements and those things that hinder us is a true desire to get released from them.

For us, one of something is never enough, which plays hell with our theology

Book 2, Chapter 2

-Part 2 continued-

This particular section in my copy of Caussade’s book takes up less than two pages – just a few moments to read. But, this part really makes me want to look away and find something less arduous to read. The good father has found me out, and his invitation to my own complete freedom with God in Christ accuses me, at the same time, for having become accustomed to and comfortable with my entanglements.

I am a comfy Christian, I confess; a product of my society; friend of the world and occasional thinker of higher things. I like to think of myself as among the beloved of God, but I shy away from considering the consequences of being so loved. Frankly, I like being loved by God, and I also like all the people and things and toys that make my life my life.

When we come to the aspect of Christian spirituality that leans disturbingly inward upon my soul – that is, my suitable response to the God who is precisely and lovingly my life is to be an all-or-nothing one – this makes me start looking for exit signs. There must be some way to get out of this!

A very unfamiliar and uncommon word comes to mind: “Singularity,” with the nuance of “one,” or “sole.” Not since the days that “stereophonic sound” was coined by Western Electric in 1927, beginning the gradual demise of one-channel monophonic sound reproduction, have we been led to think that one of something is enough.

We are a two-channel people (at least two). Take away one of our speakers or pull out one ear bud, and the sound is less than half as good. Philosophically, we like to take two opposing concepts and mash them together in a Hegelian stew to synthesize a third new entity. As a people, we have either become pluralists or fans of pluralism beneath the loving care of one God who describes Himself as “one,” and who is like no other thing or person in all existence.

As we live and pray before an all-or-nothing Lord who asks us to be singular in our attachment to Him, we will be quite naturally in conflict with this God and the multi-stranded attachments that we have invited or permitted that hold us bound to the Earth. Possibly we are bad people. More probably, we carry around a poor-quality Christianity.

For example, a few days ago I wrote “Self-love and self-denial cannot occupy the same person.” Well they can if we twist Christianity out of shape and make the faith something that it is, indeed, not. We might, in passing, have to also adjust our definitions of “self,” “love,” and “denial.” If we mess with the words enough, we can come up with a satisfying “both/and” distortion from an “either/or.”

It is possible that the actual true Christian faith has been buried beneath a barrage of semantics and clever words. Since the day Jesus said we cannot serve two masters (Matthew 6:24), we have done everything we can to prove him wrong. He told us the kingdom of heaven was like a hidden treasure in a field, or a pearl of great value, where the discoverer “sells everything he owns” to buy the field or the pearl (Matthew 13:44-46). We have since then tried to figure out how to acquire the treasure without selling everything.

We think we know stuff. We will find a way around everything God ever said. We damage our souls every time we nod in agreement to the world. The infinite transcendent difference between the realm of the fallen world and the realm of the kingdom of glory cannot be filled by all the Christians in the world who want a life that is one part God and three parts world.

If I may dare quote Kierkegaard again, “Christianity and worldliness never come to an understanding with one another – even for a moment.” (Works of Love, Page 82.) Whenever we think we have successfully mitigated the two, we do untold damage to the faith, to our own soul, and to the people in our world, who each must have a clear depiction of Christ from us.

How we love the bonds that keep us from flying

Book 2, Chapter 2

-Part 2-

I grew up surrounded by dark green cottonwood trees painted against a flawless Wyoming sky of perfect blue. The horizon in any direction was edged by pale granite lazuline mountains that granted the same reassurance in their presence as would a dog sleeping at the foot of one’s bed. We were all protected and somehow aware that we were under the watch care of these quiet, loyal, ancient stone guardians.

Before I started the first grade, we moved from our town of 2,000 to its outskirts, the east side of the Big Horn River; an area unofficially but ubiquitously known as “the heights.” From then on I was surrounded by space, most of which was made up of alfalfa fields framed by slackened strands of barbed wire fence to keep whatever horses or cattle in their places. The fences by no means meant “keep out” to humans – at least not to us kids.

Our neighbors’ fields were just as much a part of my turf as was our own yard, which itself was actually quite small. It was in these fields that I raced with my dog, built snow forts, inhabited my own “fortress of solitude,” built a tree house, dug underground shelters, pole vaulted fences and ponds, caught frogs, climbed trees and practiced boomerang Frisbee.

In one of these fields on a summer afternoon a friend and I noticed a scuffling on the ground in front of us. We could not make out what was causing the movement. I immediately assumed the worst and concluded it was a child-eating snake. Still, I couldn’t stop myself from drawing closer to the disturbance on the ground.

To my relief, we found it was a bird. One of its legs was entwined in a short single strand of dried weed that tethered the bird to the ground. The commotion we had seen was the bird trying again and again to fly off, always thwarted by the twist of weed.

I lifted the frightened bird and couched it in one hand while undoing the thin strand that had wrapped itself under one wing and once around the leg. Once freed, the bird got to its feet in my opened hand and looked into my eyes. It perched on my finger for a second or two and then flew off.

Today we seek God’s help with our disentanglement. For we are called to live a life from above, and yet we are ensnared by bonds and attached to the life below by cables made of materials we, in our folly, consider agreeable and harmless. We insist that we can live as citizens from heaven while carrying with us the cares, concerns and adventures of the world at our feet.

Who among us would not like to fulfill our personal goals and also serve God? Which of us would turn down the opportunity to do exactly whatever we wanted and believe that this alone would be our acceptable service unto God? Who can resist the irresistible inclination to both befriend the world below and serve the King above?

It seems quite natural that we should be able to synthesize an existence that borrows from both worlds – to homogenize a palatable essence made of what we might call “the best of both worlds.” While this is a keen idea, it is not a Christian one. Mind you, Christian thought is very easily polluted by this blending of spirituality and worldliness, because the mixture is powerfully attractive. It is quite human of us to want to compromise two disparate realms into a single agreeable one. Where we offend the world, we justify our faith; and where we offend our faith, we justify our sophistication. Rather than live in one realm we are vagabonds in both.

As Christians, our faith demands of us a singularity of purpose and satisfaction. “To live is Christ,” said Paul. We are to detach ourselves from everything else, leaving ourselves completely free to serve God in whatever way he would like at the moment.

The psalmist says he watches the hands of God like a handmaiden watches her mistress, looking for the slightest indication from the master’s hand that God’s mercy and some obedient response is about to come due (Psalm 123:2).The life fully free to serve God at every instant is watchful for any inflection within the current moment to indicate God’s wise and loving presence and direction.

Before we consider detachment, we have to see Christ. Otherwise this is just a religious exercise. Something must pull us away from the world we fancy, the cares we adore and the concerns we caress.

Seeing Christ is the essential first movement in the believer’s soul that will draw him apart from all else. Fail to see Christ, and no real detachment that benefits the soul will follow. Whatever else can be said about the condition of one’s soul at this point, it must be said that the soul remains entangled. Not homogenized; not synthesized; but strangled.

We try to live with ties that bind us to God and ties that hold us fast to this world. Although we talk and sing of flying, the entire Earth is shackled to one of our ankles. We can no more fly than we can pull the planet skyward with our frail wings. We are perilously suspended between two domains. In some awkward way we are built to fly, but, to quote a Pink Floyd song, we are “earthbound misfits.”*

Like that little bird on that summer day, we will require assistance with our disentanglement.

*(From their Division Bell album, 1994. Song: Learning to Fly.)

The obstacle is self-love -- paraphrasing Pogo's 'We have met the the enemy, and he is us'

Book 2, Chapter 2

-Part 1-

Continued even more ridiculously on …

Those few who may be following along in the book, which is the source of these reflections, will notice that I have not budged from this section (Book 2, Chapter 2, Part 1) for many days. By my count, this is the sixth reflection that these few pages of the book have pried loose from me.

I want to move on – I truly do, but Caussade keeps saying things that deserve some time. It has not proved good for my soul to read things without giving myself ample time to integrate or, a better word, internalize what my eyes see and that at which my mind gives but a passing glance.

As journalism rendered my penmanship unreadable, even by me, it was during my college years that my reading life was ruined. The sheer race against time to absorb at best a shadow of an outline of a book led to a very utilitarian way to read – fast and light. Get in, get what you need, and get out. It was less like reading and more like committing a robbery. In this state of mind, the spiritual writings of some of our best teachers are considered frustrating and unworthy. No one likes hot tea where the water encounters the tea leaves for less than a moment. Jesus himself was considered too watery for those who were trained not to ponder. He was asked once (and we can assume more than once), “Tell us plainly.”

So, while the student in me grows impatient with an author who will not get to the point quickly enough for me to get on with it, the beloved son in me wants to linger and pause in the thrum of God’s presence.

So here we go with further musing . . . especially on the matter of indifference and its stake in the life of the spirit.

“Come, my soul, let us pass with head erect over all that happens within us or outside us, remaining always content with God, content with what he does with us and with what he makes us do.” ~Caussade (Page 56.)

As we shall soon see, Caussade’s words here are from movements of the beautiful musical suite that makes up the life of the soul. His invitation is for the soul to enter into the peace that passes all understanding and the love that knows no bounds.

In order to experience in our limited way the unlimited expression of God’s presence in peace and love, we have to replace an obstacle in our path with a spiritual discipline: Universal indifference.

Probably none of us feel particularly comfortable with the word “indifference” – a word that means unconcerned, unresponsive, unsympathetic and uninvolved. It suggests a cold, unfeeling apathy toward something or someone. Perhaps it has even been thought that a good Christian person shouldn’t have any of this laying about in his or her personality.

Used wisely by a proper handler, indifference can help remove the most powerful obstacle in spiritual life. It can clear the path for the seeker who wishes to give answer to the groanings and yearnings for God that well up from the depths of the soul – “Deep calling to deep.” (Psalm 27)

The obstacle is self-love.

“Let us pass this labrynth of our own self-love by vaulting over it . . .” ~Caussade (Page 56.)

Let us first admit that we have a mind-set problem when it comes to the topic of self-love.

Starting sometime in the 1970s, if not earlier, it was in vogue to consider that one of the mental issues facing Modern Man in America was that he did not love himself enough. This proposal was picked up by the church and many a Christian was told that one could not love one’s neighbor unless and until one loved oneself. This inversion of Christ’s “second greatest commandment”: “To love your neighbor as yourself,” was put forth to help us with our self-esteem issues.

The conclusion, simply, was that self-love was our best friend.

Obviously, the two attitudes toward self-love collide. They are two different worlds. Self-love is either friend or foe. Here there must be a radical reconsideration on our part regarding the true nature of self-love in its theological, psychological and practical consequences.

It is not possible to look into a book with the first-word title “Self-Abandonment” and expect self-love to be supported and thought in keeping with the pursuit of holiness.

In Christian theology, self-love is the source for all the bad news that infects the human soul. For example, here is the list of the Seven Deadly Sins: Pride, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Laziness, Wrath and Envy. Seven outcomes, if you will, resulting from applied self-love. Find any other list of sin (Galatians 5 for example) and you will find each unclean act or attitude has the same cause – applied self-love.

In the case of self-love, neither self nor love are put to use in the way they were intended by God.

The individual human person is made in the image and likeness of God. Of all created beings, we are at the top. We were made with much individuality and freedom in order that we would turn ourselves over to the care and authority of our Maker.

The self has always been something to give away. In the Garden of Eden, Adam yielded nothing, but clung to himself resulting in death. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus yielded himself to the will of the Father resulting in life.

The self has always been something to give away resulting in fullness from God.

Once this abandonment is in the works, rather than finding himself hollowed or drained, the individual finds himself filled with the Spirit of God. In this condition, we share intimately and powerfully in the love that exists between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and we can most fully respond to the love that God has for us.

We find contentment and fulfillment not in loving ourselves, but in receiving the love God has for us and responding in kind with the love we have for him.

Once self and love are used properly, and we realize something of the depth to which we are loved of God, this begins a healing trend upon our wrecked self-esteem and some of our insecurities that have plagued some of us since childhood. Here is where professionals can help us, but only if they will not foster the misuse of self or love.

Man was created by a self-giving God. As such, we bear the imprint of our Creator as self-givers. We are to find it natural to turn our lives over to God. We have spent enough time in our broken condition that we could find these words appalling. Still, every one of us is seeking some way to give ourselves away to something or someone. That is the imprint talking.

God is the only safe keeper of each of us. If we give ourselves to another person, a career, an object, a cause or even a ministry, we find instead a lack of fulfillment and a certain amount of damage to the self. In realizing this, we may happen upon the erroneous advice that we need to love ourselves more and this emptiness will go away. Great. We just keep digging ourselves deeper and deeper into the mire that we think will deliver us.

If we instead abandon ourselves to God, he will perfectly keep us by wisdom and tend to us by love.

We have to get off the self-love treadmill and recognize this false and perilous path.

The follower of Christ who answers the call to the shallows of self-love will have no depth of spirit, and will have no defense in light of Christ’s command to “deny yourself, pick up your cross and follow me.” Self-love and self-denial cannot occupy the same person.

Back to Caussade’s point – Once we belong to God, we are free to be indifferent to matters that could either overwhelm us or subtly distract us.

Like eagles, says Father C, let us fly free: “Come my soul, let us pass beyond our languors, our illnesses, our aridities, our inequalities of humour, our weaknesses of mind, the snares of the devil and of men with their suspicions, jealousies, sinister ideas and prejudices.” (Page 56)

As we shall see next, we cannot fly free when entangled.

At root, the problem is not that we do not love ourselves; the problem is we have not come to love God.

God's reply to a young man's plans: 'Well, that's not quite what I had in mind.'

Book 2, Chapter 2

-Part 1-

Continued ridiculously on …

These three pages that make up “Part 1” of this chapter in Caussade’s book contain a number of central thoughts that help guide the follower of Christ. As with the faith itself, just about the time I think I am finished with these pages, I find that I have merely begun.

Caussade is going to introduce us to the matter of indifference when it comes to embracing the will of God.

I will start with a story from the life of one of the most insecure people I know: Me. As a young pastor (and here I mean “extremely, very green”) I had been called up by my then-denomination to start a church from scratch in a small town in western Montana. The Christian & Missionary Alliance Church had sent me to Hamilton, where neither I nor my wife knew a single soul. We were to scrounge up our own jobs, find willing church-starter-type people, make converts and start services.

Many were the Sundays we set up borrowed folding chairs in the spacious living room of the apartment we miraculously rented on our second day of arrival. We had to return the rental truck on the third day after we arrived. Our first night in this strange town – our new home – was spent in a distressingly-decorated motel that excelled in a depressing atmosphere. Sunday after Sunday I preached carefully-studied sermons to my wife and our two cats. I had a sign made and kept it in our front window, which opened immediately onto the sidewalk on North Second Street: “Valley Alliance Church meets here.”

Almost 30 years later, that sign is all that remains of my failed attempt at church-making in Hamilton. I use it as level footing for my backyard barbequer.

I was daily tormented by lack of success. Every once in a while a wanderer would knock on the door for food, and I would walk with him to the Range Café and buy him a hot beef sandwich. For a while, a welfare family of 10, two parents and eight children, with one on the way, took up the use of us. When they showed up on Sundays, we had an immediate need for a Sunday School and a Children’s Church. When they didn’t show, it was back to my wife and the two cats. Other than that, the Valley Alliance Church wasn’t much of anything. From my point of view, neither was its pastor.

I had no doubt that God had led us here, but I was quite dubious about myself as someone . . . effective. I didn’t seem to have a meaningful ministry. Wait, and you will see what a trap that word “meaningful” can be.

Feelings of inadequacy were only worsened when I was required to attend pastors’ conferences within the district. A group of pastors is not unlike any other group of professionals. There are the quiet, there are the blustery, there are the competitors, there are the self-assured, there are the nice, and there are the asses. I was never comfortable in this group. I was always afraid someone would ask, of all things, “How’s it going?”

At one of these conferences, in Missoula, we had all been given roles in the night’s events. There were featured speakers, people to introduce them, song leaders, invocators, benedictionaires, special music presenters and Scripture readers. And ushers.

Ushers, of course, are as necessary at a pastors’ conference as the French were in World War II. When I discovered that I had been assigned to ush, which amounted to walking backwards down an aisle and pointing knowingly in a direction with an expression on my bitten-closed smile that said, “That right there is a chair,” I fled the conference.

I silently, privately had no confidence in myself, but I could not endure having it publicly confirmed among my peers in this way: “Tim, we think, would make a passable usher.”

This was a microcosm of my general malaise. I wanted my ministry to have meaning. Instead, I felt like a sticky note in a vast library full of massive, intimidating, important books.

You can tell I was let down, disappointed, frustrated, self-absorbed, fragile and angry.

I had made a fundamental error in my walk with God. I had not yet learned that even a Christian’s idea of success can lead to problems. I had come to believe that the work I did in God’s kingdom would have to be satisfying and meaningful to me; that I would somehow look good on paper; that I would be seen as successful and competent by my fellow creatures. I might even win a prize.

The truth is, the work I do in His kingdom has to be satisfying and meaningful to Him. I may have something in mind completely different from God’s idea when I involve myself in my plans. By now, for example, I can tell that, while I wanted a career and a stable employee life, the Lord has thought otherwise. Since my college graduation I have had at least 23 jobs scattered in many different fields. Bursting forth from high school, I was committed and unstoppable in my pursuit of becoming a music teacher. Exploding out of Bible college, I was singularly set upon becoming a pastor.

God’s response to my plans might have sounded like this: “Well, that’s not quite what I have in mind.”

About the will of God, we have this example from Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane: “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass me by. Nevertheless, let it be as you, not I, would have it.” (Matthew 26:39) and again, “My Father, if this cup cannot pass by, but I must drink it, your will be done.” (26:42)

Once we carefully integrate this approach in our walk with God: “Let it be as you, not I, would have it,” we are closer to what Father Caussade calls “a universal indifference.” That is, as he writes, “a soul freely submitted to the divine will with the help of grace” (Page 55).

This is a radical distinction, and brings us to another of Caussade’s thoughts in this section of his book.

“We should then love God and his plan in everything … We should abandon ourselves purely and entirely to God’s design, and thus, with a complete self-forgetfulness, be eternally busied with loving and obeying him, without all these fears, rejections, twistings and turnings and disquietudes which sometimes result from the care of our own salvation and perfection.” ~Caussade (Pages 55, 56.)

The indifference here required is to realize that your life is not what your life is all about.

My ministry, such as it is, has not been packaged in the way I thought it would. In my earlier years this led to the above-mentioned disquietudes. As I develop a better-integrated spiritual life through grace and practice, it becomes clearer that God is doing what he wants with me at all times. As I grow in the faith, I kick somewhat less against this.