Author / Michael

Unknown's avatar

Posts by Michael

I am a husband, father, minister, and writer.
by Michael

Prayer of the Week

As this month closes, I want to be open to what’s next. I want to notice what I haven’t. I want to capture what I sense but don’t quite see.

I want to feel my senses open. I want to have my heart expand. I want to love and not hate. I want to bring good and not evil to this world.

I want to connect with others and be a connective person for others. I want to help people who can’t help me in return. I want to be larger and not smaller.

I want your help because these things are impossible for me. My motives are so complicated that they stop me. These desires are impossible to cultivate. They aren’t impossible for you.

Grant me what I need, especially the vision to see deeply within, to pull up what’s in me. These roots didn’t come from me. I didn’t plant these hopes within myself.

Do your work. Make me what this murky vision tells me I am.

by Michael

Descriptions of Your Future

If you considered what you said in yesterday’s conversations–in all of them–you would note many thoughts and opinions.

Some of them would be convictions you’ve held for a long time. A few comments would be things you couldn’t believe you said, things you never knew you felt.

Social psychology gives us the phrase self-fulfilling prophecy. It is a way of naming the power of speech and how speech has a way of creating a future.

If you considered your words as descriptions of a future, what would you hear about yourself? What would you hear, in your own words, about your tomorrows?

At the bottom of your words is an engine of deep belief. You may not know what you believe until you hear yourself speaking. So consider your words. What do they say about your thinking concerning the future? Perhaps there is a slim or a full description in what you’ve said.

by Michael

Prayer of the Week

There are needs beyond your servant’s, and her need today reminds me of how long you’ve been healing before now. You are accustomed to saving and reclaiming and making whole. Do your work as you often do, even when we don’t notice or watch or praise or acknowledge it.

Be the most competent physician during today’s surgery. As each nurse and doctor tend to her, be present in each touch, word, and gesture, making healing happen. Bring recovery when all is done and may strength be in the body of your child and friend and servant.

Grant her family all the courage they need. May they know your mercy, be enveloped in your lavish grace. These things are not difficult for you. In the name of the One who made healing his work. Amen.

by Michael

From Psalm 46 (Msg)

God is a safe place to hide, ready to help when we need him.

We stand fearless at the cliff-edge of doom,

courageous in seastorm and earthquake,

Before the rush and roar of oceans,

the tremors that shift mountains.

Jacob-wrestling God fights for us,

God of the Angel Armies protects us.

River fountains splash joy, cooling God’s city,

this sacred haunt of the Most High.

God lives here, the streets are safe,

God at your service from crack of dawn.

Godless nations rant and rave, kings and kingdoms threaten,

but Earth does anything he says.

Jacob-wrestling God fights for us,

God of the Angel Armies protects us.

Attention, all! See the marvels of God!

He plants flowers and trees all over the earth,

Bans war from pole to pole,

breaks all the weapons across his knee.

“Step out of the traffic! Take a long,

loving look at me, your High God,

above politics, above everything.”

Jacob-wrestling God fights for us,

God of the Angel Armies protects us.

by Michael

Participating in Mystery

I was re-reading Emmanuel Lartey the other day as he described classical pieces of pastoral care, and he wrote this about healing:

“The mystery is that we do not know God’s intention or the form in which God’s presence will take. This calls for openness and attentiveness.”

Being a part of God’s healing work as a caregiver–and care is a broad word admittedly–means seeing oneself as a participant in mystery. That means, in part, that every act can’t be specifically defined. Perhaps every act can’t even be described. There’s inherent humility in healing, isn’t it? At least, if you take the view that God is involved.

You live knowing that your behavior isn’t always translatable. You may rub against the ineffable, the indescribable. When you do, it helps to be humble. It helps to accept that “I can’t describe it” nature of what happened. It helps to pause, to feel the striking nature of care.

Real care leaves you thankful. It leaves you aware that you’ve been blessed and that you’ve benefited from something you may not be able to put into words.

by Michael

Perspective Transformation

Perspective transformation is the change to how you see something. I think a lot about perspective transformation. I am sitting with an educational theorist (Mezirow) whose theory is about the power of perspective transformation. I’ve also found reframing to be a pretty nifty pastoral skill over my years. The two are very related.

When I was getting consultation on a paper draft last month, one of the supervisors scribbled something on the page. Now, I should back up to say that when we present at this particular monthly meeting, we get immediate verbal feedback. Your work is engaged and your person is engaged. It’s great but it’s labor. You get a massive amount of constructive, careful, powerful, and pointed critique from pastors who have been therapists, educators, and chaplains for years. I can’t live without the stuff in some ways. But, again, it’s work being in the room!

I bring all my papers to the hospital the next week and flip through my friends’ comments. I imagine that I also review the event, almost writing a verbatim in my head about the presentation and the feedback in particular. Of course, the presentation comes up in my own supervision with my training supervisor as a major conversation topic.

Well, one piece of feedback on my theological theory was to consider writing it as a devotion. We had been working through the expectation of me exhibiting “mastery” (something on the grid that tells you what you need to pass essentially) and how I thought about that. The supervisor knew I wrote devotionals and he asked me how my theory would come across if I looked at it similarly. “What if you wrote this as a devotion?”

He was offering me a potential perspective transformation. He used something I could relate to and employed it in what has become a change of my view. Not all changes of view are comfortable. And they always require work. But they can be gifts. They can be good gifts.

by Michael

Prayer of the Week

Place these words inside all our unsettled parts so that they may be gentle, God-given counter words to what we hear so much.

Transform us in our listening until we believe differently about ourselves, until we believe more.

Open us to your reality and not just our own.

Turn us to this blessing and may it echo within.

The Lord bless you and keep you.

The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you.

The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

(Numbers 6:24-26)

by Michael

Being Secure Enough to Be Open

I’m getting feedback on a writing project. It’s a devotional for Lent. I’m dealing with prayer and endurance. I’m listening to Hannah’s story and being her student. The other night my friend and colleague brought my pages and over tea told me many things I needed to hear.

I’ve done that before: shown my pages and asked for feedback. Linda and Aja commented on my Advent devotional. Aja will see the next draft of the forming work. Feedback is always a discovery. I never know what I’ll hear. I never know how I’ll react.

In my current educational process to become a CPE Supervisor, I’ve learned a lot about defensiveness. I know that there are times when I’m more susceptible to being defensive. I know when I feel secure enough to be open. In my developing personality theory (which draws from interpersonal psychology and Carl Jung), I’m spending time thinking about anxiety and how it can either motivate a person to become or close a person off from becoming. Anxiety can make me open to what’s said. Anxiety can shut me down before words are spoken.

I think one of the critical features for my being anxious is when I don’t feel secure. When Allie talked with me at our kitchen table, I knew she was contributing for my good. I knew she was a friend. I knew I didn’t need to defend. The same is true with Aja and Linda. They’ve read my stuff but, more importantly, they’ve known me so well, that I know there’s no reason to fear. I can be secure enough to be open to what they say.

by Michael

Prayer of the Week

For some of us countless ideas run around our heads. For others of us the struggle is to start seeing anything at all. We think too much or we don’t grasp enough of your thoughts about us.

Grant us the ability to see when our heads are clouded, the ability to hear when the story is being told somewhere just beyond our ear’s grasp, and the ability to put enough form to that thing so it feels.

May we know your love in bone-deep ways. May you shed light upon dark places in us that haven’t been loved. May you reach us completely.

Help us hold your truths gently. Help us appreciate and respect the people you’ve given our world, the idea generators, the storytellers, and the prophets whose words impact, disappear too quickly, or stay and sustain.