Update: How the Prison, the 12-Steps, & Ignatius Help us Embrace Our Powerlessness No. 76

In this episode Josh offers some updates on the Invitation and shares more about what he is learning in and through the School of Prayer, how it is formed around what he experienced over the six years praying with a group of men in a prison while facilitating the Spiritual Exercises. Here Josh identifies how Christianity can function much more like a 12-Step addiction recovery program.

Consider the School of Prayer

Artwork by Samatha Kadzban


Subversive Hope,
A Rebellion Against Despair

My subversive act of hope, my rebellion against despair, is to invite you to consider the School of Prayer, a nine-month study and practice of the rule of life at the vital intersection of contemplation and justice.

"Rule of life," ie, measurement of time, energy, resources, attention

We turn to the monastic vocabulary of "rule" to discern how to give ourselves to God creatively, abundantly, intentionally not out of duty but for the sake of love.

In practice, the School of Prayer is not for the super spiritual. It's a failure lab, a safe space to hear the Holy Spirit's voice inviting us deeper in and through our hard hearts and our small faith. The holy irony is that we find our prayer as we confront our resistances to prayer.

We have space for you in the cohorts that begin soon. If you are even slightly interested, listen to this episode and let's talk.

Peace & Love,

Josh

Zach Winters Pt I - No. 75

The Banner family was gifted with a visit from Zach Winters a few weeks ago. We recorded a bit so I could share the goodness with you!

This is the first part of what we recorded with the whole fam. Zach played a few songs for us, one of which has meant much to Susanna Childress Banner and me as we've waded through miscarriages and all kinds of other regions of pain and wilderness. We've used Zach's music with the kids at bedtime too, so they were especially shy.

Of special importance, Zach and I talk about how music can both name and heal our pain. At the end of this episode, Part I, I make some connections with Gospel music, why it matters so much, and then share again bits of a song led by CJ Kingdom-Grier I recorded at Maple Avenue Ministries during the pandemic.

Next week I intend to release Pt II of my time with Zach. That episode presents my further conversation with Zach after the kids went to bed. We continued talking about music, art, and some theology, how these things help us as humans.

I also share some more about The Invitation School of Prayer. If you are interested in participating in the SOP this year, we begin at the end of the month.

theinvitationcenter.org/school-of-prayer-details

www.zachwinters.com

Reparations Chapter 3 w/ Rev Julie Van Til - Part VII No. 74

This is part seven of our series, "White People Talking to White People About Racism," a reading of Reparations: A Christian Call for Repentance & Repair by Duke Kwon and Greg Thompson. In this episode the Rev Julie Van Til helps Josh unpack chapter three.

Julie Van Til is a spiritual director and the pastor of Floosmore Community Church in Flossmore Illinois near Chicago. She is originally from the West Michigan area and was the one guest the Rev Dr Denise Kingdom Grier especially hoped would contribute to this conversation on racial justice. At the beginning of the conversation Julie and Josh discuss how the posture of a spiritual director influences her ministry as a lead pastor. They then consider the several ways that white supremacy is theft of power and culture and how racism is rooted in a troubled theology of creation. Julie and Josh conclude with reflections on the body and how anger about racism is not only acceptable, it is necessary for our healing.

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Reparations, Learning to Care: A Celebration of Latorious Willis' Prison Release! - Part VI No. 73

Before we can actively be a part of healing the ravages of white supremacy, we have to learn to care, to be invested. This whole series, "White People Talking to White People About Racism, A Reading of Reparations: A Christian Call to Repentance and Repair by Duke Kwon and Greg Thompson," this is our chance to slow down, listen, pray, and grow in our capacity to care for the work of healing before us.

In this episode Josh shares his conversation with Latorious Willis who recently was recently released from prison. Here we celebrate Latorious' release, his spiritual friendship with Josh, and to celebrate all the other brothers who are still behind bars. We hope this episode offers you a glimpse into the goodness of learning to love the disinherited, the marginalized who are often ignored--or in Howard Thurman's vocabulary: the person who back is against the wall.

 
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Reparations Chapter 2 w/ Rev Bryan Berghoef - Part V No. 72

The Rev Bryan Berghoef helps Josh unpack "Seeing the Reality of White Supremacy," chapter 3 of Reparations: A Christian Call for Repentance & Repair. We are releasing this especially on the occasion of the 4th of July weekend because chapter two begins with Fredrick Douglas' speech on the 4th of July, 1852.

Bryan Berghoef is someone Josh has been excited to get to know for some time. He is an American politician, pastor and author who was the Democratic candidate for U.S. Congress in the 2020 United States House of Representatives elections in Michigan for the Second District.[1] He is also a pastor of the Holland United Church of Christ, a UCC church in Holland, Michigan, which he founded in 2016.

The gift of this conversation with Bryan is a hope-filled demonstration of ecumenical breadth of the body of Christ that is bears witness to the love of God that will heal the ravages of white supremacy.

Rev Bryan Berghoef

Rev Bryan Berghoef

Reparations Chapter 1 w/ Rev Kate Kooyman - Part IV No. 71

The Rev Kate Kooyman helps Josh unpack “The Call to See,” chapter one of Reparations.

This call, this invitation to reparations is a discipline of seeing. Chapters one and two of our book this summer are intensive opportunities for us to see the white supremacy that pervades America, the church, and even our own families, homes, and careers. With the honesty and clarity of a spiritual director, Kwon and Thompson describe the difficulty of seeing: “seeing racism in this was has been an ongoing struggle. In truth, seeing clearly almost always is a struggle.”

Seeing is a struggle. Since the beginning we have chosen to hide from God, from each other, and from ourselves. Only with the merciful help of the Holy Spirit will we be able to come out of hiding and to open our spiritual eyes and ears to honestly know the troubles we are in and then to ask the Spirit to heal and reassemble the fragments of our lives.

Kwon and Thompson go on to write: “Embracing these truths requires a profound transformation of one’s identity, history, and aspirations. With this transformation comes an inescapable sense of disorientation and an enduring form of grief.” However, this is not a foreboding, heavy, losing ourselves in darkness for Christians, people of the light, because of the hope of the Gospel. We see the darkness in and through the light of Christ. This is an invitation to engage the sanctifying love of Jesus with more determined joy than ever before.

Subscribe to the Invitation: 
About our summer podcast series: 

Reparations Group Discussion Guide

To learn more about our formation schools...
The School of Prayer:theinvitationcenter.org/school-of-prayer
The School of Contemplative Listening: theinvitationcenter.org/school-of-con…e-listening-1

Rev Kate Kooyman

Rev Kate Kooyman

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Reparations Introduction w/ Dr Susanna Childress - Part III No. 70

My wife, Susanna Childress, helps me respond to the introduction of Reparations. The idea is to let each chapter breathe a bit, to find ways to open ourselves to God in the reading and in the discussion. Susanna is especially able to help us think about how immersing ourselves in the writings of people of color can help us grow into people who will want to attend to the work of reparations.

She is an Assistant Professor of creative writing at Hope College here in Holland, MI., and is author of two books of poetry, the 2006, Brittingham Prize in Poetry winning, Jagged With Love, as well as Entering the House of Awe. In 2015 her poem, “Careful, I Just Won A Prize at the Fair” was included in The Best of American Poetry.

Dr Susanna Childress, Hope College, Holland, MI

Dr Susanna Childress, Hope College, Holland, MI

 
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Reparations Introduction w/ Dr Jesse N Curtis - Part II No. 69

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Dr Jesse N Curtis, Valparaiso University

Josh and Dr Jesse Curtis touch on some of the big ideas in the introduction to Reparations, but mainly they admire the careful yet bold while also pastoral tone of the book we’ve chosen for our summer read and discussion. Jesse Curts begins his contribution by sharing from his own journey, how he learned from his early mistakes and learned the goodness of experiencing God in and through his steep learning curve on racial injustice.

To go directly to the conversation with Jesse Curtis, skip to 18:40.

If we want to experience the depths of God's love, we need to find ways to be involved with the things of God. Responding to racism and participating in the necessary repentance and repair of racism is of course seemingly heavy, yet it is a profound opportunity for transformation and hope! We understand the light of Gospel to the extent that we've seen the darkness.

White Supremacy is that darkness.

We invite you to participate in the life of God deeply this summer for yourself and for the healing of our country.The wonderful simplicity of the Gospel is that Jesus came to set the captives free. Isaiah 61 has been described as Jesus' mission statement: "to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners."

We are not pitying black people in America by acknowledging that they are, in the vocabulary of Howard Thurman, the "disinherited." In fact, it would be dishonest, undignifying, and un-loving to pretend that they have not been abused and that they are not still being abused in ways that are more broad and deep than the police brutality gets our attention in the news. The insight of Reparations, our text for this summer is that,

"White supremacy’s most enduring effect, indeed its very essence, is theft. We believe White supremacy to be a multigenerational campaign of cultural theft, in which the identities, agency, and prosperity of African Americans are systematically stolen and given to others. As we will show, we believe that while this theft took many forms, its most significant and enduring forms are the theft of truth, the theft of power, and the theft of wealth."

Here is a link for more information about this summer series, “White People Talking to White People About Racism”.

Please visit Jesse’s website: The Myth of Colorblind Christians

We are asking participants to buy the book from a black owned bookstore. In West Michigan, consider the store, We Are Lit! For a list of more black owned stores visit Literary Hub.

Our call to worship prayer for this summer from Howard Thurman:

Lord, Lord, Open Unto Me

Open unto me, light for my darkness

Open unto me, courage for my fear

Open unto me, hope for my despair

Open unto me, peace for my turmoil

Open unto me, joy for my sorrow

Open unto me, strength for my weakness

Open unto me, wisdom for my confusion

Open unto me, forgiveness for my sins

Open unto me, tenderness for my toughness

Open unto me, love for my hates

Open unto me, Thy Self for myself


Lord, Lord, open unto me!

 

Reparations Orientation With Rev Dr Denise Kingdom Grier - Part I No. 68

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The Rev. Dr. Denise Kingdom Grier offers a bold, honest, and frank discernment of the racism in America and the white church. Her courageous testimony provides the necessary and essential orientation as we invite white people to talk with white people about racism this summer 2021 in our reading of Reparations: A Christian Call For Repentance and Repair by Duke Kwon and Gregory Thompson.

Josh offers some orientation to Denise’s orientation by walking through the details about how this summer series will work, and then he offers some context about why the Invitation is handling this book and the vocabulary of reparations. Finally, Josh offers a few meditative readings from Ephesians 3 to allow you time to take this very difficult conversation into contemplative practice.

To go directly to the conversation with Denise, skip to 23:20.

We are asking participants to buy the book from a black owned bookstore. In West Michigan, consider the store, We Are Lit! For a list of more black owned stores visit Literary Hub.

The March 4, 2021, “#LeaveLoud” episode of the Pass the Mic podcast mentioned can be found HERE.

 

Awakening Series #5 A Family Conversation w/ Kenda Creasy Dean No. 66

In this episode Josh Banner continues the Awakening’s collaboration with the Invitation Podcast as we further explore our focus question: what does a 16-year-old have to teach the church? Here, Josh borrows from a conversation he recently had with Kenda Creasy Dean, the Mary D. Synnott Professor of Youth, Church, and Culture at Princeton Seminary, to encourage parents and teens to share their true stories of faith with each other. We hope and pray especially in the midst of Covid-19 this episode #5 will help you to slow down, to be more intentionally present to your family, and to learn with and from each other.

The full unedited, un-produced conversation with Kenda is available for you to listen to.

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Good Friday: Being Human Becoming Human w/ Fr John Beher & Overdue Update #65

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It’s been too long. I apologize for disappearing. Doing quarantine for a year with young children is not easy. It’s been difficult to get anything done, yet there has been much goodness for the Invitation even in 2020-2021 that I want to share with you.

In this episode I offer good news about this years three cohorts of the School of Prayer, our new spiritual direction practicum, the School of Contemplative Listening, the first annual Invitation Family Camp, the forthcoming episodes, and our summer book club. But first, a mediation for Good Friday, a reading from Fr John Beher’s genius Becoming Human: Meditations on Christian Anthropology in Word and Image.

We can only recognize Jesus through the cross, through his death. Ironically, our life comes through our death, our rising in and through and beyond this world! Fr Beher helps us understand that to be truly human in to die.

Registration for the SOCL is open. We’ll have registration for the SOP and the Family Camp open in the next week.

I hope you and yours are well. Don’t be shy. It’d be great to hear from you!

And thanks for listening to the podcast!

Peace & Love Josh

David Dark "Vote Righteousness!" - Conversation #15 No. 64

In November of 2018 Josh sat down for a long-awaited conversation with David Dark, professor of Religion and the Arts at Belmont University. This conversation offers us a bit of sanity as Josh and David consider questions of faith, formation, and politics. In fact, no matter what happens with our election on Nov 3 and the following week, listening to David Dark will help you "slow the tape" and consider the value of a "righteous culture" that has the capacity to ask questions with a deep attentiveness.

Josh offers a lengthy introduction offering updates on the Invitation School of Prayer as well as announcing some other exciting news. If you want to skip directly to the conversation with David, move to around the 19:30 mark to begin. If you've not already subscribed to the Invitation Podcast, please visithttps://www.invitationpodcast.org/subscribe 

Thanks for listening!

Peace of Christ to you!


Podcast Episode: Law & Order as White Supremacy & Contemplative Prayer No. 62

This is an update as we transition from summer to the fall. Work with Fr Laird's A Sunlit Absence will resume soon. In the between weeks, Josh is working to recruit and set up the School of Prayer in in-person and perhaps also in distance learning formats.

Most of the energy of this episode is a guided prayer through questions of racism. We begin with a selection of readings from the first two chapters of Dr King's collection of sermons, Strength to Love. Then Josh presents an essay he recently wrote as a produced prayer meditation on white supremacy. The essay can be found below.

Information about the School of Prayer along with video updates can be found:www.invitationpodcast.org/school-of-prayer 

Thanks for listening! Be blessed even in the midst of this difficult time!


History is not the past…It is the present. We carry our history with us. We are our history.”

”The history of America is the history of the Negro in America. And it’s not a pretty picture.”

“What white people have to do, is try and find out in their own hearts why it was necessary to have a n——- in the first place, because I’m not a n——-, I’m a man, but if you think I’m a n——-, it means you need it.
— James Baldwin

To awaken to the reality that there are two predominant stories of America, the story of the black man and the story of white America, this is the challenge ahead of us no matter who we choose on November 3. This has been our challenge from our beginning. I'm going to direct my thoughts here to the specifics of the black man even when I'm concerned for the experience of all black people because it is the black man who has been so thoroughly villainized in our culture as depicted in the 1915 silent film, The Birth of a Nation, and it is the black man who keeps getting shot. We are concerned for Breonna Taylor, yet "Over the life course, about 1 in every 1,000 black men can expect to be killed by police. Women’s lifetime risk of being killed by police is about 20 times lower than men’s risk." (abc news https://tinyurl.com/y5t3spvn)

Who can claim he is woke because there will always be more awakening ahead for each of us. I can't say that I am yet fully "woke," but I can say that I'm in process. My words here may be guilty of virtue signaling, but moreover I attempt in my writing to invite others into the challenge of the critical journey especially as it involves prayer and justice. The remaining energy to support Donald Trump by white, Christians under the banner of "law and order" continues the storyline of white supremacy in America. These are heavy and likely hurtful words, and yet I earnestly offer these words out of love. Avoiding the confrontation between prayer and justice, Christianity and racism would be an act of resignation, a surrender to despair, doubt, and cynicism. It’s my deep faith in the Christ of the church that compels me to share difficult words for a difficult conversation. This is the discipline of being in community, to move toward you in hope rather than away in condemnation. I have been in the humiliating process of dislodging the racist log from my own eye. As I see more clearly, I'm evangelical about wanting to share what I see.

As a spiritual director I am honored to sit with people as truths move from abstract ideas to actionable, emotionally vivid realities. I get to watch people awaken. I've had this experience as a teacher and a pastor. I’ve witnessed students’ eureka moments and parishioners’ maturing. Yet, as a spiritual director I sit with someone for an hour watching and listening to a much more particular depth of a person's inner being, the subtlest inner emotional and mental movements.

I know how slow and even precarious awakening can be for a person, so I can give most of my white community the benefit of the doubt when it comes to their understanding of the black man's story in America. I have tangibly watched how difficult it is for a person to awaken to the height, depth, width and breadth of the Gospel truths that they already say they believe. I've seen how difficult it is for a person who call herself “Christian” to move from the Gospel as an idea to actively participating in the Gospel as an ever deepening, transforming, crucifying, and enlivening, daily hope.

So when it comes to the real and awful story of the black man in America, it is excruciatingly difficult for white people to even conceive that the black man has his own separate story, that that story has always been and still is a story of oppression; and of course it’s even more difficult for white people to understand how we are the central cause of the black man's suffering.

White people have swept slavery, reconstruction, jim crow, redlining real estate, white flight and the abandonment of urban centers, the war on drugs, economic disparities, the school to prison pipeline, the injustices of our criminal justice system—whites have swept this oppression into little boxes inside our heads and hearts. We keep the doors of these boxes closed with a variety of explanations and various levels of willful ignorance. This is the white supremacy we are still guilty of today. We may not be wearing hoods and burning crosses, but we are white supremacists when we continue to keep our hearts and minds actively ignorant of the story of our neighbor, the black man. This is my ego staying busy and preoccupied with my self-importance. I am self-important. I am supreme, at the center of my universe. I am unable to open myself and to be present to the suffering around me. I have no idea what a black person really goes through each day. My closed hearted way of life is expressed through, projected through my whiteness. I don't know any other way, but that doesn't excuse me as a Christian because I've given my life to the cross, to die to myself so that I can be filled with the life of Christ and love my black brother as myself.

In his book Breathing Under Water, Richard Rohr offers a Christian perspective on the Twelve Steps, and he begins with the truth that we are all addicts. What are we addicted to? Each of us is essentially addicted to our own way of seeing the world. All the culturally illicit addictions, "drugs, sex, and rockn' roll”—these are means of keeping ourselves numb and closed so that our small way of seeing the world cannot be threatened. Staying on the internet too much, workaholism, shopping, even do-goodism-busyness can keep my heart and mind on one track, preoccupied, closed. What we can conclude is that we are addicted to being white, and we have built our lives around the discipline of protecting our addiction to whiteness. Anything that threatens our white identity is criminal.

Jesus' transforming work is an agonizing process of becoming less addicted to myself, less addicted to my whiteness, and to become more and more other-focused so that love of God, love of the black man, and love of myself are all integrated into a freedom of wholeness. This is the only path that will lead to law and order, decentering openness, a surrender of my ego powers, an embracing of those wild things I don’t understand and can’t control, surrender to a wild God and a world of beautifully wild possibilities. This is why Moby Dick, the whale had hieroglyphics and wrinkles on his forehead. This is why Ishmael smokes in bed with Queequeg, the savage. This is why Huck and Jim were on a raft floating down the Mississippi. It’s why Elvis stole rockn’ roll from Chuck Berry, why we love Michael Jackson and Michael Jordan, and why white kids in the suburbs listen to gangster rap. We want to love black America. We are already obsessed with black America, but we still want to keep them in their boxes on that other side of town or on ESPN, on the court or field but not close enough to threaten our control.

You may have heard early on in our quarantine the sentiment, "let's not go back to normal because if we go back to normal, we will not learn what Covid-19 is here to teach us." The restlessness of quarantine put America in a posture where we can pay better attention to the story of the black man especially after the killing of George Floyd by a police officer. We have a new opportunity to draw close and love our black neighbor. Yes, the protests across the country have resulted in violence. Some of our neighbors are acting out. However, it is possible for us to not condone the violence while at the same time loving the black man enough to listen to what he is trying to tell us, to learn the long story behind why he is acting out.

I recall a time with a former black, Hope College student who seemed to be holding back and was conflicted while wanting to speak honestly with me. I encouraged him to come out with it, to say what he had to say. That was the first time I was introduced to the damned if you do, damned if you don't experience of black people. The student explained: "I can't afford to be an angry, black man. No one wants an angry black man." My awakening since has to do with coming to terms with the reality that when a black man gets angry, he is labeled a thug and is criminalized. His anger proves to Americans addicted to their whiteness that that the black man is the boogeyman, a monstrous threat to law and order. This is the reason behind the 13th Amendment. The reason why black had to sit at the back of the bus, why they sometimes could only get food from the back of the restaurant. It's the reason why 40% of the United State's prison population is black even though blacks only make up 12% of our entire population. This is the reason why we made dividing lines between black and white neighborhoods and schools. It’s why we then left for the suburbs, and why we won't pay the black man equal wages. This is why we are seeing a surge of support for Donald Trump. It's why anyone would confuse him for a defender of faith and a keeper of law and order. We are protecting our small, white world from the threat of the black man. Of course, James Baldwin says these things with the appropriate authority and with more precision: “If any white man in the world says, ‘Give me liberty or give me death,’ the entire white world applauds. When a black man says exactly the same thing, he is judged a criminal and treated like one and everything possible is done to make an example of this bad n----- so there won’t be any more like him.”

My steep learning curve in all of this has led me to discern that the Invitation School of Prayer this year must engage the story of the black man while we study and practice contemplative prayer. In his book Jesus and the Disinherited, Howard Thurman sees the resonances between the oppression of the black man and the oppression of the Jews under the heel of Rome: "[Jesus] words were directed to the House of Israel, a minority within the Greco-Roman world, smarting under the loss of status, freedom, and autonomy, haunted by the dream of the restoration of a lost glory and a former greatness. His message focused on the urgency of a radical change in the inner attitude of the people. He recognized fully that out of the heart are the issues of life and that no external force, however great and overwhelming, can at long last destroy a people if it does not first win the victory of the spirit against them."

I've been trying to discern which biography of a saint we should read in the School of Prayer. Each of us needs to imagine what a transformed life looks like on this earth. We need to pay attention to, to immerse ourselves in, and admire the witness of an enfleshed spirituality, a model of what contemplation in action looks like on the earth. Covid-19 is pointing us to see that the black Christian witness in America is exactly this, exactly the white church's greatest opportunity to see what it looks like to persevere in faith even while you are a minority in a strange land with little status, freedom, and autonomy, haunted by your former greatness. So, this year we will be reading Howard Thurman's book as well as The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James Cone.

We have defined the mission of the Invitation as a practice of spiritual direction invigorated by the movements of the Holy Spirit in a prison. I've said that I'm on a mission to serve the church through the prison and that it’s not that I bring Jesus to the prison. It's that I discover the Jesus who is already in the prison with my brothers there. Everything else I do as a spiritual director, podcaster, retreat leader, teacher is inspired by how my faith is stirred and enlarged in the prison prayer practices. I'm awakening to the truth that this prison spirituality is the same story of the faithful black Christian witness in America. I can’t be in the prison with my brothers right now, but I can love them from afar and continue this journey of awakening by putting Fr Laird into conversation with James Cone and Ignatius of Loyola into conversation with Howard Thurman.

I am aware that some who have already expressed interest in the School of Prayer this year may be reluctant to add this story of the black man to our journey this year. I’m sorry for the surprise. I’m learning and growing so much each day. If we don’t end up with enough people to carry the School of Prayer this year, that will be okay. I’m also aware that publishing these words may affect the Invitation and myself personally in troubling ways. I’m already exhausted when I consider November 3 and the possibility of another four years with Donald Trump. Either way, I’m exhausted by the Trumpism that will remain even long after he leaves the White House. Yet, I’m deeply inspired by the persistent, faithful witness of black Christians who have persevered under a much longer, much more difficult weight of oppression.  When I consider the experience of the faithful black church, I am humbled and see how shifty and weak my faith can be when I so easily grumble. And now here we are back again at the purpose of God in all of these things, that I may be humbled, emptied, weakened even, and less self-reliant so that I can be filled with Jesus and live each day in and through the Holy Spirit.

Amen

Nate Parkers The Birth of a Nation

Nate Parkers The Birth of a Nation

Essay & Video Update: Law & Order as White Supremacy & Contemplative Prayer

History is not the past…It is the present. We carry our history with us. We are our history.”

”The history of America is the history of the Negro in America. And it’s not a pretty picture.”

“What white people have to do, is try and find out in their own hearts why it was necessary to have a n——- in the first place, because I’m not a n——-, I’m a man, but if you think I’m a n——-, it means you need it.
— James Baldwin

To awaken to the reality that there are two predominant stories of America, the story of the black man and the story of white America, this is the challenge ahead of us no matter who we choose on November 3. This has been our challenge from our beginning. I'm going to direct my thoughts here to the specifics of the black man even when I'm concerned for the experience of all black people because it is the black man who has been so thoroughly villainized in our culture as depicted in the 1915 silent film, The Birth of a Nation, and it is the black man who keeps getting shot. We are concerned for Breonna Taylor, yet "Over the life course, about 1 in every 1,000 black men can expect to be killed by police. Women’s lifetime risk of being killed by police is about 20 times lower than men’s risk." (abc news https://tinyurl.com/y5t3spvn)

Who can claim he is woke because there will always be more awakening ahead for each of us. I can't say that I am yet fully "woke," but I can say that I'm in process. My words here may be guilty of virtue signaling, but moreover I attempt in my writing to invite others into the challenge of the critical journey especially as it involves prayer and justice. The remaining energy to support Donald Trump by white, Christians under the banner of "law and order" continues the storyline of white supremacy in America. These are heavy and likely hurtful words, and yet I earnestly offer these words out of love. Avoiding the confrontation between prayer and justice, Christianity and racism would be an act of resignation, a surrender to despair, doubt, and cynicism. It’s my deep faith in the Christ of the church that compels me to share difficult words for a difficult conversation. This is the discipline of being in community, to move toward you in hope rather than away in condemnation. I have been in the humiliating process of dislodging the racist log from my own eye. As I see more clearly, I'm evangelical about wanting to share what I see.

As a spiritual director I am honored to sit with people as truths move from abstract ideas to actionable, emotionally vivid realities. I get to watch people awaken. I've had this experience as a teacher and a pastor. I’ve witnessed students’ eureka moments and parishioners’ maturing. Yet, as a spiritual director I sit with someone for an hour watching and listening to a much more particular depth of a person's inner being, the subtlest inner emotional and mental movements.

I know how slow and even precarious awakening can be for a person, so I can give most of my white community the benefit of the doubt when it comes to their understanding of the black man's story in America. I have tangibly watched how difficult it is for a person to awaken to the height, depth, width and breadth of the Gospel truths that they already say they believe. I've seen how difficult it is for a person who call herself “Christian” to move from the Gospel as an idea to actively participating in the Gospel as an ever deepening, transforming, crucifying, and enlivening, daily hope.

So when it comes to the real and awful story of the black man in America, it is excruciatingly difficult for white people to even conceive that the black man has his own separate story, that that story has always been and still is a story of oppression; and of course it’s even more difficult for white people to understand how we are the central cause of the black man's suffering.

White people have swept slavery, reconstruction, jim crow, redlining real estate, white flight and the abandonment of urban centers, the war on drugs, economic disparities, the school to prison pipeline, the injustices of our criminal justice system—whites have swept this oppression into little boxes inside our heads and hearts. We keep the doors of these boxes closed with a variety of explanations and various levels of willful ignorance. This is the white supremacy we are still guilty of today. We may not be wearing hoods and burning crosses, but we are white supremacists when we continue to keep our hearts and minds actively ignorant of the story of our neighbor, the black man. This is my ego staying busy and preoccupied with my self-importance. I am self-important. I am supreme, at the center of my universe. I am unable to open myself and to be present to the suffering around me. I have no idea what a black person really goes through each day. My closed hearted way of life is expressed through, projected through my whiteness. I don't know any other way, but that doesn't excuse me as a Christian because I've given my life to the cross, to die to myself so that I can be filled with the life of Christ and love my black brother as myself.

In his book Breathing Under Water, Richard Rohr offers a Christian perspective on the Twelve Steps, and he begins with the truth that we are all addicts. What are we addicted to? Each of us is essentially addicted to our own way of seeing the world. All the culturally illicit addictions, "drugs, sex, and rockn' roll”—these are means of keeping ourselves numb and closed so that our small way of seeing the world cannot be threatened. Staying on the internet too much, workaholism, shopping, even do-goodism-busyness can keep my heart and mind on one track, preoccupied, closed. What we can conclude is that we are addicted to being white, and we have built our lives around the discipline of protecting our addiction to whiteness. Anything that threatens our white identity is criminal.

Jesus' transforming work is an agonizing process of becoming less addicted to myself, less addicted to my whiteness, and to become more and more other-focused so that love of God, love of the black man, and love of myself are all integrated into a freedom of wholeness. This is the only path that will lead to law and order, decentering openness, a surrender of my ego powers, an embracing of those wild things I don’t understand and can’t control, surrender to a wild God and a world of beautifully wild possibilities. This is why Moby Dick, the whale had hieroglyphics and wrinkles on his forehead. This is why Ishmael smokes in bed with Queequeg, the savage. This is why Huck and Jim were on a raft floating down the Mississippi. It’s why Elvis stole rockn’ roll from Chuck Berry, why we love Michael Jackson and Michael Jordan, and why white kids in the suburbs listen to gangster rap. We want to love black America. We are already obsessed with black America, but we still want to keep them in their boxes on that other side of town or on ESPN, on the court or field but not close enough to threaten our control.

You may have heard early on in our quarantine the sentiment, "let's not go back to normal because if we go back to normal, we will not learn what Covid-19 is here to teach us." The restlessness of quarantine put America in a posture where we can pay better attention to the story of the black man especially after the killing of George Floyd by a police officer. We have a new opportunity to draw close and love our black neighbor. Yes, the protests across the country have resulted in violence. Some of our neighbors are acting out. However, it is possible for us to not condone the violence while at the same time loving the black man enough to listen to what he is trying to tell us, to learn the long story behind why he is acting out.

I recall a time with a former black, Hope College student who seemed to be holding back and was conflicted while wanting to speak honestly with me. I encouraged him to come out with it, to say what he had to say. That was the first time I was introduced to the damned if you do, damned if you don't experience of black people. The student explained: "I can't afford to be an angry, black man. No one wants an angry black man." My awakening since has to do with coming to terms with the reality that when a black man gets angry, he is labeled a thug and is criminalized. His anger proves to Americans addicted to their whiteness that that the black man is the boogeyman, a monstrous threat to law and order. This is the reason behind the 13th Amendment. The reason why black had to sit at the back of the bus, why they sometimes could only get food from the back of the restaurant. It's the reason why 40% of the United State's prison population is black even though blacks only make up 12% of our entire population. This is the reason why we made dividing lines between black and white neighborhoods and schools. It’s why we then left for the suburbs, and why we won't pay the black man equal wages. This is why we are seeing a surge of support for Donald Trump. It's why anyone would confuse him for a defender of faith and a keeper of law and order. We are protecting our small, white world from the threat of the black man. Of course, James Baldwin says these things with the appropriate authority and with more precision: “If any white man in the world says, ‘Give me liberty or give me death,’ the entire white world applauds. When a black man says exactly the same thing, he is judged a criminal and treated like one and everything possible is done to make an example of this bad n----- so there won’t be any more like him.”

My steep learning curve in all of this has led me to discern that the Invitation School of Prayer this year must engage the story of the black man while we study and practice contemplative prayer. In his book Jesus and the Disinherited, Howard Thurman sees the resonances between the oppression of the black man and the oppression of the Jews under the heel of Rome: "[Jesus] words were directed to the House of Israel, a minority within the Greco-Roman world, smarting under the loss of status, freedom, and autonomy, haunted by the dream of the restoration of a lost glory and a former greatness. His message focused on the urgency of a radical change in the inner attitude of the people. He recognized fully that out of the heart are the issues of life and that no external force, however great and overwhelming, can at long last destroy a people if it does not first win the victory of the spirit against them."

I've been trying to discern which biography of a saint we should read in the School of Prayer. Each of us needs to imagine what a transformed life looks like on this earth. We need to pay attention to, to immerse ourselves in, and admire the witness of an enfleshed spirituality, a model of what contemplation in action looks like on the earth. Covid-19 is pointing us to see that the black Christian witness in America is exactly this, exactly the white church's greatest opportunity to see what it looks like to persevere in faith even while you are a minority in a strange land with little status, freedom, and autonomy, haunted by your former greatness. So, this year we will be reading Howard Thurman's book as well as The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James Cone.

We have defined the mission of the Invitation as a practice of spiritual direction invigorated by the movements of the Holy Spirit in a prison. I've said that I'm on a mission to serve the church through the prison and that it’s not that I bring Jesus to the prison. It's that I discover the Jesus who is already in the prison with my brothers there. Everything else I do as a spiritual director, podcaster, retreat leader, teacher is inspired by how my faith is stirred and enlarged in the prison prayer practices. I'm awakening to the truth that this prison spirituality is the same story of the faithful black Christian witness in America. I can’t be in the prison with my brothers right now, but I can love them from afar and continue this journey of awakening by putting Fr Laird into conversation with James Cone and Ignatius of Loyola into conversation with Howard Thurman.

I am aware that some who have already expressed interest in the School of Prayer this year may be reluctant to add this story of the black man to our journey this year. I’m sorry for the surprise. I’m learning and growing so much each day. If we don’t end up with enough people to carry the School of Prayer this year, that will be okay. I’m also aware that publishing these words may affect the Invitation and myself personally in troubling ways. I’m already exhausted when I consider November 3 and the possibility of another four years with Donald Trump. Either way, I’m exhausted by the Trumpism that will remain even long after he leaves the White House. Yet, I’m deeply inspired by the persistent, faithful witness of black Christians who have persevered under a much longer, much more difficult weight of oppression.  When I consider the experience of the faithful black church, I am humbled and see how shifty and weak my faith can be when I so easily grumble. And now here we are back again at the purpose of God in all of these things, that I may be humbled, emptied, weakened even, and less self-reliant so that I can be filled with Jesus and live each day in and through the Holy Spirit.

Amen

Nate Parkers The Birth of a Nation

Nate Parkers The Birth of a Nation

A Sunlit Absence by Fr Martin Laird – Part XI No. 61

Part XI of marks our journey halfway through Fr Martin Laird's A Sunlit Absence. This episode is the third movement with chapter four. We've spent more time with chapter four because it is the most difficult.

If you are having difficulty getting your heart and mind wrapped around chapter four, you are not alone. Press on ahead if and when you sense the goodness of the Holy Spirit drawing. Do not force or fake your way. Read and practice your prayer. Practice your prayer and then come back to pray.

All worship and prayer is a continual, ever-deepening rehearsal of the Gospel. As Fr Laird shares Teresa of Avila's words with us: "It is all about love melting into love."

If you sense a further drawing into this love and would like some help and guidance this fall, consider The Invitation School of Prayer.

A Sunlit Absence by Fr Martin Laird – Part X No. 60

Part X of our journey through Fr Martin Laird's puts us squarely in the middle of the book. This is the second of three treatments of chapter four of the book.

As we wade deeper into these waters, Josh wants to give listeners participating more freedom to not only stop listening and working through the book but to even perhaps take a break from the Invitation Podcast altogether.

The awkward, strange, and even painful discovery is that as we move closer to God we are invited into more and more sacrifice, more death of self, more shifting of our priorities, and surprisingly more bewilderment.

During the time of Covid-19, anti-racism protests, and a contentious presidential race we need to find ways to be careful and patient with ourselves. Further commitment to spiritual discipline can anchor us, yet we cannot strive or force ourselves along the way. Sacrifice always needs to be a response to cooperate with and deepen our love of God. If we attempt to earn God's love through contemplative prayer in a spirit of striving, we will drown.

For those who sense the Holy Spirit's leading to go further into the discipline of prayer yet who would like further guidance along the way, please consider the Invitation School of Prayer launching this September with online resources for your growth: www.invitationpodcast.org/school-of-prayer 


It's my 45th birthday, August 6, 2020. The world seems like its on fire, but here we are in a happy place doing happy things. Long-time Invitation podcast music contributor, Jared DeMeester and my new friend Max working on Jared's music.

Sharing this journey through A Sunlit Absence is of the same joy and goodness, a way to push on ahead in hope love during Covid-19, anti-racism protests, and a contentious presidential race. 

Big LOVE to you!

Fr Martin Laird - Conversation #14 No. 59

"We have to have the humility to be no good at this, and gradually, as our practice deepens, these afflictive thoughts--they actually help train us."

These words from Fr Laird in our July 9, 2020 zoom conversation were worth the price of admission. 

The humility.....

to be no good at this...

That our struggles are part of the training. Our struggles are necessary!

In the context of Covid-19, the Invitation has been focusing on A Sunlit Absence, the second of a three-book series on contemplative prayer by Fr Martin Laird. This episode is Part I of two parts comprising an 1.5 hour conversation that Fr Laird so graciously shared with us.

Here Josh opens with a brief, guided prayer. Fr Laird shares some opening thoughts about contemplation in the context of all suffering we are experiencing throughout the world. Then we are able to interact with two questions from Invitation Podcast listeners who joined in to our zoom conversation.

The next episode, No 60, will be Part X of our journey through A Sunlit Absence. Shortly after Part II of this conversation of Q&A with Fr Laird will be available to you. Thanks for listening and continuing the journey.

A Sunlit Absence by Fr Martin Laird – Part IX No. 58

Father Laird describes the ideal contentment that can be gained through prayer: “The practice of contemplation does not acquire for us some thing. Contemplative practice proceeds by way of the engaged receptivity of release, of prying loose, of letting go of the need to have our life circumstances be a certain way in order for us to live or pray or be deeply happy.”

Contemplation trains us by grace to release, to surrender, to rest no matter what our present circumstances. The Apostle explains this contentment by saying, “for me to live is Christ and to die is gain.” I’ve known this passage from Philippians 2 for many, many years, yet this form of contentment has seemed unrealistic and unattainable. The writings of Fr Laird give us a path forward to move into and to dwell within this silent land, this sunlit absence, or his the metaphor of his third book, this ocean of light.

If you struggle to imagine this kind growth today, you are not alone. It’s been a struggle for me too.

My own struggle to pray during this time of shelter in place reveals that I am not yet firmly anchored in a contemplative practice, not as anchored as I thought I was. I am aware of my need for times of quiet trust to sit patiently in God’s presence, yet contemplation is not yet where my attention is drawn. It is not my first or even my second instinct.

First, I think of food. Second, I think of entertainment, the internet. Third, I think of sleep….and so on.

Since the beginning of quarantine in March, my days have less and less structure and discipline. I confess I attend to contemplation irregularly. Yet gracefully, I’m aware of the consequences of my lack. I’m not blindly or naively ignorant of what is missing. The question here after making a confession, is how we cooperate with grace. When we stray from Jesus as our first love, we should feel the sting of conviction. However, there is no condemnation for those of us who are in Jesus. The Holy Spirit does not respond to our confession with shame.

Shame is the vocabulary of our dark enemies. Shame is the fruit of our false ego. If I pretend to be something I am not, falling short of that false self will unleash all kinds of demonic voices of empty, fruitless guilt, a guilt that causes us to hide from God. The false guilt causes us to quit our prayer.

Instead, again by grace, I delight to consider how much further removed from hope, love, and God’s presence if I did not already have years of prayer practice, if I didn’t already have my irregular prayer. I recall the delight of the prayer and am inspired to return.

No matter where you are in your prayer this summer, you have not wandered too far away. Prayer is always an invitation to return and to begin again.

“Come let us return to the Lord. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds.” Hosea 6:1

Part IX of our journey through Fr Martin Laird's A Sunlit Absence takes us into chapter four which is also titled, "A Sunlit Absence." This is the thickest and most challenging chapter of the book, so before diving into chapter four I spend ample time reviewing why we are bothering with contemplation especially in our present, painful time of pandemic and political strife.

The pursuit of contemplative practice is at times bewildering and challenging, but with patience and persistence we will gain the reward of God's presence and friendship.

Below is an assortment of other sections of chapter four for your prayer and consideration.

Peace & Love to you! Amen,

Josh

“The soul is vast, spacious, plentiful. This amplitude is impossible to exaggerate. The Sun at the center of this place radiates to every part.” St Teresa of Avila

 

This vast inner space, an abyss, is completely open and porous to God. “Indeed Lord, to your eyes, the abyss of human consciousness is naked.” St. Augustine

Awareness, consciousness, watchfulness is this vast inner space radiating everywhere. It is not an object rather all objects, physical objects or internal objects like thoughts and feelings they appear and disappear in this awareness, a “sunlit absence.” To adapt Seamus Heaney, always luminous but never quite pinned down. This sunlit absence suffuses and embraces all as open to the luminous ground, as air to light. “In your light Lord, we see light.” Ps 36:10


St Hesychios identifies three moments in this process in which awareness becomes increasingly ungrasping, expansive, and luminous. “While we are being strengthened in Christ Jesus and beginning to move forward in steadfast watchfulness, he at first appears in our intellect like a torch which, when grasped by the hand of the intellect, guides us along the track of the mind. Then he appears to us like a full moon circling the heart’s firmament. Then he appears to us like the sun, radiating justice, clearly revealing himself in the full light of spiritual vision.”


Watch a video invitation to this new series

Watch a video invitation to this new series