Roger Bond showed me what prayerfulness looked like in person

18.

As I began to follow Jesus with a more deliberate earnestness in my late teens, God brought into my life a person who had the spiritual characteristic of prayerfulness.

 

His name was Roger Bond. Father Roger Bond, as a matter of fact. There are a myriad of reasons why we should have never met one another, and, beyond that, why we might never have become friends; and he, such a warm and glowing example for me as to what prayerfulness in a person actually looked like. Sometimes the people we meet are just people we meet. Other times there is a divine spark in what initially appears to be a happenstance.

 

It was March, 1976. Roger was an Episcopalian priest in a whisper of a town on the eastern edge of Wyoming, from where you could throw a cinderblock into neighboring Nebraska. I was a frenetic college boy, 19, in my second year at Laramie, home of the state’s lone university. Roger was 48 when we met, although he looked a tad older to me, due to his full head of white hair and some mild trembling, especially in his left hand, brought on by Parkinson’s disease.

 

We met in the parish hall of his church in Lusk, St. George’s. I was singing tenor with a group of university students who were touring – this particular year – the southeast quarter of the state. We were from the school’s InterVarsity Christian Fellowship chapter.

 

Of all the churches that provided us meals, St. George’s was hosting a spaghetti dinner for us on the evening after we had sung at the Lusk Senior Citizens Center. Of all the people I might have stood next to in line for dinner, I was behind Roger. He was already engaged in lively conversation with the guys in front of him; laughing and telling stories.

 

Eventually, he turned to me. I knew him only as the priest of this church and, at the time, I was suspicious of liturgical churches and their “weird” ways. (Sometimes I would like to go back in time and punch myself in the face.)

 

“God bless you, son,” he said to me, taking my hand and pulling me slightly closer. “What a blessing to have you kids here.”

 

“Thank you for making dinner for us,” I said, a little stiffly.

 

“Oh,” he said, “this is just selfishness on my part. If I bless you, then I get blessed. So I did it for me!” He laughed.

 

We kept talking. I should say, Roger kept talking while I listened. All evening I stayed within earshot to hear him talking and watch him being a person like none other I had ever met. Midway through the meal I talked to Dale, our tour organizer, and begged him to put me on the list of people who were to stay at Roger’s house that night. I think there were seven or eight of us strewn in his small house – on couches, on the floor, in an extra room. He had no space, but he welcomed everyone who could squeeze in as though we were a band of visiting princes.

 

Roger spoke with great love and joy in his voice about his “reflections,” when he would sit in the quiet of his house and considered he and Christ as guests in one another’s lives. He mentioned his “meditations,” in terms of the reading of Scripture or of some great Christian author – a time to comb out thoughts and weave them into his own experience.

 

The next morning he was up early making eggs and sausage and toast.

 

“What are you doing?” I asked, just to make conversation.

 

“I am praying,” he smiled. “Lord, deliver me from cooking.” Then he laughed.

 

Parting company with Roger that morning was very frustrating for me. After returning from the tour, I organized a second “tour,” which was just a group to take to St. George’s to sing on a Saturday night and attend church on Sunday morning on one of the later weekends in April.

 

Meanwhile, Roger and I wrote often, and I spent at least three weekends back in Lusk, usually leaving on Friday and returning Sunday evening. The 170-mile trips (each way) took me through a rarely-traveled stretch of highway – State Highway 34 – which follows a ravine etched into the landscape by North Sybille Creek. It is a gentle indentation leaving a beautiful shock of life along its banks. Roger’s mark on my inner landscape is similar to that of North Sybille Creek’s on this little-seen Wyoming territory.

 

Roger and I spent many hours talking quietly at his favorite truck-stop restaurant, or grocery shopping. For me, the important thing was to be in his company. I didn’t care what we did.

 

The 1976 Book of Common Prayer had just come out, and Roger was having a terrible time understanding the new design of the book he was supposed to use for masses. The 1928 version had stood everyone in good stead for almost 60 years. The alterations, to Roger, were maddening … especially on Saturday night.

 

“Where in the hell is tomorrow’s collect?” he shouted to himself while pouring over the new book. In his anger his lips got wet and his Parkinson’s shakes were unmistakably more pronounced.

 

“C’mon Father,” I said. “It has to be in there somewhere. What’s a ‘collect’ anyway?”

 

He didn’t want to, but he smiled.

 

“This isn’t funny,” he said.

 

“Yes it is,” I replied.

 

I once showed him a notebook I kept with Bible study notes and my own inexperienced comments on the pages.

 

“I’m not a Biblicist like you,” he said. “I wish I knew the Bible better.”

 

“We all do,” I said. “If you are not a Biblicist, what are you?”

 

“I’m still trying to figure that out,” he said.

 

“So am I, Father Bond,” I said. “You are a mystery.”

 

I knew Roger for 10 years. He died in that house in 1986. His ministry was a lonely one, but he was faithful and prayerful. His inner life had a thrum to it with such warmth that, if one listened, one could hear it and be changed by it.

 

God brought me peace in the form of a person twice: Once in Jesus, and once in Roger.

 

He used to sign his letters, “Pax, Father Bond,” in a hand that looked like an electrocardiogram … then a small cross next to his name.

 

Pax indeed.

It is hard -- and a little unwise -- to chart progress in the spiritual life

17. With all this talk about progressing or advancing along your spiritual journey, you will sometimes want to measure how you are doing so far. When I was a runner in my younger days I kept track of every mile I ran, my average pace per mile, my diet and what pair of shoes I wore.

When centering on your spiritual life, it is much more difficult to measure progress. For example, are we going to measure time prayed, or depth of thinking, or amounts of reading, or number of meetings and Masses we attend? I suggest you avoid keeping track.

At the end of the day, all we know is that we want to grow spiritually. It is really a matter of faith on our part to believe that, on any given day, this growth has taken place as a gracious unseen, unfelt act of God upon us.

You may have done a great deal on this day to cooperate with God’s work on you. On the other hand, maybe you did nothing.

If you dare to try to keep score somehow, you will no doubt find yourself being very proud of your accomplishments on some days. You will likely grade yourself better than you should. This is the first sign that you are thinking of yourself as being more spiritually adept than others around you.

We come to God always spiritually impoverished (Blessed are the poor in spirit). The wealth that we enjoy is his not ours – it is graciously Him not selfishly us.

Too busy with myself to notice goodness in another

16. When I was about 10 years old, my mother took me along to visit a friend of hers who lived in a tiny town called Ten Sleep about 60 miles from our home in Greybull. It was summer. Schools were let out; dads were working, and warm Wyoming days stretched endlessly on.

 

At this visit I learned that my mother’s friend had a little boy named Dana, who was two years younger than I.

 

Nowadays, some 45 years later, I can tell you that I was a self-absorbed little kid stemming from a disturbance in my own incomplete sense of self. As yet, this is the best description of me I have ever heard, and it comes from the “narcissism” section in the field of psychology.

 

Back then, at age 10, I was busy being myself and sorting out my world as best I could. I was my own narrator, so, my interpretation of things was often well off the mark. At root, I didn’t think anyone except my grandfather liked me very much.

 

I didn’t so much meet Dana as I found myself in the midst of his openness, his friendliness, his welcoming heart. He instantly made room for me and wanted to play. His undiluted joy was contagious and I felt, of all things, comfortable with another human being.

 

I can remember that we met up two more times – once in my town, and once at the swimming pool in Basin. In Greybull, we walked and talked from the City Park in the south end to the grade school to the north. In Basin, of course, we swam at the outdoor pool next to the gym and jumped off the high dive – our boney little bodies hardly registering a splash – and surreptitiously peed through our swimming trunks in the shallow end.

 

I had never been so pleased to know someone … to be in the company of someone who seemed to possess such personal strength, but who would only use it for good.

 

As it turned out, Dana and I never crossed paths again. Other than those three very impressive days, our circumstances would never pair us again. There were three Wyoming high schools between Greybull and Ten Sleep, and, of course, little kids don’t plan trips to visit friends.

 

At this writing, it has only been a few days since I learned that Dana died in Texas at the age of 19 in March of 1979. Me, I was busy with myself that month, in another country, studying to be a pastor. I didn’t get the news of his death until 33 years later.

 

Unfortunately, I realized, I have been busy with myself a lot since the day at the Basin pool. So busy that I did not realize the gift that those three days of acceptance had been to me. I understand that I was just a little kid back then, but I can’t help feeling stupid – and feeling a loss.

 

I mention this to students of the inner life because a twisted side-effect of concentration on one’s inner life is narcissism: Being so busy being yourself that you fail to notice the gift that others are in your life. I wish you had met Dana. He was a great example in this regard. Me, not so much. T.

Our inner life is mostly unseen good for others

15. Your inner life is not for you.

One of the key characteristics of the human soul is that it is made to give away. Primarily, we are expected to give ourselves away to God. This is our duty – to respond to God in love for him with all that we are. The Greatest Commandment, according to Jesus, contains this responsibility for us in the “you shall.” We are expected to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.

In response to the second greatest commandment, we are charged by Christ to love our neighbor as ourselves.

When we address ourselves to God through this inner life, we find ourselves praying more actively for others out of love. As this inner fire is fanned to flame within us by the movement of the indwelling God, others around us will themselves behold the light of God and be drawn to his warmth.

The others – your neighbors – might not credit you with this odd attraction they have for God. Your very existence may not be of much importance to them. Your hidden life often remains hidden … both from you and particularly from others. You will not be fully aware of how God uses your inner life as a ministry to others. This is another way that the inner life is a life of faith.

Have you made a difference? Absolutely. Can you point to it? Mostly, you cannot. This should not be disconcerting to you. In the Kingdom of God, it is normal.

Note: This post stemmed from a concern that one of my life-long friends mentioned last August, while living under the threat of death from cancer. “You know,” he said to me, “where Jesus says ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant’? I am afraid of that moment, because I don’t think my life has been all that well done.” I assured him that he would be surprised for all the unseen good results his life has caused. He died in April. I am confident he got his “well done” from the Lord.

There must be a way to be truly relevant

14. When I first thought of myself as a contemplative, rather mystical-oriented person of prayer, I sought to attach myself to a group or order of people who distinguished themselves as contemplatives.

 

When we Catholics go through the confirmation process nowadays, we are allowed to choose the name of a saint with whom we associate ourselves. Having been influenced greatly by the writings of John of the Cross, it was a no-brainer for me to choose him as my confirmation name, and to designate him especially as a saint who would pray for me while I journeyed out my faith on this side of our divide.

 

I eventually severed ties with the contemplative order because, it seemed to me, it was merely a way to draw attention to myself; to set myself apart and a little above the others who were not so much contemplative.

 

Now, having journeyed still further with John of the Cross, as well as Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen and a few other solid teachers on this rather ethereal subject, I am leaning toward the idea that contemplation is, first of all, no longer the best word to use, and, secondly, that it is for every believer.

 

To describe Thomas Merton as a contemplative, for example, does nothing to help us understand his actual bearing as a Christian. I prefer to think of Merton as “integrated.” His life of solitude and silence, as Henri Nouwen points out, led Merton to a life of compassionate involvement in the lives of others, and a poignant critic of the world around him, and an expression of the love of Christ to the world in a singularly relevant way. This is a life for all Christians, despite our circumstances and despite our absolutely inescapable need to be personally comfortable about everything our faith demands of us. (Those looking on from centuries past must surely refer to us as “those unbearable lightweights.”)

 

Merton lived as a Trappist monk in Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky. It would be easy to misunderstand and accuse him of hiding. Few outside the monastery realize what a social and cultural, as well as spiritual center an abbey becomes by virtue of the prayer that takes place within.

 

It is this immersion in prayer that will shake us loose from our superficiality and drown us in an integrated faith that will make us radical and relevant, as was Christ.

 

Until then, we are doomed to be cartoons or sketches of believers who add a smidgeon of the Christian faith to a comfortable life and call it good.

Regaining a sense of center

13.

Whenever we read or write or, indeed, take a break from a careful consideration of spiritual life, we always, always have to circle back and regain our sense of center.

 

My life is not what my life is all about. My prayer life is not for me, but for others, or just for God to enjoy.

 

Now that I belong to Him, I continue to cry out to Him. Not to belong more, but, in belonging to seek Him out in praise of Him, blessing of Him, adoration of Him, and glorification of Him.

 

Laudamus te,

Benedictimus te,

Adoramus te,

Glorificamus te.

 

We do this because that is what sons do.

Remain reliant upon God to walk the walk of faith

12. At least three times in the Gospels, Jesus is accused of being slow to respond. His friend Lazarus had died in Bethany, and Jesus lingers for a few days before arriving at his town. In another place, Jesus sleeps in the boat while the disciples become more and more alarmed that the growing storm will sweep them away. In still another place, James and John ask Jesus if they should call down fire upon a city that rejected him … in a way commenting on what they perceive as Jesus not being involved enough.

 

We have to recognize in ourselves this same impatience toward God. As I have said before, it will not do for us to expect God to pay us back with a sense of His presence for whatever work we put into His kingdom. Once we set out as men and women walking by faith, we must not expect to “graduate” into a walk by sight. If anything, this would be a digression.

 

The disciples were men closest of all to knowing Jesus and being familiar with his intentions. Yet, even though they have known him and followed him, they find themselves often unclear about how to follow or what to say.

 

It is saying nothing new to warn that, even though we pray a lot and press ourselves into the knowledge and understanding of God, we must not consider our own perspective to be unerring. “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5). Or, as the wording of the New Jerusalem Bible has it: “put no faith in your own perception.”

 

It is a mistake to think ourselves accomplished in matters of faith. We are ever reliant upon God to “show us his ways” and “teach us his paths” (from Psalm 25). If we stop this seeking, our finding will come to an end.

Keep going even when you want to stop

11. Once you start to make a turn toward the study and practice of the interior life, you would think that everything is going to feel fine.

You must realize that the path you are on is going to take you to some dark places. If your life is truly going to be immersed in God, your flaws and impurities are going to become disconcertingly apparent. In semi-darkness we can hide many aspects of sin and its damage to our lives. When God’s light moves more intensely within our hearts, our awareness of him increases, but so does our awareness of our need for purification.

This is a point at which many seekers turn back. You will be sorely tempted to excuse yourself for being broken, to pronounce yourself forgiven and to go no further on this inner journey. Self-awareness of sin is the quickest way to get someone to run in fear from what is holy. Peter showed us this when he said to Christ, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man.”

Don’t be afraid. The spiritual masters call this the “purgative” element of the journey. This is when God will work in your heart to cleanse you from sin and free you from its power. He will do this not all at once, but little by little over time, so as not to overwhelm you.

In the same way that a surgeon may heal you by cutting into your body, so will the Holy Spirit lovingly wound your heart in order to make a way for God’s greater influence over you.

Don't miss the miracle of God's presence by seeking excitement

10. Sometimes you will experience what I call a “tasty time” with God. That is to say, your prayer or Bible reading, or “that one time in church,” or during a conference or special retreat, you have an extraordinary sense of God’s presence.

You will want your every prayer and every reading and every meeting to be a “tasty time” of spiritual excitement and enlightenment. Of course, you know, faith operates in the unseen, unfelt aspects of life. By faith we believe that God is involved in our lives whether or not we can touch him, hear him or see him.

The spiritual masters of yesteryear tell us not to expect spiritual excitement and enlightenment every time. It is not any one particular reading or one prayer or one attendance at church that is going to form your inner life. It will be the continual practices of prayer, reading, meditation, community and ministry to others that God will use to gradually enrich your walk with him.

Sometimes these conscious visits with God will be extraordinary. Most of the time they will be ordinary.

Expecting satisfying payback from God for your faithfulness is the mark of a big baby

9. You are likely to think that God is going to pay you back for your faithfulness in prayer by making you feel full in your soul, or by giving you a special sense of his presence or at least by providing you with a zest for the spiritual life.

Inner life Christian teachers from centuries ago refer to these good feelings and pleasant outcomes as “consolations.” It may strike you as very unusual that we would be warned against these consolations.

My own spiritual director once gave me this terse warming: “God ebbs, too, you know, Tim.”

It is true that some of our spiritual experiences feel good to us. That “full” or “close” feeling that we have with God is something that we should be free to enjoy. The point here is that many times our spiritual practices, our prayer life, and the tendencies of our spirit do not yield what we have come to know as “warm fuzzies.” In fact, many students of the interior life struggle often against a complete absence of consolations.

We are told by Spanish spiritual writer John of the Cross that the quest for consolations is an aspect of “beginners,” and will hold us back in our learning and in our growing such that we remain “feeble, like that of weak children.” “Their motivation,” he says of beginners, “in their spiritual works and exercises is the consolation and satisfaction they experience in them.” (Dark Night of the Soul, Book 1, Chapter 1, Part 3.)

As you become more resolute in your pursuit of God, your need for warm fuzzies will fall away. You will think your prayer life is getting stale and perhaps God has wandered off, but, quite the opposite is happening. You are growing.

This closer look at your interior life will press you toward better things

8. Last time we concluded with this: It could be said that we are conditioning our inner life to the end that God will use every thought, every word and every deed of ours to fulfill his purposes in us and, through us, in others.

Here we are on the verge of the topic of sanctity. Depending on your church background, you may know this as holiness, sanctification, perfection, theosis or even moral theology. As you spend time considering the state of your interior life, you will also find that some things just don’t belong in there.

You will naturally excuse yourself from the impurities that you allow yourself to store in your inner life. You are, after all, only human. You are, after all, a sexual person, a self-indulgent person, a materialistic person, sometimes a spiteful person, maybe an addicted person … you get angry, you say unkind or unclean things … you are tired of putting up with the same falderal from the same people all the time.

Okay, so you are just like everybody else, except that you are looking more closely at your inner life these days, and you are sensing a disconnect. Some things just don’t belong in there. You are starting to realize the inner battle between your personal darkness and the indwelling Spirit of God. No, they will not live in truce. They will keep fighting until one of them dies.

When you look into your inner life, you start to choose sides.

Emphasis on inner life runs the risk of lack of balance

7. Any time you emphasize a particular facet of the spiritual life you run the risk of lacking balance or appearing to do so. If you are exercising the development of your inner life, this could raise some questions. Aren’t you avoiding your responsibility to love your neighbor when you are holed up in your room musing Bible verses or whatever? Aren’t you being selfish by looking after your precious little inner life when you should be feeding the hungry or asserting a just cause to right a wrong? What’s the big deal about the inner life anyway?

It should be obvious that good spiritual teaching would not divorce the inner life from the necessary “exterior” life of action.

The best way I have heard this expressed is that the inner life involves our response to the “Greatest Commandment” as stated by Jesus – to love God with all of our being. The life of the outward expression of spirituality is how the believer responds to what Jesus called the “second” greatest commandment – to love others as ourselves. Added to this is the idea that one’s love of God comes first as the source and inspiration for the second.

It could be said that we are conditioning our inner life to the end that God will use every thought, every word and every deed of ours to fulfill his purposes in us and, through us, in others.

Refrain from getting uppity

6. The student of the interior life must not fall prey to the pride that falsely tells him he is a special breed of Christian because of his interest and enthusiasm about the inner life.

Already I have used the term “student of the interior life” to somehow recognize and congratulate the reader. It is, in fact, a good thing for a brother or sister in Christ to take an interest in their own inner life for the betterment of their walk with God and their ministry to others. The student should be thus affirmed that he or she is involved in a spiritually healthy pursuit. At the same time, it is unhealthy and counterproductive to one’s spirit and ministry to think oneself as above another or as elite in some way.

In loving God, we are all responsible to address ourselves to God’s love of us. In loving our neighbor we are, to some extent, responsible for the condition of one another’s souls. No one is excluded or exclusive.

The topic of Christ’s indwelling of us and through His Spirit exerting His influence upon us is important for every believer.

Spiritual formation is central to inner life strength

5. I have previously mentioned the “formation” of the inner life. There is, in some traditions within the Christian church, a study made (if not a college degree) in spiritual formation. The term itself suggests that there is education to be done and progress to be made by the believer.

It behooves us to develop and openness to this training and a commitment to this progress. The Bible clearly describes believers in different stages of spiritual growth, including: Infants, babes, children, adults, the mature, as well as weak, strong and spiritual.

Spiritual teachers over the centuries have also talked about the advances that believers should make, using images such as ladders to be climbed by the rung; a mountain to be scaled by stages; a castle being entered from the outer to the innermost chamber.

Medical science has found that exercising the mind can strengthen the brain’s resistance to some forms of dementia. So does the use of the spirit keep the inner life strong, prepared and ready to be put to use by your will once submitted to God.

What if inner life stuff isn't your bag?

4. Every Christian should involve themselves with what to do about their spiritual life. If we are serious students of the interior life, we will want to fully realize Christ’s indwelling and his active influence upon our life.

There is a concern among some, however, that the interior life is only for a particular type of person. In other words, this is not for every Christian. You may know someone who seems to be extremely thoughtful and spiritual. They strike you as “the type.” Those, you may think, are the ones who should really look into this interiority stuff. Since all of us have a different function in the Body of Christ, isn’t it kind of natural to think that an emphasis on the interior life is something that is for some and not for others?

Those spiritual guides who have written about Christian spirituality do not in any way address the student of the interior life as being elite, special or choice Christians. Nor does anything in the faith steer us away from doing all that we can to develop a prayerful inner life in Christ, or tell us to set aside for an instant the hope that we have from the indwelling of Christ in our hearts.

If you have an interior, you should consider your inner life with God and involve yourself in its development.

The real subject is always Jesus

3. A common criticism of the teachings about the interior life is that Christ is not mentioned enough. The subject matter can sometimes seem to stand alone as The Interior Life, when in fact the subject matter IS Christ, His dwelling within us and His influence upon us.

This is what the serious student of the Christian’s interior life truly wants to explore: Christ dwelling within us and through His Spirit exerting His influence upon us.

In interior studies, this can be said in many ways, and it is sometimes left unsaid. Thus, the lack of a direct reference to our Lord Jesus Christ on a page or in a section on the subject is never intended to mean Christ is not all in all. On the contrary, there would be no discussion of the interior life if we did not understand it to be the very place where the Holy Spirit diffuses Christ’s divine life to the believer.

So, let’s be clear – the topic is Christ and His life in me.

Spirituality: A topic that can drag us away from spirituality

2. One of the first things you as a student of the interior spiritual life will be faced with is the tendency to leave the inner life untended while studying about it. We become like artists who leave their studios in order to talk about art – never again to pick up a brush or mix a color.

While it is important to take good direction in matters of the spirit, a good balance must always be maintained. The actual formation of our own spirit occurs when we deliberately place ourselves under the influence of the Spirit of God by what we can generally call our prayerfulness. For the spiritual person, it is needful to be more aware of God’s work within, and to be more deliberate in bringing oneself into the loving embrace of God.

We are not critics or commentators on the spiritual life. We are participants. We are not cheering for the team. We are ON the team.

           So, at the outset, let us not allow the topic of the interior life itself to become a distraction from our involvement in and our connection to that very life.

This is about Jesus ... or alveoli ... or something

1. The first time I mentioned the possibility of writing these short bursts about the inner life, a young Christian friend of mine asked, “Could you be more specific?” Good question, Lane!

“What are you talking about?” is always a fair question. If I know what I am doing, I should be able to answer in one or two sentences.

The inner life is where God dwells within us. We are talking about our spiritual life when we say we have a personal relationship with Christ. Your inner life is where this relationship takes place; where you are transformed into the likeness of Jesus Christ.

The alveoli in our lungs act as a permeable barrier through which the oxygen we breathe is diffused into our red blood cells. The alveoli comprise the place where this miraculous exchange is made between the respiratory and circulatory systems.

While oxygen is all around us in the air, it will do us no good unless it becomes a part of our personal biological life. The oxygen out there becomes the oxygen in me.

In the same way, our Lord Christ is out there everywhere with spiritual life. When we become students of the interior life we raise our awareness of the place in me where God makes possible our own spiritual life by his indwelling. He gives us His touch of the divine life, which the Bible refers to as “Christ in me,” “the Spirit of God living in you,” or, simply, “the renewed inner man.”

This blog is about Jesus Christ and his life taking place in us.