Brian McLaren | Naked Spirituality Series  ## Metadata - Author: [[YouTube]] - Full Title: Brian McLaren | Naked Spirituality Series - Category: #articles - Document Tags: [[video-notes]] [[youtube]] - Summary: Brian McLaren | Naked Spirituality Series - URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXbvQKEmO7k [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] hey grace pointe my name is annalise jinglevine from franklin tennessee and we are so happy that you joined us today virtual or in person i want you to know that no matter who you are who you love or how you exist in this world you will always be celebrated welcomed and loved enjoy the service stand we're glad you're here help us sing this first song [Music] go all in your troubles now set your feet on solid ground be as deep as i have found i wanna follow [Music] [Music] [Music] come on and follow [Music] don't wait for tomorrow come on all you people come on [Music] well i wanna follow you leave [Music] come [Music] on don't wait for tomorrow come on all you people come on [Music] [Music] set your [Music] leave only your [Music] [Applause] come on [Music] [Music] [Music] hello my beautiful gracepoint online family my name is ricky bratty i'm the music and arts director for grace point and uh my pronouns are he him but i wanted to take an opportunity today to say hello to you all i miss you all i don't get to engage i'm gonna interact with you all um that much on sunday morning so i want to take this chance to give you your announcement say hello we love you we cherish you we value you as part of our community here at grace point um so if you want to scan the little qr code that should come up on your screen um that'll give you a list of the things going on and the things that i'm about to talk about so next sunday september 4th which is labor day weekend we actually will have an online only service across all of grace point no live services and i think it'll be really cool because we might see some people who usually attend in person here in nashville tuned in to the online service and in the chat regular service times but i'd love to see kind of connections and interactions with some of you all who we love and some of the people that we get to see every sunday so that'll be cool next sunday online only service and then september 18th coming up we're doing a baptism after after church here in nashville and i know some of you have have reached out about wanting to participate in your own way wherever you are participating in kind of the collective baptisms that we're going to do and i think that's beautiful i think that would be amazing we can get you more info if you want to sign up for those and let us know that that you want to be a part of that baptism september 18th another cool and exciting thing that we are about to host at grace point is if you remember hunter wade she was our beloved intern this past spring for grace point well she's graduated um she has moved to nashville so she is still a part of the community and she's going to be hosting a study now the study is called her a feminist approach to scripture it's going to be amazing the study will explore five central tenets to reading the bible with a feminist lens and everybody's welcome to this because we're gonna offer it in person and online um here are the dates september 8th october 6th and november 3rd all from 6 to 7 30 p.m central standard time so make sure wherever you are it's 6 to 7 30 central stanford standard time september 8th october 6th november 3rd it's going to be awesome i think you will all really enjoy and appreciate what hunter has prepared finally um we as always so appreciate all the the financial support and support across the board that we get from from our family at grace point we can't obviously do what we do without it um and so if you have found meaning and beauty in in the community and really gotten something out of of grace point then we would ask for you to help us and support us financially and the ways to do that you can text grace point to 7797 um you can go to our website gracepoint.net gib and again you can scan the qr code on the screen well we love you so very much hope to see many of you soon um and we hope that you enjoy the service [Music] you [Music] it's true now i'm just lost in you i am hell and i am free what a beautiful mystery [Music] i am [Music] of you i was so restless but i found my rest in your truth you took me as i [Music] what a beautiful mystery [Music] i am [Music] once i was lost it's true now i'm just lost [Music] [Music] free [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] hello friends at grace point uh so good to be with you virtually this morning i would like to share with you a way to think about the spiritual life a way to think about prayer and the whole act of orienting ourselves toward the spirit of god in our lives and in this world and um and i understand that you all will be doing a series in the coming weeks that will draw from my book naked spirituality and i'm very honored about that and happy that i can offer this uh this introduction today um let me just get us a set here uh over the years you know i've talked to lots and lots of people around the world uh christians of all different types and and denominations and traditions and orientations um and you know at the deepest heart of us i think all of us want to be transformed people i think all of us want to experience what it is that god wants us to experience and that our deepest souls want to experience i don't think any of us really set out to be religious jerks or or self-hating failures who feel like we just can't make it into spiritual life i think all of us have nothing but the the best intentions um and the best desires mixed in with all kinds of other things um and i i think it can help us if we start by thinking about our own lives in relation to the larger framework of living things in this universe and we understand that our spirituality like all living things is dynamic that goes for us as individuals but it also applies to us as faith communities um we all start where we start and then we go through different experiences and some traumas and setbacks and difficulties over time we mature we develop we evolve we change and as many of us look back over our spiritual life pastors like me we look over the broad range of experiences that we see in other people those of us who are parents and grandparents we look at our children and grandchildren many of us notice certain patterns kind of seasons of development in in the spiritual life distinct stages that leave their mark on us like rings on a tree each one including the other in something bigger not leaving what came before behind not rejecting it but including it and transcending it in a pattern of ongoing growth um and i've written about this in my book naked spirituality then my book faith after doubt really focuses on uh this growth process and then in my most recent book do i stay christian i return to this theme way back when i was in graduate school i began studying in depth some theorists of human development and i started seeing the overlap uh between what psychologists say and educational experts say on human and intellectual development with uh the patterns of spiritual development too as i see at each stage in a life with god depends upon the earlier stages it doesn't reject them but embraces them in something bigger and each stage is good and beautiful in its own way look all of us as parents we remember when our babies were just tiny little infants and then we remember when they became crawlers and toddlers and then we remember when they got ready for school and went to school each stage is beautiful uh and and and and also in a sense each stage has its limitations and prepares us for something new uh in the spiritual life we could say each new stage of the spiritual life opens up a new soul space and expands our capacities for love so that we can love god neighbors itself and the earth more fully and at the end of the day i think we all would agree that that's what the spiritual life is all about as paul said in the book of galatians he said neither circumcision nor uncircumcision count for anything in other words he said look so much of what we exhaust ourselves on in the religious life it's meaningless the only thing that matters he says is faith expressing itself in love it's very similar to what micah said uh in his time people were preoccupied with the sacrificial system he says look is is what is it that god really desires of us human beings is it that we just have more and more animal sacrifices so that rivers of blood flow from the altar he says of course not what god desires from us as human beings is that we would just do justice love kindness walk humbly with god the same kind of movement toward kindness love caring about the the justice and well-being of our neighbors um so i began reading these theorists and i integrated uh what i could come to understand of their work into a four-stage framework and and look you and i know life doesn't uh come that neatly divided into stages but for many of us just as a year has four seasons the spiritual life seems to unfold season by season you know there can be warm days in winter and really cold days in spring but the pattern of winter spring summer fall winter spring is a pattern that we see unfolding in in life in many ways um i would like to propose that after we complete the four stages once we go through them again and again and each time we might say at a a bigger spiral a higher and wider spiral or if you prefer a deepening and widening spiral and so we'll look at each stage at some spiritual practices appropriate to that season and we're going to root each of these practices or spiritual postures in one simple word i'm only going to name them today you're going to unpack them and go deeper in them in the coming weeks and you could think of these practices as being like postures of the heart ways that we open ourselves to god ways that we make space in our inner life as we mature develop skills and add skill to skill capacity to capacity season by season stage by stage step by step and i propose that we all begin in stage one now you might actually say we begin in stage zero because we all started at zero but our parents from the very time where we gain any kind of motor skills and ability to say no and ability to toddle around the room our parents are trying to raise us into stage one so it's kind of our baseline of childhood and i call it simplicity in stage one simplicity is like spring when many things are born and begin to grow it's a time of beginnings it's a time of fresh new life and in simplicity you could also say it's the stage of dualism because when we come into the world we don't know what is safe and dangerous we don't know who's a friend and who's a foe we don't know what is delicious and what is poison we don't know what is uh you know uh something we should be curious about and something that if we follow that we could we're not ready for it we could get into a lot of trouble and so uh it really our survival work in stage one is to learn to sort the world into two categories uh and yes no us them friend enemy uh uh insider outsider legal illegal uh uh and so on um uh and that dualistic work really preoccupies us uh in in our younger years uh we go to school is that right wrong uh did we follow the rules or did we break the rules uh and since we're all new on this planet we depend on trusted authority figures to help us sort things out we're very very dependent on authority figures even though we might fight them and argue with them and throw temper tantrums still we're dependent on them we need them for literally for our survival i'd like to propose to you that many people stay in stage one their whole lives and many people when they think of religion they think of a stage one phenomenon now that's just not true um i think at its best religion takes us through all the stages but especially in white american christianity we have a lot of stage one christianity and and and in these settings life is simple life is clean life is neat life is under control our authority figures know the right answers and uh the other guy's authority figures have the wrong answers um and so uh that explains an awful lot of religion that has turned off many of us this is simplicity and in the coming weeks you'll explore three central postures for the or practices for the springtime of simplicity here which is the posture or prayer of showing up with god thanks the practice of gratitude appreciation and oh the practice of awe and wonder and delight and worship many people stay in stage one their whole lives many i would say denominations um have very little room for people to grow beyond stage one certain congregations if you try to move beyond stage one they tell you you're backsliding they tell you you're going backwards because they don't even know there's anything beyond stage one and um but in spite of the obstacles many of us continue on into stage two life pushes us there my friend richard rohr often says it's great pain and great love that moves us out of a stage i would add sometimes it's a really good education really reading really good literature or a great experience of travel or cross-cultural relationship and in stage two we move from simplicity into complexity let me give you just a simple example let's say i grew up i i did grow up in a a christian fundamentalist home and let's say that one of my best friends in school is jewish and i get invited over to her house for dinner one night and i find out that they say prayers but their prayers are different from ours and i find out they celebrate holidays but their holidays are different from ours i found out that they have rules about what they can and cannot do but their rules are different from ours and and so i i'm i'm i'm dealing with complexity at a couple levels here because my church maybe told me we're right our religion's right our rules and our holidays are correct and everybody else's are wrong but here my jewish friend and her family are so nice to me and so now i have complexity that somebody who's supposed to be one of the bad guys is actually pretty good and that makes me wonder if those good guys who told me they were bad whether they were really good but not only that i realized there are different sets of rules and different contexts and now i have the complex work of negotiating a complex world i compare complexity to summer if springtime is simplicity when everything's growing rapidly summer now is a time of intense growth and activity and we might say fruitfulness and um and sometimes summer's a time where you have to do some weeding and where there's competition and uh and that's those are the challenges of complexity in summertime our simple dualisms become complexified um and so we start to realize you know what some of us aren't so good and some of them aren't so bad some of the good guys can turn bad and some of the bad guys can turn good some things i was told were true may actually only be partially true and some things i were told i was told were false may only be partially false and that thing that i was told was safe i found it if you do too much of it it could be dangerous and that thing i was told was dangerous there might be a time where it's actually necessary and so negotiating all those complexities is the work of stage two we learn to function more independently we start learning the how to's of succeeding in a complex world we learn to pray we learn to study the bible we learn to solve problems we learn to help others on our own and we like leaders who are less like rule givers and authoritarians and and more who are like coaches who are giving us some freedom and helping us to succeed on our own um and and the practices you're going to talk about in coming weeks during the summer of complexity are sorry because we all make mistakes help because we all have to face our limitations and please where we care about others and we're very very concerned we want the same well-being for them that we want for ourselves now again a lot of people go from stage one to stage two and they stay there the rest of their lives i think in the united states in my lifetime a lot of stage one christians have moved to stage two and we have this center of gravity in protestantism and in catholicism that is a sort of an alliance between stage 1 and stage 2 christians but more and more of us i think at a younger and younger age are driven by great pain great love a great education good travel cross-cultural experiences and relationships and we find ourselves in stage three which i call perplexity and in complexity we learn to critique the other and we learn to defend us our in-group but in perplexity we take the critique that we used to put upon others and we turn it upon ourselves we instead of just critiquing the out group we start to critique the in group and when that happens it's often very scary we wonder if i critique us will i have anything left what makes me any better than anybody else and of course when we ask that question we think who gave me the idea that i was supposed to be better than anybody else it's a it's a challenging and scary time where we start to peel the layers of the onion and we wonder if there will be anything left at the end except for tears and the reason i think it compares to autumn is this beautiful tree that's grown through the summer now its leaves turn and begin to fall and all we feel is a loss a loss of the innocence of stage one and a loss of the innocence of stage two the innocence in stage one that we could know anything and the innocence in stage two that we could do or fix or solve anything often in stage three we resent those dualistic authority figures of stage one and we often resent and get angry at those pragmatic authority figures of stage two and and very often we feel skeptical and disappointed disillusioned alienated from our the group that brought us to where we are if we dare to go public with our questions and doubts we may start to find other people who are similarly disillusioned similarly questioning similarly alienated and together we want to create a space where we can be open and honest about our struggles with our own in group as well as uh other groups and uh there can be a great excitement when people find each other and find oh here's some people i can be honest with um and a lot of people uh end up staying in stage three for the rest of their lives often because they don't know there's anything beyond it um in uh the coming weeks you'll be exploring um three postures that i associate with stage three uh the the question when when will this be over when will i figure this out when will the stressful time end the the outrage of no this is unacceptable i cannot accept this and learning to raise our voice and our fists and say no and then the question why why not even as a demand for the answer but why as an expression of the fact that we don't understand that we don't know an ability to accept our unknowing that's one of the things we struggle with in stage three um and uh and and here's a problem if you stay in stage three long enough you your skepticism can easily turn into cynicism and your analysis analysis and critique of others can easily turn into a kind of paralysis really and you feel stuck and you have to get on with life and something often happens at the age of end of of stage three where you become cynical about your own cynicism and skeptical of your own skepticism and you begin to long for something beyond simplicity beyond complexity beyond perplexity before i go on i should say that some people when they get to perplexity they they become so frightened by the emptiness and meaninglessness and despair that they think is waiting for them if they take one more step that they run back in reverse and i think cults and cultic and authoritarian groups often thrive by providing a kind of a place of retreat from people who became frightened by where growth might take them and um and i think we see an awful lot of that in both our religious and political culture in today's world but i think more and more of us once we've done the work of stage three we've learned what we need to learn from perplex from perplexity we're ready to move into the fourth stage harmony harmony is in many ways like winter our all the fast exciting growth of springtime has led to all the hard work and productivity and fruitfulness of summer and we've had the kind of blaze of glory that leads into perplexity as first leaves turn such beautiful colors and then begin to fall and as some of the things that we worked so hard to do turn out not to end so well and and there's this sense of a descent um to a time of reflection about what's happened and then a time of anticipation could anything come from this in some ways this feels like a time of death that could prepare the way for resurrection in harmony we look back at stages one two and three like rings on a tree and we realized that each of those stages had strengths that we learned had capacities that we developed and we realized that those are good capacities we just have to learn how to integrate the dualism and the pragmatism and the relativism and skepticism uh and critical thinking of stage three to integrate them within a larger reality and we wonder what that larger reality would be we also face the weaknesses of stages one two and three and we begin to understand that those weaknesses are in some ways unavoidable just because we didn't have the capacities we needed to to develop this larger integration we learned to hold both us and them insiders and outsiders in a larger us a big we what my friend dr barbara holmes calls a cosmic we and we learn to have compassion for people in each stage including the old me that used to live in stage one and the old me that used to live in stage two and the old me that used to live in stage three and the new me that is trying to find my way into stage four in in in the coming weeks you'll explore the postures and practices of winter of harmony of integration behold just learning to open our eyes to what's there yes of learning to assent and surrender to the beautiful flow of life and silence to learn to sit in reflective contemplative grateful appreciative silence not needing to fix everything and explain everything and know everything and do everything but simply seeking to be and do what is mine to be and do um if we stay in harmony long enough it becomes a new simplicity and and and if we stay in that new simplicity long enough it becomes a new complexity and i think the seasons repeat spring summer fall winter spring summer fall winter spring summer fall winter in that spiral where we are more mature with each spiral this beautiful pattern of expanding beyond what we once were and expanding again and expanding again matches of course the whole reality of this amazing wonderful universe full of expansion and um so that was the that's a kind of overview sets the stage for uh naked spirituality this understanding well here's how the apostle paul said it in first corinthians he said when i was a child i spoke i thought i reasoned as a child but when i became a mature adult i put those childish ways behind me and you say well paul what are the more mature ways and paul says well listen faith is really important it abides hope is really important it abides but the greatest thing of all is love love never fails love is what maturity really means and this process of maturing from the rules the us them the in and out the uh sim the all of the work of simplicity it's really about preparing us with some essential skills of love moving into pragmatic complexity we learn how to function and succeed and do our part in society that all contributes to love if we properly understand it it's not about me it's about this cosmic we even the doubting and questioning and struggling the the the the sensitivity to injustice and oppression and unfairness that happens at the stage three that's preparing us for love and the more we understand love is the big picture the more i think we're in tune with what paul said there in first corinthians 13 and what jesus said when he said the new commandment that he has for us the greatest commandment that we could ever be given is the is the commandment to love i just thought i'd tell you a brief story in closing that might give you a feeling for what that stage for harmony looks like my uh wife was a freshman in college when her father suddenly died of of a heart attack and um some months after her father's death um grace went home to be with her mother and her four siblings all of whom were teenagers and um and she and her mother went out for dinner alone and uh their first dinner after the loss of grace's dad and and she and her mother tony were sitting in this restaurant just the two of them and while they were eating tony my mother-in-law looked out across the restaurant and she said to grace i can tell of all the couples in this room i can tell which ones are married and which ones are dating and grace says come on ma of course you can you just look on their hand and see which ones have a ring or not and tony said no it's not that i can tell which ones are married because they're not talking and i can tell which ones are dating because they're all talking now grace heard this as what a 19 year old kid she heard this and she's thinking my poor mother is cynical my poor mother thinks that it's only the young dating couples that are exciting and talking and happy to be together and that the boring old married couples are just sitting there bored with nothing to say and grace was disturbed by this and remembered it and told it to me she especially told it to me if we ever went to a restaurant and we were sitting quietly she'd remind me of that story and say i don't want us to become one of those boring old married couples well many years passed we raised our kids and grace and i were in a restaurant and we were eating enjoying our food and we weren't talking and suddenly grace says to me oh no i said what's wrong grace she said i get it i said what do you mean she said remember that story i told you about it about my mother shortly after my father's death she said you and i are sitting here we've been together for so many years we can finish each other's sentences you know what i like i know what you like we know each other's thoughts and it's not boring it's comfortable that we can be together here in this place and just enjoy one another's company without a lot of words she said now i realize that we were in that restaurant and i was talking my mother's ear off i was just blabbering and talking and talking and talking and my mother was missing my father because she remembered how nice it was to be able to sit quietly with a person with whom you're at peace and at rest and just be in their presence without all the noise i love that story because it gives me an image of how i feel now at 66. when i am in the presence of god honestly i don't feel a need to talk and blabber and beg and all the rest i i just i trust god i feel at ease in god's presence and i just cherish the great peace of being in the presence of love love that i receive love that i give love that we share my dear friend richard rohr is you know up in years now and he's losing some vitality and he's looking very frail and uh if you say what have you been up to richard he says i mostly just gays i sit up on my house and there's a big cottonwood tree and i i just gaze at the cottonwood tree and i notice its beauty and and i just see it with love and i noticed the grass and i noticed the birds and i noticed the people driving by it says i just look with love that's not a bad place to be after living life to live and work and play and rest with a heart full of love blessings to you all [Music] when the pieces seem to shatter together off the floor when all it seems to matter is i don't feel you anymore no i don't feel you anymore [Music] i need a reason [Applause] i need to know that you're still holding the whole world in your hands [Music] i need a reason to sing [Music] when i'm overcome by fear and i hate everything i know [Music] if this waiting lasts forever i'm afraid i might let go i'm afraid i might let go [Music] i need a reason to say i need to know that you're still hoping [Music] i need a reason [Music] [Music] now [Music] are you singing [Music] victory [Music] [Applause] [Music] cause i need a resistance [Music] is [Music] [Music] [Music] um [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] you, Brian McLaren | Naked Spirituality Series, YouTube, 01k9gfnzfjth0ge6jp31z9v0g2.