The Gathering

While in Australia I had some fun teaching Tom Long's ART OF THE HOLY BACKRUB to the students of Wesley Institute, in Sydney. It uses the parable of the sower and is a fun exercise to have the audience use different backrub techniques for the different kinds of soil and the harvest the farmer had in the end.

Here's what I had to say to follow the fun:

If nothing else, my experience in China and Singapore has been carving out of me my ego and identity coming from what I do. The world will keep spinning if I’m busy at work or just hiding away doing a poor job at studying Chinese or doing housework.
God doesn’t need me. I need him. I’d been a human doing: caught up in my work, getting stuff done, proving my worth through accomplishments…and all for what I thought was God’s glory.

I’ve been learning more about what it really means to be the human being God created me to be. As I rest…as I abide in Christ I’m beginning to understand my worth comes from being attached to him and his love and grace.

My existence is less focused on the importance of doing excellent art and more focused on the shortness of life here – I’m more aware now that what I’m doing – the hard work I’m doing – the art I’m doing – Is just a means to prepare myself and others for eternity.

Maybe it was getting put “on the back burner” in China and Singapore for awhile. Maybe it just comes with getting older. But now, though I still love my work, (and still can get obsessive about it) it’s more important to me to concentrate on what kind of soil my heart is…

I want to be that rich well composted soil, so that the seed of God planted in me will through his miraculous work sprout, blossom, and yield a 100 fold harvest. Can you identify with any of this?

Is your heart well watered? Do you tend to the soil of your heart or is your soil beaten down hard, so hard that the word of God, God himself doesn’t really even get in?

Or has Jesus just been planted in you shallow with no roots?

Have you got soil with a lot of rocks still in there, or are you allowing weeds in your soil to grow up and choke the goodness out of what he wants to do in and through you?

Then we ended chapel as the 2nd year drama students joined me to lead the group in an enacted prayer. (Twila Paris: Cry for the Dessert)
"Pray for Rain for Australia, let that prayer become a prayer for your dry heart spiritually."