Tag: Rob Bell

5 Ideas for Navigating Troubled Times

March 21, 2020 / Matt McMann / 0 Comments

It was a heartbreaking conversation. A few days ago, my wife and I helped our son and his fiancé make the gut wrenching decision to postpone their long-planned wedding. Their immanent April celebration is now a distant October event.

It’s a challenging time. The reach of COVID-19 is affecting us all, but not in the same ways. Some of us have been devastated by the disease through personal illness, the loss of a loved one, or financial instability caused by industry shutdowns. For others, the impact to this point has been relatively mild, like adapting to the new realities of social distancing and sheltering in place at home.

Rather than write a “one size fits all” post, I decided to share a variety of suggestions to hopefully help you navigate this season regardless of where you’re at on the impact spectrum. You may be drawn to some suggestions while others might feel completely irrelevant to you. In the future, the appeal of these ideas may completely reverse as your situation changes. Here’s a list of thoughts and resources for you to browse as you choose:

1. FIND YOUR BALANCE

It’s okay to be scared right now. That’s normal and natural given the breadth and impact of this global pandemic. That said, huddling in the fetal position unable to function or stuffing an entire closet full of toilet paper is an unhelpful overreaction. Conversely, laughing this situation off as an overhyped hoax and not taking proper precautions for the good of yourself and others is also a dangerous extreme. Somewhere in the middle is a healthy place to land.

2. FIND YOUR PEACE

I use several apps to help me with this. The Calm app provides guided and unguided meditation experiences of varying lengths with soothing music, imagery, and nature sounds. For those with a spiritual bent, there’s the Pause app produced by author John Eldredge based of his book Get Your Life Back. It leads you through one, three, five, or ten minute reflections to quiet your anxious mind and realign your perspective. A friend also recommended Rob Bell’s latest podcast where he and his wife Kristen share tools they use to navigate these troubled times. Choosing your focus also really helps (you can read my post on that here).

3. FIND YOUR MOTIVATION

While not the right time for everyone, this may be an opportunity for you to get to some long-delayed or newly discovered home projects. Scanning old photos, decluttering (see my post on that here), deep cleaning, whatever. I plan on hanging picture shelves.

4. FIND YOUR FUN

In addition to binging that show you’ve been meaning to watch, break out the board games or coloring books. Curl up with a steaming mug and a novel. Check out Google Earth or the Google Arts & Culture web site and take a virtual stroll through the world’s greatest museums, cities, and sites of interest. My wife and I have a puzzle sitting out to noodle with during breaks in our writing sessions. For 94 different ideas, check out this great list of in-home activities from Apartment Therapy.

5. FIND YOUR RELATIONSHIPS

With many of us stuck at home, this is a great time to connect with friends and family on FaceTime or a good old fashioned phone call. I recently chatted with my parents then spent an hour and a half on speaker phone with my sister over lunch. Physical isolation doesn’t have to mean relational isolation.

So which of these ideas connect with you right now? Pick one and try it today. Keep the others in your back pocket as it looks like this “new normal” is going to be around for awhile. Find your BALANCE. Find your PEACE. Find your MOTIVATION. Find your FUN. Find your RELATIONSHIPS. If you do, you’ll make it through these challenging times, and you’ll take another step toward BecomingYourself.

How to Connect With God: My Daily Practice

January 25, 2020 / Matt McMann / 0 Comments

In last week’s post How to Find Direction in Life’s Fog, I wrote that, during confusing times in my life, God was my best source of “fog burning sun.” In response, a regular reader asked if I would share some of my process for how I connect with God.

Honestly, I was hesitant. While I often write about how my spiritual perspective helps me become a better version of myself, I know that some of you come from different faiths or no faith at all. I respect that, and don’t want to come across as “preachy” or forceful of my worldview. My goal is simply to share things I’ve learned on my personal development journey that may help you walk your own path, whatever path that may be.

Then I remembered something – many of the best things I’ve learned from others did not come from their insights on a particular topic, but from their sharing the ways they practice personal development in their own lives. Even if they come from a very different perspective, I almost always glean a helpful idea or tool.

So with that in mind, I decided to share a brief overview of how I approach the “how to connect with God” question. If this isn’t for you, feel free to stop reading now and check out the another post on the site or wait for next week’s installment. Still interested? Read on.

How to Connect With God

To give some context for my practices, here are some of my fundamental beliefs:

A loving, powerful, intelligent, eternal Higher Power exists and is the creative force behind the universe (I use the term God, but this power goes by many names).
God wants to be known but will not force Herself/Himself on us (God is beyond gender binaries).
A life-giving, intimate, conversational relationship with God is possible.

Why I believe those particular things is not the purpose of this post. That said, here is my daily process of connecting with God:

MORNING

I start the day with a five-minute stretching routine while I steep a cup of hot Tetley brand English black tea in my Harry Potter tumbler. I sit in a comfortable chair in the library corner of our apartment and begin a practice with three loosely structured parts:

Listening

For 10-15 minutes, I center myself in silence. Sometimes I close my eyes, sometimes I leave them open, depending on what feels right or how sleepy I am. Some days I let my thoughts wander. Other times, I use various meditation techniques like centering prayer, or focusing on my breathing, a word (God, love, peace, etc.) or an image (a lonely beach, a mountain meadow, a fireplace, etc.). The particular technique isn’t important. The goal here is to quiet my mind and heart to a listening posture where I’m receptive to anything God might bring to my mind.

Talking

After listening, I begin talking with God. I start with thanking God for who She/He is to me and for things I’m grateful for. Then I think about people and situations I care about and ask God to provide them with the help they need. Finally, I consider my own needs and desires and express those to God, asking for strength and guidance to live well. This usually takes about 30 minutes.

how to connect with God — My chair in our corner library

Learning

After talking with God, I read some type of spiritual writing for 10-15 minutes. I’ve read and studied the Bible for many years, but lately have been drawn to other writings such as The Diary of an Old Soul by George MacDonald (spiritual poetry about pursuing God), Walking With God by John Eldredge (was incredibly helpful for me in establishing conversational intimacy with God), and the daily emails from Richard Rohr (a Franciscan priest, author, and teacher who founded the Center for Action and Contemplation in New Mexico). After reading, I listen to a spiritually focused podcast while I run the stairwell in our apartment building for about 20 minutes. Current favorites are Another Name for Everything by Richard Rohr and The RobCast by Rob Bell.

That is the cornerstone of my connection with God routine. It usually takes about 75-90 minutes. As a writer with a flexible schedule and a 50 year old empty nester, I can take that extended time in the mornings. I’ve done some version of a Listening / Talking / Learning routine regularly for 40 years, starting with 2 minutes for each section and building gradually. This included seasons where I was in school, working day jobs with set schedules, and raising young kids. It’s definitely harder during some stretches than others, but with tenacity and a little creativity, it can be done. I believe we make time for the things we truly consider important.

AFTERNOON

Throughout the day, I try to maintain an “unstructured awareness” of God’s presence through intermittent thoughts and spontaneous, silent conversation with God while I write, run errands, do chores, watch TV, whatever. A wonderful little book that taught me this concept is The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence.

EVENING

Before bed, I stand on our balcony and talk through the day with God. Did I use it well? Accomplish what I set out to do? Learn or experience anything new? Even on hard days, I try to thank God for good things like health, relationships, a home, food, God’s presence, and meaningful work. Combined with my morning routine, these practices bookend my connection with God, providing both a positive start and a peaceful close to each day.

So there’s my personal take on how to connect with God. Take anything that may be of value to you and toss the rest. If you have questions or would like clarification or expansion on anything, please leave a comment below or email me through the “Contact” tab above. If you’re willing to leave a comment sharing how you connect with God, I’d love to read it.

Whatever road you choose, I wish you all the best on your journey toward Becoming Yourself.

Actor Rainn Wilson’s ONE Big Question May Surprise You – and Change Your Life

December 7, 2019 / Matt McMann / 0 Comments

Sometimes an author’s words express your heart and experience better than you could yourself. That was true for me recently when I came across this excerpt from a book I’d read years ago called The Sacred Romance:

“The Sacred Romance calls to us every moment of our lives. It whispers to us on the wind, invites us through the laughter of good friends, reaches out to us through the touch of someone we love. We’ve heard it in our favorite music, sensed it at the birth of our first child, been drawn to it while watching the shimmer of a sunset on the ocean. It is even present in times of great personal suffering—the illness of a child, the loss of a marriage, the death of a friend. Something calls to us through experiences like these and rouses an inconsolable longing deep within our heart, wakening in us a yearning for intimacy, beauty, and adventure.

This longing is the most powerful part of any human personality. It fuels our search for meaning, for wholeness, for a sense of being truly alive. However we may describe this deep desire, it is the most important thing about us, our heart of hearts, the passion of our life. And the voice that calls to us in this place is none other than the voice of God.”

The Sacred Romance by John Eldredge and Brent Curtis

You may not believe in God. I get that position, and I respect it. Regardless of where you fall on the faith spectrum, I’m guessing that most of us can relate to the feelings and experiences described above.

So that begs the question – is that “voice that calls to us” in those moments God or not? As actor Rainn Wilson (Dwight from the TV show “The Office”) said in a fascinating interview on author Rob Bell’s recent podcast, it is THE question – does God exist? Why is that so important? Because the answer affects every part of our lives. Everything else flows from it. Either we’re a random byproduct of matter and energy or we’re not. Either we’re alone in the universe or we’re not. Either there’s a guiding creative force or there’s not. Either there’s an overarching purpose to our existence or there’s not. Our answer to the God question impacts our relationships, how we spend our time, our money, our energy. It influences our work, our play, our search for meaning. It alters our hope for the future or lack of it. It speaks to our sense of identity, our self worth, and what happens when we die. Everything.

So how do we know? There are some rational, logical arguments for God’s existence that I find compelling, like the Moral Law Argument (God makes sense of the existence of objective moral law), the Teleological Argument (God makes sense of the existence of the universe), and the Fine Tuning Argument (God makes sense of the delicate balance of physical laws that allow life to exist) among others. That said, they aren’t proofs. No one can conclusively prove (or disprove) God’s existence.

To believe in God requires an acknowledgment that there are other ways of discovering truth than the logical reasoning of the mind. It’s how we believe in the existence of love. Though love can’t be proven rationally, we see compelling evidence of it and feel the truth of it in our bones. That’s what the above passage from The Sacred Romance is saying – there are feelings and experiences common to virtually all of us that point toward the existence of some type of Higher Power, one that, as crazy as it may sound to our rational mind at times, created us, loves us, and wants a relationship with us.

If that’s true, as I personally believe, then we will only become our highest, most fulfilled selves, only live our most satisfying and joyful lives, when we align ourselves with that reality. We become the best version of ourselves when we acknowledge and work on our spiritual side, as well as our mental, emotional, and physical aspects.

So how about you? Are you developing your spiritual side? Are you open to the existence of a Guiding Spirit, Life Force, Love, Allah, God, or whatever you may call it? Not from a fear of hell or some other punitive punishment, but from a desire to truly thrive, to become your best self, and to experience life to the fullest.

Reason and faith are two sides of the same coin – you need both to discover Truth. Choosing to utilize only your rational mind and reject faith as a means of understanding reality is like viewing a panoramic nature scene with one eye closed or running a race on one leg. You can do it, but you’re missing out on the full experience.

In those deep moments of wonder, awe, pain, mystery, and intimacy, are you in tune with what The Sacred Romance calls “the voice of God”? Will you respond to it? I sincerely believe your best life is found by answering “yes” to that question. Think it through. Weigh the decision for yourself. Experiment with developing your spiritual side. Meditate. Pray. Read spiritual writings. Try out a temple, mosque, or church. Talk with someone who has a spiritual life you respect. If you do, you’ll take another huge step toward Becoming Yourself.