I’m still learning what it means to find freedom in discipline.  There is discipline that can evoke freedom, and then there is just strict, dry discipline.  There is discipline on one side, and spontaneity on the other.   I don’t think I’ll ever get a good balance of freedom through discipline this side of heaven, but I know that the continual training in godliness is the goal, not perfection.  Much like a violin player that disciplines herself for years will eventually be able to have the freedom to play incredibly complex works with ease – almost as a form of meditation.

The other day I heard a great quote – that “absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.”  — Simone Weil.  It takes focus and discipline to stay centered on a single action or thought in our world today.  Millions are diagnosed (and misdiagnosed) with Attention Deficit Disorder each year – and now they are proving that for every hour a toddler spends in front of a television set his chances of developing symptoms of ADD increase 10%.  No surprise there!

Truly look around at your world.  Think about the hundreds of items grasping for your attention – even as you read this.  Advertisements on web pages, TV, radio, clocks, phones, in-boxes, billboards…Twitter, email, Facebook…events coming up, Christmas cards to respond to, projects to plan, light bulbs to change out…on and on it goes.

So what is prayer in this lifestyle?  Could it be that your earliest experiences in prayer might be of some practical help here?  Closing your eyes and holding your palms together fingers extended is the way most Christian children are taught to pray.  In fact, Buddhists and other faiths meditate in similar form.  Recent research has discovered that we focus and meditate best when our most sensitive nerve endings are a “closed circuit.”  Your finger tips for example are filled with some of the most sensitive nerve endings on your body – its your fingers that allow you to engage your world in the most tactile way.  So holding your palms and fingertips together is sort of your way of saying to the world’s distractions, “I’m taking a break,” and begin training your mind and soul to dive deeply into God’s presence.

“So when you pray, go away by yourself, shut the door behind you, and pray…”  (Matthew 6:6)

Jesus was pretty clear that God is not held behind locked doors or in special places for special people.  Yet in his teaching on prayer, he specifically states that some places and positions are better for pray at than others.  I think that the human body is affected by the posture in which we pray.  The brain is active in different places when we smile and lift our open hands up to the sky than when we are crouched in the fetal position over a cup of coffee and a computer screen. The earliest Christians often prayed facing East (orient), because they wanted to “orient” themselves toward where they knew Jesus was going to return from.  Try bowing in your prayers.  Try facing east.  Try lifting up your hands.  Try prayer-walking.  Let your whole body in on what your mind thought it could keep to itself with regards to your prayers.  See your prayers transform.

If you are looking for “unmixed attention” when you pray, maybe it has less to do with your ADD diagnosis, and more to do with the simple fact that we are being bombarded with things seeking our attention – and yet God is not in those things – he is in the still small voice that so often gets crowded out by the whirlwind of our lives.  Listen.  Close your eyes.  And close your circuits off from the outside world.  Meditate and see where God shows up.

It is no secret that this is the most neglected and forgotten layer in the Church.

It is also in this layer that lies the secret to everything – the pathway to a spiritually vibrant community life.

In the first layer we considered the power of a life centered on God.  While the Christian walk is never private, it is inherently personal; inviting each heart to pay attention to the love and power of God in their life.  Learning to cultivate a unique, organic relationship with the Divine is what produces the unyielding stream of life that Jesus promises in John 4.

As John Donne has aptly stated, “No man, is an island.”  We cannot thrive as humans while separated from others.  Nevertheless, there is a neglect of the Micro Layer, especially in the West, where individualism and mass corporatism reign supreme.  We are a highly narcissistic bunch, and unfortunately, this makes truly engaging the lives of one or two others very difficult, if not impossible.  We want it to be “all about me” making “empathy,” “teamwork,” and “community” good ideas only…but ones that are never realized.

Generally speaking, the Church in the West has only a tacit awareness of the Micro Layer – the communities of two or three.  Accountability groups became for many nothing more than sin-management sessions, and Catholic priestly confession took an important habit of the early church and distorted it, setting up an actual one-way wall that only invited one-way confessions.  In contrast, I believe that we are all priests, and we are all confessors. 1 Peter 2:9

Much of the burden of  spiritual formation has been left up to two people in the Western Church: the first is the pastor, who does what one can to spiritually nurture a crowd once a week, and second, the loner Christian whose spiritual life and struggles are not to be shared with anyone else for fear of rejection from the group.  This becomes particularly toxic when the pastor takes his own spiritual formation as privately as the rest of us – which results in many of the clergy scandals we’ve seen in the news of late.

But a quick skim through the relationships found in the Scriptures shows a different life.  David and Jonathan didn’t have the private-life reservations we Americans hold today.  They knew that life was best lived with a friend at your side.  Jonathan even made a vow of brotherhood to David in covenantal friendship, 1 Sam 18:3-4.  Or what about Moses and Aaron – learning to lean on each others’ strengths to fulfill the will of God that bound them together for life.  Or Paul and Barnabas, who relied on each other to earn the trust of Jewish Christians and Gentile skeptics for the sake of the Gospel.  Or Peter, James and John – Jesus’ tight knit band of brothers.  That’s what we need – we need a band of brothers.

We need a fellowship of the heart that will fight for each other.  To be a place of sanctuary for another’s heart where they can feel safe to ask tough questions without fear of rejection, mutually confess sin, and realize dreams they could never achieve on their own.  Where the challenge of discipleship can be lived out on a practical level and practice the teachings of Jesus.  It is in the Micro Layer that we first experience God’s Kingdom come on Earth as it is in Heaven…the hard work of peace-making, reconciliation, and loving/ serving/ submitting/ praying for one another.

It takes a church to raise a Christian.

This is the smallest unit of church – where the core elements of the Church’s DNA are first expressed: Divine Truth, Nurturing Relationships, and Aposotlic Mission.  I think of the Micro Layer as the most important part of the church.

Like leaves on a tree – they may be the weakest part of the organism, but leaves are where light enters in, and collectively they keep the tree healthy and strong.  If a tree has a strong trunk, but no healthy leaves, we assume the tree is sick and dying.  The same is true for a church – the massive worship gatherings may be strengthening to the church, but if marriages, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, and soul friends throughout the crowd are not connecting with each other and inviting God to speak to them, there is something very sick about the church.  This is the power of the Micro Layer.

Why do so many avoid the Micro Layer?  Because it is easier to keep our masks on and hide in our shadows.  But the benefits of community (Eccl 4:9-12), accountability (1 Tim 5:19), confession (Matt 18:15-17), flexibility (Matt 18:20), and especially reproducibility (2 Tim 2:2) bring transformation to every child of God.

The Micro Layer is the “on ramp” for each disciple into living the abundant life Jesus promised and the earliest Christians experienced.

I’ve observed that many, when they realize this piece of their spiritual life is lacking, quickly get frustrated because there is no program to join or curriculum to follow.  At the micro level, there are only simple structures.  Below are a few examples of the Micro Layer in action:

• Life Transformation Groups – our organic church network attempts to make LTG’s a community practice.  It involves a same-gender group of 2-3 reading lots of God’s Word (25-30 chapters a week), confessing sin to each other while speaking forgiveness over each other, and praying for the lost.  The DNA of the Church in its most raw form.
• CO2’s – or “church of two.” In addition to LTG’s we are pushing marriages and families to take on the task of being the church together in a daily way.  It means listening to our hearts and sharing them honestly with one other person.  Using the tool of SASHET and VIRKLER we are “listening attentively to my heart, your heart and God’s heart.”
• Read up on the Anamchara from 6th Century Celtic Christians in Soul Friend.
• Read the Shack, and consider the “Micro Layer” found in the Trinity!
• Check out Centered by my friend and mentor Kent Smith.

Why would Jesus send his 70 disciples out to share his gospel in pairs?  Couldn’t he have spread his message further with 70 individuals rather than 35 pairs?  I think his decision reveals God’s desire for a the human heart – to have a companion for the journey.  Whether its Adam and Eve, Paul and Timothy, or you and me, as soon as one disciple of Christ joins another, they become an “incarnate capsule of the Kingdom,” “Jesus with skin on,” displaying the glory of God through redemptive relationship.

Imagine what would be different about the Church if everyone was in a covenant friendship with just one other Christian.  Just imagine…it would change the world.  The Micro Layer may be the hardest to find, and the hardest to keep – but for those who seek it – there is no doubt they will find it.  And lives will be transformed.

I’ll get back to talking about brain dumping again soon. I promise.
In the meantime, I want to share with you a little Christmas cheer. The other day I had my good friend Jennifer over. She was telling me about how she is planning on heading to meet with family for Christmas. Apparently, her parents rank at the top of the stack for dreamers at Christmas time. They want it all – -and they send her an itemized list prior to the holidays, so she can prepare… and save up her money.

Well, this year, she decided to buy them a llama. “A LLAMA?!?” You heard me right: a llama. I could hardly contain myself. Her logic went something like this, “Well, Katrina… It generously helps a family in the south, and it cost about the same amount of money I would have spent on them, and if they complain about it, they’ll have to live with themselves… it’s great.”

Needless to say, I could barely stop laughing out loud. At first, I thought she had physically bought them a pet. Then she mentioned Heifer International. She proceeded to describe a little toy llama she had bought for her family as well. “I’ll put in a box with a card, so they’ll have something tactile.” Brilliant. And the heifer website gives you a printout of the gift you’ve purchased, too. It’s great.

I knew about Heifer before this, but I never connected it with Christmas time. It’s great if you’re doing some last minute shopping. You don’t have to walk into any stores— you just print the card and hand it over. And it’s a great conversation piece. Merry Christmas!