Listening for More

Rimes McElveen

Some years ago I experienced a not entirely unfamiliar season of spiritual plateau. After a bit of flailing about and rummaging through my Hermoine Granger-like knapsack full of familiar spiritual tricks, I recognized the nature of this particular plateau as more spiritually arid than I had previously experienced. Soon it became evident it would require something new, something more, something from Above, if I was to emerge more seasoned and less scarred, than other such stretches of spiritual malaise left me in the past.

I often wonder how others navigate spiritual doldrums and find their way back into the steady current of Christ, the Wellspring of life.

Fortunately, I had a mentor in my second year of seminary who was a well-seasoned spiritual guide who introduced me to the likes of Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, Theresa of Avila, and Glen Hinson. Spiritually accomplished and deeply flawed humans of long matured faith, nurtured by epochs of desolation, not just consolation, in their own journeys with Jesus.

January was almost upon me and the coldest and darkest days of the year were close at hand when I remembered that Rev. Dr. Ted Percel introduced me to Merton. So I picked up A Year With Thomas Merton. The book is a year’s worth of journal entries selected from decades of Merton’s personal spiritual journals. Each devotional page offers an entry from that same day of a year from across Merton’s well journaled life. I found a nearly empty journal of my own from years before that I stopped writing in after a dozen days or so. I dusted it off and pressed it into fresh service. Together, these two coalesced into exactly the spiritual formation tools I needed to find my way back into spiritual flow. Not at first. Not for quite some time. But eventually, by the grace of God and counsel of the Holy Spirit, I was ushered back into the Holy Current that is always there, wooing would-be followers of Jesus back into the fold.

While serving in full-time ministry for 25 years, the last 18 of which as Executive Director and Collegiate Minister of Mere Christianity Forum at Furman University, I have loved introducing people to the depth and breadth of the Christian tradition in hopes they discern for themselves a vision and version they live into with integrity. It’s what simultaneously fills my cup to running over and requires me to stay in The Current of Christ in my own journey of faith. As my students have become digital natives over the years, it has become imperative that I use and shepherd the use of digital spiritual (and not so spiritual) formation (and de-formation) tools.

I am learning so much from the gifted Phygital Fellows, our facilitators, and the incredibly dynamic and accomplished leaders we have been introduced to across the country. I am taking that learning and pouring it into my own efforts to develop a spiritual formation app that forges a sacred triad: Christian tradition, Christian community, and Journaling, through the creation of a digital app.

Time will tell if this new tool will bear spiritual fruit at the intersection of physical and spiritual realities, but I’m hopeful it will. At its core, Plumbline, reflects the conviction that people need opportunities to reflect on their own lives, experiences of faith, and their unique experiences of the world. We need tools that cultivate the capacity to listen to the Spirit of God within and without. This new journaling app also leans on the concepts of both Paulo Freire and Donald Schön, who espouse the virtues of reflecting upon one’s actions as a means of personal and social transformation.

As digital life continues to carve out greater percentages of our daily experience, we need tools that facilitate our individual and collective reflection and discernment. How else will we be transformed by the renewing of our minds so that we may test and approve that which is good, true, and beautiful, and what is God’s holy and perfect will for us all in Christ Jesus.

I pray that Plumbline can be that something new, something more, something from Above for someone else when they find themselves in their own vulnerable season of spiritual malaise.