Lynette’s New site

Lynette’s old web site

• Born in
  Canada (Mom is American) May 27th, 1968.
  
• Has an older brother (Bevan) who together with his family moved to Seattle for a year to help start Quest.
• Loves teaching, and is job-sharing third grade in the Bellevue Public School District.
• Took a summer and went to Ecuador with a friend to teach English.
• Graduated with a B.B.S. from Canadian Bible College.
• Graduated with a B.S.Ed. minor in philosophy from Montana State University, Billings.
• Spent Summer in Latvia Teaching ESL.
• Earned her Master’s Degree in creative arts from Lesley College in Boston.
• Became a mum on June 15th, 2001.
• Has a passion for Justice and women’s rights in the two-thirds world.
• Researching educational philosophy of public education in a postmodern context.
• Avid writer of Haiku as a spiritual engagement.

• Full name:
  Dwight Jason Friesen.
  
• Born in Canada March 3, 1969 to Ben CS and Roselle Friesen.
• Middle of three kids, older sister (Michelle) younger brother (Dallas).
• Raised (for the most part) in Brandon, Manitoba.
• Met Lynette at age 5.
• Met Jesus at age 6.
• Impacted by the ministry of Ralph and Lou Sutera in the early 1980′s. 
• Played Canadian high school football with the Plainsmen. 
• Attended Capernwary Hall in England, competing a one year certificate program in Biblical studies.
• Graduated with a B.B.S. from Alliance University College now located in Calgary, 1990.
• Married Lynette May 12th, 1990.
• Interned at Foothills Church in Calgary
• Assistant/Youth Pastor in Billings, Montana – First Alliance Church.
• Ordained as “Reverend” by the Christian & Missionary Alliance in June of 1992.
• Graduated with a M.A.R. from Trinity International University where I was mentored by Robert E. Coleman, while my thesis adviser was Michael Bullmore.
• Very active with Willow Creek Community Church while attending graduate school.
• Moved to Seattle to start Quest – Summer 1996.
• Bought a house May 1998.
• Became a dad (son born June 15th, 2001 Pascal Brandon).
• Serve as a Spiritual Director.
• Earned a Doctor of Ministry with an emphasis in Leadership in an Emerging Culture at George Fox University under the mentorship of Leonard Sweet, with Kent Yinger was my dissertation adviser.
• Adjunct Practical theology instructor at Crown College Online.
• Assistant Professor of Practical Theology at Mars Hill Graduate School.

Peace, dwight

“The imagination plays a great role in the 
spiritual development of the soul.”
–
St. John of the Cross

Do you wish to form an intentional relationship with a person who could provide mentoring, support, and challenge for you as you nurture a life of dependence on Christ? If so, you may wish to find a spiritual director, or a soul friend.

Spiritual direction is a gift from God.  Both lay people and clergy can make excellent soul friends. Keeping an open mind about your director is wise. You may be surprised at the kind of person who makes the “best” soul friend for you.

To find a spiritual director:

1. Pray about it. Seek Divine guidance. Trust that God will lead you to the person who is right for you.

2. Ask close friends you trust or maybe your pastor.  A strong referral from a trusted friend goes a long way.  Sometimes friends and clergy will know about persons who are gifted in the art of sharing the life of Christ-dependence.

NOTE: The life of serious, intentional dependence on Christ is intimate. For this reason, use discretion when talking about spirituality, especially with casual friends. Many people find the topic of prayer unsettling or embarrassing — so, out of respect for such persons, be wise when discussing your prayer life, especially in casual conversation.

3. Email ( Direction@DwightFriesen.com ) or call ( 206.276.3992 ) me and we can discuss Spiritual Direction on a more personal level.  And see if we might be a fit for this time in your life.

* * * * * * *

While being accountable to spiritual director greatly benefits a disciplined prayer life, that relationship alone cannot accomplish everything. In addition to a spiritual director, the person who is serious about the life of prayer needs to formulate a rule. This may be done in consultation with a director, or by oneself.

“A true artist always puts something of his time in his art, and also his soul.”
– Auguste Rodin

One temptation concerning spirituality involves separating it from the “rest” of your life, relegating it only to religious, or mystical experiences.

Christian spiritual direction takes a much humbler stance regarding the life of faith. To be in a relationship with God is not necessarily about extraordinary states of consciousness or miraculous events — although, quite frankly, any person who opens up to the life of the Spirit may expect some interesting or unusual experiences, since spirituality invites us out of our ordinary ways of thinking and perceiving. But the spiritual life is much more likely to transform us in small, undramatic (if that is a word) ways over time, than to clobber us with mystical experiences of Cecil B. DeMille proportions.

Another common misperception of spirituality is to view it as a form of therapy. Spirituality equals mastery, according to this line of thought — to be spiritual is to move toward having all one’s financial, romantic, sexual, and health-related woes vanquished under the power of psychic attainment. Once again, while the spiritual life does promise us the fulfillment of our heart’s deepest desire, it does not promise mastery, or attainment, or any other form of self-aggrandizement or self-indulgence.

What does spirituality entail? 

Quite simply, it entails fostering an on-going relationship with God. Spirituality may never lead you to see a vision of heaven or to practice extraordinary psychic powers, but it does offer you an on-going, deeply loving relationship with the Creator of all things. That, in my opinion, is the better choice!

If spirituality involves relationship, then like any other relationship — marriage, business partnership, membership in a community — boundaries and ground rules are necessary to support the relationship’s smooth functioning. Every relationship needs to be established on agreements between the parties involved, and spirituality is no exception. In the Bible, God is said to create covenants with God’s people. These covenants are the basic agreements that form the foundation of the relationship. By the time of the New Testament, the basic covenant between God and humanity ran basically along these lines: 

·         God created us and loves us unconditionally.

·         God gives us the freedom to choose.

·         God does not “rescue” us — if we choose poorly, we face the consequences.

·         When we realize we have chosen poorly, and are willing to choose better, God lovingly forgives us and helps us in our efforts to grow.

·         The sign of this covenant, Christ’s death and resurrection, expresses that God loves us dearly enough to die for us, and that death, carries with it the promise of resurrection and new life.

A covenant exists between God and God’s community, but what kind of agreements define a relationship between God and individuals? This is where the rule of life plays an important role. The idea of a rule developed in the monastic communities of Christianity — and indeed, monasteries and convents today still function under a rule. The most famous rule was written by St. Benedict in the early years of monasticism. Many other rules have been written over the centuries, often as adaptations of earlier rules.

The monastic rule still governs the life of a community, but it provides the model for an individual rule. Basically, an individual rule consists of a set of established agreements made by the individual as promises to God regarding spiritual practice. A person can adopt an existing rule (many monastic communities have rules written for individual use by persons living in “the world”), or one can write his or her own rule, especially with the cooperation of a spiritual director.

Since a rule defines one’s relationship with God, and since God is interested in every aspect of our lives, a spiritual rule might include promises made regarding any area of one’s life. Here are some examples of promises that can be useful in a rule:

·         A commitment to a block-time of prayer each day.

·         A commitment to give away a percentage of one’s income for spiritual or charitable purposes.

·         A commitment to exercise, eat properly, and get appropriate rest.

·         A commitment to rest and worship.

·         A commitment to be loving and attentive to members of one’s family.

·         A commitment to work for peace and social justice.

·         A commitment to active involvement in a faith community.

·         A commitment to sitting under Sacred/theological/mystical texts.

A rule is meant to be a spur to growth. Think of the rule as being similar to a stake used to hold up a tomato plant. By providing structure and support to the plant, it enables the plant to grow quickly and healthily. In a similar way, a rule of life provides structure and support not only to our prayer life, but indeed to every aspect of life, enabling us to grow into the persons God wants us to be. Because of this, a rule works best when it is a moderate challenge to us. A rule that we always keep flawlessly is not effective — it’s like a fifth grader solving third grade problems. On the other hand, a rule that is so demanding that we have difficulty even meeting it’s minimum standards is likely to discourage us, and therefore defeats its own purpose. The rule is not a tool to make us feel good or feel bad — it’s a tool to help an individual grow in spiritual maturity.

If you would like to adopt a rule of life to provide structure to your own spiritual journey, a good first step to take is to find a soul friend or spiritual director who can help you create a realistic rule for yourself. Remember, the main purpose of a rule is to form a “partnership” with God — to open our minds and hearts to the inrushing love of the uncreated source of life!

peace, dwight

Happy birthday to my bestman (in every sense of that word) - my dad. 

Ben CS Friesen

When I Grow Up

by dwight friesen

When I grow up and get to be a writer

I’m going to write a poem about my dad

And I’ll tell of strong arms and a short carriage

And an insatiable appetite for chocolate cake and ice cream

And the way he kissed my mom with a loud smacking sound

And the safety of his hugs

And the way we prayed with me nightly

And the time I saw him cry

When I get to be a writer

I’m going to write about my dad

And the nail clipper that never left his side

And his tact

And his deep respect for his father

And an enduring entrepreneurial spirit

And his big farm-boy hands

And a genuine love for God

And a rock steady character

And his spitting out the car door at traffic lights

And his joy in giving to others

When I get to be a poet

I’m going to write about my dad.

Love you dad,

dwight

NOTE: The inspiration for this poetic structure came from the great Langston Hughes’ and his glorious poem, Daybreak in Alabama.

In a class this spring a couple of students drew some interesting “hugging connections” between Schnarch and Volf. 

In David Schnarch’s Passionate Marriage he encourages hug therapy, which he sums up as “hugging till relaxed”.  Schnarch describes hugging till relaxed as a fourfold process:

1. Stand on your own two feet,
2. Put your arms around your partner,
3. Focus on yourself, and
4. Quiet yourself down – way down, (Schnarch 1997, p. 160-4).

Combine this with Miroslav Volf’s “Drama of Embrace”  from Exclusion & Embrace and we might we well on our way to a relational theology of hugging. 

1. Opening the arms: inviting the other in.
2. Waiting: with arms open one must wait for the other to respond.
3. Closing the arms: the goal of the embrace is a reciprocal holding of the gift of the other.
4. Opening the arms again: embrace does not permanently make the two one – the end of the embrace is the beginning of another embrace (Volf 1996, p. 140-7).

What is the difference between hugging and wrestling?  Who wins when hugging? 

Peace, dwight

The other day my friend Deb told me about an IM conversation that she had with me – or at least so she thought she had with me.  As it turned out, she had stumbled across another Dwight Friesen, (who also happens to be from Manitoba, Canada).  Deb got me thinking about people who carry this name; so far I’m aware of 5: 

1) No info on the Dwight Friesen that my friend Deb talked to, just that he’s living in Manitoba.

2) Oddly enough, I met this Dwight Friesen as kids at camp in Carberry.  He now works at Briercrest College.

3) There appears to be a Dwight Friesen who is a journalist for CBC in Toronto.

4) There’s a Dwight Friesen who works in school administration in San Jose, CA.

5) And there is me.  BTW – as the story has it, my parents named me after Dwight L. Moody, the 19th C. Chicago preacher.  Though I appear to be more moody than a preacher.

Blessings on each of you.  May our world be a more beautiful, more gracious, more peaceful and more loving place for your presence.

Peace, dwight

Nightclub

by Billy Collins

You are so beautiful and I am a fool
to be in love with you
is a theme that keeps coming up
in songs and poems.
There seems to be no room for variation.
I have never heard anyone sing
I am so beautiful
and you are a fool to be in love with me,
even though this notion has surely
crossed the minds of women and men alike.
You are so beautiful, too bad you are a fool
is another one you don’t hear.
Or, you are a fool to consider me beautiful.
That one you will never hear, guaranteed.

For no particular reason this afternoon
I am listening to Johnny Hartman
whose dark voice can curl around
the concepts on love, beauty, and foolishness
like no one else’s can.
It feels like smoke curling up from a cigarette
someone left burning on a baby grand piano
around three o’clock in the morning;
smoke that billows up into the bright lights
while out there in the darkness
some of the beautiful fools have gathered
around little tables to listen,
some with their eyes closed,
others leaning forward into the music
as if it were holding them up,
or twirling the loose ice in a glass,
slipping by degrees into a rhythmic dream.

Yes, there is all this foolish beauty,
borne beyond midnight,
that has no desire to go home,
especially now when everyone in the room
is watching the large man with the tenor sax
that hangs from his neck like a golden fish.
He moves forward to the edge of the stage
and hands the instrument down to me
and nods that I should play.
So I put the mouthpiece to my lips
and blow into it with all my living breath.
We are all so foolish,
my long bebop solo begins by saying,
so damn foolish
we have become beautiful without even knowing it.

happy birthday honey

Paul Ricoeur — “the philosopher whose writings on hermeneutics were the cornerstone of an ambitious rethinking of the relationship between the humanities and the social sciences . . .” died today at the age of 92.  Read more here and  here

Russell Arben Fox blogs on Ricoeur

A few of Ricoeur’s titles:

• Oneself as Another
• Memory, History, Forgetting
• Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences
• Time and Narrative, Volume 1, Volume 2, and Volume 3