Chealsia: [00:00:00] Have you ever felt distant from God and found that after reading the Bible you didn’t feel any closer or does praying sometimes make you feel even more alone? Puerto Rican author and spiritual companion, Lisa Colón Delay, wrote her book The Wild Land Within, to support people who have felt alienated and confused as they go on the complicated, windy journey of moving closer to God.

But if God is with us all the time, why do so many Christians who seek him often feel this way? And how can you partner with the Holy Spirit to continually experience the peace and love of God’s presence with us?

Welcome to the Created For podcast, a space where our everyday lives intersect with God’s redemptive story. I’m your host, Chealsia Smedley.

Chealsia: [00:01:00] Today on the podcast we’re talking with Lisa Colón DeLay. Lisa is an author, podcaster, graphic designer and spiritual companion. She wrote this wonderful little book called The Wild Land Within: Cultivating Wholeness through Spiritual Practice. And when I came across this book, it really felt like God put it right in front of me.

Um, we had just finished a season about wholeness and wanted to focus on spiritual practices, and so this book does a really great job of demystifying and giving us a guidebook into our inner landscape so that we can more deeply connect to God’s loving presence there and connect to each other and his work, in the world.

And so, Lisa, thank you so much for being here.

Lisa: It’s really a great pleasure. I’m just so glad we get a chance to talk. Thank you so much for reading my book.

Yeah, I would love to hear a little bit more of like why you wrote The Wild Land Within.Who are you writing to?

Lisa: There are three main reasons that I wrote it. One was that in my own story, in my own life, I realized that when I [00:02:00] began the spiritual practices, and I was told sort of growing up, pray, read your Bible, go to church, that’s what helps you grow in your faith. And there’s nothing wrong with that advice, but I had learned there were many things in addition to that, many ways of praying, many ways of becoming close to God that can really enrich your spiritual life. And what I wasn’t expecting though was that some of those things would actually make things worse before they made them better.

Some of those things would actually bring up pain, anger, resentment, old wounds, and I thought to myself, There’s something wrong with me. I’m doing this wrong, and I was told by a director, that’s not wrong.  That’s how the practices work. This is the spirit working in your life, getting those things up that can heal, that can be seen now by you.

They’re already seen by God. You’re loved by God the same, but now you’re ready to to heal from them. And those were barriers between you and yourself, between you and others, erected between you and God. And now [00:03:00] those can be healed and, rectified. And I know that I wasn’t just the only one experiencing that.

I know that there were other people who were thinking, ‘you know, I prayed in this way and I thought it was gonna be this way. Everybody said, now this is a great thing to do. Then when I did it, it actually felt worse.’ So I wanted to accompany people in that journey of maybe they have pain, maybe they have, um, trauma, and all of a sudden it gets triggered.

And also I wanted to give a kind of cultural and historic context for church, uh, because mine had been pretty shortsighted back 500 years instead of 2000. I wanted to talk about the difference between eastern and western Christianity because we’ve had this influence of Empire, Roman Empire and other empires taking Christianity and using it as a weapon, literally using it as a weapon against people. And that’s really far from the kind of, faith, the kind of relationship with God that Jesus had.

And I was a [00:04:00] pastor’s kid, so I’ve always been exposed to spiritual things, but probably do not follow the same God that I was raised with because this was a very specific kind of God with a specific kind of culture that was really kind of imposed on me.

I had heard a lot from the same tone over and over the same sorts of people over and over, and I wanted to show that the church is global. We can hear from many voices and those often on the margin are the voices that speak the most beautifully to us. Jesus came from the margins. Jesus came from poverty. He came from an oppressed group of people.

Chealsia: Yeah, for sure. I think that’s something I really appreciated about this book.

You’ve opened my eyes to like all of these other people, like Barbara Holmes who has been writing about contemplative practices in the black church and just all of these different, contexts where there is this rich spiritual formation. we just haven’t been calling it that.

Lisa: Right.

Chealsia: [00:05:00] So one of the things that you focus on in this book is a lot on like contemplative practice and this inner work. What is this inner holy work?

Lisa: And to just kind of demystify it when, when we’re talking about contemplative practices or inner work, it’s not, it’s not even that woo woo, it’s, it’s all in the Bible there too.

It’s just a way of introducing a kind of life and a kind of posture into your life that. Is much more in tune with the presence of God all the time with you, not God far away. Not, you know, when people say my prayers are bouncing off the ceiling, that shows me that you have an understanding that God isn’t with you.

God is the center of your very being. God is right there closer than your very breath. If you feel like your prayers are bouncing off the ceiling, it’s you’re out of touch with reality. And you’re not feeling connected to God. So that is kind of what spiritual formation is about. Let’s form our spirits so that we understand that the spirit of God [00:06:00] is literally with us all the time, in whom we move and have our being as Paul talks about. And when we become acquainted with that, reality, then we feel loved and we feel connected to ourselves, but to others and to God. And that way we don’t go through life feeling so alone and so restless and so undone. Jesus went away contemplatively ahead of everybody else in the early morning to be with God.That’s the kind of life that nourish Jesus, and that’s the kind of life that will nourish us too.

Chealsia: Yeah. Can you describe what it looks like to be contemplative, practically?

Lisa: To have a contemplative life is that you are always in a sense as Brother Lawrence, if anybody wants to read, Practicing The Presence of God.

Brother Lawrence was this monk, I think it’s the 16th century, and what he wrote in his letters to people who were interested about his spiritual life. He said, I am acting as if, because it’s true. I’m acting as if God is with me all the time. If I’m in the kitchen scrubbing [00:07:00] pans, God is with me and I’m having a conversation.

If I’m flipping an omelet, I’m telling God here, I’m flipping an omelet. I’m doing it for you. If I’m picking up a piece of straw to clean up the floor, I’m picking up a piece of straw for God. It is that continual idea that God is with me all the time. I’m in conversation. I’m in a loving, beautiful relationship with God, and God is not far away.

God is right here with me. In my heart, if you will, in the center of who I am, changing me from the inside. And people saw this amazing transformation within Brother Lawrence because he was just a, a kitchen helper, you know? And, he didn’t start off beautiful, but he became beautifully, he became like Jesus.

And that’s this idea of practicing the presence that the spirit is indwelling us. Do we believe it? Do we act like it? Do our lives show that the spirit is indwelling us. And from there we live our lives. And so we go back to, to fill the well, we don’t come back to fill the, well when we’re empty. We leave from a [00:08:00] full well and we continue to be refilled.

And that means going back to, I, like to call it going back to center, or as Howard Thurman would say, wonderful. Read everything you can get your hands on by Howard Thurman. Centering down, centering down, he calls it. So even when. And that’s not to say that centering down is something a privileged person has.

These can be people with backs against the wall, but no one can take the center from you. It’s something that is only yours. And you give yourself a moment to come down to the completely still center where that is, where God is, and you orient your life to that manner, in that way of being, and, and that’s really what it is.

It doesn’t happen all at once. It’s a process. This is a slow. But beautiful process toward transformation into Christ’s likeness. And so we have to be very patient with ourselves and very patient with the process.

Now, a lot of times we don’t do that. We sort of decorate our lives like a Christmas tree. I’m gonna add this spiritual thing here.

I’m gonna pull the spiritual thing here. I’m [00:09:00] gonna be sort of decorated with Christianity, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about a living tree, not a cut down Christmas tree, a living tree flourishing and having leaves and, and, and being alive.

Chealsia:  That is a beautiful picture of this, of a living tree. What are we missing out on if we don’t, if we don’t go there?

Lisa: I think what we’re missing out on is a life that feels connected, a, a life that feels rooted. Um, a lot of peace and really, that’s kind of this sort of anxiety-based life is kind of what, probably what we’re all used to, more or less restlessness, anxiety, some level of that. It’s a relief from that really.

If you’re not good at sitting in silence or if that thought even scares you, that’s normal at this point because we are just used to being distracted and busy and full of noise in our lives. And that’s a muscle, you kind of build a muscle within you, And if we don’t build it, we become [00:10:00] unwell.

I think we’re living in a time of incredible mental illness and it’s really because we, we’ve sort of lost the center. The center is our reality as God, you know, is, is the source of love disconnected from love? We will be mentally unwell And not to say that mental illness is, is just a matter of not being connected to God.

Of course there’s chemical. I, I take medicine for anxiety and I’ve had traumas that have necessitated that that is a whole different thing. But what I do mean is that just busying ourselves, um, and staying with the regular current of water flying through our culture where we have to keep up and keep up.

To be able to take five minutes and just settle down and not be overwhelmed by your thoughts. That’s a tall order and that is the contemplative life it takes a little practice. Set your thoughts aside, and just focus on God’s love for you.

Allow God to sing into your life with his [00:11:00] loveliness, with his beauty, and that’s really the way that the spirit begins to transform us. We have to feel connected to love. We have to feel beloved. That usually doesn’t happen when we’re super busy and worried and just trying to keep up.

What do we miss out on when we don’t do it? Just, you know, in a way we’ll never know because it will be just a lesser, smaller life. But you do trade off the anxiety for peace and connection and you feel more grounded, you feel more belonging.   And it’s not to say, oh, I’m looking at you right now, and I’m saying, oh yeah, I feel all those things all the time.

I don’t get depressed. I don’t have bad days. I don’t. Of course I have all those things, but compared to when I thought God was far away or compared to when I thought God was angry with me or really didn’t love me unless I did a good job, it’s a night and day difference.

Chealsia: Yeah. Can you share a little bit more about your own [00:12:00] personal journey into this?

Lisa: For me, like I think I mentioned a a little bit already is that all the stuff that was really unpleasant and disturbing came up first because that’s the things that God needed to heal. There was trauma

that I would have, triggers and I would have, you know, I would shake if I spoke about certain things that had happened to me and my voice would quiver. This is all because this was trapped trauma and a lot of people have this, and God wanted to heal that. God wanted to show me I love you and everything’s okay.

You’re reacting to something from the past and, and you’re okay. You’re okay right now. and that took a, a true calming of my nervous system. And the nervous system belongs to God. You know, the, these are all things that I, I wanted to know about and that I include in the book about, neuroscience and how does the body calm down. God wants to heal that. And you cannot [00:13:00] calm down. Your body cannot calm down, and you cannot heal unless you feel safe. So you can talk about it to a therapist all you want, that might help a little. But unless you actually feel safe in your own body, you won’t feel well. And for me, that was understanding that God loves me and I am the beloved of God.

That God won’t leave me and forsake me. It doesn’t mean bad things won’t happen to me, but it means that it is well with my soul. And that was a process that didn’t just, you know, snap one day and I realized it. It was a slow learning and some of it maybe comes with just getting older. Perhaps some of it comes with living more life and having more reference points so that I know, okay, the last time.

If this happened, I could handle it. I’ve actually been through a lot. So when something happens, I’m like, you know what? This is not my worst day. This isn’t even my top 10. Worst days, everything’s gonna be okay. This is a [00:14:00] bump, and that knowing God’s is with me is even a stronger bond, if you will, a stronger connection when you feel that you’re walking with God through it. And, uh, you know, the, there’s that kind of goofy, it’s like a trite thing now about walking in the footprints in the sand and, you know, there’s the one set of footprints and all that stuff.

Um, and, and people have made like a ton of different jokes about that. Or this is, this is when Jesus was dragging me through the sand or something like that. . But, but the thing is, if, if we’re to believe the theology, uh, that’s in the Bible, that God is actually omnipresent, that is, everywhere all the time. If we’re supposed to believe that, then we have to live like it’s true.

We have to. We can say whatever we want, that we believe, but what are we acting like is true? If we’re acting afraid and disconnected from God and that God isn’t there, that’s gonna be become the reality that we wind up living out. If we know that something different is true, we’re gonna begin [00:15:00] to act

as if it’s true. We’re not just saying we believe it, but we’re living out the reality. And that connection with God is built by trust over and over layer and layer and layer until you have something that really is substantial. And I think that’s kind of what the disciples got when they were with Jesus.

At first, they’re just like, who is this guy? And then later they’re like, poof, miracle, after miracle and thing after thing and they get convinced, you know, to the point where they’ll give up their lives for ’em. Uh, not when it really mattered on the cross, but later on when he leaves, you know, they’re such a, they’re such a ragtag bunch of people,

the disciples Jesus picked they’re not any better than the rest of us, and they can’t figure it out for the longest time, they cannot figure out how to rely on God. That’s another thing that can encourage us.

[00:16:00]

Chealsia: A lot of the things you said, like being loved, that God is love all of these things. Like we know them intellectually, but we need to know them and have them seep into all of who we are.

And so is there anything that has encouraged you or kept you there when it was like, okay, I know this, but I’m not experiencing it.

Lisa: Well, what I’m gonna say might sound like a surprise because I think what stopped me from really believing that, because I’m told that my whole life at church, right? You know, God loves you, but I think what undermined that a lot was people who betrayed me, who didn’t love me like they should, who I couldn’t trust. And so I put that on God too. That was my framework, that was my reference. And so I’m like, Hmm,

I can’t, I’m not sure what I can trust, but the invisible God, uh, are you really any better than anybody around me? The reason I mentioned that is because [00:17:00] when we don’t sense that, this is my opinion, but it’s proven true in my life. When we do not sense that of God, I believe it’s because we need to heal from things that have happened with other people in our lives or in other situations in our lives.

If we’re just having trouble accepting that God loves us and we’re connected and it’s not from nothing, that’s all from context of hurt and pain and betrayal and trauma andw e have to go to those places that are unhealed first and deal and deal with them, and we can do that through the Holy Spirit. We can do that and. Learn what real love is, learn what real connection is, and it’s not gonna be reflected all that well in people. ’cause people can be very disappointing if, if someone hasn’t disappointed you, it’s coming.

You know what I mean? Like, it’s just, people are just not, they’re weak. They’re vulnerable and they’re gonna mess up. And that’s why we have forgiveness That’s why I think that the pain of it not working out in, in our realities that we can see and [00:18:00] experience that pain puts up a barrier for us being able to connect with God.

And so that’s why I think when I came up against not believing or wanting to believe and it just doesn’t feel, it’s because I had unresolved work that needed to be done within, but about different things. And it’s not like you have to pick out, okay, there’s these 11 things that are the scars.

No, but it’s like patterns of of harm that you might have to say, yeah, that actually really hurt and actually feel the feelings and ask for healing. Ask for things to be made right in your heart and and to be able to cancel debts and all the things that need to be done to kind of start over.

Chealsia: How else would you help someone if they’re like, okay, I’m listening to this conversation. I wanna go there. It’s scary?

Lisa: Another thing I would just highly recommend is to have, don’t, don’t go [00:19:00] alone in any of this. We’re really part of a self-help culture. Uh, we read self-help books. I’ve gotten a lot out of self-help books, but Christianity is not any kind of self-help enterprise. It is a community one, it’s always been a community one, a historic and communal type of movement.

And so get yourself a good spiritual friend. You can trust. A spiritual director is another person who just makes space for you with the Holy Spirit. You don’t have to ever go alone. So as you’re maybe doing a spiritual practice and it feels overwhelming or it feels like it’s bringing up a lot, you just go at the pace. God meets you where you are.

There’s no, I mean, we’ll get it into our heads that we have to be at a certain place at a certain time, or maybe we’re not cutting it, we’re not making progress. We want to, and that’s the beauty of grace and love it. It really as, as you’re just turning your face toward God. That’s, that’s it. And if you make a mistake, just do it again.

Just turn back again. [00:20:00] And, and so there isn’t the pressure there that maybe we, we make up in our heads that, you know, ah, I think I’m doing this wrong.

Chealsia: Like we see the finished product.

Yeah, I’m thinking of this tree that you talked about, right? I see this tree, it’s living, it’s blossoming, but the tree started as a seed and like the person watering it was probably like day after day. Is this gonna come up?

I don’t know. Like, is this actually gonna grow? Did any animals get into it? You know, all of these questions you don’t know when you’re

Lisa:  Good point.

Chealsia: um, and so this feels a little bit like that.

Lisa: Well said.

Chealsia: Okay, so let’s say I want to start implementing contemplative practice in my life. I want to become more like this rooted tree. Where do I start?

Lisa: Well, I really don’t think that anybody needs to do anything that impressive. Um, whatever it is that you already like, that kind of feels like it connects you do that. So, for instance, if you like music, if you like being outdoors, [00:21:00] if you like, um, prayer, find something that already works or has worked for you, you don’t have to start with, wow, I’ve never prayed the hours.

Maybe I’ll do that. And, and it doesn’t like praying every single hour or four times a day. Isn’t gonna do it for you. And you already know that. It’s like, I don’t know if I’m gonna connect with that. Just don’t, don’t bother with it. But if something already like, well, you know, I really love nature and it’s always made me feel sort of part of something, you know, bigger or part of, enjoyed God’s design, well then maybe take a prayer walk or.

You know, walk in nature and, and start as a, as a spiritual practice or contemplative practice. Just be silent in nature and, and walk and notice the design and listen to all the birds, but make sure that that’s a time, that’s, that’s a special. Time for you and God to, have permission, to let everything else go.

You you have permission. Just, just let it go and do the thing that, that already is kind of geared for [00:22:00] you and you can try other things later to see if that will be refreshing to you and invigorating to you.

Um, but you know, in my book, I have one after each chapter, but there’s also other books that have lots of spiritual practices, and I, I think go with one that seems interesting and already seems attractive. You don’t have to do, you know, you don’t have to do something like, well, I’m gonna fast.

I, I’ve never fasted, but I think I’m gonna fast because that’ll, no, just, just do the one that, that already seems like a good fit.

Chealsia: Yeah, and I like that, like you don’t have to do all

of them Like even reading your book, I was like, okay, like I’m, I’m trying, trying all these different practices in the process,

but then now that I’ve, I’m done with a book, like what is one that I could focus on and say, okay, this kind of  felt good for me.

Lisa: Yeah.

Chealsia: I’m gonna  practice this  one.

Yeah. And it can be, it doesn’t mean that if you let that one go in another season, take up another one or come back to it

Chealsia: Mm-hmm.

Lisa: [00:23:00] again, it’s supposed to be a joy. It’s supposed to be an encouragement a special time with you and God, like date night or something would be like, you know, just, just something you would love.

And it’s not, sometimes we feel like if, if it’s not painful and hard to do it, maybe it doesn’t count. But again, it’s just building. the time of felt connection with the presence of God. What would that be? And some people are like, well, if it’s not going to church or reading my Bible, if it doesn’t sound really official, maybe it doesn’t count.

It’s like it counts. Of course it counts because God is in everything. So like maybe it’s, you know, I just got a cat recently, maybe very quietly stroking my cat and thinking about my blessings and thinking about gratitude. Why wouldn’t that count? Because that brings me closer to God and it, and I experience a presence and it’s somehow calming my nervous system to just do that.

Why not? You know? Just do the thing that brings you into the presence of God, gratefulness and thanksgiving or worship, whatever it is. Continue in that.

And also to take your time, you [00:24:00] don’t have to rush through that place you can, you can take your time and look things over and, and go at whatever pace that is and revisit spots and just know that, God wants ,for you,

God wants your joy. What brings you joy, brings God joy. You know, whether that’s your healing, whether that’s connection, um, all that is a delight to God’s heart. I think that, you know, we do a good job sometimes of being really too hard on ourselves and kind of beating ourselves up, and it’s not the

Chealsia: Yeah.

Lisa: It’s not the character of God.

Chealsia: Yeah, that’s such a sweet reminder too. Like God wants our joy. Um, yeah, I think that’s a great place, place to end, even as we’re talking about going into this inner world, like keeping that at the forefront that God wants our joy, he wants our delight, he wants us whole.

He’s already here. He’s already present, so let’s orient ourselves to be more aware of that. [00:25:00]

Thanks for listening to the Created For podcast. For more ways to continue journeying with us, hit subscribe in your favorite podcast app. Check out the show notes for any links we mentioned, and go to cru.org/createdfor, for a guided reflection based on this episode.